| by M.G.Devasahayam
Former IAS Officer
( November 24, 2012, New Delhi, Sri
Lanka Guardian) “Events in Srilanka mark a grave failure of the UN to
adequately respond... during the final stages of the conflict and its
aftermath, to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of civilians.” So said an
internal United Nations report leaked by BBC in mid-November. The Report
condemned UN’s failure in its mandate to protect civilians in the last months
of Srilanka's bloody civil war that ended in May 2009. Ironically, it is India
that was largely responsible for this failure!
The 26-year war left at least 100,000
people dead. There are still no confirmed figures for tens of thousands of
civilian deaths in the last months of battle. An earlier UN investigation said
it was possible up to 40,000 people had been killed in the final five months
alone. Others suggest the number of deaths could be even higher. The final
months of the war saw hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians-330,000,
according to the UN Panel of Experts report of 2011-trapped in the territory
held by the Tamil Tigers.
The most damning part of the leaked
Report is that despite a ‘catastrophic’ situation on the ground, in the capital
Colombo many senior UN staff did not perceive the prevention of killing of
civilians as their responsibility and there was a sustained and
institutionalised reluctance among UN personnel in Srilanka to stand up for the
rights of people they were mandated to assist. Obviously UN staff chose to
remain silent about war crimes committed by Srilankan military. Can there be a
more damning indictment of the top-heavy and money-guzzling UN establishment?
“I fought India’s war”, declared
President Mahinda Rajapakse immediately after the war ended. Naturally so and
Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar gives the grueling narrative: “As the curtain comes
down in and we leave the theatre, the spectacle continues to haunt us. We feel
a deep unease and can't quite figure out the reason. Something rankles
somewhere. And then we realise we have blood on our hands….It is the blood of
100,000 Srilankan Tamils who have perished in the unspeakable violence through
the past quarter century.”
Continuing the war against Srilankan
Tamils, India joined hands with the likes of China, Russia and Pakistan and
defeated the Resolution moved by European Nations at UNHRC, Geneva seeking
enquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Srilankan
military. India’s Ambassador in Geneva himself drafted and tabled a Srilankan
self-praising counter-resolution and got it passed by ganging up with several
autocratic countries!
India’s anti-Tamil scheming is indeed
bizarre. A retired Lieutenant General of the Indian Army was a paid Consultant
to the Srilankan military and was advising them on war strategies. His brother,
an Indian diplomat and UN Secretary General’s chief of staff was supervising
Srilankan operations from Colombo. They worked in tandem, ably aided and
abetted from Delhi by the National Security Adviser, Foreign Secretary and a
top PMO functionary! India’s Ambassador to Geneva was an add-on. This well
oiled Network stretching Colombo-Delhi-Geneva-New York made UN inactive during
the last months/days of the war. Rest is history and the leaked UN Report only
confirms this!
In the first week of November, Srilanka
was hauled up by the International Community at UNHRC during the Universal Periodic
Review (UPR) of the island’s human rights record. As follow-up of the western
countries-US, UK, France and Germany-effort to get the genocide and war crimes
investigated by a neutral international body, countries including Sweden,
Austria, Slovakia and Estonia urged Srilanka to sign the Rome Statute of 1998
that had set up the International Criminal Court so that it could investigate
the horrendous war crimes. India kept
deafeningly silent!
Influential countries like UK, USA and
Canada asked for a political solution based on devolution of power to the
Tamil-speaking provinces. India kept mumbling about this, but did not join
these countries. Taking advantage of India’s impotency, Srilanka government is
sitting pretty suppressing all democratic, fundamental and basic rights of its
minority citizens.
For public consumption India’s foreign
policy mandarins came out with some outlandish reasons to justify India’s
Srilanka policy. These included ‘Zero-tolerance’ against terror; National
Security; safeguarding geophysical interest in the region; preventing the
sowing of the seed of ‘secession’ in Tamil Nadu and expansion of business,
trade and commerce in Srilanka.
All these are spin except the last one
as is clear from the New Delhi based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies
Report titled “India’s Srilanka Policy-Towards Economic Engagement’ (2008). The
Report exposes that India’s ‘conflict resolution drama in Srilanka’ is pure
farce and instead of India-Srilanka
relationship focused on conflict intervention, India’s foreign policy has
pushed economic engagement into the lead role in bilateral relations. The
success of this suggests that India has been pushing a policy emphasizing on
economic relations and backing away from the highly contentious political
issues of conflict-resolution.
Post-war, India is continuing with the
same puerile agenda as stated by another Ambassador-G.Parthasarathy (2012):
“India’s ties with Srilanka will inevitably be strengthened on the basis of
growing and mutually beneficial trade and economic relations. India views Srilanka
as a country whose past performance and potential for rapid economic growth
make Srilanka a reliable and long term partner for bilateral and regional
economic cooperation and integration as well as FDI….” Let democracy, dignity
and human rights be damned!
One message is clear. Liberty-driven
democracy agenda has been replaced by Greed-driven ‘development’ agenda. This
is what governments are doing within India and GoI is pursuing in Srilanka.
Hence the simmering cauldron in the island and India’s utter failure in
bringing peace!
This is reflected in the sense of
betrayal among Srilankan Tamils that India has sold off their self-respect and
dignity for a mess of pottage: “Thirty-five years of armed struggle to
‘reestablish the lost sovereignty of the Tamils’ was crushed by the same State
with the support of International Community under the pretext of
counter-terrorism. After a full circle, Srilankan Tamils are back to square
one. They lost hundreds of thousands of people to prove to the world, that the
Tamils are striving for their legitimate rights. Despite forced, miserable
nomadic life they have repeatedly mandated for self-rule refusing to
compromise. For Srilankan Tamils this is an issue of existence or extinction,
survival with dignity or servitude as slaves.”
But Delhi has no ears to hear this wail.
Prior to the war India could not bring about peace and just solution in
Srilanka mainly because of its commercial and trade interests prevailing over
democracy agenda and the extreme positions taken by the warring parties. This
led to the war. Post-war, India should realize that SL conflict resolution
process is about resolving the conflict, which led to the war. The conflict was
anterior to the war. The conflict that is sought to be resolved is not the war.
In fact, the war itself was an attempt to resolve a conflict, which had not
been amenable to resolution by peaceful means.
In this sense, war was a part of the conflict resolution process-a war
persuades parties to reconsider their earlier positions and hopefully, move
them to settle their differences so that peace could be brought about through
just means.
At the UPR there was convergence of
international opinion on key points-13th Amendment Plus, democratic devolution,
power sharing, demilitarization of Tamil areas and penal action for war crimes.
If India is true to its salt, this is
the opportunity to grab. India should realize that it is world’s largest
democracy wherein human rights, liberty, dignity and freedom matter much more than
trade, blood-money and corporate profits and bring about peace in the ‘Teardrop
Island’ through an abiding political solution. If not, posterity will never
forgive the Delhi minions and their cohorts, who have blood on their hands.
 “Events in Srilanka mark a grave failu...){kind=link}