THE Sri Lankan government appears on target to release by the end of January 2010 the 136,000 Tamil refugees it still holds in military-run camps. Perhaps in response to UN pressure, it announced Saturday that from now on, people will be able to leave the camps for a few days to visit friends and relatives but must then return to detention.
This presumably signals the fact that the authorities have completed the screening of the camp populations to weed out Tamil Tiger fighters from their midst. Some 10,000 insurgents have reportedly been identified and taken away. It is as yet unclear what has happened to many of them. The government has refused access to the camps, even to opposition politicians, let alone international aid bodies and press and media. Therefore there is no way to confirm or deny dark tales emerging from the camps, which include raids by paramilitary forces.
The new EU lineup
Herman van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton, the new president and high representative respectively of EU should not be dismissed as boring failures before they have even begun, said The Independent in an editorial on Friday. Excerpts:.
There was a lot wrong with how the European Union selected its new leaders, and the two individuals chosen as the faces and voices of Europe may have their defects. But there was not nearly as much wrong with either process or individuals as that very British convergence of Euroskeptics and Euro-idealists would have us believe.
The EU, still a work in progress, is at a particular point in its evolution. The Lisbon Treaty is finally coming into force, after a rocky few years that included a rejected constitution, a repeat Irish referendum and a hold-out Czech president. The new president and high representative provide a belated answer to the question supposedly posed by Henry Kissinger. Europe now has two phone numbers, which is a considerable improvement on 27. Nor was the selection process as much of an embarrassment as might have been feared. At the Euroskeptic end of the wish list might have been a dinner that extended into breakfast, then lunch, culminating in a public row from which the national leaders angrily went their separate ways. At the Euro-ideal end of the wish list might have been a formal shortlist, followed by a hustings televised live Europe-wide, followed by a pan-European secret ballot next day. To be blunt about it, this was never an option. Some variant of the Euro-ideal option might be feasible in future, with Europe’s voters becoming directly involved — but not this time. This time the priority was to reach a consensus as smoothly as possible to get the post-Lisbon show on the road. And, despite forecasts of a long weekend, this is what the 27 managed to do — almost before the first course was over.
Nor was the process quite as undemocratic as Euro-idealists might claim. The fact is that the EU is in a bind here. Hold a direct, Europe-wide election, and the principle of national sovereignty is not just eroded, but negated. Publish a shortlist for the top job and a national leader who is in contention risks being accused by his (or her) own voters of betrayal. EU democracy is not as simple as it looks.
The need to stop any diehard Tamil Tigers from returning to the Tamil north of the island to seek to reignite the fires of rebellion is understandable. Nevertheless its information clamp down on the camps has made the government vulnerable to all sorts of claims of ill treatment. It also may have done little to advance the cause of reconciliation between the Tamil and majority Singhalese communities.
The government also claimed that Tamils could not return to the former conflict areas until around one and a half million mines had been removed. It is not clear how far this operation has got. Nor unfortunately is there yet much evidence of the “Northern Spring” redevelopment project that Colombo announced to rebuild shattered Tamil communities.
The unfortunate truth is that President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s cash-strapped administration is hard-pressed to fund such a multimillion-dollar exercise. Further pressure on the public purse is unlikely as the president seeks to produce electoral sweeteners ahead of next spring’s expected presidential election. His likely challenger is Gen. Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka’s former top commander and architect of the Tigers’ final defeat. Fonseka resigned because he complained Rajapaksa had not accorded the military and himself sufficient credit for the victory. The general now says he plans to fight for democracy and human rights and the two opposition parties, the free market United National Party and the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna are reportedly eager to adopt him as their joint candidate. Fonseka is said to be waiting for the president to call the election before declaring his candidacy.
This looming political hiatus must not, however, be allowed to interfere with reconciliation efforts toward the Tamils. The money for “Northern Spring” may not immediately be there but the political will simply has to be. The Tamil minority’s rebellion was rooted in years of discrimination by the Singhalese majority. After 25 years of violent Tamil Tiger indoctrination, the psychological barriers to be broken down are high. Tamils need to be welcomed back generously into the nation with a visionary hearts and minds program that unfortunately is not yet apparent. But without this, the seeds of a future awful conflict will be sown.
