How Tamils Are Treated? Even now...!

The Travails of being a Tamil................by Shanie/courtesy: island.lk

Maheswari is an unmarried hill country Tamil woman from Uva and has over the past ten years been working in a well known garment factory in Bandaragama as a machine operator. She is a conscientious employee well liked both by her peers as well as by her employers. Early this month, she applied for two days leave to visit her parents and set off from the factory workers’ hostel travelling by bus from Bandaragama to go to her home in the Badulla district. The bus was stopped at a checkpoint near Piliyandala and the passengers had to alight from the bus and their identities were checked. A Police Constable on duty looked at Maheswary’s National Identity Card, remarked to her that he was also from a village close to her estate, was courteous and asked her to re-board the bus. But there were a few home guards or members of the Civil Defence Force who stopped Maheswary as she was getting into the bus. She was a Tamil and therefore required further investigation. Along with five other men who were also Tamils, she was detained while the bus they had arrived in, continued on its journey. Passing three-wheelers were stopped and asked to take the lot to the Piliyandala Police Station.

At the Police Station, there were a couple of dozen other Tamil men and women who like Maheswary had been detained while they were going about their legitimate business on public highways. Most of them were hill country Tamils. Some of them had mobile telephones which were shared by the detainees to inform concerned employers, friends and relatives about their plight. A policeman noticing this, shouted at them and confiscated all the mobile telephones. Some of those in detention had been there for over two weeks. Pleas and assurances from employers had no effect. In all there about 35 detainees of whom five were women. The men were all herded into cells where others charged with various crimes were also remanded. A woman Police Constable who was in charge of the women detainees however was exceptionally courteous and the five detainees were provided with sheets to spread on the ground to sleep on.

The Head of Human Resources at Maheswari’s company arrived at the Police Station very early next morning to secure her release. The Officer-in-charge told him that she could be released only on an order from the Magistrate and left the premises. However, a more friendly lower ranking policeman told him that it was not likely that the detainees would be produced in Court and suggested that he come back with all the relevant documents to show Maheswari’s bona fides. This he did later the same morning and stayed in line to meet the Officer-in-charge, which he was able to do around noon. This time, he was told that these matters could be looked at only after 5 pm. The company’s representative made a third visit at 5 pm and managed to have Maheswari released around 9 pm, nearly 36 hours after she had begun an innocent two day visit to see her parents!

Maheswari’s case is not an isolated one. Many of us are personally aware of many such cases. Maheswari was lucky that she had a considerate employer who was prepared to take the trouble to secure her release. Other Tamils, self-employed or with less helpful employers or with no influential person to take up their case, will have to spend many more days in detention purely because they are Tamils. Detention at checkpoints and arrests during cordon and search operations are not the only travails of Tamils. Some are subject to forced abductions; and not all abducted persons return to tell their stories. The insensitive among us justify such arrests and abductions as being necessary to ensure the security of all.


Internment of Japanese Americans

It was similar arguments that were put forward in the US during the Second World War. Following the Japanese air attack on the US fleet in Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the United States went into a frenzy and latent anti-Japanese feelings were aroused. Every person of Japanese origin was treated with suspicion and nearly 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry, the vast majority of whom were US citizens were subject to internment. There were a few who retained their sanity and refused to go along with the racism of the majority. Ralph Lawrence Carr, Governor of Colorado, was one of the few who spoke out against the injustice being done to the Japanese Americans. He publicly apologised to that community. His stance for justice cost him his re-election as Governor but he had courageously taken a stand against racist hysteria.

It took over three decades for the American people to realise that the stand taken by Carr was the right one. In 1976, President Gerald Ford acknowledged the wrong done to the Japanese Americans and in 1980 a Commission was appointed to inquire and report on wartime relocations and the internment of civilians. This Commission issued a report in 1983 holding that the Japanese Americans had suffered a grave injustice and that the official exclusion orders taken against them was ‘not justified by military necessity….The broad historical causes which shaped those decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.’ In 1988, the US Congress passed the Civil Liberties Bill apologising to the Japanese Americans for the injustice done to them. Some 60,000 survivors of internment were paid a total of US$ 1.2 billion as compensation.

In a landmark case where a Japanese American convicted in 1942 of not complying with the incarceration order successfully sought to have his conviction overturned, the Judge commented as follows: "In times of war or declared military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting constitutional guarantees. It stands as a caution that in times of distress the shield of military necessity and national security must not be used to protect governmental actions from close scrutiny and accountability. It stands as a caution that in times of international hostility and antagonisms our institutions, legislative, executive and judicial, must be prepared to exercise their authority to protect all citizens from the petty fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused."


Lessons for Sri Lanka

No two situations will be exact parallels. But wise leadership will learn from the mistakes made in similar situations by others. To refuse learning from another situation because it is not identical to our own is foolhardy at best. Political leaders and opinion-makers must have the sagacity not to repeat the mistakes of other leaders in history who made wrong and unjust decisions in similar situations. They need to be far-sighted, have a clear mind and not be swayed by ‘racial (or ethnic) prejudice or war hysteria.’

Regi Siriwardena was one of the most perceptive of our political thinkers and writers. Soon after the signing of the 1987 Peace Accord which brought in the Indian Peace Keeping Force to the North, he made a speech at a seminar; his observations then still have relevance to us today. Relevant because we now seem to reverting to J R Jayawardena’s failed political and military strategy. In the entire course of the ethnic conflict, Siriwardena wrote, the vast majority of the Sinhalese and Tamil people were deceived regarding the realities of the political situation. … You could not force on (an ethnic minority) policies which were abhorrent to their fundamental sense of justice and righteousness. Ultimately that was bound to meet with violent resistance. Secondly, when that resistance began, governments failed to realise that you could not stop that resistance by military means, with repression, torture and imprisonment…. These problems could have been solved in 1956 and 1965 and again in 1977 at much less cost. This could again have been solved in 1983 - at the time of annexure X (and this columnist would add, again in 2000 when President Chandrika Kumaratunge presented her constitutional proposals). But we reduced ourselves to that position where we totally isolated ourselves diplomatically and politically in the world.

Today, more than ever, we need leaders of foresight and courage, in politics, in civil society and in all walks of life. We need men and women who will take a public stand, as Governor Carr did, against violence in all forms – whether against an ethnic minority or against the weak and marginalised in society. We need leaders who will speak out against ethnic prejudice and war hysteria. We need men and women who will help our country towards that new dawn which will ensure justice and equality for peoples of all ethnicities, religions, and classes.