It is not enough to mobilise the PEOPLE of SL to stand against the rising threat of incipient fascism! Also of the greatest importance to mobilise IC!

Lanka’s National Security State versus the International Community
April 15, 2012, 12:35 am



by Kumar David


Outpouring of fury at abductions and assassinations has reached a peak. Let me quote just one of dozens of angry comments on the web - the kept press and TV prefer to make light of it. I quote, conflating two pieces by a wisely pseudonymous contributor (Watchdog) on Groundviews:


Quote: "Twenty nine disappearances (including an attempted abduction) have been reported in Sri Lankan media between February and March 2012. There have been fifteen in March and fourteen in February. This brings the total number of disappearances reported in the last six months to fifty six. Political activists and leaders of the People’s Struggle Movement in Sri Lanka, Mr. Premakumar Gunaratnam and Ms. Dimithu Attygalle disappeared on 6th April 2012. Prior to their disappearance both activists had been preparing for the first convention of the Frontline Socialist Party, a party formed by a dissident group from the JVP. FSP party members had received credible information that both activists were under intense Government surveillance, shortly before their disappearance. FSP party members believe that Mr. Gunaratnam and Ms. Attygalle have been abducted by forces linked with the Government since the party has campaigned actively against human rights abuses by the Government, particularly against the Tamil minority in the North. PSM activists have suffered threats, attacks, intimidation and surveillance due to their work. PSM activists Lalith Weeraraj and Kugan Muruganandan were abducted on 9 December 2011 in Jaffna and have not been seen or heard from since". End quote.


The People’s Struggle Movement, or New-JVP which will soon become the FSP, emerged from the womb of the Old-JVP less than a year ago. Till then its cadres and leaders, ensconced in the old party, went along with its anti-Tamil chauvinism. For several years Marxists have been warning that once the state had finished off the Tamil militants it would turn its guns on the Sinhalese working class and dissident movements. Of course neither the JVP nor most Sinhalese people were in a mood to listen. Now both see the point, but is it too little too late?


Then there are those in the foreign ministry and diplomatic services, GL and his acolytes, who have long been running with the hare and hunting with the hound. After the Geneva flop they have become the guinea pigs. One of them complains that a white van from the fleet hunting Tamil militants, journalists and human-rights activists has made a detour to give him a lift! Hypocrites who stayed silent, or incited van visits, only a few short years ago, should go reread Martin Niemöller’s prescient verse.


Two weeks ago I speculated in this column whether the regime would choose to confront the International Community (IC) and India, or compromise. I suggested that in the event it chose to mend fences, it would, for a while, encourage a cathartic surge, where the feral impulses of the security establishment and Sinhala-Buddhist extremists are allowed to run wild, enabling the regime to recoup its base. Thereafter it would attempt to regain control of political spaces for a compromise with the IC. I was aware, and many have warned in response to that piece, that once unleashed, the dervishes of extremism and the sorcerer’s apprentice in the national security state, would seize the moment and overwhelm the regimes ability to reassert control. Now events affirm that an insanity of political psychosis is driving these forces, within and outside the state, to paroxysms of violence. We are but a sliver away from an Idi Amin state; President Rajapaksa and the SLFP have lost their grip and politicised killers run amok in the South as much as the North.


In a grotesque turn of phrase the Dead Left leaders, speaking of Geneva, have squealed: "But we in Sri Lanka have to take part of the blame for allowing events to deteriorate to this extent. Let us act in a united, sensible and effective manner in the future to overcome the emerging threat to our national sovereignty and also to regain India’s support and goodwill". These three Ministers sat silently in Cabinet and raised their hands in acquiescence with every dastardly crime; now they pass it all off as small mistake! Are they seeking to assign all the blame to the Rajapaksa siblings alone, and whitewash their spineless selves? A bit rich after playing ball when the going was good in the racist civil war and thereafter. History will bury the Rajapaksas, but it will bury the Dead Left leaders well before that.


India


The half-mad national security establishment is manufacturing stories of 150 LTTE terrorists trained in Tamil Nadu and shipped to Lanka in the guise of fishermen. Statues of Gandhiji, scout movement founder Robert Baden-Powell, Swamy Vipulananda (instrumental in the revival of Hinduism and native culture in the East) and Palavarmani Periyathambipillai, which stood in the centre of Batticaloa town have been, decapitated by – well, who else, if the state declares that it cannot track down the culprits? The Nation newspaper of Pakistan carried a report on 27 March to the effect that GoSL had decided to confront India and expose its crimes and human-rights violations in Kashmir. I am not averse to exposing Sri Lankan or Indian human-rights violations, but that’s not the point. The pitch is that Colombo should set off on confrontation course against Delhi. The cup of xenophobia and inciting anti-Indian sentiment is filling, and some in the highest locus of sibling power are pressing for a hostile stance towards India.


This will also be attractive to the anti-Indian faction of the Sinhalese community including the Old-JVP, and make no mistake about it, once let lose this rabble can rouse much rancour. It is also a way to divert attention from the regime’s dismal failures and economic woes. What will happen in the event of out-and-out confrontation with India? The consequences will be dire for the economy, and Delhi will again start meddling and destabilising Lanka’s politics. I doubt if Indian opinion will allow Sonia-Singh to retry the old knock-kneed method of the last three years, sending plane loads of diplomatic supplicants bearing gifts of gold and myrrh and frankincense!


What about the China card? There is not the slightest doubt the regime will try to woo more Chinese support and thumb its nose at India. The Chinese will provide economic assistance, but they are too astute to get involved beyond what is in their own interests. Knowing Lanka falls in a sensitive zone of Indian strategic concern China will not let itself be drawn into a fix where it will have to back-off in humiliation. The world has learnt the lessons of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis well. What I am not so sure of is whether Delhi has spelt out the strategic bottom line sufficiently clearly to Colombo.


If a mad regime in Colombo sets off on a ‘Confront India’ path it could drive public opinion in greater India into a Tamil Nadu syndrome. If this irritation becomes widespread, it will not be good for this small island. No rational and intelligent regime in Colombo should provoke that, but is the current regime rational or intelligent? I ask in all seriousness; was it not foreseeable from January what the consequences of a knock-out blow in Geneva would be? Was it not obvious from early March that the regime was heading for a gigantic setback? Why on earth not deal with the Americans and Indians and work on a compromise resolution that it could live with and sell to its extremist partners at home? Most important, in the teeth of a UNHRC resolution demanding it halts human-rights transgressions, who but a madman will multiply abductions and assassinations? A leadership that gets itself into such a snarl can’t be very smart; the fabled cunning of the sibling cabal has deserted it.


The indispensability of foreign intervention


If anyone calls the outcome in Geneva foreign intervention or interference, I will not quarrel with the semantics. The point is that it is a damned good thing this happened and the ongoing saga of abductions and assassinations cannot be contained unless, once again, foreign pressure is much multiplied. The UNHRC said "Stop it", our national security thugs thumb their nose at the rest of the world and reply "Screw you" and press on, abducting with renewed vigour. The showdown with incipient fascism cannot be evaded any longer, and democracy in Lanka needs every possible ally it can locate, local or foreign, red or green, earthly or divine.


Political consciousness in sections of Lanka’s populace is backward, and as in Germany at the time of Hitler’s rise to power, there is a sizable chunk that is atavistic. If you add those who have been inducted into the game by patron-client crumbs from politicos’ tables, and include many who are plain scared, the number is large. Therefore rebuffing xenophobic’ shrieks and widening democracy’s international support base is vital. When I speak of mobilising international support for securing democracy in Lanka, more important than the governments of India, the USA or the EU, are public support structures. Many trade unions belong to or have close links with global trade union federations, our religious institutions have worldwide connections, the ability of Lanka’s intellectual classes to find resonance in India is large, and don’t discount the influence of the non-LTTE-rump Tamil diaspora which can mobilise intensive effort. Every one of these avenues must be used to the full to salvage basic democracy in Lanka. The last named must recognise the significance of this moment; you can’t have Tamil rights unless you save the rudiments of democracy first. Will a fascist state in Colombo grant devolution, let alone self-determination, to the Tamils?


It is not enough to mobilise the populace at home to stand against the rising threat of incipient fascism; in the current conjuncture it is also of the greatest importance to mobilise the international community defined in its broadest sense.


www island.lk