TNA repeating history

The call by a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) legislator for foreign judges to sit on a war crimes court to prosecute, inter- alia, Sri Lankan military officers and political leaders who gave leadership to the crushing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( LTTE) in 2009, and a reported request for personal security for him and some of his party leaders -- because they fear extremist elements in the North -- must be read together.

Both have a common thread. The TNA, which for decades had a monopoly over the politics of the North is currently under pressure from within its own polity. Formed in the early 1970s by the Federal Party and the Tamil Congress (the plantation-based Ceylon Workers Congress left the coalition no sooner it joined, opposing the coalition’s political agenda), the TNA leadership had complete control of the North and North- Eastern parts of the country. Its leader became the Leader of the Opposition in the national Parliament in 1977. Shortly thereafter, the fringe elements of the Northern and Eastern youth, realising they had no place in the parliamentary system, formed themselves into an armed group with the backing of foreign spy agencies. They gunned down and decimated the TNA leadership. Those who were left were forced to cringe before the AK-47toting LTTE and recognise it as the “sole representative of the Tamils” in Sri Lanka.

The TNA’s remaining leaders had to go to the Sri Lanka Government and seek personal protection by the very Police and Armed Forces they called “murderers” from the real murderers – the LTTE.

Is this that dark chapter of not so long ago repeating itself ? Has not the new generation of TNA legislators heard the saying “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

The Northern Province politics is on the boil once again. University undergrads are being pulled out onto the streets. The Northern Provincial Council did little or nothing other than passing resolutions to please the Diaspora that gave the politicians tickets to Toronto, London and Geneva. The politicians seem to know no better than beat the communal drum, peddle the ‘hard luck’ story and seek sympathy from abroad.

But as we keep saying, the hands of the Diaspora and the West are short and their pockets are long when asked to translate their tears to something tangible in the form of economic investment in the North. The bulk of it has been by the much slandered Government of Sri Lanka.

One might have an element of sympathy for the TNA if it tried to bridge the North- South divide and bring about racial harmony rather than harping on sectarian issues that provoke reactions in the South. But what if the TNA fail in this? At least it can say it tried.

What the TNA might not realise is that by trying to remain politically relevant by whipping up communalism and bad-mouthing the country’s Armed Forces, the party might still be irrelevant – as it was during the reign of the fascist LTTE until the Armed Forces vanquished them and gave democratic political life a chance to blossom once again in the North and North-East – and saw the rebirth of the TNA.

Trying desperately to score points in the North -- and with the Diaspora -- by calling for an international war crimes tribunal cannot be taken lightly as mere political rhetoric. Talking and complaining about the lack of progress in reconciliation efforts and ‘transitional justice’, the catchword of Western nations themselves gripped with their own headaches, is one thing, but to keep repeating a call for an international war crimes tribunal is another. One might have to restrain oneself from saying what that call really amounts to, but at the least, it is perfidious.

In about a month’s time, it will be ten years since the LTTE putsch for a separate state was ended. The three-decade long conflict cost much more than the inflated, unverified figure of 40,000 lives lost in the last battle of the terrorist organisation. What then is the aim of the TNA other than its own political survival on its own turf ? Or should the TNA still be backed as the lesser evil?

Nobody wants to invest in the North – not least the Diaspora because of the continuously simmering political climate there. TNA leaders and other heads in the North might do well to ponder why even a South Indian political leader from the Dravida Munnetra Kalagam (DMK), a party that has long shed crocodile tears and even got its cadres to commit self- immolation on behalf of their brethren in the North of Sri Lanka, prefers to invest his personal monies in a multi-billion rupee project in the deep South of Sri Lanka – not the North.

It is noteworthy that this Government has come out very categorically, and affirmatively that there will be no hybrid judicial mechanism ( with international prosecutors and judges) to investigate and inquire into purported war crimes in Sri Lanka nearly ten years ago. The UN Human Rights High Commissioner has already pre-judged that there were war crimes committed when she says that “the Sri Lanka Government should now refocus its efforts on fulfilling its obligations to provide justice and accountability for the grave human rights violations and abuses that took place during the conflict…” She has thereby already found that human rights violations and abuses took place even before any tribunal has been set up. This is the type of “independent” foreign adjudicators the UNHRC is pushing for.

The Foreign Minister has said that the Constitution of Sri Lanka must be amended to allow foreign judges and prosecutors to sit in local legal tribunals. The TNA is threatening to take the Armed Forces and the political leadership that saw the LTTE defeated to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Is the TNA naïve to not know that Sri Lanka has not signed the Rome Statute submitting itself to the ICC and the only way to the ICC is through the UN Security Council?

So, then, whom is the TNA going to lobby – is it the five superpowers that have veto powers at the UN Security Council? Or is this just the TNA bluffing its own people – and whipping up communal fervour in the rest of the country? Either way it serves no purpose for anybody, not least the people of the North.

The wiser and more beneficial road for the TNA would be to go to Toronto, London and Geneva and ask the West – and the Diaspora to put their money where their mouths are and invest some monies in the North and North-East where there is a dire need for economic growth and the raising of the living standards of the people, and also, potential for returns on their investments.