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Sri Lankas TamilsHarder lines

Continuing repression of Tamils, and their

defiance, suggest reconciliation is far offSep 28th 2013 | JAFFNA |From the print

editionHoping this pinkie has started something

NOW

win the peace, is common advice to victors of a civil war. Sri Lankas president,

Mahinda Rajapaksa, ended a nearly three-decade long conflict in 2009, but his effortsto produce stability look badly skewed. He, along with Tamil leaders, are storing up

troubles ahead.

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Tour the north, where secessionist Tamil Tiger rebels once ruled, and signs of material

progress abound. Since the wars end splendid roads have spread, along with a web of

pylons bringing electricity. A rebuilt train line will reach the countrys northern tip at

Jaffna next year. Tens of thousands of foreign-financed houses are going up. The

residents of one, former hut-dwellers, show off their flat-screen television, concrete

walls and leafy garden. Northern towns, once isolated, buzz with motorbikes and

three-wheel taxis.

Democracy had a fillip, too, of sorts, on September 21st, when the north held its first

provincial elections. To dismay in Colombo, Sri Lankas capital, the Tamil National

Alliance (TNA), a relatively hardline group, romped to victory, taking 30 of 38 seats.

That was despite the efforts of sullen men from military intelligence near polling

stations telling voters to back Mr Rajapaksas ruling party. Intimidation was

widespread but ineffective. Foreign observers praised voters who defied a

compromised electoral environment.Still, celebrations were subdued: a few firecrackers and rueful smiles. Tamils know that

their gain is largely symbolic, and they voted more in frustration than in hope. A first-

time voter in Jaffna said it was not about development, but having our own people

rule. Yet that prospect remains far off. Breaking earlier promises of devolution, Mr

Rajapaksas central government will continue to run most affairs, notably public

spending, the police and the distribution of land, much of which has gone to the army.

The provincial council is weak. Real power lies in a shadow military administration,

including an army commander who is now governor. It will carry on deciding day-to-

day matters. Meanwhile, the army forbids crowds from gathering in the north. Its spies

spread feara policeman on polling day admitted that even he was scared of them.

Many Tamils say just talking to a foreigner provokes interrogation. Plain-clothes

figures sporting military haircuts frequently skulked near this correspondent,

interrupting meetings.

None of this suggests that reconciliation between Tamils and the Sinhalese majority is

going anywhere. A politician in Mullaitivu, a northern town, blames Gotabaya

Rajapaksa, the defence secretary and the presidents brother, who oversaw the bloody

end of the war. With his secret police, he uses the military as a threateningprogramme, to create fear among people, says the politician. He adds that military

thugs often barge into his house. No wonder Navi Pillay, the United Nations human-

rights commissioner, who toured Sri Lanka in August, warned of a drift towards

authoritarianism.

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If so, that is true in the south, too. But northern Tamil resentment runs especially

deep. In part it flows from the horrors in the final weeks of the war, when the army

killed thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of trapped civilians being held as human

shields by ruthless rebels. The army is also accused of killing surrendered fighters from

the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE.

Northern anger may have eased a bit. But post-war treatment of the defeated has been

crass. Bulldozing graveyards of rebel soldiers and denying Tamils memorials to the

dead while erecting Sinhalese ones: this looks likely to hold back reconciliation, not

encourage it. Triumphalist war-tourism sites are just as bad. But it is the military spies

who instil greatest mistrust. People are getting more hardline. Surveillance is very

high, which upsets people, says a human-rights activist.

It was discouraging, too, that the TNA election campaign suggested that Tamil

attitudes are hardening in response. References to the LTTEs late leader, Velupillai

Prabhakaran, drew cheers and support from voters. He was a psychopath, moreresponsible than any other for Tamil deaths. Yet even moderate politicians found it

convenient to call him a hero. As for the least moderate, one newly elected councillor,

the wife of a disappeared Tamil rebel, claimed that her victory showed that the LTTE

is still living in the hearts of the people.

Such talk is bound to provoke hardliners in Mr Rajapaksas government to seek more

repression of the Tamils. It will also dismay foreigners who have understandable

sympathy for the minority group. Already some Sinhalese commentators say the TNA

electoral victory proves that Tamils should have been denied an election in the first

place.

A university lecturer in Jaffna concludes that his community is traumatised and lacks

leaders. Tamils, he says, are morally disorganised. As if to prove his point, one of

Prabhakarans closest aides, Kumaran Pathmanathan, from his garden in Kilinochchi,

argues that Tamils know only the hardline, never the middle line. That is obnoxious

coming from the LTTEs main arms procurer, an apologist for Prabhakaran for 35

years. But since his release from jail last year he has become a stooge of the defence

secretary. The task for Tamils is to prove his claim wrong.

From the print edition: Asia

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