Arab News Editorial: Tamils in Lanka


(Arab News, Editorial, 20 September 2009) - Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised the UN that by the year end, the 300,000 Tamil refugees currently held in government camps under tight security will have returned to their homes. It would be a fine thing to believe him. Unfortunately the general attitude displayed by the authorities toward the Tamil minority still gives cause for concern. There is a clear current of triumphalism in the way the vanquished Tamils are being treated, which causes many to fear the government in Colombo is in fact unwittingly fanning the embers of future rebellion and violence. The manner in which the UN itself has been treated by Sri Lanka, including the arrest of some of its local officials, only adds to the unease.

However, to be fair to the government, it is clear they recognize at least part of the challenge. Among the refugees are still almost certainly a number of active insurgents. The last thing the authorities want is to let these people go and allow them to sow the seeds of fresh insurrection.

There is also some truth in Colombo’s assertion that the former heartland of the defeated Tamil Tigers is still highly dangerous. Deadly anti-personnel mines litter the countryside along with other unexploded ordnance. These have to be cleared before the Tamil inhabitants can return to areas that were once part of the front line in the 25-year war that brought such misery and bloodshed to this beautiful island.

Nevertheless, the manner in which such a huge number of Tamils has been confined in closely controlled camps from which they are unable to move, in any circumstances, is inevitably sending the wrong message, not simply to the international community, but far more importantly to the Tamil minority itself.

Despite one or two statesman-like pronouncements, the government has not actively demonstrated any clear program to win the confidence of this minority, whose severely circumscribed place in Sri Lanka was one of the original causes of the rebellion. The social and political reintegration of Tamils into society requires a lot more than weeding out the last concealed militants from the camps and mine clearance. It requires an active campaign to win the hearts and minds of a group of people who have escaped the rule of an uncompromising and militaristic Tamil Tiger administration, where every facet of normal life was sacrificed to the cause of rebellion and independence.

If the government thought about it, it ought to be pushing at an open door. The majority of Sri Lanka’s Tamils has to be utterly relieved to be escaping the perils of endless conflict and the harsh street justice of the ruthless Tigers. These people ought to be embracing the peace and the opportunity it brings for them to return to the distant days of peace and security. This does not, however, seem to be happening. Colombo needs to display more imagination. If Tamils feel they are merely being cemented back into their former place at the bottom of Sri Lankan society, the imposition of today’s peace is the building of tomorrow’s conflict.

Arab News

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