Shouldn’t be afraid to let your Tamil flag fly
This war is finally going somewhere. But, um, where? Does it lead to a unitary Sinhala dominated state where Tamils take whatever they get, or does it lead to a federal solution where different communities have control over their own security and judiciary? What does it look like to you? More importantly, which outcome would you consider a victory? This war, beneath the verbiage, looks like pretty much every other war in history. One group is thrashing another and consolidating its own power. The fact is that our government is blockading, searching, arresting, disappearing and killing Tamil people. The party line is that we are doing this (and abandoning negotiations) in order to ensure democracy for… these very people. The unofficial line is that anyone disagreeing with the current policy is LTTE. The government is very serious about defeating the LTTE but completely unserious about solving the ethnic conflict. In fact, in the rush for temporary security they are doing permanent damage to the humans, laws and institutions that are the heart of this nation.
In this state of emergency, our Constitution and Fundamental Rights have been suspended. In application, this affects Tamil citizens far more than any other party. The fundamental rights that Tamils don’t have include freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention and punishment, freedom of movement, and – less officially – freedom from torture. This is branded as a ‘temporary’ measure, until we smoke the LTTE out. The only thing temporary, however, was the cease-fire of years ago. During that time there was movement, less people being arrested and tortured and – wait for it – far less terrorism. The permanent state of affairs for Tamil people in Sri Lanka has been overt state racism after Independence and then collateral racism from the fight against the LTTE. That is, the government was originally hard on Tamils for being Tamils, now it’s hard on them for possibly being LTTE. It is a very big step that we are not overtly racist and that we do have democratic laws and institutions in place to protect our multi-ethnic culture. To a Tamil citizen picked up from their house in the morning and deposited in jail for weeks, however, it probably doesn’t feel much better.
This war, as it’s being fought, looks pretty much like a Sinhala southern state consolidating its power and thrashing Tamils. Before we subjugated Tamils for being Tamil, and now it’s for possibly being LTTE, but the net effect is still a typical war. The LTTE is an ideal scapegoat in that they do pretty much nothing to recommend themselves to anyone, from killing Rajiv Gandhi to throwing bombs in the zoo. At some point, however, we have to question whether it’s worth throwing out Tamil babies with the LTTE bathwater, and if that is any kind of victory for the Sri Lankan people.
If we are fighting a war for the Sinhalese then we should scrap the borrowed Bush doctrine and just do it. Discourage Tamils from living here by whatever means and build a strong enough security apparatus to control the ones that stay. Issue special IDs and visas for Tamils within Sri Lanka. Limit their movements, especially from the North and East. Do not grant them the same Constitutional rights as other citizens, have security forces single them out, and lower the bar of evidence required for imprisonment and punishment. We should also look the other way when third parties extort or terrorize them. For reference, these are all things our government is doing or has proposed. By some estimates the Sri Lankan Tamil population is now reduced to 5-8%, so we don’t have that far to go. Personally, I feel that a unitary Sinhala nation would be a very boring and sad place to live, but I guess it depends on how you define victory.
This article was written for the latest issue of Montage, out now
Wish I have a time machine. I could copy and paste this post (and most of your posts regarding this subject) in to notepad, hit F3 and replace LTTE with JVP and replace Tamil with Sinhala, and go back to the time I live far down south where more dark days than weekdays, more dead bodies by the road than burning bodies on the tires, and more army vehicles on the road than potholes, and read this post.
Excellent Post Indi! Right on target, nicely put.
another nauseating moralizing post by hypocritical racist indi ( who owns but does not have the courage to admit to his padashow blog).
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anyway apart from his hypocrisy and racism ( anyone who equate tamils with ltte terrorists is a racist and indi.padashow had done that regularly.) there is another regular feature of his posts, his avoidnace of the main issue when he is supposedly writing about the war.
what does he propose to do with ltte?
that avoidance more than anything indicate his intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy
does he support giving ltte more power? allow it to oppress millions and engage in all sort of atrocities as it did during war, during ceasefire, and at all times? does he thinks appeasement will work ?
how is he going to morally justify appeasement of terrorists and attempting to get “peace” at the cost of democracy , freedom , justice and human rights? by admitting sole representative claim of racist terrorists ? by calling ltte “freedom fighters”? how?
does he have any pragmatic arguments for appeasement of terrorists (given their history esp well documented lack of good faith at peace talks) and why does he think appeasement will succeed, (given the long track record of fascist appeasement in history around the world ) ?
why is he afraid to admit to beliefs about what to do with ltte, that his writing implies and advance his supporting arguments in a more straight forward way?
well he probably knows that his beliefs cannot be morally justified when they are exposed to the daylight( ditto for his arguments in support of them ). hence posts like the above avoiding and covering the mian issue using invective against government and his other silly statements ( like his recurring and false analogy about bush and iraq with sl)
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these ignorant and dishonest attacks of verbal diarrhea of indi.padashow can be ignored as crazed ravings of a cocooned brat if not for his slanders.
to cover up his real morally bankrupt beliefs, he repeats the ltte propaganda about “disappearing and killing Tamil people”. as always i request that he advance substantiated evidence that there is any systematic conspiracy to kill, disappear, control, tamils as he asserts and that the war is not against ltte a bunch of criminal thugs. s
so far he or his supporters have not been able to point to even one instance substantiated evidence . all his allegations are ultimately sourced from ltte propaganda through peaceniks, not on any verifiable facts .
but then he like all racist do not discriminate between tamils and ltte.
well here is a fact
when ppl parrot ltte propaganda and slander military without a shred of proof as he does here, they are acting for the ltte ( whether by design or as naive idiots dose not matter ) – that is not a government excuse as he alleges but a statement of fact . even those who oppose government will recognize that l.
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similarly he subscribes to the racist ltte argument that tamil grievances, discrimination, 83, etc caused and justifies ltte violence . that argument is no more justifiable than saying poverty causes theft. yes grievances, discrimination, 83 should be addressed ( as should poverty ) but only democratically, while terrorists (and thieves) should be bought to justice (using legitimate violence if needs be ).
but this fellow is unable get that in to his head
in the process of unquestioningly accepting ltte view of this argument indi padashow deliberately ignores the success achieved by other sri lankan minorities in addressing their grievances democratically, (for instance how can he miss enfranchisement of millions of ppl ( and very high percentage if population), something that many so called liberal western democracies have not done )
but then hypocrites like indi cannot let loose his slanders against sri lankans if he had to admit such facts
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ultimately we have to ask what motivate these stinking attacks of indi.padashow?
i cannot completely understand motives of such an idiotic racist but it may have lot to do with allegedly corrupt dealings of his relative when he was a political appointee of previous governments and was responsible for acting ( or not acting ) against illegal broadcast activities of terrorists . past, can bite back. esp if ltte gets defeated and there is a witch hunt for those who dealt with it ( esp given his latest attempt to suck up to present government through hakeem failed whan hakeem left)
one para above should be expanded to below for better clarity
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to cover up his real moral bankrupt beliefs, he repeats the ltte propaganda about
“disappearing and killing Tamil people, Discourage Tamils from living here by whatever means and build a strong enough security apparatus to control the ones that stay – Issue special IDs and visas for Tamils within Sri Lanka – Do not grant them the same Constitutional rights as other citizens- have security forces single them out, and lower the bar of evidence required for imprisonment and punishment ” etc etc
as always i request that he advance substantiated evidence that there is any deliberate or systematic( or even accidental ) conspiracy to kill, disappear, control, (or do any of the other things he says) to tamils as he asserts. there is no reason to doubt that the war is directed against ltte- a bunch of criminal thugs. and that all actions engaged in by sl military are common to all wars ( if he is opposing any kind of war against ltte he is avoiding saying that as i said )
so far he or his supporters have not been able to point to even one instance substantiated evidence . all his allegations are ultimately sourced from ltte propaganda through peaceniks, not on any verifiable facts .
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if some find my above comment too long here is a shorter version with main points ( but if you object to them first read the details in full version ) and a small addition
* indi. padashow is intellectually dishonest because he avoids the main issue about war in sl – what to do with ltte
* he avoid straight talk about ltte because doing so will expose the moral bankruptcy underlying his beliefs about what to do.
* to cover up this he uses ltte propaganda to slander sl militray and government without a shred of evidence to back up his claims . above post with its false allegations is typical
in addition
* he accepts the false racist argument that tamil grievances causes and justifies ltte terrorism.
* he ignores the existence and grievances of other sl minorities and how they have and are dealing with these grievances ( with some success) in his haste to paint sri lankans as racists.
* he is probably motivated to write these slanders by the allegedly corrupt dealings of his relative
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addition
to make a simple contrast of a fact to expose the lie in above post
indi extols the virtues of a ceasefire with ltte, that resulted in zero voter turnout in a ethnically cleansed wanni
he hates (and slanders as racist) attempt that resulted in 60% turnout, democracy (not perfect but still democracy ), and diverse ethnically mixed community
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war against ltte is justified and necessary ( if indi or anyone thinks otherwise say so openly )
frankly we don’t have any other morally justifiable and/or realistic option.
war is not against tamils but against ltte and there is nothing beyond typical horrors and inconveniences of any war here (if indi or anyone thinks otherwise point to evidence ) .
An incident this week involving a person in an office to which I provide consultancy services.
Middle aged Tamil woman, wears Shalwar Kameez, been employed in the office for 12 years, travels to work by train. She travels in the same carriage every day and is known to a fellow passengers. A few days ago, a stranger in civvies travelling in the same carriage says she looks like a suicide bomber and asks fro her ID. She refuses. He argues with her. She shows her company ID but he is not satisfied and asks for the national ID which she eventually produces. Strager pronounces himself satifsfied and gets off at a station a few stops later.
At about 8am at the Slave Island Railway station a CID officer boards the train and takes the woman to the Slave Island police station. The Slave islabnd police are familiar with the women because they make regular rounds of the offices nearby and they have interviewed here before. The CID are not satisfied so they take her to the CID 4th floor.
At about 2pm two officers from the CID turn up and inquire abut the woman. The company staff confirm that she is employed and ask her to be released, CID promises to do so and leaves.
At about 6.30 in the evening she is taken home and the people at the house questioned before she is eventually released.
During the time she was held she was repeatedly asked to sign a confession that she was an LTTE agent. Afer the CID officers returned from the company they had put her into a darkened room for about an hour and a half and keptt insisting that she had to sign a confession. In the evening before being released she was asked to sign a statement statement that she was well treated. She can read Sinhalese so she refuses to sign the statement but evenutally signs one that simply says that she was released unharmed at a particular time.
During the whole of the day, she is offered no food or water and although she is a diabetic and cannot take her pills.
All because someone in a train though she looked like a suicide bomber.
The most troubling thing about the detention without charge is that the detainee is not offered access to legal cousel nor allowed to contact family or friends. They are simply taken in, no one knows where they are, people search high and low and if they are lucky if they find them in custody. Most are also too frightened to take legal action after release for fear that they or their families may be taken in again.
The period of detention is 30 days, which may be extended to 180 days or longer at the discretion of the CID/police. All they have to say is we suspect the detainee to be involved in x, y or z, no basis need be provided. Put oneself in the shoes of the detainees or their families and one begins to realise what a terrifying experience this can be and just how far simple measures like the need to be produced before a magistrate within 48 hours, the right to contact family and access to legal counsel go towards guaranteeing freedom.
The above is by no means the only instance of detantion without charge.
Other notable example include the case of Ranjit Dahanayake who was held for 57 days without charge. His crime was to have offered the SL government 3 helicopter gunships for US$3m when the government was proposing to buy them for US$6m. He was detained because, it was claimd, he must have supplied helicopters to the LTTE.
see story of his release here:
http://lakdiva.com/island/i981122/fri/islnews.htm
The more recent case of the Mawbima journalist is reported here:
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/81946/
Jack point, Sad Story..
Since this is the story time, when I was around 19 (in A/L time) or so, I was in Nugegoda at night with my friend having tea in a restaurant and walking to the car where it was parked little further down the road. But passing police jeep decided to pick 4 of us up without any explanations, leaving other friends on the road and drive us all around the place and eventually end up in Piliyandala police station after midnight. I can explain in details all the verbal and psychological bulling they did just like how you explain above – but I don’t think it is fun to explain that again. Eventually they let us go in the morning once they have enough amusement by bulling 4 teenagers almost ready to pee on their pants and most importantly when they got to know we don’t have any money in exchange of our freedom.
I can explain that, just like how that woman been a Tamil in the train, I was been a young Sinhalese on the road at night. But I think it is not the case. Abuse of police power is Abuse of police power. Police find whatever the reason they can get away with when they do that sort of things. When I mean “Police†I do not mean SL police alone. It is including NYPD and LAPD too.
When I was 14 or 15, a cop declared my mother is a prostitute in the middle of the road because I use the word “uncle†when I ask him the direction. It must be somewhere in the constitution says that kids not suppose to call cops “uncleâ€. But I didn’t know that back then.
But those are minor issue compared to how they take the young Buddhist monk in the village temple, may be 18 years old, just because he been a young Sinhalese at the wrong time and the wrong place and eventually to be founded by the road side laying on a used tire. He happened to be dead and on fire by then. Smells something like roasting beef. I can recall number of people like that, my woodworking teacher happened to share the most unfortunate last name with Wijeweekra, my neighbor, my neighbor’s neighbor, couple of school prefects. Well, school prefects, I didn’t like those basteds in the first place. Anyway, we got rid of JVP militia somehow and now we do fancy things like blogging. I don’t know if the price was too high. May be government should have taken softer approach and hand over the country to JVP back then. May be the government should do that with LTTE now. All I see is, Tamils are facing the same thing that I experienced back then.
I think there was a recent ruling that the cops can’t extend the period of detention merely on suspicion. This was after the case of the guy who was picked up at the Pamankade checkpoint.
What impact will a ruling have? Coercing confessions and false statements indicates a certain level of impunity, I doubt some ruling will change that. No suspicion? No problem. Just make something up.
Sam, you are quiet right about the parallels between the crushing of the JVP and the issues with Tamils now. Indeed the root causes of both uprisings are the same-economic.
Also it is from this era that we came into the culture of government death squads traveling in unmarked vehicles armed convoys for ministers and others and the widespread use of guns in the underworld.
Also I don’t think it will end with teh Tamils either, political opponents will also eventually be targetted – as has already happened in the case of Dahanayake, only it will get more common. A police state is in the ascendant.
rumors and personal anecdotes that cannot be verified!
is that all you have to back the claim that there is an effort to create a “unitary Sinhala nation”etc etc ?
there is no such effort and as long as you cannot do better than silly rumors the claims of indi.padashow will remain a conspiracy theory along with alien abductions, us government killing jfk and mlk , staging the moon landing and white van conspiracies etc etc
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there is an effort create an ethnically pure authoritarian state on the part of ltte criminals . lot of sinhalaese and muslism and tamil refugeees can testify to that. no rumors there.
what do any of you want sl government to do about that ? not answering that question betrays your intellectual dishonesty
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jack point
“Indeed the root causes of both uprisings are the same-economic.”
i suppose you also think poor ppl will end up stealing by same logic ? not so, such sloppy analysis do a great injustice to great majority of poor who work their hearts out to get out of poverty.
anyway what do you propose to do with the thieves created due to economics? be honest. lock them up or forgive them ? :-)
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conditions of detention in sl are atrocious to all, not just to ppl with anecdotes, ask any petty criminal. that is a different question. don’t convolute that with this to hide your lack of facts and to fish for sympathy.
what matter here is whether there are grounds for detention and whether they exceed typical reason for detention in any country dealing with murderous terrorists . and whether the reason for detention was purely racist or reauslt of racist conspiracy as indi implies.
you have not proved your case with regard to that . you merely retail unverifiable hearsay. given that you have admitted to advocating abandoning millions of sri lankans to ltte oppression or “peace”, your believability here is not very high . get us verifiable evidence please.
Overall this is an excellent analysis. But there is hope. Recently the government decided to grant citizenship to Sri Lankans of Chinese origin.
So there is hope that things will improve in the future.
eh actually this was meant to be in the thread on “fear of a white planet” :-)
Sittingnut,
the woman was there is the office, I was around when she was relating the story to the others. That she was held in custody is certain because the CID visited the office to verify the details, in the afternoon. It is difficult for a third party to verify all the details but she had no particular reason to lie.
Conditions of detention are indeed atrocious but under current laws where anyone can be taken in on mere suspicion and where Tamil are equated with the LTTE then there is a problem. you seem to be at pains to make a distiction between Tamils and teh LTTE but a great many people, including the government do not. Witness the deportation of the Tamils from lodges and the JHU’s call for special ID cards for Tamils as just two examples.
What I meant was that the cops would have to present something more than “intent” aka “suspicion”. Something more evidential. I agree that evidence can be falsified, but at least it’s a positive step. Hopefully there’ll be more such small steps.
we have our own guantanamo in boossa, galle.
Agree, a small positive step. I wonder if its possible to ensure that :
1. All detainees have the right to contact their lawyer/family
2. In the event that detainees are removed from their house/workplace, the officers responsible for the detention must give names/no’s/contact details to family or friends present at the time.
In the event that the suspect is alone at the time of being taken into custody, a log to be maintained at the detention centre recording the details of contact of detainee with his lawyer/family (date, name, telephone no’)
It might go some way to prevent people disappearing.
Under the Emergency Regs, Jack, 1 will never happen and 2 might or might not. In the case of point 1 I can see the logic of not allowing a terrorist suspect access to a third party in order to prevent a warning being relayed. Point 2, depending on the circumstances, may not be adhered to for the same reasons. I’m sure point 3 is being carried out, it’s just that such a log may not be accessible to the detainee’s family.
The distinction Sitingnut seems to be trying to make between LTTE members and other Tamils is very laudable. Unfortunately, this distinction is NOT one encouraged by the government. In fact the behaviour of the stranger in the train would very likely be cheered on by them.
I think this is the point Indi is making here.
Whether by direct action or by mere inference, the current administration is definitely moving towards a unitary sinhala nation.
Same kind of scene happened with my accountant. She travels by train and some guy had demanded her to show her NIC and asked so many questions. She was so upset about it.