Sri Lankan IDPs are not displaced as much as detained. They’re being held until LTTE cadres are ‘weeded out’ or screened or whatever, which has a logic, but there’s no particular legal basis for it. That’s why I’m interested in the Fundamental Rights case filed by the family of an IDP. Under the Constitution freedom of movement is a fundamental right. It can be restricted under Emergency Law (PTA) basically at Ministerial discretion, given a detention order. It can also be restricted under the 6th amendment for supporting secession from Sri Lanka. I suspect these are the reasons for the detention of basically everyone moving with the LTTE (willingly or not). The detention, however, is not really done in a legal way. The Supreme Court should actually strike it down.
Note that I’m not saying the detention doesn’t make sense. I don’t agree with it, but I don’t think it’s irrational. There are LTTE cadres and supporters in the camps. There are significant weapons and ammo dumps in the Wanni. The roads to Mullativu, Kili, etc should stay closed until the places are demined to acceptable civilian standards (note that this is different from military standards). However, it is important that the law applies to all Sri Lankans. It is possible to detain 280,000 people, but that would legally involve issuing detention orders to all of them, including five year old kids and babies.
However, this hasn’t been done. The detention is an executive/military decision without much legal backing. I think the Supreme Court should rule for the person filing the case and let that IDP family out. I think that this precedent should apply to all the IDPs and they should be given a choice to leave. I also don’t think that this is likely, and I think the executive branch still has enough war support to safely ignore any such ruling. But I still think that’s the right thing to do, under law.
Note that I’m not even saying it’s the best decision in terms of national security or integrity or anything. I don’t know. I just think it’s the legal one. The court doesn’t always give you the decision you want, I mean, I thought OJ did it. However, rule of law generally makes everyone’s lives safer and a bit less insane.
You’re learning, but you got some things wrong, again. It’s ok. We’re getting there. You rightly observe that the procedures haven’t been followed, even assuming there was a reason to detain all 300,000. Great. Then you say something nonsensical – “It is possible to detain 280,000 people, but that would legally involve issuing detention orders to all of them, including five year old kids and babies” I assume you don’t mean physical possibility, because they are doing it any way, rather ‘legally possible’. That’s where you get it wrong. The law says you can’t detain someone unless you reasonably believe them to be a person who has committed an offence. Ex facie, a baby cannot commit an offence under the PTA, so you cannot, never ever, justify detention of all 300,000. Furthermore, to justify the detention of all 300,000, and to support it, you would have to say that every single one of them, babies, adults etc are people you believe to be terrorists. Not that you think there are some, or many terrorists among the 300,000, but that you have information that every single one is a terrorist. Whichever way you look at it, you can’t justify the detentions, even if you issued 300,000 detention orders including tens of thousands to babies(which is the most ridiculous fucking thing I have ever heard) Under our emergency law, you just can’t keep these people, detention order or not.
You’re learning real slow, but any progress is good progress.
indi, please…how can gov send these people home … there are no homes all destroyed … to build them will take years..until such time this is the only feasible solution, can u imagine how much money GOV will need if those people spread in the whole vanni district… don’t fall for LTTE propaganda, like u did before.. during the war….
@TimesEye
The LTTE wants a separate state of Tamil Eelam. I simply want a united Sri Lanka where everyone has rights, under our Constitution. Please try to get that straight.
There is no particular legal mechanism to detain everyone in these particular camps. I suppose Parliament could pass a law, but under current law I don’t see how it works. Having a reason is not the same thing.
It’s not about sending them home, those areas are still mined. It’s giving people choice to come and go from Menik Farm, or to go to relatives in Vavuniya and cleared areas. Some would decide to stay.
Most of these IDP’s have relatives in Colombo or others parts of north east or even overseas. It’s not like they are short of places to go stay or dont have cash to spend to look after them. It’s just that the govt wants to hold them prisoners for the crime they were Tamil and living in LTTE held territory. This is plain illegal.
Thanks for the clarity in this post, Indi.
If only the govt can release people who have been cleared and have a place to go, that would make the situation less
crazy. choice !!!
christ, talk about getting your knickers in a twist.
er, the point is nowhere in the law are you allowed to arrest people, detain them, and then start ‘clearing’ them to decide whether or not they should be held. that’s plain illegal, even by the draconian ER’s and PTA standards, not to mention immoral and a blatant violation of international norms. twisted panties, or naked racism?
They would probably move in with friends/relatives elsewhere. Only a few have nowhere but their destroyed houses to go back to. Most will have somewhere other than N/E where they can go to but govt does not want them flooding Colombo or elsewhere.
There is also another question that could be asked. Will penning these people up create the right conditions for another militant movement to emerge?
Especially, when they are eventually released they return (say) to find an army camp occupying a part of their farm/school/village?
I am going to tell you a story. It’s an old story. Not as old as the hills however. But as old as Law. This is the story of man made Law.
Once upon a time, in a far away land there arose a certain SITUATION which made necessary a certain COURSE OF ACTION which had a logic but there was no particular legal basis for it.
Once upon a time in a far away land the legal thing to do ceased to be the best decision in terms of national security or integrity or anything (People didn’t know!)
Once upon a time there arose a SITUATION which made necessary a COURSE OF ACTION. And people said that course of action made sense. It was not irrational they said. But at present it was not exactly legal.
In the hills, in the woods, in the bazaars, in citadels, in public gatherings they said this. The cry went up “The legal thing to do has ceased to be the best decision, the most rational decision, the most logical decision”
The cry reverberated from one end of the land to the other. The very birds and beasts echoed it.
And finally the makers of Law took note. They made new Law to accommodate the new situation. They made the best thing to do, the most logical and rational thing to do, also the legal thing to do. At the same time they regularized and moderated and took steps to minimise the negative side effects the inhuman, unkind aspects associated with the BEST THING TO DO.
And all around the land people marveled. They said. This is why LAW is majestic. This is why LAW is not a static, dry subject. This is why LAW is a dynamic, moving, evolving force as riveting as Bold and the Beautiful. Now children sleep.
There are still Tigers out there. Small groups, starving, hiding, occasionally killing a cop or soldier. They’re being hunted down and killed. There are also tons of weapons, explosives, food, and kit cached in the NE. The LTTE’s international network is intact and making money, and it has a diaspora ready to pump in more. All that is needed is a sea for those small groups of Tigers to swim in. A sea in which to recruit and recuperate and retrain. But right now that sea is dammed up in the IDP camps. They will stay there til those groups are exterminated and the weapons are dug up.
It may be sad, it may be illegal, it may be a lot of other things. But it’s also OK, as long as it doesn’t go on indefinitely.
OK is a wish-washy thing. There are lots of people who were OK with the Holocaust, as there are lots who were OK with the internment of Japanese during WW2. Of course, there are people who don’t care about things like the rule of law and the rights of citizens. That’s fine. I think Indi is at the least, trying to pretend that he cares about state legitimacy, rule of law, and civil rights. It may be ok for you Blacker, it shouldn’t be OK for Indi, is my point.
david,
however measured and deliberate you think your statement of “ok” to be, are you confident that posterity will see it the same way? That the great-granchildren of those detained completely outside the law will think, “but for the brave and tough decision made by MR, we would be fodder for Tiger AKS, vehicles for Tiger suicide vests and mediums for Tiger infestations.”
“Indefinitely” is a bar so low as to invite inapt comparisons, like Aadhavan invoking Godwin’s Law above. Surely, proponents of mass detention should come up with a more concrete standard. 1 year? 2 years? 10 years?
Until the six months ultimatum given by the president to settle the large majority of the IDP’s has passed I think its fair to give him the benefit of the doubt. He might actually keep his word. it’s in his interest politically, it’s in the interest of the IDP’s and the rest of the population.
haha…not Godwin’s law, but those are the two examples of wide scale internment that readily come to mind.
What sorts of resources has the government committed to vetting the interned and facilitating their release?
This is a severe form of collective punishment and it follows that the government should be motivated by a sense of urgency in the process of winding down these camps. However, I’m not seeing that. They seem to be approaching it as some sort of elaborate, if unusual, administrative task. Something proceeding at the usual pace of SL bureaucracy.
It’s that that’s hard to stomach. This sort of unjustified collective punishment – against toddlers, against the elderly – is something that can’t be excused. It’s galling that you continue to justify it.
It’s just plain wrong is all. Enough already.
Nothing can justify this, nothing. We have courts, we have laws, we have a police force – these are the tools with which to tackle crime. Arbitrary detention of a group of suspected criminals for an indefinite period of time is not how our system works, and not how it should work. Ever.
I am of the view that we have to solve this issue within the parameters of our laws (including the constitution). To say that certain circumstances may require us to work outside those laws implies that those very laws are meaningless. How can we expect minorities to have faith in the governance framework of the country if it is circumvented on a case-by-case basis?
Sri Lanka – Small Miracle (that we’ve got away with this for so long woo hoo!)
Yes, I think there should be a timeframe, Nayagan. A fixed one. I’m not too worried about posterity. I fought in this war. I’ve no prob with that. I’ve really no prob with my son or future grandchildren fighting a war if it’s inevitable. But I’d hate to have them fight one because we were too weak to see beyond the bonds of our own laws. Callous as it may sound, the adults in those camps brought this on themselves. The entire SL NE Tamil population, parts of the diaspora, and the pro-LTTE Tamil politicians share a part of the blame. They raised the dog, and let it control the house. They let the dog eat their children in exchange for keeping the neighbours away. The kids are innocent, but they’re suffering with their parents. It’s sad, but it can’t be helped. There’s only so far you can go down a road before it’s too late to turn back. You have to walk through to the end, pain or no. Sorry. But there it is.
I wonder if David would feel differently if his dad had been Tamil rather than his mom. I’m not sure a ‘David Balasingham’ would say something like the above so readily.
got nothing to do with Pants. Ever heard of Pradeep Jegananthan or Jeevan Thiagarajah?
“What care I for their quarrels or whether the eagle I march under has one head or two?”
— William Makepeace Thackeray. “Memoirs of Barry Lindon”
It was by the smallest of coincidences (or gods or destinies) that I grew up in Colombo instead of Jaffna. I know without a shadow of a doubt that if it had been the latter, I would have fought for the separatists. So what I say has nothing to do with my race. I always believed — and still do — that the Tamils were right to fight. If I grew up in Jaffna or Killi or Batti, I’d have fought too. But it was Colombo, so it was the Army for me. I have always maintained that if you truly believe in something, you must be willing to fight for it. I truly believe that Tamils — and all other races — must be treated equally in SL. I also truly believe that no one will take a part of my country away under a gun.
I believe the Tigers were right to fight — all other options were useless. But where they went wrong was when they usurped the true cause, and put the LTTE above the wellbeing of the Tamils. When they wiped out all the other separatists and silenced all alternate voices, they betrayed the cause. They took away the NE Tamils’ most fundamental right — choice.
“What is the future of these little ones, my sweet boy?”
“Their future is to fight. They have no other future.”
— Gerald Seymour. “At Close Quarters”
That is a future the children in those camps must never face. And it’s upto us to make sure they have the choices I had, at least.
” The entire SL NE Tamil population, parts of the diaspora, and the pro-LTTE Tamil politicians share a part of the blame.”
apportioned how? Substantiated in what way? I could easily say that such-and-such group is responsible for lowering the average IQ in the US and weakening the institutions underpinning our current wealth but then, absent proof and argument, i’d be called a xenophobe and racist. what are you? You do, whatever protestations may follow, think that you are the archetypal inevitable killer–whether born in Jaffna or Colombo. If you are the profile for the typical tiger grunt, how could you blame anybody in an affected area for backing down and taking the pain?
and you didn’t answer the question, how long is too long?
Every day that they are held behind the wire is too long, Nayagan. Every single fucking day that those people can’t walk free is too long. But I will put up with it and tolerate it if it’ll eventually be for the greater good — a good that includes the future of the SL Tamils. I hope it won’t be too much longer. But I will never forgive myself if we have to fight this war again because we couldn’t go the distance and backed down to the weak-kneed, lilly-livered liberal horseshit that demands a short term reaction.
I do not blame the NE Tamils for bowing under the tyranny of the LTTE. How can anyone be blamed for being scared. But the Tigers weren’t always terrorists and tyrants. They became that. And the NE Tamils, the pro-Tiger diaspora and the LTTE apologists allowed them to become the monsters they became. They washed their hands off responsibility for the conduct of the cause. They said, “we trust you, tell us when it’s done”. And that is unforgivable. If you believe, fight, man, fight to the fucking end. But a revolution is not made by conscripted peoples. You can’t force freedom.
you need a more detailed timeline than, “1. the tigers appeared…2. locals disavowed responsibility.” It is my opinion that they didn’t have the power to make a choice to disavow responsibility or not. It is not at all clear that public apologists contributed in any material way to the LTTE lifespan. Nobody ‘allowed’ anything anymore than villagers down south “allowed” the gov’t to disappear their loved ones.
i agree that you can’t force freedom. but i also remember gitmo and the israeli mistake of rooming hamas and plo members together in prison. It’s an example which belies the claim that internment does not provide a hospitable medium for extremism and violent intent–a force multiplier for proto-tigers.
short-term reaction expressed thus far has been of the knee-jerk, thoughtless variety. But it will soon become medium-term. What then?
and no, i can’t agree that something I believe in is worth depriving another’s life if it’s possible to negotiate and argue instead. You may abhor the beta-male-cooperation driven economic wealth of the west, but it’s a life i’m sure any in and outside the camps would wish to share on their own terms.
and how long can mahinda insist on demining to be complete and then saying it’s the sole responsibility of the UN? can’t the mighty GOSL army fulfill that function as well at highest-ever funding and personnel levels?
Laws, laws, laws…you think those butchered at Kaththankudi can expect justice at the Supreme Court?
Some people here are just plain dumb. Everything cannot be resolved by the rule of law – if that was the case, we should have just taken the LTTE to court, no?
You talk to people in language they can understand, and the same goes for the remnants of LTTE cadres left hiding amongst civilians.
And yes, this catastrophe is something the NE civilians brought onto themselves, and more importantly, something the Tamil diaspora brought onto these civilians by supporting the LTTE.
You reap what you sow – it was fine to foster the terrorists, but somehow, we can’t stand the weeding out process, can we?
The latest IDP update is available here by UN OCHA, to me the most reliable public document yet.
http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/srilanka_hpsl/Catalogues.aspx?catID=74
It is absolutely shameful, however, that the govt is not releasing information in the format that UN OCHA is doing above, and that journalists have to chase up individuals in various ministries to get info.
“you need a more detailed timeline than, “1. the tigers appeared…2. locals disavowed responsibility”
Nayagan, I thought you’d be aware of the detailed timelines of the LTTE’s history, 1979-2009. I don’t think it’s necessary for me to list that out in a comment on a blog. It’s freely available. Nor have I oversimplified it as you’ve claimed above. It was a gradual process — as the LTTE gained in popularity and power, the Tamils of the NE, SL as a whole, and the diaspora gradually lost/abdicated control. The Tigers didn’t start wiping out the opposition in 1990 — they started long before that. It was clear to everyone (including the Tamils), just what the LTTE was doing. Read what DBS Jeyaraj wrote way back in the early ’90s. Read what Taraki wrote.
Even when true visionaries such Neelan Tiruchchelvam were killed, LTTE apologists like Kumar Ponnambalam applauded the act.
At first, VP referred to the Tamil diaspora as a “lost generation” and treated them with scorn for running away. He only really began to woo them post Indian intervention via the IPKF. Finally gaining relevance, the pro-separatist elements of the diaspora supplied the cash, never questioning VP’s tactics and strategies.
Unlike a state, the LTTE required a sea to swim in. The Tamils of the NE were that sea. And you can’t swim in a hostile sea. The NE Tamil population as a whole backed the Tigers. If they didn’t, the LTTE couldn’t have survived, they would have been wiped out as they were eventually this year. The proportion of pro-LTTE:anti-LTTE within the NE Tamils gradually changed from pro- to anti-, but that change was also proportionate to a gradual increase in the LTTE’s callousness to the Tamils, and the latter’s increasing helplessness.
Your attempt to compare the Sinhalese south’s suffering under the GoSL to that of the NE Tamils under the LTTE is illogical and frankly absurd. The deep Sinhalese south was sympathetic to the JVP, not the GoSL. They were victimized by the state — whom they considered an enemy. The NE Tamils on the other hand were betrayed by their own leadership.
I agree that internment is not an ideal solution. However, the SL military can’t pacify the NE with the population in place. It will lead to a Iraqi-style insurgency. Have you forgotten what the situ was just before the return to hostilities? The LTTE used the civil populace as proxies to antagonize the GoSL forces with aggressive civil disobedience coupled with pinprick terrorist action. The MoD doesn’t want to be faced with a scenario where they need to carry out further anti-insurgency ops in a civil environment. House-to-house searches, curfews, etc, will just result in clashes between the military and the civilians, laying the ground for a return to low-intensity conflict, which will be disastrous. The GoSL will keep the sea drained until the fish are caught and their eggs are dead.
I understand your feelings on pacifism, and I respect them. Perhaps if you were faced with a situation such as the Tamils of SL faced over the 30 years post-independence, you would feel differently. I do not “abhor the beta-male-cooperation driven economic wealth of the west” as you put it. I have lived in that society and enjoyed it very much. But I understand also that none of that wealth would have been possible if there had not been men willing to use violence to gain it. It would have been nice if the option of negotiation and argument had been open to 1970s Tamils, but it wasn’t. Action was all that was left. Sadly, that military rebellion was hijacked and fucked up by the LTTE, with the tacit cooperation of SL’s Tamils.
As I said, demining isn’t the only thing — the GoSL won’t admit that there are considerable numbers of Tigers on the loose still. They are also using the closed environment of the camps to weed out the surviving Tigers and gather intelligence. This will be much harder if the populace was back in its villages and towns. Demining itself isn’t as easy as it sounds — it can take years even in a totally pacified environment. Most soldiers haven’t a clue about demining. In the military its undertaken by specialists — units and individuals. But it IS a good excuse.
ok, i’ll stick my neck out and make a prediction: in 1 year, there will still be at least 150,000 civilians in internment camps. All your argumentation above will be irrelevant if it comes true.
since you’re so fond of inapt metaphors, think of who you ‘support’ when a gang of masked goons breaks into your house and hold a gun to you and your family’s head. Does playing tough guy and telling the goons to eat it play out well? Not if they’re the sociopaths who founded the tigers.
and i’m sorry you feel the support of “all tamils in NE” supported and were “responsible” for the tigers is such an obvious case. Any rational person would, taking that as p, continue onto q and kill/deport their descendants. I’m sorry that your mind hasn’t led to you interrogate that position fully and discover the mechanisms of fund-raising in the west and the means of manufacturing consensus in the NE of SL. It’s just too bad. You could have convinced me of something.
and you are stating here, to the kottusphere, that prabhakaran was a ‘leader’ of NE tamils?
really?
“All your argumentation above will be irrelevant if it comes true.”
My argument is irrelevant right now. So is yours. ‘Cos what either of us think doesn’t really matter.
“think of who you ’support’ when a gang of masked goons breaks into your house and hold a gun to you and your family’s head. Does playing tough guy and telling the goons to eat it play out well? Not if they’re the sociopaths who founded the tigers.”
And not if you opened the door, invited them in, fed them, sheltered them, and paid for the bullets. Bit too late to play tough then. Or smart.
“Any rational person would, taking that as p, continue onto q and kill/deport their descendants.”
Perhaps we have different views on rationality :)
“It’s just too bad. You could have convinced me of something.”
Why would I want to convince you? Your assumptions about my discoveries or lack of them are just juvenile “bah, humbugs”. As useful as shaking your fist at the sky.
Oh, and “yes” to your last question.
Wow. Thank you for expressing so perfectly why the minorities in Sri Lanka don’t feel truly secure (and perhaps never will).
I hope one day the white vans don’t come for your family – regardless of whether they are guilty of anything or not.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
“You talk to people in language they can understand”
Well, at least she’s on board with the efforts to offer all government services in Tamil as well as Sinhalese. Kudos on your progressive views, Nadia.
I’m with Nadia here. And Niemoller’s ‘poem’ is getting really old.
Yes, ‘Been Here’, quite old. Nearly six decades old, in fact. Thankfully those lessons are no longer relevant, especially not in a Sri Lanka inhabited by the likes of you and Nadia.
Praise the lord.
Yet aother example of Tamil whining; it’s always someone else’s fault isn’t it?
Ha. It didn’t take you very long to scuttle to ethnicity, did it? This from the person appealling for a united Sri Lanka, defined by citizenship rather than ethnicity.
United so long as minorities don’t ‘whine’ when a few hundred thousand are interned in camps. The day that most Sinhalese people find it as unacceptable as Tamil people that a few hundred thousand Sri Lankans are being treated this way is the day you’ll see a truly ‘united’ Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka seems to be heading in the opposite direction, with people like you cheering it on.
Feel free to consider the above as more Tamil whining as well, if it makes you feel better about yourself.
Tamils have a long history of “scuttling to ethnicity” so why point fingers at others? Whining, crying and screaming at the Sinhalese, Indians, Brahmins, Hindi-speakers, RAW, “Tamil traitors”, the “two-faced” Muslims etc etc isn’t going to get the Tamils anywhere; it’s just making the community look like a bunch of fools. It’s time the Tamil community looks within and fixes its (glaring) flaws before throwing a tantrum. I support the Government of Sri Lanka’s move to keep these folks in welfare camps until the remaining Tamil Tigers are weeded out, and until villages are demined and made safe for resettlement. If these people are sent back and get their legs blown off day in and day out you’ll be here screaming that the government deliberately sent them back to a dangerous environment to continue to “genocide.’ If Tamils are livid with rage about the camps, then perhaps they should have thought twice about supporting and funding a terrorist organisation, no?
And those that didn’t support the LTTE, what of them?
You mean the 0.00001% that didn’t support the LTTE? Yeah, what of them?
I thought the government narrative was that the vast majority of Tamils were coerced into supporting the LTTE – that it had liberated them from a dictatorship.
Are you saying that this isn’t the case? Are you saying that the LTTE were the true representatives of the Tamil people? Quite a revelation, Been Here!
If you believe that, it really must not be difficult to support the collective punishment of all Tamils, as you do. One wonders if this same thought process is what truly underlies the thinking of the majority of Sri Lankans: ‘they deserve what they’re getting’.
Unity indeed.
My narrative is that the vast majority of the Tamil people supported the LTTE, and their dream of a separate Tamil Eelam has come crashing down on them with the defeat of the LTTE. I can only imagine what they felt when the dead ugly face of Prabhakaran was beamed onto their television screens across the world. It would have been nice to see their contorted and teary faces though, seeing as they had no qualms about funding the LTTE and cheering it on. I don’t see any of the Tamils in the south getting “punished” though. Those people in the camps are there for a reason and I think that they will be let out once the remaining LTTE cadres are weeded out and the north is demined.
The NE Tamil support of separatism was pretty widespread throughout the ’80s and ’90s. This support centered on the LTTE simply because they killed off the competition. As the LTTE got gradually more dictatorial, powerful and less dependent on the NE population for funds and support, the latter’s support began to fade, though it was still strong.
It’s similar to Germany under the Nazis. Support was widespread throughout the war and strong til the end. Then suddenly everyone hated the “those Nazis” and didn’t have anything against Jews, and had never heard of concentration camps. Half of Germany went under the Iron Curtain for their sins. There is a price for mistakes.