The roots of Tamil
October 26, 1992
CIS / SRI LANKA
The CIS may, however, survive for a longer period than initially expected, but rather as a loose association of states developing cooperation in (at least) two The Russian agenda
IN most of the world's media the Tamils of Sri Lanka appear either as refugees or as "terrorists" of the nationalist
While Russia has officially been keen
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Little attention is on developing the framework and institutions of the CIS it has alsoconsistently paid to the history of past and present oppression of been pressing ahead with its own agenda
Tamils by the Sri Lankan state, dominated by the island's even when this is clearly to the detri-
Sinhala majority, which has led to the rise of the Tigers and ment of the other CIS states.
A case in point is monetary policy the desire of many Tamils to leave their country.
where Russia has been playing the part of the IMF's most zealous disciple. In order to carry through the prescribed drastic reduction in the money supply, they have introduced a series of measures — in part through the financial institutions of the former USSR - that have presented the other CIS states with two alternatives: either to submit to the decisions of the Russian Central Bank or leave the rouble zone.
Some have left — or announced their attention to do so (for example Ukraine), while others are more or less forced by their dependence on Russia to stay in.
Consequently Russia retains the levers of monetary policy in its hands and it has also by and large secured firm control of the military forces of the
CIS.The main problem so far have been the disputes with Ukraine over the Black
Sea Fleet and the supervision of strategic nuclear weapons.
There is however little doubt about the real relationship of forces: the (Russian)
commander-in-chief of the CIS forces,
Shaposhnikov, has announced that:
"Commanders of the various sections of the Russian armed forces will become deputies to the CIS commander-in-chief, because over 80% of the air force, navy and air defence infrastructure belongs to
Russia". 24
Authoritarian drift
The outcome of the current political struggle in Russia over its "place in the world" will have significant repercussions not only on the domestic scene but also throughout the CIS. Most of the political establishment is drifting towards increasingly authoritarian and interventionist positions.
The question remains if other forces
— outside the conflicting factions of the bureaucracy — can make heard their vision of an alternative to the pseudosolution of inter-republican and national disputes through economic domination and military intervention. *
22 24. TAR-TASS, July 8, 1992.
International point 2300
V. THIRUNAVUKKARASU*
T HOUGH well-known to observers
of the Sri Lankan politico-military scene, it is worth briefly recounting the events leading up to the ongoing war in the north and east of Sri Lanka and the current major offensive on Jaffna code-named "Operation Earthquake". It should be noted that this has been preceded by a number of such operations in the past, such as "Operation Vadamaradchy", "Operation Jayasakthi", "Operation Valampuri", "Operation Thunderstorm", "Operation Balavegayas I and Il", and so on. Furthermore, during its presence in the north and east from 1987 to 1990, the so-called Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) also launched a number of operations with "Operation Pavan" as its major offensive on Jaffna.
Terrible human cost of war
The now 10-year old war has cost around 50,000 lives and many thousands have been maimed. Annual military expenditure has risen from 1.37 billion rupees in 1983 to Rs. 12.7bn. in 1987 to Rs. 20bn. in 1992. The total expenditure between 1987 and 1992 alone is Rs. 86bn. The destruction caused to property will also doubtless run into hundreds of billions, to say nothing of the pillage and plunder by unscrupulous armed forces and other ele-
At least 700,000 people have been made refugees and consigned to squalid camps, living on miserably inadequate rations, falling victim to serious malnutrition, and in sub-human health and sanitary conditions. The rations worth Rs. 315 (less than $8) per week for each family of five or more members have since been halved by the government, allegedly for lack of funds, while vast sums are ploughed into the war.
Military expenditure, which was 0.7% of the Gross National Product (GNP) in 1977 rose to 5% by 1988, and the food subsidy came down from 5% in 1977 to 0.7% by 1988. It is clear that essential welfare subsidies have subsequently been further pruned to meet ever-increasing military expenditure.
In the post-1948 period, with the advent of independence from British rule, the country witnessed two major anti-Tamil riots, besides a number of intermittent outbursts of bloodletting, in southern Sri Lanka. The first was in 1958, during the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)-led regime headed by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike who, in 1956, made Sinhalese the only official language, ignoring the Tamil language altogether.
This served as a further step on the path of oppression of the Tamil-speaking people initiated by Sri Lanka's (then Ceylon) first United National Party (UNP) prime minister D. S. Senenayake who removed citizenship and the franchise from the Tamil plantation workers. This was aimed as a deadly blow to these workers as well as to the then powerful leftwing movement.
He also encouraged state-sponsored colonization of parts of the Tamil majority north and east by Sinhalese-speakers, thus drastically changing the demographic composition of these areas as borne out by the government's census figures.
The 1958 riots broke out following the repeal of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact which sought to redress and resolve the grievances and problems of the Tamil-speaking people. The repeal was triggered mainly by a campaign spearheaded by former president J.R. Jayewardene coupled with the exhortations dished out by the UNP journal Siya Rata to "awake, arise and kill the Tamils".
The riots turned out to be so barbarous, with even bellies of pregnant women being ripped open in broad daylight, that people asked themselves whether it signalled the end of the road between the Sinhalese and
The second occurrence was in 1977, soon after the UNP headed by J.R. Jaye* V. Thirunavukkarasu is a member of the politbureau of the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP - Sri Lankan section of the Fourth International).
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oppression
In the next issue of International Viewpoint we will carry a report and analysis by union leader Bala Tampoe of the recent victorious work-torule campaign by the 16,000 workers at the port of Sri Lanka's capital
October 26, 1992• # 237 International Viewpoint wardene (known as JR) was returned to power. 1977 proved to be even worse than 1958. Jayewardene was returned to office in early 1977 on a manifesto which explicitly identified and promised to address the genuine grievances of the Tamil-speaking people in areas such as education, employment and land settlement. Once returned comfortably to office with substantial Tamil support, JR threw that pledge to the winds, declaring in a speech in Colombo that if the Tamils wanted war, it would be war; if they wanted peace, it would be peace.
### Anti-Tamil pogroms
Then came the July 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms, the worst holocaust ever, the pretext being the killing of 13 soldiers in Jaffna by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Both in 1958 and 1977 the Tamil victims were able to flee to their native north and east at least to vouchsafe their physical safety.
By 1983, however the security and safety of the Tamil-speaking people in the north and east itself had become imperiled with the progressive beefing up of Sinhala armed forces in these areas. (These forces were first posted to Jaffna in the early 1960s to suppress the non-violent protest campaign launched by the Federal Party under the leadership of S.J. Chelvanayakam.)
By the early 1970s the Tamil youth had already become disillusioned and exasperated by the ever-shrinking access to higher education resulting from the then SLFP-Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP)Communist Party (CP) coalition government's pursuit of a policy plainly detrimental to the Tamil students. Coupled with the terrible death and destruction in July 1983, which included the massacre and mutilation of Tamil prisoners at Welikade Jail, the Tamil youth chose the path of all-out armed struggle, to which the government responded by stepping up its repression.
The ensuing war, with its ever increasing toll, has today assumed monstrous proportions particularly insofar as the Tamils and Muslims in the North are concerned. Tied to this bloody war are a host of restrictions tantamount to an economic blockade which has already debilitated the bulk of the population, with serious malnutrition invading most families — a consequence worse of food, fuel, medicine, and the like. In Jaffna, vital drugs such as antibiotics and all varieties administered to heart, cancer and psychiatric patients are not available at all most of the time. Even dressing material is seldom available at a time when large numbers of civilians are getting wounded almost daily in the ongoing military operations.
Death rates have increased as a result. Infant mortality rates have also risen in Jaffna. During a seven-month period 283 infants died - 235 of whom were stillborn; 90% of mothers are malnourished. There are large numbers of premature births with badly underweight babies. Malnutrition is the prime reason for this state of affairs. Non-availability of proper prenatal clinical care and wartime shocks have also been contributory factors, according to Jaffna's obstetrician and gynaecologist, Professor Sivasooriyar.
What is more, education has been seriously disrupted in the war-torn areas. The students, like anyone else, have to live in constant fear of aerial bombardments, artillery shell fire and so on - with even refugee camps and examination centres sometimes being targets. Thus one can easily imagine the extent to which the psychology of the student population is damaged and their education derailed.
Moreover, the continual lack of electricity supply and the acute shortage of fuel has affected the students immensely. Standards have begun to drop sharply, as evident from the hitherto unheard of low performance at the university entrance GCE (AL) Examination held in April 1991.
Even in such an extenuating situation, the government continues to pursue the pernicious policy of media-wise standardization via the stipulation that students in the north and east who sit the above-mentioned exam have to secure some 30 marks more than students elsewhere (in engineering and physical science) for admission to
In the economic sphere, the agricultural, industrial and fishing sectors are at a near standstill. Further, the construction sector has ground to a halt for want of building materials. Thus, all the sources from which the bulk of the people used to derive their income have dried up; it is not hard to imagine the plight of the people condemned to an existence fast reaching Somalian conditions, especially with the recent halving of
SRI LANKA decades and, above all, external interference, for the ruling class to remove past blunders even on paper. For instance, Tamil was granted the status of an official language under the 13th amendment following the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987. And the Sinhala "Sri", the exclusive introduction of which on motor vehicle number plates in the 1950s caused quite some tension and bloodshed, was recently dropped altogether.
Complicity of old Left
Attempts by successive governments to provide some solution under pressure have each time proved to be too little too late, and every such attempt proved to be futile. The old Left parties (the CP and the LSSP above all also have to share the responsibility for compromising with the capitalist forces, on the Tamil question as on others
What is the way out of this impasse? Firstly, the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP - Sri Lankan section of the Fourth International has made it clear that the latest government effort, the Mangala Munasinghe Parliamentary Select Committee! is yet another exercise in futility.
Secondly, the NSSP reiterates that there is no other way to resolve this question except on the basis of the right to self-determination of the Tamil-speaking people being inscribed in the Constitution, and regional autonomy for the merged Northern and Eastern province with powers over security, land settlement and allocation of adequate resources from the
It should be crystal clear that it is fruitless for the Tamil and Muslim parties to entertain any hope that either the UNP or the SLFP will bring forth a viable solution to the problem. Instead of following the beaten track of trying to negotiate with the oppressors, these parties should join hands with the oppressed who form the majority of the population: the workers, the peasants, the plantation workers, the students, and so forth. This is their hitherto untried, but historically inescapable task and the NSSP will fraternally exhort them unceasingly to take this path. The sooner they do so, the nearer will be the goal of national liberation. * 1. Mr. Mangala Munasinghe is a Member of Parliament of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). He presented a motion in parliament for the appointment of a Parliamentary Select Committee to devise than the war in itself.
There continues to be an acute shortage
Important victory for Colombo Port workers city, Colombo.* the already meagre refugee rations.
On the political plane, it took over three ways and means of achieving peace and stability in the Island, with particular reference to the war-torn north and east. The Premadasa government, which has failed to put forward any proposals for the resolution of the national question, grabbed this opportunity to engage in yet another time-wasting exercise and set up the desired Select Committee with Mr. Mangala Munasinghe himself as its Chairman. The See or we a are ear now to ring to 23 Select Committee has laboured like the proverbial
Palestinian opposition denounces sell-out
International Viewpoint # 237 • October 26, 1992
PALESTINE with Israel on "administrative autonomy".
Once again they have come home tongue-tied. Now that it looks likely that Bush will lose, the Israelis feel that the pressure is off. They have broken off the sixth round and postponed the issue of an agreement to next year.
The Palestinian opposition has vigorous-
EVENTS are speeding up on the Palestinian front. The coming to power of Rabin in Israel after last June's elections has given new impetus to the year-old negotiations taking place under American auspices between the Zionist government, its Arab neighbours and, in quasi-official guise, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Rabin's highly intelligent tactics are in marked contrast to the bovine intransigence of his Likud predecessors.
ly denounced the new capitulations by the Arafat leadership. The two left factions in the PLO, George Habash's Popular Front and the Democratic Front of Nayef Hawatmeh have increased their collaboration, already strengthened after the start of the Israeli-Arab negotiations, whose ground rules they have denounced. Once again they have made statements jointly with the Islamic fundamentalist opposition represented by the Hamas movement and the
SALAH JABER - October 15, 1992
W ITH the aim of getting
American guarantees of a $10bn loan, Rabin has undertaken to make the concessions needed to get the negotiations that started in Madrid and continue in Washington back on the road. After the fifth round of negotiations involving Rabin's predecessor Shamir, the ball was firmly grounded on the Israeli side of the court. Rabin has now succeeded in getting it back over to the Syrian and Palestinian side through concessions which are more noise than substance.
For the Syrians, Rabin has talked of the possibility of a partial retreat from the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in 1967. Indeed the very fact that negotiations between Israel and Syria are taking place implies such a possibility, since Israel has nothing else to offer. Even so, the proposal remains below the minimum that Damascus could accept (this minimum being the total return of the Golan).
For the Palestinians, Rabin has put a new coat of gloss on the autonomy plan that first saw the light of day 13 years ago in the Camp David agreement signed by Israel's Menachem Begin, Egypt's Anwar el-Sadat and the US president Jimmy Carter. The plan would allow the Palestinians of the Left Bank of Jordan and Gaza to take control of those affairs that do not impinge on the interests of the Israeli occupiers, in this way lightening the burden of administration and repression borne by the occupying power.
This experience, according to the most generous Zionist scenario, is, after a further transitional phase, then supposed to lead to the formation of a Palestinian Bantustan under the joint supervision of Israel and Jordan.
In both cases, Rabin has understood that such purely formal concessions can elicit 24 much more substantial concessions from the Arab side. The latter have a nasty feeling that if Bush loses the presidency in November this will mean a strong turn in US policy in favour of Israel; the Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton is said to be strongly pro-Israeli.
So far, Damascus has not taken the bait, having more to lose than to gain as far as new Israeli concessions are concerned. Foreseeing the prolongation of negotiations, it has firmed up its position in Lebanon.
Through the tradesman's
The PLO leadership on the other hand has humbly passed through the tradesman's entrance opened by Rabin. Taking the risk of sharply heightening inter-Palestinian dissension, and on the eve of a change in Washington that may herald an even more difficult climate in the negotiations, the Arafat leadership has swallowed further bitter pills, which the Palestinian nationalist opposition is finding increasingly difficult to digest.
The rightwing that dominates the PLO is looking for a rapid agreement, even before the American elections, taking advantage of the haste of some of its supporters to get their hands on the dubious prerogatives of an administration under strict outside control - a haste expressed in the rush to enrol in the future Palestinian police. This calculation inevitably implies a series of new capitulations to add to the PLO leadership's already impressive total.
The Palestinian right has betrayed the unanimous undertaking adopted by the PLO's leading bodies on July 22 to refuse to take part in a sixth round of negotiations if the US granted Israel the $10bn loan. The Palestinian negotiators, following orders from Arafat, have gone to Washington with a vague notion of an agreement
Islamic Jihad.
But this time they have also come together with all the factions of the Palestinian opposition including Abu Mussa's dissident faction of Fatah formed in 1983 and Saika (controlled by Syria). They have very sharply denounced the policies of the Arafat leadership, referring to the positions set out by the Unified Patriotic Leadership of the Intifada in its communiqué no. 86 of September 1, 1992.1
The opposition cartel called a general protest strike for September 23 which was widely observed according to our sources. On the eve of this strike the two Fronts of the Palestinian left announced the formation of a common leadership
We publish extracts from the above mentioned documents on page 26 opposite. * 1. In this communiqué the Unified Patriotic Leadership "reaffirms its rejection of any solution not based on the resolutions of Palestinian, Arab and international legality, which have all underlined the need to realize the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people, including their right of return, of self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital".
Some Palestinian organizations
DFLP: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
FPPS: Front of the Palestinian
People's Struggle
PF-GC : Popular Front-General Command
PLF: Palestine Liberation
Front
PFLP: Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine
Hamas: Islamic Resistance
Movement
PRCP: Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party
October 26, 1992 •