Architecture & Architects of Sri Lanka’s Continuum of Violence

Alex Meland, Sarah Eagleton, Nicola McIvor, Maya Henebry, Krista Lomu, Arjunan Ethirveerasingam

18th Century Map of Sri Lanka showing the 3 Kingdoms: Sinahala Low Country,

Kandyan, Tamil

1983 Pogrom

LTTE attack kills 13 Sri Lankan Army soldiers

Anti-Tamil mob kill thousands of Tamil - allegations of state

collusion

Thousands of radicalized Tamil youth join guerrilla movements

1983 seen as the “beginning of the war” by many.

2002

•LTTE and GoSL sign Ceasefire Agreement (CFA)

• agree to ‘explore’ federalism

2003

•LTTE ‘temporarily suspends’ participation in talks, citing exclusion from 2nd donor Conference in Washington and the continuing humanitarian crisis

•LTTE refuse to attend donor conference in Tokyo

2005

•Mahinda Rajapakse elected President

2009

2009

8

• 1948 Ceylon gains independence

• 1956 ‘Sinhala Only Act’

•18 May 2009

•GoSL declares Tamil Tigers defeated after army forces overrun the remaining LTTE-held territory in the northeast killing leader Velupillai Prabhakaran

•Tamil Tiger statement says the group will “silence guns”

Through the Looking Glasses

Historical Lens

Complex nature of conflict, and the challenges of identifying root and proximate causes

“Wars rarely have clear cut beginnings and endings and they are often preceded or

followed by other forms of collective violence, including riots, scattered attacks or chronic political instability” (Goodhand 2006,

p.19).

•Long history of structural inequalities:•from linguistic nationalism leading to ethnic outbidding (Devotta 2005)

•Implications for Sri Lanka’s ‘Continuum of Violence’

•Effects of primitive accumulation, stemming from alterations to socio-economic structure and modes of production altered under British colonial rule, helps to shape the hegemonic structures of power

Historical Underpinnings

Historical Lens

Political Economy LensThe Seeds of Primitive Accumulation 

•1955 -1977 economic system was state-regulated

•Import substitution policies facilitate patronage structures

•Patronage politics entrenches industrial and commercial business in favour of Sinhala

• The state, through political patronage: enabled "a stratum of Sinhala entrepreneurs to rise to the level of industrialists; protected a section of predominantly Sinhala entrepreneurs of the middle level engaged in light industrial production; and created extensive job opportunities mainly for the Sinhala people through the expansion of the public sector" (Gunasinghe; 2004, p.103).

•"middle-level Sinhala entrepreneurs to the position of captains of industry" (Gunasinghe; 2004, p.100).  

The 'Liberalization' of Disenfranchisement: Sri Lankan Open Economic Policy and Structural

Adjustment

•1977-1983 escalation of violence

•Global economic crisis, many developing countries experienced societal and economic fragmentation

•1977 SAPS were implemented and the economy shifted to a neoliberal market oriented approach

•Deepened relationship with capitalist West

•Incessant ethnic rioting climaxed in 1983 – the beginning of the civil war

Political Economy Lens

Good Bedfellows: War as the Enabling Environment for Capitalist ‘Development’

•Unconventional war economy (not resource based) (Palmer 2004)

•Formal and informal war economy blur - large  remittance flows from wealthy Tamils controlled and sustained by the LTTE, poor communities survive through remittances and are often dependant on LTTE support (ibid. p4)

•Donor contributions, IMF policies and diaspora remittances perpetuate conflict over political capital

•Market structure rewards and offers opportunities to particular demographic segments, through predation and primitive accumulation various sectors are enhanced and built by war

Political Economy Lens

Political Economy Lens

The winners:

◦LTTE: predatory taxation system and investment in real estate and business in Colombo (Goodhand and Klem 2005: 48) 

◦Southern Sinhala Youth: well paid employment through GoSL’s recruitment drive targeting of poor, from large money inflows and state investment in its armed forces (Palmer 2004: 5) 

◦Military personnel: engage in extortion and criminal activity to profit from the war-imposed restriction of the movement of goods and people across the country (Ibid: 4)

◦Military Wives: military institution aligned with 'the good life‘, offering military income and upward social mobility (De Mel 2009: 3)

◦Elites: economic liberalisation further internalizes the conflict by providing opportunities for "greed," while simultaneously creating a material environment that generates widespread "grievances" (Goodhand and Klem 2005: 26).

Religious, Ethnic, Linguistic & Cultural

Conflict LensIn the context of Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict, religious, ethnic and linguistic discourses have all been used as a ‘mobilization tool’

◦Dominance of Sinhala Buddhist nationalist ideology and discourse :

◦ ‘Buddhism became the vehicle for the assertion of Sinhalese nationalism by newer rural social groups seeking political power who were excluded from the largely urban, westernized power elite that inherited and first administered independent Sri Lanka in 1948.’ (Jayawardena 1990 forward to Tambiah 1992. p.xv). 

•Contributes to 1860-1915 Sinhalese nationalism movement and ‘Buddhist Revival’, merging the faith with politics

Tamils benefited substantially under British colonialism.

◦ 33% of civil service employees Tamil

◦ 40% made up the judicial service

◦ 31% of the students in the university system.

•Linguistic nationalism provides powerful mechanism by which Sinhalese majority are able to marginalize Tamils  in post-independent Sri Lanka

•According to DeVotta, the rhetoric utilised in the process partly indicates how ferocious ethnic outbidding was and the corrosive impact this had on society and its governing institutions. (DeVotta 2005)

Religious, Ethnic, Linguistic & Cultural

Conflict Lens

The Muslim community, comprising predominantly Moors and Malays, and accounting for approximately 8% of population, have also suffered throughout Sri Lankan history

•This includes victim to ethnic cleansing, massacres and have been forcibly displaced by insurgents.

•Muslim elite's denial of shared identity with the Tamils has fuelled resentment and distrust between Muslims and Tamils in the north-east region. 

•Increasing number of investment plans has triggered fears among local Muslims and Tamils of “government plots” to “Sinhalise” the east  (ICG; 2007, p.19).

Religious, Ethnic, Linguistic & Cultural

Conflict Lens

Democracy Lens

‘Tyranny of the Majority’•Western Parliamentary Democracy•In the words of Nadarajah & Sriskandarajah:

• “The repeated failure of ‘democratic’ politics to address Tamil grievances for several decades and the concomitant lack of effective mechanisms for constitutional reform, combined with heightened state violence led to armed resistance.” (2005, p.8-9)

•Denial of Tamil identity, political power, social and cultural values and aspirations•Resistance to Tamil marginalisation occurs through democratic mobilisation and peaceful agitation (see Wilson 1988, Bose 1994, DeVotta 2004, Balasingham 2004).•Failure of democratic procedures to address Tamil grievances (Nadarajah; 2008, p.13) leads to violence exacerbated by ‘ ethnic outbidding’ and ‘linguistic nationalism’ (De Votta 2005)

The Devil is in the Details - Architects of Post-Independence

• “At the time of independence, and in the absence of a political party system that could cut across intra-group loyalties, identity politics had become the dominant mode for democratic competition. State power has expressed itself in their exclusion from sharing the state power in the post-colonial context. The perception as well as experience of discrimination, being treated just as a ‘minority’ and as a community with a second - class status of citizenship and of moral worth emanated from the unequal distribution of state power among ethnic communities in the years after independence” (Uyangoda; 2006, p.1)

•One Person’s Democracy is Another Person’s Tyranny

Democracy Lens

Militarization LensLTTE claim:

• “the armed struggle of our organisation is only a means to achieve our political ends. … Therefore the LTTE gives primacy to politics and upholds that politics dictates the gun” (LTTE 1988:9)

•Militarism is contagious ignites collective emotional responses - use of force as the most effective tool of negotiation

•Roots in colonisation – use of force empowered colonisers, and became inextricably linked to the function of state

•Independent Sri Lankan state adopted the militaristic means of maintaining power and control

•Militaristic reactions by the state to Tamil peaceful resistance contributed towards the militarization of Tamil opposition –LTTE

•Sri Lankan society was absorbed by the military machine; its cogs, as perpetrators or victims of violence, soldiers, sex workers

•A militarized approach to security has been welcomed by the West as the ‘War on terror’ - post 9/11 legitmises GoSL’s war on the LTTE

Militarization Lensand the Continuum of Violence

•Spread of militarised ideology and discourse produces a continuum of violence penetrating emotional, economic, political, social, cultural and psychological dimensions of the society

•expectations and perceived needs of those militarized and impacted by a conflict, can produce an unattainable model of peace; peace divided through the production of a ‘symbolic politics trap’ (Kaufman 2006: 202)

•missing key to ethnic conflict resolution involves escaping this trap to stabilise the elite on both sides while simultaneously mobilizing a political coalition in favor of such compromise (Uyangoda; 2007: 8)

•Orjuela (2003) emphasises the the difficulties faced in building peace once people have been militarized, mobilized emotionally and discourses of difference are embedded in local politics and culture

•Ethnic outbidding feeds into militarisation, mutating the causes of the conflict, resulting in the non-negotiability of state power and diverging’ conceptions of peace (Uyangoda 2007)

Ethnic Outbidding Root Causes

Militarization

Use of force to challenge

Dominant Political Power

Root and Proximate Causes Mutate

Non-negotiability of State Power

Muslims

Sinhalese

Tamils Peace

Gender Lens• ‘New Wars’

• More female combatants, suicide bombers and funders in war

• Blurring of gender roles as well as military-civilian actors

• Opportunity to challenge and transform social structures

• Does the ‘return to peace’ result in a ‘return to the traditional gender status quo, as Rajasingham-Senanayake (2004) suggests ?

• Women in Asia ‘doubly victimized’:

• Victims of militarized patriarchal structures

• Patriarchy exacerbated by caste and religious practices characteristic to Asia’ (Rajasingham-Senanayake 2004)

Gender LensSocial Mobility of the Militarized Man

•Neo-liberal inspired Free Trade Zones (FTZs) in the south of Sri Lanka have prompted a style of governance that has resulted in gendered, "violence, militarised surveillance and coercion," reinforcing militarisation and national security strategy (De Mel 2009: 3)

•Women look to the military men and their socio-economic status as paths towards their own upward social mobility.

•Militarized male considered protector and provider of security - even if women suffer domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies and rejection at the hands of these men (Ibid.)

•FTZ women aspire to be military wives knowing that the military income and the pensionable service offer an economic edge both within rural and semi-urban social structures - loyalty to the military institution becomes inexorably linked to the means by which the good life can be attained (Ibid: 6).

Transformation

•LTTE’s radical disregard for traditional caste and gender hierarchies provided contradictory spaces for women’s agency in north-east

•Changing, sometimes unconventional, roles taken up by women during and following war including becoming heads of households and main income generators, opens up ‘new spaces’ of agency for women

•Failure to embrace social transformation in conflict and peace building, may impede recovery from traumatic experiences and prolong grievances (Ibid.)

•Harris (2004) argues that the problem lies in the lack of capable institutions in place to ensure gender issues are addressed

•Institutional capacity more important in achieving long lasting solutions to the gender issues overall overall, than the absolution of militarized gender roles (Ibid)

Gender Lens

Gender LensIDP Camps – 2009/2010

oLate September 2009, scores of pregnant women were abruptly released from the camps and told to make their own way home without assistance

onumerous credible reports of prostitution networks in the camps - function with the knowledge and involvement of Sri Lankan security forces

oWomen forced to sell sex for money and supplies

oLarge number of female headed household

oa variety of credible sources report that significant numbers of women held in the camps have been raped or sexually assaulted

owomen have been removed from the camps with police and military assistance and then assaulted

oformer LTTE female fighters have been raped while held in detention centres

oThe women involved are reportedly too afraid to report the crimes.

(International Crisis Group 2010)

Conclusion: Violence Crystallized & its

Continuation by Other Means

Policy recommendations:

•Strengthen civil society: Increase cooperation between the ethnic groups to provide better means to reconciliation through local grassroot movements

•Strengthen the democratization process: Encourage the development of the state institutions to protect human rights and to tackle atrocities

•Make sure development assistance is equally distributed and that the development projects are locally 'produced' and directed towards local issues.

•International donors should especially focus on the fact that Sri Lanka is not a typical post-conflict situation and pay special attention to conflict dynamics that may arise through development