The Second Fascist Front in Sri Lanka


by UTHR(J)

(February 22, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Ceasefire Agreement has been abrogated, the Nordic Monitoring Mission has left and it is now a war without witnesses. Civilians on both sides are the main victims as each side pursues military advantage regardless of them. One way or the other, singly or otherwise, each side has deliberately targeted civilians of the other ethnic group. The bus bombings in Okkampitiya in Moneragala on 17th January and near Madhu in the LTTE-controlled area on 29th January, claiming in all more than two score lives, including women and children, are notable among the continuing outrages.

The LTTE will not be party to any democratic settlement. It will continue along its malefic course giving mutual sustenance to its Sinhalese extremist counterparts. The State, which was functionally truncated into a “Sinhalese State” by the myopic politics of the South and precipitated the Tamil armed struggle, continues to foster impunity – the main tool of an ideologically motivated clique now in control of the government.

Regaining the sanction of the minorities is far from the aims the present government; and the long-term effects of pampering to the extremist and criminal elements are all too evident. Bolstering Sinhalese fears and sustaining itself through the rhetoric of a war to eradicate “terrorism” is its sole agenda.

The political task of marginalising the LTTE is clean outside the lexicon of hardcore “Sinhalese Nationalist” intellectuals – for that would be to win over the minorities by offering them a political settlement giving them a stake in a united Sri Lanka as equals. This for them is absolute anathema. Therefore it has not happened in 60 years of independence. The APRC fiasco extinguishes the final gleam of hope on the horizon. The present Government has shown itself is unwilling to go beyond any arrangement that would dilute the present structures of control of the North-East – control that is plagued by massive human rights violations, frequently by structures set up by the Defence Ministry outside the regular forces, reminiscent of some of the well-known repressive regimes in the past century. The rulers do not treat the North-East as a part of Sri Lanka.

We have written extensively about the LTTE’s fascism, its cost and what it portends. We opposed this current round of war, because less destructive political means of cornering the LTTE have not been tried, it has proved intensely callous of civilians and their protection and is not guided by any vision that offers light at the end of the tunnel.

The war has all the hallmarks of a war of conquest and subjugation in pursuance of a Sinhalese supremacist agenda using the LTTE’s intransigence as a pretext. This we argue is not necessarily because of foreordained malice on the part of President Rajapakse, but arises from his courting fractious extremist forces with their own power agendas and being pulled by them competitively and disastrously into greater extremism.



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