Elections, Crimes and Criminals

One year has gone by since the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunga. Mr. Wickremetunga was assassinated in broad daylight, at a busy junction a stone’s throw away from a high security zone.

Three hundred and sixty five days later his murderers remain at large while police investigation into the killing is proceeding at snails pace, when it proceeds at all. The inescapable conclusion is that the murderers of Mr. Wickremetunga will not be caught, so long as those who benefited from his ‘removal’ have the power to subvert justice.

“If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America -- even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants’.” Alberto J. Mora, former US Navy General Counsel (The Memo - New Yorker – 27.2.2006)

It requires a huge dose of credulity (a dose so gigantic as to be incompatible with reason and sense) to believe that a government capable of defeating one of the deadliest terror outfits in the world and killing its eponymous leader has not been able to apprehend the men who assassinated Mr. Wickremetunga. And not only Mr. Wickremetunga; the Rajapakse administration has been singularly unsuccessful in bringing to justice the perpetrators of many a political crime, from the abduction of Keith Noyher to the assassination of parliamentarians Joseph Pararajasingham, Nadaraja Raviraj and T Maheswaran, from the abduction of the Vice Chancellor of the Eastern University to the killing of five students in Trincomalee.

A pattern is discernible here; when a crime is committed, if the victim is an opponent or a critic of the government, the perpetrators are rarely caught, if ever. The crime may take place in broad day light, in a busy area overflowing with checkpoints; still the perpetrators manage to get away as if the very earth has swallowed them. The police investigations into such crimes meander and become lost in a maze of delays and contradictions. The culprits remain free while the victims are denied justice.

War Crimes Charges and the Myth of Infallibility

When the BBC’s Channel Four aired its now infamous ‘execution video’, the Rajapakse administration reacted with predictable fury, denying its authenticity and condemning it as a part of an anti-Lankan and pro-Tiger conspiracy. Though the regime cited expert evidence to back its own position, the capacity of these experts to act in an objective manner was questionable, given the high degree of polarisation in Lankan polity and society.

The ‘executioners’ in the video were said to be Lankan soldiers while the ‘executed’ were said to be LTTE prisoners. This, therefore, was a ‘crime’ to which most Sinhalese would react primarily as Sinhalese and most Tamils as Tamils, rather than as human beings, let alone professionals. Just as the Tigers were ‘our boys’ for most Tamils, the Lankan Forces are ‘our boys’ for most Sinhalese. Just as an absolute majority of Tamils were unwilling to admit publicly any wrong doing by the LTTE, an absolute majority of Sinhalese are unwilling to admit publicly any wrong doing by the Lankan Forces. In such an ethnically polarised situation, the sensible course is to obtain the services of experts who are neither Sinhala nor Tamil and are not linked to the two parties in any way, and therefore less likely to be swayed by misplaced notions of patriotism/ethnic loyalty. That is, if the revelation of the truth, rather than its obfuscation is one’s object.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial Executions, Philip Alston, has obtained the advice of three international experts on the authenticity of the execution videos and has concluded, on the basis of their evidence, that the video is genuine. Killing prisoners in cold blood is a war crime. The charge stemming from the ‘execution video’ cannot be rendered impotent by abusing Mr. Alston or accusing the UN of engineering anti-Lankan conspiracies. That after all was the way the Tigers used to react to any international criticism. For instance, when the Human Rights Watch published a report about the LTTE’s child conscription, during the heyday of the Wickremesinghe – Pirapaharan peace process, the Tigers accused the HRW and its senior researcher (and the author of the report) Jo Becker of being part of an anti-Tamil conspiracy.

The Rajapakse regime is reacting in an identical manner to the ‘execution video’, instead of launching its own credible investigation to determine its authenticity or otherwise.

Given the outlook of the Rajapakses the only other response possible is a time buying exercise (the best case in point being the appointment of the IIGEP). Not only has impunity become a national curse under the Rajapakses; the regime also believes in the myth of its own infallibility.

This precludes the Rajapakses from admitting to any error, let alone a crime, and a war crime at that. This belief is a convenient cover; it is also a function of the Rajapakses’ self-perception as divinely mandated leaders to save the ‘land of Sinhala Buddhism’.

In mid 2006, as the Mavil Aru crisis moved inexorably to its dénouement, the South of the island succumbed to a collective ‘vertigo of intoxication’ (a term coined by Israeli writer and peace activist Uri Avnery). In temples across the country, innumerable Buddhists claimed to have seen Budu res, halos of light around Buddha statues. Spontaneous or engineered, the sightings were used to focus on the nexus between war, nation and religion, to depict the war as a divinely sanctioned enterprise to save Sinhala-Buddhism and its sole refuge, Lanka, from enemy aliens, a just war to end the holy task begun by the Hero-King Dutugemunu. This perception/depiction bestowed upon the Rajapakses the right to act with impunity (a holy war would remain a just war irrespective of the nature of the means employed to win it); it also granted them the attribute of infallibility. Divinely mandated leaders engaged in a divinely mandated war cannot make mistakes let alone commit crimes.

This is a basic premise on which the Fourth Eelam War was waged – no crimes were committed since no crimes can be committed; the nature of the war transforms even sins into virtues. The moral of the tale of Dutugemunu’s conscience is operative here – killing unbelievers for the greater glory of the Faith is no crime. The Rajapakses will never abandon this belief in their own infallibility and in the sinless nature of their war effort. Nor will a President Fonseka (if there is a President Fonseka, post-election), since he too shares these beliefs (and benefited from them) as Army Commander and member of the war-time triumvirate. No crimes, no perpetrators to punish and nor victims deserving of justice. This may be the fate of those who became subjected to extra-judicial violence during the last four years, from Tamil civilians and Tiger prisoners to Sinhala critics, including Lasantha Wickremetunga.

Politics as War

After a brief lull, the song hailing President Rajapakse as the divinely sanctioned High King of Sri Lanka is back on Rupavahini, the state owned TV channel. This song, which praises the President for reuniting Sri Lanka with his miraculous feats (pelahara – a term usually reserved for the miracles of Prince Siddhartha and the Buddha) and calls him ‘the god who won the land’ (derana dinu devidun), is more than a mere exercise in sycophantism. It symbolises the credo of the Ruling Family, which enshrines President Rajapakse as the perpetual hero-saviour of the nation, a gift to the nation from its protective deities.

Under the Rajapakses, ‘patriotism’ has become the state religion of Sri Lanka. This is manifest in the repeated presidential statements asserting that the only division in the country is the one between patriots and anti-patriots. In Voltaire’s Socrates, the High Priest Antius says of the aged philosopher, “Since he disdains me this man doubtless scorns the gods”. Similarly, according to the Rajapakse credo, anyone supporting the President is a patriot while anyone opposing him is an anti-patriot.

The presidential election has thus being transformed from a standard democratic exercise to a new war to save the nation, a continuation of the anti-Tiger war by other, non-military means. This enables them to treat opposition as treachery, political opponents as national enemies and normal electoral compulsions as part of a grand anti-Lankan conspiracy. The natural and democratic urge on the part of the opposition to electorally defeat the incumbent is castigated as vile and dangerous, a desire reeking of ingratitude and anti-patriotism. This attitude makes it easier for the government to punish supporters of the opposition, since such punishments are no longer acts of political victimisation but acts which are good and necessary for the protection of the nation. Intolerance is thus turned into a virtue, a patriotic virtue, a necessary task to save the nation.

This Manichean outlook enables the regime to dehumanise its opponents and deprive them of basic human rights as well as equal protection under the law, by the simple expedient of placing them in the anti-patriotic category. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, once the close confidant of the Rajapakse brothers, has been transformed from super patriot to arch traitor. The President negotiated with the TNA to win their support; the moment the TNA decided to support Gen. Fonseka, it was accused of being a Tiger proxy. Hand he TNA decided to support the incumbent, it could have joined the patriotic camp instantly, with its pro-Tiger past conveniently forgotten. A popular teledrama actress has been deprived of her role because she turned down requests to participate in the mega advertising campaign supporting the incumbent president sponsored by Tharunyata Hetak, a non-governmental organisation headed by the President’s oldest son, Namal Rajapakse. This is a dangerous state of affairs, since it can lead to a wave of victimisation and repression, post-election.

Mahinda Rajapakse and Sarath Fonseka have become born-again democrats, not out of conviction but because of the need to discredit and defeat each other. Their democratic pose may not outlast the Presidential election and will definitely end with the parliamentary poll.

According to latest media reports the President is going to announce the abolition of high security zones in the North, obviously a response to a pledge by Gen. Fonseka to remove these he wins the election. This demonstrates that the high security zones were kept in place, post-war, not because there was any objective need but because of the regime’s Sinhala supremacism and Tamil phobia (plus its general anti-democratic inclinations). Once the election season is over, many of these concessions can be reversed. This is a certitude if the incumbent wins a second term, and a considerable probability if the main challenger wins. They were, after all, birds of a feather, until self-interest drove them apart and compelled them to array themselves in alien plumage.

- Asian Tribune -