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Jaffna Public Library
by Lynn Ockersz
The lessons of history seem to be going a begging. The steady dismantling and throttling of democratic institutions in a major way in this country from approximately the mid –seventies onwards and the veritable institutionalization of political thuggery and violence proved very potent factors in the 30-year war which bled Sri Lanka white. It has also been this country’s sad lot to be saddled with governments and political elites, from the time of political independence, which have done precious little to stamp out communalism in Southern Sri Lanka.
Likewise, Sri Lanka’s problems have been compounded by some North-East-based political parties which have not shied-away from using the separatist platform and the ‘communal card’ to occupy office. The end results of these distressing political trends were, of course, chronic bloodshed and continuous intra-state strife.
The current wave of violence directed by some sections against the Muslim community and its business interests, for instance, and the recent disruption of a political propaganda meeting convened by the TNA in Kilinochchi, apparently by political goon squads, recalled to mind those dangerous socio-political distortions and anomalies which began to assail Sri Lanka from mainly the mid-seventies and are still being allowed to be with us. Wantonly destroyed Muslim clothes houses, with their goods strewn all over the surrounding streets, to my mind at least, were a horrific replay, on a lesser scale, of course, of the ghoulish happenings of July 1983, when the Tamil community and its properties were set upon by marauding mobs. And, once again, the government is standing accused of looking the other way.
Subsequent SLFP-led governments described the UNP’s 17-year reign beginning 1977, as the ‘Long Itch’ and the social blights which then UNP administrations unleashed on this country, including the unprecedented criminalization of politics, did seem to justify the use of this appellation at the popular level, but the analyst cannot be faulted for getting the impression that little is being done currently to get Sri Lanka out of the political and social decay it has inherited.
The state is obliged to ensure that the democratic process flourishes in the North. It is duty-bound to bring the disruptors of the TNA’s Kilinochchi gathering to justice and to ensure that the political rights of the people of the province concerned are protected, inasmuch as it should ensure the vibrancy of democracy all over the land. If it does not do so, it too would stand accused of accelerating the undermining of this country’s democratic institutions. To be sure, the agencies of the state may not have been involved in the Kilinochchi disturbances, but the state is obliged to bring the relevant wrong-doers to justice and that too in double-quick time.
It was the state’s seeming inability in the mid-seventies to check political hooliganism and thuggery which eventually led to abominations in the North in the late seventies, such as, the disruption of the DDC polls and the torching of the Jaffna Public Library. These dark developments helped speed-up lawlessness in the North-East and set the stage for the searing monumental torment of July 1983.
Accordingly, let not our polity succumb to a bout of collective amnesia. The lessons of history this country may ignore only at its peril. These lessons must be zealously learnt and acted upon, lest the fatal mistakes of the past are repeated in astoundingly asinine fashion. Lawlessness in whatever form, political thuggery and, indeed, ‘terror’, must be wiped out in double quick time and it falls to the lot of the government to do this. Delays in bringing wrong-doers to justice will reflect badly on the state and this will prove a boon to disruptors and anti-state elements, locally and internationally.
The government is also obliged to lose no time in eliminating from our midst religious and racial extremism. The writing needs to be on the wall, that these dangerous aberrations in our body-politic would not be tolerated by the state any longer. Unfortunately, we are yet to have substantial evidence that the state is attaching any priority to this task. We call on the state to prove us wrong on this score. To begin with, how about passing legislation against these forms of extremism and earnestly implementing the pertinent laws? The well-meaning of this country need solid proof that religious and racial hatred, for instance, is being rooted out in its entirety.
It must be considered that a free and fair provincial poll in the North will be a sound measure of the democratic health of Sri Lanka. Besides, it will enable the UPFA to contest the poll on the platform that it has brought development to the North and enable it to defeat any persisting separatist tendencies in the province. On this score too, repeating the mistakes of the past could prove fatal. All major strands of political opinion in the North must be given an opportunity to contest the polls. If this is not facilitated, the democratic process will stand emasculated and some shades of opinion may be compelled to ‘go underground’, as happened in the past. A development of this kind would run counter to the national interest, because the state would be denied the invaluable opportunity of engaging constructively with democratic oppositional political forces whose opinions matter in developing the North.
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