By S. Venkat Narayan Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, April 9: A just-retired senior Indian diplomat today blasted Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, for the continuing plight of the island-nation’s minority Tamils even four years after the war against the separatist LTTE ended.
Hardeep S. Puri, who retired as India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York in February, said in a brilliant article in The Hindu today that, notwithstanding assurances given to India, "the ‘Brothers’ running Sri Lanka appear to have no intention to move on political reconciliation and devolution."
This "majoritarianism" in total disregard of respecting and protecting the rights of minorities is "a narrow and calibrated political strategy designed to safeguard Sinhalese parliamentary strength," Puri declared.
The seasoned diplomat has worked in the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and was present at the ceremony in Colombo in July 1987, when then Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had signed the India-Sri Lanka Agreement.
Puri said both the ruling AIADMK and the opposition DMK, along with the smaller parties in Tamil Nadu, are on the same page on the Sri Lanka issue. "The problem will continue to fester till Colombo has a genuine change of heart," he cautioned.
However, recent signals are anything but encouraging. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said on March 27, 2013: "Could we afford to have a provincial administration here, which pointed a gun at the national leadership at the drop of a hat? We don’t want to be at the mercy of scheming provincial administrations."
Puri said: "Let alone the 13th Amendment, the Defence Secretary seems to be suggesting the winding up of provincial councils altogether!"
He pointed out that the recent attacks on the Muslim trading community in the heart of Colombo by fanatic Sinhalese, allegedly led by Buddhist monks, are manifestations of similar callous and cynical disregard for the rights of linguistic, religious and cultural minorities. "India did the right thing by supporting the resolution on war crimes" at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva in March this year, he added.
Most Sinhalese believe, with good reason, that Tamil militancy, rightly viewed by them as terrorism, would not have succeeded in tearing apart Sri Lanka’s social fabric but for support from across the Palk Straits. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sought course correction.
"He committed India to Sri Lanka’s unity and territorial integrity. This fundamental turnaround meant India would not support the break-up of Sri Lanka and would also cooperate in ending support for terrorism. There was, however, one caveat. The Tamil minority should be treated with dignity and as equal citizens of a multicultural, multiple-ethnic and multilingual Sri Lanka," Puri pointed out.
What the international community is questioning is not Colombo’s military operation against the LTTE or human rights violations "but specific allegations of war crimes during the last 100 days of military operations." Visual documentation, including by triumphant victors on mobile phones has contributed to Sri Lanka’s discomfort. The US resolution at the 19th session of the HRC in March 2012 was a minimalist attempt. It invited Sri Lanka to act on the recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.
"Even the assistance to be made available to Colombo would have been provided only with its consent. Instead, Colombo chose to prevaricate. With additional visual documentation being made available, the demand for accountability gained momentum. Having voted in favour of the resolution in March 2012, it was next to impossible for India to change its vote in March 2013, especially in the absence of any credible steps by Sri Lanka towards reconciliation and devolution," Puri argued.
Being such close neighbours, "it is both in India’s and Sri Lanka’s interest to get a full and final closure on these allegations. Not to do so will allow the wounds to fester," he warned.
Puri dismissed the theory that India does not support country-specific resolutions as "absurd." Sovereignty has never succeeded in providing a cover against genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. To suggest that India does not support country-specific resolutions is absurd.
In any perceived clash between principle and national interest, it is invariably the latter that is invoked and reigns supreme. Following the anti-Tamil riots in Colombo in 1983, New Delhi spearheaded a resolution against Sri Lanka in the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities.
"We vote in favour of similar resolutions against Israel only because they deal with gross and systematic violations of human rights of Palestinian people in the occupied territories. We have never hesitated to take a position on country-specific resolutions whether on DPRK or Iran, whenever our national interest so demanded," the diplomat declared.
He warned that dismissing popular sentiment in Tamil Nadu as the machinations of politicians is both a misreading of the situation and a recipe for disaster. "Why should Sri Lanka not be held to account for not respecting understandings given bilaterally to India, such as those of April-May 2009?" he asked.
India can be against the LTTE but cannot afford to be against the Tamils. "The problem both amongst the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka and large sections of the Tamil population in India, is that the LTTE successfully manipulated Tamil opinion by projecting itself as the only physical shield against Sinhala repression. We cannot wish away this sentiment. The only safeguard for the Tamils in Sri Lanka is delivery of the promised devolution based on the 13th Amendment," Puri suggested.
Exaggerated projections of Chinese inroads and influence are a bogey which many of India’s smaller neighbours "periodically try on us." Apart from being practical, the Chinese are also hard headed. They will pursue economic and commercial opportunity irrespective of the way India votes. Support for Sri Lanka up to 2012 did not prevent them from looking for commercial projects there. "Many Chinese successes have something to do with our own inability to deliver commercial projects on time," he wrote.
"Sri Lanka is not only India’s closest neighbour but in many respects, culturally and emotionally, closest to us as well. We need to reach out to Colombo and drive home the point that it takes two to tango," Puri added.
Gotabhaya reminds former Indian UN rep of his role in Colombo during 80s
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Had the then Indian government acted with responsibility, Sri Lanka wouldn’t have experienced a 30-year war, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said yesterday.People of all communities would have been still suffering horrors of war, if not for the eradication of terrorism in May 2009, following a three-year combined security forces campaign, the Defence Secretary said, noting that India could never absolve itself of the responsibility for creating terrorism here, though some of those directly involved
in subverting Sri Lanka were blaming the Rajapaksa administration for the plight of Tamil speaking people here.
He was responding to former Indian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Hardeep Singh Puri.
Puri had been directly involved in the Indian operation against the then JRJ government in the run-up to the July 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord, Rajapaksa said, alleging that he was one of those aware of the Indian operations here.
The Defence Secretary said that both Hardeep S. Puri and his wife, Lakshmi had been attached to India’s mission in Colombo during the tenure of J. N. Dixit as India’s High Commissioner here.
Puri had now called for an investigation into what he called specific allegations of war crimes during the last 100 days of military operations. Those demanding accountability on Sri Lanka’s part for alleged atrocities committed during the last 100 days of the conflict were silent on the origin of terrorism here, the Defence Secretary said.
Rajapaksa said that Puri should realize that the Indian intervention here had caused a major regional crisis, when Indian trained Sri Lankan terrorists raided the Maldives in early November 1988. The international community should consider a comprehensive investigation into the issue beginning with the Indian intervention, he added. India’s former Permanent Representative could help the investigation by revealing what was going on at that time.
The defence Secretary pointed out that Dixit, in his memoirs published during his tenure as the Foreign Secretary, had acknowledged that arming Sri Lankan Tamil youth was one of the two major policy blunders of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Commenting on Puri’s allegation that he (Rajapaksa) wanted to do away with the provincial council system and criticism on recent attacks on Muslims in Colombo, the Defence Secretary said that the Indian official couldn’t be unaware of what the Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik had said before he slaughtered 70 men, women and children. Breivik declared that he wanted the drive out Muslims out of Europe the way northern Sri Lanka was cleansed of Muslims during 1990. The Norwegian was referring to massacres carried out by the LTTE during President Premadasa’s administration.
The Defence Secretary said that those critical of the Sri Lankan government should peruse former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal’s recent piece to India Today.
The LTTE had used children as cannon fodder and Prabhakaran had forced the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to recognize the LTTE as the sole representative of Tamil speaking people. The TNA couldn’t even finalize its candidates’ list for parliamentary polls without Prabhakaran’s approval, the Defence Secretary said, alleging some interested parties were reluctant to acknowledge the fact that Sri Lanka was a much better place today without the LTTE.
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