Perfidious Indian duplicity

by Durand Appuhamy .(courtesy-The island)

Activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthee Parishad, the youth front of the Bharatiya Janata Party, burn an effigy of the rebel United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) Chief Paresh Baruah, in protest against the killing of Hindi speaking migrant Bihari people in Gauhati, India, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007. (AP)

Separatism backed by the terrorism and the barrel of the gun is no good for anyone including mighty India. India today is a land of many separatist movements. The Indian constitution has failed these separatists and that precisely is the reason why they want to opt out of the Indian Union. Given these vibrant fissiparous and virulent centrifugal tendencies within India, its Constitution cannot be considered a role model for other countries racked with separatist insurgencies, though some individual clauses and provisions of the Constitution aimed at safeguarding the Indian Union could be relevant for other nations.

The latest terrorist attack by the outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) took place starting on Friday 5th. Jan. 07, in three eastern districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh and Dhemaji in the state of Assam. Over seventy-five persons have died at the hands of the militants and many others were injured. The ULFA is fighting for an independent homeland and have vowed to ethnically clean its lands from all Hindi-speaking non-Assamese. The victims were Biharis who had made Assam their home and were engaged in menial jobs of all sorts. It has been estimated that at least 20,000 had died in rebel violence since 1979. Peace-talks with the government collapsed last September due to the insistence of ULFA that sovereignty of Assam be included in the negotiation.

Note the similarity of these terrorist attacks in Assam with the many terrorist attacks by the LTTE in Kebithigollawa, Mutur, Serunuwara, etc. and the bus attacks in Colombo. The targets are civilians and the objective is ethnic cleansing in the east especially by the artillery attacks on the Sinhala and Muslim villages in the east. Thus there is hardly any difference between the ULFA and the LTTE as far as their murderous attacks and terrorism are concerned. Both the LTTE and the ULFA want a separatist sovereign homeland.

So where is the Indian perfidy? The perfidious duplicity is in the means used by India to tackle terrorism within its territory and the prescriptions it issues to Sri Lanka to tackle LTTE terrorism. Solemn rhetoric assuring Sri Lanka’s "territorial integrity and sovereignty" accompanies those prescriptions neatly wrapped in diplomatic jargon indicating dire consequences if the prescriptions are not swallowed wholesale.

Now let us look at how India is dealing with ULFA. A curfew was enforced with orders to shoot on sight. District magistrate Absar Hazarika was reported to have told the AFP that "security forces have fanned out across the region with the army, police and paramilitary troopers are engaged in systematic anti-insurgency offensive". Home Minister Shivraj Patil said that "the killing of innocent people will not be tolerated". Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi denounced the violence as "inhuman attacks on innocent people" and that he had intensified security offensives against the militants.

He was not prepared to "go soft on the militants". A disproportionately overwhelming armed force of more than 10,000 troopers have been let loose on Assam. Going by past experiences these government forces will no doubt use sledgehammer tactics with brutal ferocity to hunt and kill ULFA cadres. Had Sri Lanka followed India’s example in fighting the LTTE terrorists in the east, the Co-Chairs Europeans, the Japanese and the Indians would have lodged strong protests and called for an immediate stop on all offensive action against the LTTE. India probably would have prepared for another Parripu Drop in the east, if not, it would have engineered an invasion of Sri Lanka by the LTTE sympathizers in Tamil Nadu.

In this unholy conflict it is inevitable that many civilian Assamese will also perish unheard, unknown and unlamented. Who speaks out for them? Who mourns their demise? Neither Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Mr. Karunanithi nor Vaiko, the voice of LTTE in India, has expressed any sympathy or concern for the Assamese civilians killed by the Indian army. Contrast this with the unfortunate civilian Tamils caught in the conflict, used as shields by the LTTE against army attacks and perish as a result of LTTE’s murderous commands to shoot if they vacate their posts? The deaths of those helpless victims are all blamed on the Sri Lankan army by the Indians and the Tamil Nadu politicians! These Indians ignore the killings by the LTTE.

To-date it is only the numbers killed by the ULFA are made known to the world. The innocent Assamese civilian casualties are yet unknown. Would the Indian army reveal them to us? Or would it allow independent reporting of incidents within the operational areas of Assam? No, that will not be allowed in Assam, yet that is what they want from Sri Lanka and they do get independent as well as biased reports on our army operations in the north and the east. Without any verification these reports are then used to flog Sri Lanka by India and by other international bodies.

While India fights its terrorists with brute force, it expects Sri Lanka to mollycoddle the LTTE and allow them to function carrying out its murderous activities without any hindrance. Thus India has expressed its displeasure at the de-merger of the North and the East. The fact that the merger had failed over the last eighteen years to bring about any peace has been ignored. Again the fact that India itself has failed to fulfil its obligations under the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 over the same period, does not appear to be of any concern to the present-day rulers of India. India does not want to abide by international undertakings; yet these Indians do want Sri Lanka to act against the judgment of the Supreme Court and the Rule of Law and perpetuate an illegal arrangement imposed on the country by the superior armed threat of India, as evidenced by the conspicuous anchoring of the Indian navy outside Colombo harbour until the Accord was signed and sealed.

India does not want the LTTE terrorists defeated and cleared out of the eastern province. It frowns upon the use of aerial bombs on LTTE sites in the east. It simply accepts LTTE propaganda without any verification that these bombs kill civilians. It refuses to see the flight of Tamil civilians from the oppression of the LTTE and their willingness to seek shelter and refuge in the government controlled areas of the eastern province. It refuses to accept the unacceptable conditions of life imposed on them by the LTTE as described by these IDPs.

The Tamil people have voted with their feet to abandon LTTE and undertook dangerous and arduous journeys to show their preference to live amicably with the Sinhalese and Muslims in government controlled areas. What more does India want? Do the pathetic plight of these Tamils as caused by the LTTE matter to India?

India is not prepared to have effective joint patrolling of the southern coastline by the navies of Sri Lanka and India. The recent discovery in Tamil Nadu of explosives being transported to LTTE was a mere accident. We can only guess at the amount that reached the LTTE undiscovered.

The reception accorded to the TNA recently by the Indian Prime Minister is a matter of international shame on India. The TNA was not legitimately elected. The EU election monitors confirmed this. The TNA is a well-known proxy of the LTTE that killed the former PM of India together with many others who attended that election rally. Rajiv Gandhi was the then leader of the Congress party in power in India today.

The LTTE has also been guilty of conducting many terrorist activities in Indian soil such as airport bombing and shootout at marketplace. It therefore merited being outlawed as a terrorist organisation banned in India. To its eternal shame India has now registered a contradictory foreign policy as regards Sri Lanka. It covertly and indirectly supports the LTTE through its proxy TNA and at the same time wants the world to know that it supports Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity and sovereignty without in any way providing any support to eliminate LTTE terrorism in the country.

This is the diabolical duplicity practised by the Indians. India was initially responsible for destabilizing Sri Lanka by nurturing, training and arming the LTTE and nearly three decades later, it is quite clear India wants this situation to continue. The inescapable conclusion is that the present-day Indians probably accept what Nehru said of Sri Lanka in the 1940s. He said that "culturally and racially and linguistically Lanka is as much a part of India as any province and point inevitably to a closer union, presumably as an autonomous unit of the Indian Federation". (Nehru: "Before and After Independence 1922-1950", pp69/70).

Like vultures some Indian politicians are probably expecting the disintegration of Sri Lanka so that they can then step in to annex what is left of the country. They certainly will have to wait along time and will have to walk over the dead bodies of millions of Sri Lankans to get a piece of this country!

What can Sri Lanka do to get over this unwarranted situation? Robust consistent presentation and argumentation of the country’s interests on the diplomatic plane is called for at every meeting with the Indian authorities. Immediate contact with the Tamil Nadu politicians should be established to present our case to them and over their heads, to present our case to the people of Tamil Nadu. Contact should also be established with the opinion makers in India to lobby them to accept the fact that our terrorist problem is no different from India’s terrorist problems and that we need be helped as we are not so strong militarily or economically like India to fight terrorism.

Finally a propaganda blitz in India to enlighten the Indian people the nature of our problem and the close connection we have and should continue to have in pursuing our separate destinies. The bifurcation of Sri Lanka would be the beginning of the fragmentation of India before long—a prospect no true Indian would relish