PROF UYANGODA AND THE PEACE
INDUSTRY
Secretary General SCOPP
responds Secretary General
The Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP)
21st November 2007
I was startled last week to read a reference by Prof Uyangoda to what
he described as 'the government's War Secretariat'. I assume he meant
the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, which I head, since
it was in the context of his feeling the comments he was making did
not warrant 'a five page polemical response'. But I should not have
been surprised that the metaphorical adjective 'polemical' should have
translated into a much more categorical epithet for the Secretariat
itself. The stage had after all been set by Kishali Pinto Jayawardene,
in the Mirror's sister paper the 'Sunday Times'. She had, a few weeks
earlier, wondered whether SCOPP should be renamed the 'Secretariat for
Coordinating the War Process' because of its 'angrily incessant verbosity'.
Prof Uyangoda was slightly kinder in talking of 'bearded as well as
suit-clad defenders of the regime, who can speak fairly good combative
English.' I suspect however that he intended to stress the second adjective,
to point out again that I headed a War Secretariat. Ironically, these
criticisms in two of the Wijeya Group newspapers sandwiched a period
in which our counterpart in Kilinochchi had shown itself indeed a War
Secretariat, in celebrating the Black Tigers who had attacked the airbase
at Anuradhapura. That Peace Secretariat had proudly circulated photographs
of the suicide squad as well as 'the LTTE Air force that supported the
attack from air, posing with the Tamil National leader V Prabakaran.'
In such a context I can only feel pride in the fact that those darling
dodoes of Civil Society, as Angus Wilson might affectionately have called
them, could only refer to the language I use to justify their epithet.
This Peace Secretariat does not circulate pictures of servicemen involved
even in defensive operations, nor does the Ministry of Defence send
it posed photographs of assault teams for worldwide circulation. When
Kethesh Loganathan was killed there were no children dressed in military
uniform at his funeral, indeed there were no soldiers.
But I suspect our Sri Lankan commentators will never understand the
distinction, not even Prof Uyangoda, who was part of President Kumaratunga's
negotiating team way back in 1994, who knows the suddenness with which
the LTTE struck, militarily, to put a halt to that negotiating process.
Given how idealistic the dear man is, it is possible that he was dreaming
then of yet another trip to Jaffna when his transparent sincerity would
have won over the Tigers to peace. He is still dreaming of that untrodden
world now, as his latest article makes clear, when he equates the approach
of the LTTE and the government, and hopes that the international community
will 'provide disincentives for war'. He clearly refuses to believe,
despite all evidence to the contrary, that this government has been
wanting the LTTE to return to negotiations, and to abide seriously by
the Ceasefire without engaging in the guerilla attacks and then the
full frontal assaults that necessitated retaliation last year.
Sadly, though I suppose inevitably, he has reached the stage where he
believes only he himself is sincere.
In so graciously asking us to realize that 'mirror-imaging the LTTE
particularly in the area of human rights and humanitarian issues is
self-defeating and self-destructive for the government' he must assume
that we, bearded or suit-clad or both, are all idiots. Worse, he assumes
we have no moral sense, for we at least realize not only that such mirror-imaging
is self-defeating, we also know it is morally wrong. Then again, he
obviously assumes that Prof Vitharana is a hypocrite and only people
like himself 'keep the argument and conversation for a negotiated political
solution alive'. Whether what Prof Vitharana and his dedicated team
of negotiators, representing so many elements in the political spectrum,
produce will be acceptable to Parliament I do not know, but it is the
height of arrogance to assume that they are incapable - and they it
should be noted work through practice rather than pontification - of
understanding the importance of negotiation and a political solution
for our political problems.
Terrorist problems are however different, and need to be dealt with
militarily unless the terrorists are willing to negotiate or at least
to abide by a ceasefire. Given his own transformation, from 1971 terrorist
to peace-loving academic, forgetting perhaps the history of that transformation,
Prof Uyangoda doubtless believes that transforming the LTTE would be
a simple matter. He ignores what happened to President Premadasa's negotiations
in 1990, when the sudden withdrawal of the LTTE led to so many policemen
being slaughtered. But perhaps on that issue he sides with the LTTE,
who claimed that President Premadasa was not sincere, and they were
forced to resort once again to arms.
Does he think the same of what happened in 1994/95, when he himself
was initially part of President Kumaratunga's negotiating team? Does
he believe that in the end she turned hypocritical, and the LTTE was
therefore justified in its sudden naval attack? Does he believe that
Mr Wickremesinghe was insincere, in his indulgence of the LTTE, and
the LTTE was therefore justified in withdrawing from talks in April
2003, and in building up its arsenal, its troops and its military installations
throughout the period of the Wickremesinghe government - and in killing
Tamils opposed to it as well as the army's intelligence operatives?
His recent articles suggest that he does so believe, that for him the
LTTE are lambs and it is people like me, who only have words to use,
who are warmongers. Fortunately the international community is I think
now more sensible. The Sri Lankan peace industry simply cannot understand
the significance of the way the LTTE Peace Secretariat celebrated the
suicide attack on Anuradhapura, but one of its principal funders took
my point immediately. I don't suppose the adulatory pictures will be
removed from its website, funded with the full agreement of the Sri
Lankan government by many foreign sources, but I believe the world at
large will be more cautious now about the way it has been flinging money
at the LTTE.
As a distinguished British academic put it, the IRA at least strenuously
maintained the fiction of a sharp distinction between its political
and its military wings. That splendidly typical British characterization
said it all: the British belief that there was in fact no such distinction,
but the awareness that there were certain rules that one needed to observe
to ensure acceptance within the political process, and which the IRA
abided by. Therefore it was able to engage politically when the time
seemed ripe to it.
The LTTE never worried about such a distinction, as the actual polemics
of its Peace Secretariat indicate, as was made clear by the military
uniform Mr Thamilselvam sported so often last year, against his will
we hope even though he was so prominent in the attack on Muhumalai in
August. On the one hand this may have been due to a belief that there
was really no need for it to engage politically.
That was what its absolute refusal ever to contemplate elections suggested.
But beyond this was the fact that it had no reason to bother, because
people like Prof Uyangoda would hardly notice the fact. In short, the
failure of the LTTE to bother at all about keeping its ostensibly political
wing distinct from its military activities shows a contempt for the
international community and previous Sri Lankan governments which the
initial attitude of those bodies did much to encourage - and which Prof
Uyangoda's flawed understanding of what constitutes war will further
justify.
I believe all that will change now, if the LTTE and its ilk do not
succeed in upsetting the present government. The international community
has begun to recognize the importance of other Tamils, and the decision
of the new Norwegian ambassador to at least meet with former Tamil militants
shows that there is understanding now of the realities of the Sri Lankan
situation. That involves both a political problem which must be resolved
politically (through negotiations primarily with minorities), and a
terrorist problem that must be resolved through the abandonment of terrorism,
to be accomplished we hope peacefully if the LTTE is made to see that
terrorism will gain it nothing. In this respect the American decision
to freeze TRO funds, the greater attention I hope Europe will pay to
prosecuting illegal fund-raising and deployment, the determination of
India to make clear its abhorrence of LTTE practices, should help. That
all these should be accompanied by support for political reform should
not be a problem for Sri Lanka, provided advocates of such reform do
not think that upsetting the government is the means to this end.
There may be one or two exceptions, but I believe that the international
community, at least at the relevant senior levels, is not interested
in the regime change which some Sri Lankans hanker for. Sadly their
principal instrument in this campaign is the international community,
and some elements within this are sublimely ignorant of the use made
of them. Indeed it is because of the efforts of this Secretariat to
counter such stratagems that we were first accused of making War, though
I believe Prof Uyangoda jumping on this bandwagon is due more to his
impressionability rather than design.
But it was not I think a coincidence that allegations within the Sri
Lankan elite, as sympathetically reported to me initially by the Sri
Lanka Monitoring Mission, sprang up in the week in which we refuted
the confident assertion that Louise Arbour had recommended a UN Monitoring
Mission for Sri Lanka.
Interestingly, the Sunday Times on October 14th declared as the headline
of its lead story 'Showdown on key HR issues: Arbour insists on direct
UN monitoring; Lanka says no way.' It was necessary to point out that
this was false, as was another claim that four leading Human Rights
activists had resigned from the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission in
high dudgeon, or another that the government had prevented Louise Arbour
from visiting the East, all these made much of in the international
media. That alas is not so easy to correct, though fortunately, even
if our 'polemical …. Incessant verbosity' had nothing to do with
it, on the 21st the Times editorial referred to 'Ms. Arbour's veiled
suggestion of a larger presence of the UNHRC in Sri Lanka, what has
been interpreted as that of a 'permanent mission' in the country', thus
effectively giving the lie to its banner headline of the previous week.
And that, I believe, explains the otherwise inexplicable hostility
caused by my simple use of English prose, the anguish caused by the
fact that some of us who speak for the Sri Lankan state can use 'fairly
good … English' even by Prof Uyangoda's standards. This after all
seemed previously to be the preserve of the anti-government Human Rights
industry, assiduously pursuing its ostensibly peaceful course, permitting
itself to say the most diabolical things about the government and its
armed forces - dirty war, evidence of tampering, genocide, ethnic cleansing
- without expecting any reasoned reply.
What they want is someone who will attack them personally, not someone
who will expose their illogicality and their lack of evidence for the
sweeping generalizations they make, and their not so uncommon prevarications.
I have no doubt that in my writings too there will be errors, but I
believe there will be none of the above. And so far certainly there
have been no identifications of errors, though unlike my interlocutors
I will certainly correct any that are found, as I have promptly corrected
any I found myself. But such an approach is probably more worrying to
those who, as Prof Uyangoda implies, thought they had a monopoly of
the 'moral high ground'. And so, for these apostles of peace, we have
to be warmongers, the LTTE Peace Secretariat with its grisly pictures
poor misunderstood creatures, anxious for peace were it not for our
polemics.
Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
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