Norwegian Peace Initiative
For Larger Freedoms: Pursuit of Peace in Sri Lanka
President Chandrika Kumaratunga
at Asia Society, New York
14 September 2005
It is a pleasure to be here at the Asia
Society once again. Over the past eleven years as President
of Sri Lanka, I have had the occasion to visit New York
City, several times. During these visits, I have also
invariably visited your Society and addressed you. My visits
to New York and the United Nations have become inextricably
linked to my having to deliver a talk at the Asia Society.
So that now I have begun to think of a visit to New York as
a visit to the Asia Society. I also take great personal
pleasure in getting an opportunity to brief the
distinguished members and guests here about the situation in
Sri Lanka, and to reflect on the challenges Sri Lanka faces
in achieving peace and development, and consolidating
democracy.
Speaking before a distinguished and
learned audience such as you is also a challenge. As someone
who left a doctoral academic program in politics because I
could not resist the lure of politics in the real world, I
continue to suffer from envy of those who engage on a daily
basis in intellectual activity, and hold in awe those who
have something to say that is not just novel, but
intellectually so. So Mr. Chairman my opportunity to address
you has also become for me an intellectually fulfilling
challenge to describe our policies with regard to the key
issues we face, and also how our thinking about it has
evolved. I hope this could give you some elements to reflect
upon similar political challenges in other parts of Asia, if
not the world. This is also the last address I will make to
the Asia Society as President of Sri Lanka . And I wish to
express that I will always cherish the hospitality the Asia
Society has extended to me over the years.
It is a
sad and tragic moment in the United States today because of
the destruction wrought by hurricane Katrina. We have been
humbled before the power of nature, just as we were on
December 26th last year by the Tsunami. I wish to express
the sympathy and solidarity of myself, my government and the
people of Sri Lanka with you at this moment of incredible
challenge. In an address to the nation two days after the
Tsunami struck in Sri Lanka, I said:
"This is a
moment of great humility for us all. We have been incredibly
humbled by Nature's great forces. An ineluctable truth has
been laid bare before us all. The mighty forces of Nature
have compelled us to learn a lesson that some of us refused
for long to learn……This disaster has not been selective in
the destruction it has wrought. …Nature does not
differentiate in the treatment of peoples. Loss of life,
loss and destruction of property take place irrespective of
whether it is in the North or South. It knows no difference
between religions or castes: the high and low in society or
the rich and the poor. It is necessary that we reflect
carefully upon this lesson nature has taught us."
I
dare say that these thoughts are no less relevant to you as
Americans, even though, or especially because, you live in
what many call the sole superpower in the globe today. And
so my heart goes out to the people of Louisiana, Mississippi
and Alabama, and the wonderful city of New Orleans,
especially the poor and the helpless who have suffered from
the hurricane, and my government and I are ready to assist
in any small way we can.
Mr. Chairman, you may recall that my Foreign Minister,
Hon Lakshman Kadirgamar was with me, here, last year when I
visited you at the Asia Society. He was assassinated just
over a month ago. His killing is a dastardly act committed
by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Mr.
Kadirgamar was an opponent of Tamil and Sinhala extremisms.
He opposed the terrorism of the LTTE and he supported a
federal solution to the conflict within a democratic and
plural Sri Lanka that addressed the aspirations of all
communities - a longtime demand of many Tamil political
leaders. He was killed for his courage in acting on his
views. And he was killed because he happened to be born a
Tamil, who worked for a united and democratic Sri Lanka.
Something the LTTE, which claims to be the sole
representative of the Tamil people, does not yet agree with.
His assassination not only challenged my personal
commitment, but also that of a vast majority of the people
of the country to pursuing a negotiated settlement with the
LTTE. Although, my government had the option of a military
response, we rejected it. And instead chose a different
approach - to re-iterate our commitment to a ceasefire and
to a political solution, whilst reviewing the approach
towards negotiating with the LTTE we had hitherto taken.
Such a review has just begun at a practical level with a
call to the international community to help exert real
pressure on the LTTE, in order that we can engage them in a
process that will lead to a lasting peace, bringing about
democracy and human rights.
This is also a good time
for such a review because of Sri Lanka's political calendar.
A new President will be elected in the next few months and
he will get an opportunity to begin fresh efforts to move
the peace process. And so I can be a bit more
self-reflective about what such a peace process may look
like.
As I reflect upon the different elements of
the peace process at the national level in Sri Lanka -
bringing an end to violent hostilities, rebuilding the
conflict-affected areas, strengthening human rights, and
working out a political solution - and the need to link
these elements in a way that leads to what we hope maybe a
positive cycle of peace - I see a resonance with the
Secretary General's Report to the 2005 Summit - "In Larger
Freedom".
There he observes that security, human
rights and development go hand in hand. Some say that in Sri
Lanka, or in other peace processes, it may be desirable in
theory to tackle each element of the peace process one step
at a time - first to end hostilities, then rebuild
conflict-affected areas, then strengthen human rights, and
finally to workout a political solution. However, reality is
more complicated.
For example, a breakthrough in the
political solution can promote opportunities for
development. Or efforts at improving human rights can
contribute to working out a political solution. Or for that
matter, socio-economic opportunities gained from development
can provide an incentive for avoiding war. In other words,
we need to be open to the possibility that the world
(particularly the world of war and peace) works in a
non-linear and sometimes chaotic fashion, even as we, as
rational human beings, may try to bring order to our
understanding of it.
Conceptual Underpinnings of
"Larger Freedom"
Before I get into the details of the Sri Lankan peace
process, I would like to begin with basic principles, and
ask: what are the fundamental sources of conflict in a
political community where many different people live
together? I see three such sources of conflict: moral
conflict over competing, if not contradictory ideals;
inequality even in the presence of a moral consensus; and
competition over goods and services. Let me elaborate,
briefly.
As human beings, blessed with reason and
imagination, we think about the world we live in. We ask
questions of ourselves. Why are we here? What are we meant
to do? How should we treat others? What happens when we die?
These questions are so common, that they may appear trite?
But they underlie an important universality about us, and
reflect our yearning for something more than the houses we
live in, the food we eat and the pleasures we enjoy.
While these questions are common, the answers we supply
to them are diverse. They differ if you are a Hindu, a Jew,
a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Jain, or if you are a
liberal, a Marxist, a rationalist, a utilitarian or a
libertarian. Clearly, each of us thinks that some answers
are better than others. And so we differ in where the
answers to these fundamental questions will lead us. But, if
there is one thing we have learned from these thousands of
years of human civilization, it is that we will always
differ in the answers to these questions.
They have
differed, in the past, and they will continue to, in the
future. No amount of rational and reasonable debate will
lead to a convergence on these ideals. You in the west have
a greater experience with the kind of violence this conflict
can cause with the religious wars that were a tragic part of
European history. But they led to important lessons, and so
political institutions evolved that gave expression to human
freedom - freedoms of conscience, expression and
association. These freedoms have now become an integral part
of all democratic societies, and we have learned to avoid
the dark lessons that you were forced to learn through
experience.
The second source of conflict is inequality. This is
particularly true of societies that have a democratic
tradition, where there is both a belief that human beings
deserve to be treated with equal dignity, and that this
ought to be enshrined in practical arrangements. It is of
course hard to find a political community today where such
sentiments do not exist. So when people, even if they share
the same moral values, feel that they are not treated
equally they can resist and fight. While it has become
fashionable today to disregard inequality as a source of
conflict, particularly globally, I believe that it will
always be an important source of conflict, because of the
deep belief we all have that unfair advantage over another
is, unjust.
And it is hard to find a political
constitution today where the equal worth of a human being is
disregarded or seen as irrelevant to setting up the rules
that will govern a society.
The third source of
conflict is competition for scarce goods and services,
because we still do not live in an egalitarian world of
abundance. We want more, so we get together in groups to ask
for more and fight for more. These groups may be ethnic
groups, political groups, neighbourhood groups, religious
groups or language groups. The source of conflict here is
not necessarily the group identity itself, but the claims
made by a group for a greater share of the resources. When a
province says that its development has been neglected or
when an ethnic group asks for more admissions to university
or when a city asks for more resources, they are making
claims for greater resources to be shared with them. Whether
or not these claims are justified, they can lead to
conflict.
These three sources of conflict are clearly
intertwined and can also be sources of conflict, globally,
when we fail to recognize and act on the equal dignity of
all humans who live in the world today. The United Nations
Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, understands this when he
says in his report: "I have named the present report "In
larger freedom" to stress the enduring relevance of the
United Nations and to emphasise that its purposes must be
advanced in the lives of individual men and women."
The Secretary General's report is a search for a practical
way of recognizing and acting upon this equal dignity
globally, in a world of great inequality of wealth and
power. He seeks to do this politically by integrating human
rights, with development and security. The deeper conceptual
point in the Secretary General's report then is not just
that people must have equal access to say health, and equal
civil and political rights. But that equal access to health
care is needed for equal civil and political rights.
And equal civil and political rights are
required for people to have equal access to healthcare. The
political philosopher John Rawls captures this point by
talking not just about equal basic liberties but about the
equal worth of basic liberties. Similarly, Professor Amartya
Sen refers to "Development as Freedom" in order to emphasize
that development is not simply to increase growth rates in
order to increase per capita income and purchase more goods,
but to improve health, education, housing, so that people
will have improved quality of life.
But it is not
just political philosophers who are concerned about the
practical implications of treating people as equals. We have
interesting developments in what is called "game theory"
among economists that develops mathematical models for
dealing with the technical challenges of equal division of
goods among "n" persons in day to day situations. In a
friendly critique of the talk I gave last year at the Asia
Society, a web blog - pointed out some of these important
technical advances in conflict resolution, curiously known
as cake theory, because these models use cake cutting as a
metaphor for dividing goods equally.
These theories,
even those that are technical, have common assumptions. The
first is that people want more goods, not less. Second, the
rules for how to divide up the goods must be fair for all
players or citizens, otherwise the game stops or the
political community ruptures. And third, whatever value
conflicts exist (religious or ideological) they cannot
affect the fairness of the rules of the game or how
societies make rules. In other words a constitution that
says people X must have fewer rights than people Y (and
sadly their were constitutions at one time, such as that of
the United States that did imply this) is not something that
the world, or for that matter people X or Y would propose,
leave alone accept today.
I say this not to belabour
a conceptual point, but to emphasise that the ordinary
citizens of societies that are deeply divided about the
rules of the political game, will never argue that some must
be treated less equally than others. I have found in my
experience of campaigning for a just and stable peace in Sri
Lanka, that the vast majority of Sri Lankans do not believe
that they must have an advantage over others simply because
of their ethnicity or religion. Like the hardnosed
mathematicians who think they are doing models without any
ethical standpoint, Sri Lankans who collide with each other
about the rules of the game, share with philosophers like
Rousseau and Rawls a basic commitment to equal dignity for
all. And this is a moral and political resource that I have
always drawn on in advancing peace in my country.
Reviewing the Peace Process
It is this confidence in
the people of Sri Lanka that gave me the courage in 1994 to
campaign on the basis of a political solution to the ethnic
conflict. We had a resounding victory at nine out of eleven
rounds of elections in a period of eleven years, because the
people unequivocally endorsed my policy of a negotiated
settlement in place of war, and a federal solution as
against a separate State. With the support of a broad
multi-ethnic coalition of parties I proceeded to talk with
the LTTE about ending the war, and discuss with all the
parties in parliament about a new more inclusive, political
constitution that would share power with all communities.
While talks with the LTTE broke down and they went back to
war, my governments continued in its efforts to bring them
back to the negotiating table. I proceeded to work with
other democratic parties to discuss a political solution and
presented in parliament for the first time in the history of
my country proposals for a federal style constitution.
Unfortunately, we lacked the numbers in parliament to make
constitutional changes.
I believe that the
qualitative changes wrought by us in the approval to the
ethnic question changed the reality irreversibly in my
country. It created the climate for the two largest
political parties to evolve for the first time an important
policy consensus: that war is not a desirable political
option for the country, that negotiations with LTTE to the
end the war should be pursued, and that a political C of a
Federal type that addresses the concerns of all communities
should be designed. I am proud to say that it would now be
difficult to reverse the political momentum towards peace
created by my Governments.
Mr. Chairman, let me now
discuss in some detail the four elements of the peace
process in my country that I mentioned earlier - bringing an
end to armed hostilities, rebuilding the conflict-affected
areas, strengthening human rights, and working out a
political solution.
Ending armed hostilities has
been an important step in changing the climate for peace in
Sri Lanka. In February 2002, the then Prime Minister, Mr.
Ranil Wickremasinghe, signed a ceasefire agreement with the
leader of the LTTE, Mr. Prabakharan. While there are
elements of this agreement that have an adverse effect on
the sovereignty and security of the country, its overall
influence on the context for peace has been and still is
positive. For one thing, it saved many lives. It allowed
civilians, particularly those living in the
conflict-affected areas of the North and East, to farm, fish
and trade more freely than they had done before. There was
greater people to people exchanges as students, businessmen,
civil society leaders, government officials and even
politicians got an opportunity to see for themselves how
their fellow citizens, particularly in the conflict-affected
areas lived. The ceasefire also provided a more conducive
climate that enabled several rounds of peace talks to take
place, where important commitments on the road to peace were
sought and made.
Despite these important advances
following the signing of the ceasefire, we are now at a
point where we have exhausted the positive climate created
by the ceasefire and are at the risk of escalating violence.
The primary reason for this is the increasing number of
violations committed by the LTTE. The Nordic staffed Sri
Lanka Monitoring Mission of observers who monitor the
Cease-Fire Agreement has ruled that the LTTE has committed
more than three thousand violations, while the Armed Forces
of Sri Lanka have committed about one hundred and fifty. The
actual violations committed by the LTTE as ruled by the
Norwegian led monitoring mission, includes more than one
thousand and five hundred child soldiers have been recruited
and hundreds of cases of extortion. This is backed up by
reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and
the UNICEF. The LTTE has also engaged in assassinating
democratic political opponents, mainly Tamil. Whereas the
violations of the ceasefire by the Sri Lankan security
forces, the same Nordic led monitoring team has ruled on,
are primarily incidents of harassment at checkpoints.
While the ceasefire is necessary for the pursuit of a
political process that will lead to peace, it is obviously
not sufficient. It is clear that the human rights element of
the Cease-Fire Agreeement needs to be worked out in greater
detail and more attention paid to it, if the peace process
is to move forward.
The second element of the peace
process is development or rebuilding the conflict-affected
areas of the North and East. I have always believed that one
of the reasons why the Tamil people in Sri Lanka felt
marginalized was because the regions where they have
traditionally lived, have been among the least developed in
the country. These areas have some of the lowest literacy
rates, lowest growth rates, and this has been further
exacerbated by the armed conflict.
I have, since 1995,
tried hard to develop these areas, including areas dominated
by the LTTE, and even during the fighting. Initially these
efforts were rebuffed by the LTTE. They tried to kill a
senior minister I sent to Jaffna to engage in development
work for the Tamil people.
Over the last few years
we have quietly changed the attitude of the LTTE towards
development activities carried out by the government. They
have extended cooperation to the Ministry of Relief,
Reconstruction and Reconciliation, which I happen to head,
in carrying out work in areas they dominate. We are deeply
committed to undertaking development work in those areas. It
is the Governments duty to ensure that all of our citizens
irrespective of where they live, what ethnicity they belong
to, or even who they are forced to live under, must have
access to health, education and economic opportunities.
Second we believe that development is good for peace. It
gives the people living in those areas, particularly the
youth, options other than being recruited and forced to
carry arms. And it gives the LTTE an opportunity to engage
in useful and constructive work that benefits the people
directly, instead of preparing for war. Finally, it provides
an area where the government and the LTTE can work together
on concrete activities that can build confidence and even
some trust that is vital for any peace process to move
forward.
It is for this reason that I risked the
stability of my government and signed a joint mechanism -
Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure - with the
LTTE to engage in reconstruction of the tsunami affected
districts of the North and East. Unfortunately, some clauses
of this mechanism are being temporarily stayed by the
Supreme Court for constitutional considerations.
Nevertheless, the idea animating it - that the government,
the LTTE, leaders of the Muslim and other communities can
cooperate on development and build mutual confidence -
should not be underestimated as steps towards peace. We
believe that development is an area of common concern with
the LTTE, which offers a great deal of political space for
greater cooperation. This is because while there is a real
desire for more developmental work in the North by the
people living there, there is also a recognition and support
for this work in the South.
The LTTE has been
engaging in a systematic campaign of child recruitment,
where they are abusing the lives of the most vulnerable
members of the Tamil community. The LTTE have also been
killing political opponents - members of Tamil groups who do
not agree with them. The fact that these activities also
took place prior to the Cease-Fire Agreement, and did so at
a higher rate, is no excuse for not making every effort to
bring them to a halt now.
A peace process, Mr. Chairman, cannot and does not
operate in a vacuum. People demand that a process of peace
should include active engagement, commitment and good
conduct of all parties to a conflict. In a democratic
society, the opinion of the people is paramount and
fundamental freedoms are sacrosanct. Therefore a peace
process cannot move forward as long as the people of the
country, comprising of all communities, perceive and believe
that a party to the conflict remains immune to the
consequences of its actions and does not demonstrate signs
of sincere commitment to peace. This has serious
implications for the ability of any elected Government to
garner the support of the people to its approach to the
peace process.
Strengthening human rights in the
context of the peace process is vital to saving lives,
improving peoples living conditions, and restoring public
confidence in the possibility of peace. It is therefore
important that the parties seriously consider ancillary
arrangements derived from the Cease-Fire Agreement that can
lead to new mechanisms for monitoring and implementing human
rights as a part of the peace process. This is also an area
where the United Nations with its panoply of conventions and
its universality can play an important guiding role.
Whatever the risks to the peace process inherent in dealing
with a challenging issue like human rights, it is my
conviction that the failure to do so will lead to a greater
risk to the peace process.
The fourth element of the
peace process is the political solution. I have always
stated that you cannot defeat terrorism, militarily alone.
It is also a political, social and economic phenomenon.
While there may always be individuals who may take up arms
or engage in wanton acts of violence, these individuals
become strong and powerful, because they attract large
numbers of others who feel marginalised to join with them.
So when I understand terrorism as having root causes, I mean
political social and economic causes, and not military ones.
To put it more concretely, we as a responsible government
would have to address the challenge of transforming the
State so as to include all communities - Sinhala, Tamil and
Muslim - equally. And this requires a durable political
settlement.
I have argued that it is hard to neatly
separate the key elements of a peace process - ending armed
hostilities, rebuilding the war-affected areas,
strengthening human rights and working out a political
solution. Rather than thinking of a political solution as
following these developments, we should think of it as
making these developments possible. In other words a
political solution is a framework that will contribute to
ending armed violence, re-building the country and
strengthening human rights, not one that precedes or
succeeds these.
Concluding Comments
So
security, human rights, and development are linked, both at
the national level and the international level. And a
durable peace is not possible without understanding these
links.
I want to conclude my talk by highlighting
what I see as the dual challenges we concretely face in Sri
Lanka - transforming the State and transforming the LTTE. As
I have mentioned in my talk we need to transform the State
so it is more inclusive - equally reflecting the concerns of
all communities. My view and the view of overwhelming
sections of Sri Lankan society is that this will involve
transforming the State from a unitary one to one that is
plural and federal in nature. Through a series of proposals
to parliament and discussions inside and outside parliament
my party and I have been at the forefront of the efforts to
transform the Sri Lankan State .
While a
transformation of the Sri Lankan State from a unitary to a
federal one may help include the Tamil community and the
Muslim community, it alone will not bring lasting peace. To
achieve peace we also need to deal with the second equally
important, but neglected challenge - transforming the LTTE
from a dictatorial and ruthless militant group that
regularly engages in the use of terror, to a political force
that engages with the State and does not resort to violence
to make its arguments heard.
This process needs to
be analyzed and addressed in a conscious and systematic
manner together with the LTTE. And just as the LTTE has a
stake in the transformation of the Sri Lankan State, all Sri
Lankans have a stake in the transformation of the LTTE.
The challenge of dealing with these dual transformations
will not be easy for any single political party in Sri
Lanka, however powerful. It requires a broad consensus and
joint action between the major political parties and groups
in the country.
Thank you. |
