European Union & the Tamil Struggle
Appeasement � A Failed Strategy
R. Cholan
9 November 2005
�When you see your wife commit an
offense, don�t rush at her with insults and violent
blows... Scold her sharply, bully and terrify her. And
if this still doesn't work, take up a stick and beat her
soundly, for it is better to punish the body and correct
the soul than damage the soul and spare the body... Then
readily beat her, not in rage but out of charity and
concern for her soul...�[i] -
Friar Cherubino
(1450 AD)
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S.Sivanayagam, Head Tamil Eelam Information
Unit, 1984 - "Imagine
a habitual wife beater who has been at it for
twenty years. Imagine the little woman
protesting arguing, screaming, grappling, and
having come to the end of her tether one day,
snatching the nearest kitchen knife to defend
herself against further attacks. And then she
says:'You have tormented me enough. It is
impossible to live with you any more.' With that
she files papers for divorce. If you were the
judge, what causes would you attribute to the
break up of the marriage? The Sri Lankan
Government (as probably the habitual wife
beater) attributes the causes to the wife
snatching the kitchen knife and asking for
separation! To any oppressor resistance to
oppression is naturally the beginning of the
problem..." -
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The world has changed alright from the days
of society approved �wife-beating� to the current state of
disapproval, but during the course of this change there was
a period when �appeasement� was tried. As human societies
became civilized about this, they sought change by appealing
to the goodwill of the errant husbands by way of advising
women to mend their ways so they �don�t bring it upon
themselves�. Appease the perpetrator and he will change was
the strategy, one that we now know failed. Although we are
not completely out of the woods on this societal scourge,
meaningful change came about only when laws were enacted and
used to punish the wife-beaters.
Now the international community is trying the same failed
approach in Sri Lanka - of �appeasement of the batterer�,
hoping the abuser will change. Tell the victims to mend
their ways so that they don�t �bring it upon themselves�,
and the abuser will change!
The
European Union�s announcement
[September 26, 2005] to ban LTTE leaders from travel to
their countries, coupled with a threat to name them as
�terrorists� in response to a shrilly but baseless
allegation on the Kadirgamar murder, is a good example of
this �appeasement�.
Accepting as true such groundless allegations, and then
compounding the error by basing a major policy decision on
it, is thoughtless and frivolous. It ignores the tenuous
status of the peace process in Sri Lanka, a weakness that
was brought on largely by the southern politics. In one
stroke the EU announcement strengthened the spoilers and
further undermined the already weakened peace process.
European leaders are not unaware that the dominant thrust of
the southern politics today is to foil the Norwegian peace
process. The loudest voices in the south, the JVP-JHU
combine, now joined by SLFP�s Presidential candidate, are
all stridently anti-peace. The JVP/JHU cabal has won every
round against attempts at rapprochement with Tamils, be it
the
ISGA,
P-TOMS agreement, or even on matters as mundane as the
selection of a venue for talks, with hardly any opposition
from the bulk of the Sinhala leadership (SLFP or UNP).
Ranil Wickremasinghe, widely perceived as pro-peace by the
international community, now hiding behind semantics instead
of confronting the anti voices is a clear indication of the
dominant southern sentiment on this matter. His purposeful
avoidance of the word �federalism� in his campaign
(something he himself agreed to in December 2002), is a
throwback to the Kotelawala somersault in 1956 on the
language issue.
Indeed, nothing has changed from when it all started at Sri
Lanka�s independence in 1948. All things harmful to Tamils �
be it the
Citizenship Act of 1948, or the
Official Language Act of 1956, or the more recent
military budgets to fight the Tamil rebellion � have
pan-Sinhala political support. Any offers beneficial to
Tamils become contentious, with those proposing such
concessions being opposed, weakened and defeated. Nothing
has changed
in
the last fifty-plus years.
It is also worth noting that
in all these decades there has been no counterbalancing
pro-peace movement of any significance in the southern
civil society. The so called peace organizations in the
south are nothing but apologists, explaining away the
anti-Tamil stances of the Sinhala leadership, and never
taking a strong enough pro-peace stand themselves.
A constant refrain we hear from these so called
peace-activists is that the majority of Sinhala masses want
peace. If this is so, why is it that these southern peace
groups have not produced even one mass pro-peace rally, at
least equal in strength to the numerous anti-peace rallies
of the JVP and JHU? If what they say is true, they should
have been able to mobilize a great and a recognizable
pro-peace movement in the south.
Surely, the EU leaders who have sought to penalize the LTTE
based on some groundless allegations know all this.
They must also know that this type of appeasement has never
worked with Sri Lanka. Indian ambassadors trekking to Sri
Lanka couldn�t stop the Citizenship Act or the Sinhala Only
Act in the fifties. They couldn�t even persuade the Prime
Minister of the time, Mr. SWRD Bandaranaike, to declare a
state of emergency
to stop the massacres of 1958.
The more recent promise of a US$ 3.5 bn development aid
couldn�t persuade the Sinhala leadership to resume the peace
talks. A similar offer to get the P-TOMS going didn�t have
any effect either.
Appeasement doesn�t work with Sri Lanka. The wife-beating
husband stopped only when it started to hurt. What will work
with Sri Lanka doesn�t require elucidation.
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