Sri Lanka & Diaspora

The central challenge at the heart of Sri Lanka´s protracted ethnopolitical conflict is between two distinct and exclusive political rationalities. The Sinhala rationality, which has informed the conduct of the Sri Lankan State and Sinhala polity since independence, holds the view that the island is the preserve of the Sinhala people. This is based on the belief that the Sinhalese peoples are its original inhabitants and the Tamil speaking communities are late arrivals. The Tamil rationality posits the Tamils and the Sinhalese as the founding races of the island and calls for equitable power sharing between these collectives. These two rationalities continue to determine the political affairs of the communities and act as the basis for both Sinhalese and Tamil nationalism.

On the electoral platform, the Sinhala rationality resulted in ’ethnic outbidding’: whenever a governing party tries to find a political solution to the ethnopolitical conflict, the opposition would undermine those efforts, appealing to the ethnonational sentiments of their constituencies. On the Tamil side, similar patterns can be discerned. The Tamil electorates were mobilized along different political options – ranging from reformation of the present constitutional system to autonomy, federalism and secession.

Efforts to move beyond confrontational politics was initially sought within the parliament; however, in the absence of any tangible political reforms, radicalization and militancy erupted. The LTTE managed to spearhead this militant struggle after a bloody and brutal intra-Tamil struggle.

Parallel to the approach of ethnic outbidding, the LTTE´s strategy in Tamil politics could be described as violence outbidding. The inability of the Sinhala polity to address the grievances of the Tamil speaking communities and the non-violent futile measures to resolve the conflict, ended in recurrent cycles of violence with the LTTE claiming the status of the “sole representative of the Tamils.” This had a daunting effect on the Tamil speaking Muslim community feeling co-opted and discriminated against, pushed to enjoy the status of a minority within a minority. Through a combined effort of conventional and guerrilla war-tactics, the LTTE managed to determine the political trajectory of the Island.

The violent war ended in May 2009 with the defeat of the LTTE, the dismantling of the territories under the de-facto control of the LTTE and the killing of its leaders. Overall, the four major wars have killed 150,000 people and hundreds of thousands are displaced or have fled the country seeking refuge in other neighbouring countries. The remaining IDPs are still languishing in the camps of the Sri Lankan State. The society is deeply divided and there is immeasurable misery. The ending of the war has unfortunately not led to the ending of the conflict. Until the structural discriminatory practices are resolved, it is unlikely that a stable and durable peace will be built in the long-term.

In this time period, the Sri Lankan conflict and peace processes went through a full circle from war to a ceasefire agreement and peace negotiations, which then stagnated leading to re-escalation and finally another war that ended in May 2009. In how far the recent post-war situation can be described as a post-conflict situation is a contested issue among observers and experts. For more details see article The Victorious Peace in Sri Lanka – Victory over Terrorism or Protraction of the Conflict?

Given the different phases in the peace and conflict processes, the RNCST approach also went through several phases. When its work began in 2001, the country was still at war although the parties were preparing for a peace process, which began formally with a Ceasefire Agreement at the beginning of 2002. During this period, which lasted until 2005, the programme was in high demand and provided and implemented about 200 services and projects in three basic areas:

• Direct support for the peace process and other attempts at interethnic agreement in the form of conferences, seminars, dialogue activities and background studies.
• Qualification of people and organisations regarding their contribution to these efforts.
• Examination of the most important subject areas connected to the peace efforts, in particular constitutional reform and power sharing, security issues, development and reconciliation.

The re-escalation of the conflict from 2006 onwards made the RNCST’s work increasingly difficult. Nationalistic media and politicians criticized all kinds of capacity building work in favour of peace through negotiations, dialogues, power sharing and constitutional reform as not being in the interest of the country and propagated a military solution to the conflict. Under these circumstances, BPS decided in consultation with the donors to close the project office in Colombo ahead of schedule in 2008.