[sacw] [ACT] sacw dispatch #2 (26 Jan.00) [Sri Lanka's endless War]

Harsh Kapoor act@egroups.com
Wed, 26 Jan 2000 20:58:16 +0100


South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
26 January 2000
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
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#1. Sri Lanka at a turning point?
#2. The film that was denied screening in Sri Lanka
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#1.

=46rontline
Volume 17 - Issue 02, Jan. 22 - Feb. 04, 2000
COLUMN

Sri Lanka at a turning point?

Traumatic recent events in the island unfold a new crisis which the
political system might find it impossible to tackle given the
dangerously widening ethnic rift.

PRAFUL BIDWAI

COLOMBO: SRI LANKA, which five years ago seemed all set to move towards
far-reaching systemic reform and historic ethnic reconciliation, today
teeters on the brink of a grim crisis. In an almost incredible turn of
events, the forces of reform and progres sive change appear exhausted;
there is a sharp rise in ethnic tensions; growing insecurity grips the
Tamil minority in the South; top functionaries of the state and the
media indulge in paranoid statements accusing their opponents of
plotting their killi ngs; Ministers resort to inflaming crass
majoritarian passions; and the air is thick with foreboding, sullenness
and despair.

"To put it starkly, another 1983 stares us in the face today," says
Kethesh Loganathan, a social scientist, who works on conflict and peace
analysis at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, referring to
the fateful anti-minority pogrom that prec ipitated the ethnic war that
has convulsed Sri Lanka to this day, and to which there is no end in
sight. Loganathan's view echoes growing fears not just among Sri Lanka's
minorities, but a sentiment widespread among anti-majoritarian liberal
elements in the Sinhalese population too. The nagging feeling is growing
within the Sri Lankan liberal intelligentsia that yet another ethnic
confrontation may break out, aided and encouraged, if not triggered off,
by the state, which could play right into the hands of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the super-militaristic guerilla group
which opposes all efforts at reconciliation and peace in its struggle
for a despotically ruled single-party Tamil Eelam.

Several developments and trends have conspired to create the present,
dangerous, conjuncture. Among the short-term developments are: the
campaign building up to the December 21 presidential election (which saw
sharp political polarisation); the very-near ly-successful
suicide-bomber's assassination attempt on President Chandrika
Bandaranaike Kumaratunga on December 18 and the simultaneous,
successful, attack on United National Party leader, and former General
Lucky Algama; a considerable hardening of her political stance along
with some loss of her credibility within the progressive intelligentsia
over the conduct of the elections; the January 5 bomb blast near the
Prime Minister's Office on Flower Road in the heart of Colombo and the
killing that very day of LTTE sympathiser and Tamil politician Kumar
Ponnambalam. As important as the events themselves have been the
responses to them from the general public, the government, different
political parties and ethnic formations, and the media.

Thus, the unprecedentedly bitter and confrontationist election campaign,
with both Kumaratunga and United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil
Wickremasinghe trading accusations - the former charging the latter with
having "sold out" to and colluded with th e Tamil "separatists" -
elevated the majoritarian pitch of Sri Lanka's electoral politics. The
LTTE's call to single out and defeat Kumaratunga, virtually naming her
as the main enemy of the Tamil people, seemed to harden the ruling
People's Alliance (P .A.) position on the ethnic issue and facilitate
the transition to the present "mainstream" rhetoric in the media with
their barely concealed anti-minority prejudice.

By the end of December, the P.A.'s stand had been radically transformed:
from making a clear (and necessary) distinction between the LTTE and the
Tamil people for years, even Kumaratunga (December 22) had begun to
remind the latter of their "responsibili ty" to bring the LTTE to the
negotiating table: "those who aid and abet terror" were now under
scrutiny and stood "warned". They would be answerable if they "by act or
omission support terror" or "secretly or openly endorse the path of
violence". This re flected not just personal bitterness at the
assassination attempt - itself horrific for its purposiveness and
significant for the chinks in the security armour it exposed - but the
P.A.'s greatly altered political priorities and orientations.

Chandrika Kumaratunga could not have been pleased with her greatly
reduced vote margin (down from 62 per cent in 1994 to 51 per cent), and
representing a slender lead of just seven lakhs over Wickremasinghe. Nor
could her Sri Lanka Freedom Party cadres h ave relished the prospect of
a major vote erosion. There were charges of stuffing of ballot boxes and
"booth capturing" from a significant number of constituencies, reported
by the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence and other voluntary
bodies, despi te the international election observers' general
conclusion that the polls were "by and large fair and free", or at least
fair "by South Asian standards".

The perceived flaws in the election process further eroded the elan and
the general appeal of the P.A. government. The fact that Kumaratunga,
who until a couple of years ago campaigned for abolishing the
presidential system, was elected under that very s ystem, with no route
of transition to a Westminster system visible, did little to boost the
P.A.'s credibility. The December 18 bomb attempt and the chaos that
reigned for several long minutes after the explosion rudely underscored
the lack of wisdom in using purely physical or military methods of
putting down or containing discontent. Had a second bomber or even a
sniper been present on the spot, she or he would almost certainly have
succeeded in killing the President.

Relief at the failure of the assassination attempt had barely set in
before it was disclosed that the President had probably lost an eye. Her
interview on the BBC Asia File programme further aggravated matters: a
new combativeness, perhaps driven by ange r at the UNP leadership,
seemed to have taken over, as also an assertiveness about her historic,
if not divinely ordained, mission to bring peace to the island. The tone
of this interview only served to create fresh fears and forebodings
among the minori ties, as well as the P.A.'s opponents.

This was not the Chandrika Kumaratunga of 1995 or 1996, even of 1998,
trying to build bridges, create a consensus in favour of devolution and
systemic reform, or appealing to the UNP to lend support to her
devolution proposals in Parliament. This was ano ther persona
altogether, anti-consensual, less tolerant, preoccupied with security
issues, unwilling or unable to break out of the mould of thinking within
the centralised unitarist state - a persona that appears harsh and
unfriendly to ethnic minorities , hostile to political opponents, and
capable of using methods long familiar from the UNP period to many
political observers. Since then, the official media have made
high-pitched allegations about collusion between Tamil businesspersons
and army officer s in conspiracies to kill Kumaratunga. This is a
serious matter.

The two assassination attempts of January 5, one of them successful,
become significant here. The first, the bombing on Flower Road, leading
to 13 deaths, was widely attributed to the LTTE. The official response
was to tighten security further, re-draw p rotocols and drills, and
impose a 14-hour curfew in Colombo and its suburbs on January 7, leading
to the arrest of over 1,200 people, mostly Tamil. The second,
Ponnambalam's killing, produced widespread fear among the minorities.
The killer has neither b een identified nor apprehended. But it is
widely presumed and feared that either a clandestine security agency of
the state, or an anti-LTTE Tamil group, or a combination of the two, was
involved in the killing. (One possibility is the involvement of a n ew
and virtually unknown group claiming to be the National Front against
the Tigers.) Only a full investigation can establish the whole truth,
but a few things can still be said with confidence today.

Ponnambalam was a totally committed and unabashed supporter of the LTTE,
who not only defended its cadres as a successful lawyer, but advocated
its deplorable brand of Pol Potist politics. He was less known for an
abiding commitment to the Civil Rights a nd Free Media Movement
(although he helped them at the early stage) than for his high-profile
family connections (especially through his illustrious father and former
Minister, G.G. Ponnambalam), his collection of Mercedes-Benz cars, and
his LTTE sympath ies. These sympathies extended to his thoroughly
despicable defence of Neelan Tiruchelvam's assassination last year. But
it must be conceded, says political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda, of
Colombo University and the Social Scientists' Association, that P onnamb
alam was one of the few Tamils in Sri Lanka who "could talk and did talk
boldly to the Sinhalese people directly, not just to their two
traditional dialogical communities, the Tamil masses and the Sinhalese
ruling class."

Ponnambalam's elimination has sent shivers down the spines of the ethnic
minorities not so much because he was popular or highly regarded as an
intellectual (as Tiruchelvam was), but because his killing seems to pose
the question whether this signalled a return to an authoritarian era
where political opponents were physically eliminated.

The short-term causes and phenomena that fuel these fears are themselves
embedded in a long-term process of causation, the structural crisis of
the Sri Lankan state, and what Uyangoda calls its "unreformability" once
it reached a "point of no return". Th us Sri Lanka's politics, he says,
has "acquired a distinctly reform-resistant character. Reform resistance
is distinctly present in two spheres, political and social." The major
actors in politics have either never had or lost the will to democratise
the state through power-sharing between ethnic groups and its radical
restructuring in relation to society. After 16 long years of the ethnic
war, even the long-overdue attempt at constitutional reform has all but
petered out, paving the way for the triumph of a unitarist-majoritarian
model in the South and the Centre, coupled with an unremitting Tamil
separatist movement. There are no major forces in Sri Lanka today that
are not statist-conservative, or that are not themselves dominated and
controlled by the larger phenomena of militarisation of daily life,
extreme regimentation, and paranoid minority nationalism, as in the
North and the East.

The war has proved socially destabilising, militarily crippling and
economically ruinous. The National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, a
non-governmental organisation (NGO), estimates that the real cost of
prosecuting the war, in which official forces have r ecently suffered
huge setbacks, is not, as claimed, 6 per cent of GDP, but something of
the order of 21 per cent in direct and indirect military expenses, and
in lost opportunities and missed output. (This is a 1996 estimate; the
expense is likely to be even higher today.) And yet there are no signs
that the war is about to end, or even enter a period of "stable
stalemate". The state's attempt to "contain" and confine the ethnic
conflict to the North has demonstrably failed. The LTTE can repeatedly
wrea k havoc in the heart of Colombo. And yet, the LTTE is in no
position to win Eelam by military means.

There is a real danger that the forces of moderation and conciliation
will soon become marginalised, fears Kumari Jayawardena, one of Sri
Lanka's tallest public intellectuals. This will produce even greater
despair and paralysis. The likelihood will then grow of a serial
breakout of ethnic conflict, or state attacks on the minorities, in
pursuit of "national security" and "defence". That could give the LTTE
precisely the handle it has been looking for - something that helps it
win a degree of internatio nal sympathy, despite its own devotion to
ultra-violent and inhuman methods. Messy mediation by third parties in
these circumstances - without any real meeting of minds of the
contesting parties - can further complicate matters. In such a
situation, the Sri Lankan cauldron could boil over. India has a historic
responsibility - not to over-react, interfere, mediate or mess around,
as it did 15 years ago. But we must know that this could be the next
turning point for Sri Lanka after 1983.
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#2.

"Death on a Full Moon Day"

The film that was denied screening in Sri Lanka

The ethnic war between Sinhala and Tamil nations in Sri Lanka is
continuing for the last 16 years, and even at the eve of the new
millennium, we don't see any sign of an end. The ordinary people of the
Island undergo immense hardship without any hope for peace. Often,
various local and foreign media reports speak about this. However, it
is a disappointment the literary community in the Island has not made
any serious attempt to reflect the problems in their creations.
Although, artists from both the Sinhala and Tamil communities produced
a few materials, they have not reached the international media. The
state imposed media censorship an d other threats to this creative
personnel may have prevented such efforts.

In this regard, the film `Death on A Full Moon Day' (Pura Handa
Kaluwara in Sinhala) is different. The film displays the effect of the
on going war at the home ground. The home ground situation featured in
this film is that of a Sinhala village in the North Central province in
Sri Lanka. The situation is much more different from the ground reality
of a Tamil village in the war torn North and East of the Island.

The village shown here is a land stricken by drought, unemployment at
peak and hopeless but cheerful people. Few miles from the village the
sons of this rural poor are dying on the war front.

Wannihamy (Joe Abeywickrama) a blind old man. His son Bandara was one
of those who joined the army to relieve the poverty at home. Building a
small house for them and to get his younger siste r married were his
aims for joining the army. Needless to say, joining the army is the
only choice for the poor village youth to get a decent income.

On a full moon day, his soldier son's body was returned in a sealed
coffin. The body was buried with full religious respects but without
opening the coffin. The local government officer (Mahendra Perera) who
came to attend the funeral says with relax, to the people at mourning,
`the human loss on the other side is many more than ours'.

Wannihami refuses to sign the papers which entitle the family to the
Government's compensation pay for his son's deathin action.Sunanda
(Pri-yanka Samaraweera) the younger daughter silently acce- pts her
father's decision and finds a job in a garment factory. Employment at a
garment factory, though not well respected in the village, is another
source of income in the poor village. Her fiance Somay (Linton Semage)
was against her decision to work in the garment factory. He compares
the job to prostitution. Instead, he asks her to pressure Wannihami to
sign the papers and to get t he Government's compensation money. He
says that the money is nee ded to start a new life for them. The other
option he had, to join the army as he knew the money he earns by making
bricks wouldn `t provide an income to start a family.

The local government officer from whom Wannihami lent some money,
Yamuna (Nayana Hettiarchchi) the elder married daughter and her husband
ressurise Wannihami to sign the papers. The Buddhist priests at the
local temple remind Wannihami that the alms giving ceremony, three
months after Bandara's death was faster approaching. Yamuna and her
husband plans to hold the ceremony but they desperately need the
compensation money as their estimate for the ceremony reached to 7,000
rupees. The Buddhist monks also want to c onstruct a bus stop in the
name of Bandara who gave his life for the country.

=46rustrated by the pressures from kiths and kin blinded by desperate
poverty, day to day hardships and empty glories of being nothing more
than cannon fodder, Wannihami retains the clarity of vision which gives
him the wisdom that reaches far beyond what the eye can see. He picks
up the mammoty to dig up and open his son's sealed coffin. By doing
this he knows he will invalidate the compansation claim, but his
greater purpose
is to believe that the war cannot kill his son.

The villagers also join him at the graveyard where Wannihamy star ted
digging ground. Somey who borrowed the mammoty from Wannihami managed
to open the coffin and what they found was a couple of stems of banana
tree and a big rock. Although it was a surprice, it was a big relieve
for Wannihami, and the villagers too. But th e Government officer moans
about loosing the compensation money.

The film was shown in the National Film theatre, London as part o f the
forty third London Film Festival. The director of the film, 37 year old
Prasanna Vithanage who appeared on the stage before the commencement of
the show said that the Sri Lankan defence ministry has refused to allow
him to screen in Sri Lanka. The defence ministry feels that the film
discourages people in joining the army and it would hampers their
recruitment drive. He went on to s ay about how he made the film with
the financial assistance from the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. `I
have attempted to display the situation at the home ground, how the war
affects the rural people', he said.

It is a 75 minutes long colour film in Sinhala but with English
subtitles. Joe Abeywickrama the veteran actor of the Sinhala screen who
cast as Wannihami deserves a lots of praise. He really brings the true
image of a strong Sinhala rural character. Joe has won numerous awards
in the past for his best acting talents. The other actors who are
relatively new to me, have performed their roles with perfection.
M.D.Mahindapala, the director of photography has brought the beauty of
a rural village to the screen like a poem.

I couldn't see Prasanna's other films, `Aanantha Rathriya' or `Pawuru
Walalu' but I must say that this is a master piece. We have to commend
his efforts in bringing an untold story of people's grievance to the
international audience.

The pity is the film which was shown only two shows (13th and 15th
November) was attended by a very few viewers. I went to see the film on
the second day and the audience were around 200 which is very little
for that great auditorium. And most of the people w ho attended the
shows were non Sri Lankan nationals. I don't know the reason behind
this, whether this was lack of publicity or people do not want to see
the reality.

The Director

Prasanna Vithanage was born in 1962. He became involved with the theatre
on leaving school. He translated and directed Bernard Shaw's ARMS AND
THE MAN in 1986 and Dario Fo's STRAWBERRIES AND TRUMPETS in 1991.

He directed his first feature film SISILA GINI GANI(Ice on Fire) in 1992
which won nine OCIC (Sri Lanka) Awards, including Best Director, Best
Actress and Actor. His second feature ANANTHA RATHRIYA (Dark Night of
the Soul), made in 1996, which he wrote and directed, participated in
several international film festival and won a Jury's Special Mention at
the 1st Pusan International Film Festival.

It won all the main awards at the 1996 Sri Lanka Film Critics Forum
awards for Most outstanding Film, Best Director and Best Scriptwriter.
His third feature, PAWURU WALALU (Walls Within), completed in 1997, won
the Best Actress Award (for Nita Fernando in her role as Violet) at the
1998 Singapore International Film Festival. It won ten out of eleven
awards at the 1998 Sri Lanka Film Critics Forum Awards, including Best
Picture and Best Director. PURA HANDA KALUWARA (Death on a Full Moon
Day), which he wrote and directed and completed in December 1997, is
his fourth feature.

Source
www.hotspring.org

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SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.