topic: War crimes & accountability

යුද්ධය නපුරුය විනාශකාරීය, ඒ සමඟ එය ඓතිහාසික කාර්යභාරයක් ඉටු කරයි

Answering Ravaya readers angry at his support for the war, Ivan points to Gandhi raising an
ambulance corps in the Boer War and blessing the Allies against Hitler, and argues that the
Second World War was won not by non-violence but by a greater counter-violence. He applies
the same reasoning to the two JVP insurrections and to this one, and — drawing on Michael
Roberts — describes the people held with the LTTE as citizens of a de facto state that ran
its own courts, customs and army on Sri Lankan salaries.

අවසානය කුමක්ද?

Written during the critical final phase of the civil war in February 2009, this article analyzes the LTTE’s strategy of using civilians as a human shield to force a political settlement. The author addresses the outrage from the global Tamil diaspora, pointing out the LTTE’s own history of violence against Tamils. By comparing the military offensive to the much harsher state suppression of the JVP youth insurrection in the late 1980s, the author argues that the government has a duty to defeat the armed rebellion while minimizing civilian casualties, without abandoning its primary objective.

සිදුවූයේ කුමක්ද? විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?

Sri Lanka’s throat was caught in two nooses, Ivan writes — terrorism and the political system — and the first is nearly loosed. He explains his own shift: he doubted the account that armed struggle followed the failure of non-violent politics, doubted the Tamil homeland claim, and was moved decisively by the LTTE’s treatment of Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had given them more space than any Sinhala leader and whom they destroyed politically. He defends Rajapaksa’s decision as the most important and most dangerous taken since independence, and argues the war could have gone very differently had the LTTE succeeded in mass suicide attacks, a single trap killing thousands of soldiers, or coordinated massacres in fifty or sixty villages. He then judges the opposition, the courts and the press all to have acted without responsibility, and disputes the reported threatening of Poddala Jayantha and Sanath Balasuriya by the Defence Secretary.

යුද්ධයේ අවසානය අත ළඟය, ඊළඟට කුමක්ද?

The war is near its end. The LTTE will have to abandon the civilians it holds and flee to the jungle within days, and nothing remains to it but surrender or destruction, whether or not Prabhakaran is still in the country. Defeating what Ivan calls the strongest and most terrible separatist terrorist movement in the world should earn the forces the respect of Sri Lankans and the world — and he names those to whom it belongs: army commander Sarath Fonseka, the navy and air force commanders, the Defence Secretary who coordinated it, and the President. This was a merciless war against the LTTE but not a war against Tamils, though it caused them temporary suffering and produced excesses, as the campaign against the JVP in the south did. No war can be fought with human rights wholly intact. With every Tamil leader killed by the LTTE, that people is now left without leaders of its own, and must be cared for until they have some.

GSP+

The country faces losing the European tariff concession its garment exports depend on, and the political argument about it is being conducted without knowledge of the subject. Ivan explains what the concession is, what it is worth, why the crisis arose, how the conditions are being interpreted, and why a foreign policy still shaped by Cold War loyalties cannot handle it.

ඇඟලුම් කර්මාන්තය ආරක්ෂා කරගැනීම ජාතික වගකීමකි

Germany’s warning that the GSP+ concession could be withdrawn if the country does not meet the conditions it signed up to should be taken seriously, Ivan writes, and not enjoyed by the opposition as damage to the government. Garments drive the economy and employ village women; protecting the concession is the country’s responsibility, and if we have done wrong the answer is to put it right without delay.

මහින්ද හා ප්‍රභාකරන්

The sky is filling with the war’s black cloud and killing as much as possible has become its positive quality. Ivan asks where it ends — whether Mahinda brings Prabhakaran to his knees or the reverse — and answers that the honourable name goes to whichever leader is willing to admit that an injustice was done to the Tamil people and to put it right.

චන්ද්‍රිකාගේ ජනාධිපති සමය

A critical assessment of Chandrika Kumaratunga’s presidency: her half-hearted support for Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Cabinet decision to give her land beside Parliament, property dealings in Britain and France, her failure ever to declare her assets, her habits in office, her handling of the peace process and the ‘war for peace’, tenders and procurement favouring friends, and the argument that a president can have no immunity for crimes against humanity.