BETA

Pogroms were used to extend this plunder to the cities

The international powers have long nurtured the notion that Sri Lanka is a ‘friendly democratic state’.  Maybe they even believe that Sri Lanka’s democracy will eventually emerge from its ‘Tamil problem’ to be the true model democracy they so ardently desire it to be.  

Certainly the actions of aid agencies, human rights groups, foreign media and governments reflect the belief that Sri Lanka should be given all the support to strengthen its democratic state – in spite of all Tamil protestations of genocide.

The problem is that the Sinhalese-led state has been the British Empire’s favourite child for so long now that it will take a lot for Western powers to realise that this state is as much driven by a nasty belief in ‘Aryan racial supremacy’, as was the (also ‘democratically’ elected) Nazi state.  

This means the same arguments we have used so often before about ‘Tamil rights denied’ will not simply change that perception.  Just by us repeating these arguments louder, more often, or through more voices, it won’t change the Western aspiration for a beautiful Sinhalese democracy.  All that has happened is that Westerners have hardened their hearts on hearing these phrases of ours – we, not the Sinhalese rulers, have been seen as the aggressors against democracy.  

How do we change that?  We can only change ourselves, what we do.  If we change, the world changes in response to us.  We need to think more clearly about what we are expressing, and how we are expressing it.  

It is a well known fact that there is no communication power as strong as video and film.   And there is nothing as strong for telling our stories as our personal testimonies. Making videos of our testimonies gives us the exceptional human power to communicate in person the fine detail that we’ve failed to communicate through the broader arguments made by our finest debaters.

From personal testimony, new evidence shows the terror of Sinhalese violent rule was established in villages before the same terror extended to the towns and cities, and it was economically driven racism.  

In one personal testimony collected on video by The Truth Commission, a Tamil woman talks of how the Sinhalese military imposed a violent social order on her village so that every season, for six months each year, neighbouring Sinhalese fishermen could invade and plunder her village.

When we were young the Sinhalese fishermen did not allow us to fish.  When I was about seven  I remember they came and occupied the whole of our area, with the protection of the army, they came to fish.  We were not allowed to fish at all. If any of us tried to fish they would beat us up, take away our fishing nets and drive us away.  We had to exchange our coconuts and mangos for the Sinhalese fishermen’s fish.  All our income was taken away like that because of the army.  This happened continuously for almost fifteen years.  They took away all our potential income with the army’s support.

They would come in season and stay for about six months.  When they came everything would go under their control.  Our people had to stay indoors silently.  If they plucked mangoes and coconuts from our trees in our homes we couldn’t question them.  When they came they would have knives tucked in their pockets.  So our people lived in fear.  But we never gave in completely; this caused a lot of friction.  

If anyone challenged this there was trouble.  They would attack our people.  The police would come and arrest our people and take them away.  No action was taken against the Sinhalese attackers. They would tie our people up and throw them into the sea.  I remember hearing people being murdered this way.

There was a big army camp in Mullaitivu, it was there for many years.  They would come straight away, once they received a message, within ten minutes, the army trucks and armoured vans would come barging into our villages.  Anyone they saw they would take them away.  

When my brother was around twelve or thirteen, we had all hidden in our huts hearing the army was coming.  The army climbed out of their trucks and beat everyone up and they shot two people who were running.  And with their injured arms hanging, the army shoved them into their trucks.  

They made my brother lay on the floor and they stood on him with their army boots.  They took him away and put him in custody.  All the people they took away were tied up in sacks and beaten up.  Two of those people are still alive today and became severely disabled because of the incident.  

As soon as the army came the Sinhala people would join them.  The Sinhala people would beat up those they wanted revenge on in front of them.  After they beat them up, the army would join them and tie up those people and throw them in their trucks.  And no one could question it.  Out of the people who were beaten up or shot, one man had only one leg.  They kidnapped this man and took him to a new camp.  Only after four years they released him.”

The woman’s story continues through the decades, and the violence against her community grows worse and worse.  

Her story shows how the Sri Lankan state used racial terror for economic plunder.  Her experience is far from unique. I’ve heard a number of similar stories from people living in Vanni, where many villagers, farmers and fisherfolk, eventually found refuge after the army had violently driven them out of their homes elsewhere in the country.  

Perhaps what is most tragic for us is that, while our educated elites wrote about being deprived of government jobs and university places, the larger Tamil population were talking (but rarely writing) about the daily terror of living with physical violence.  Perhaps if we had all known to also write about the experiences of the villagers we may have prepared ourselves better for what ended up engulfing us everywhere.

Knowing a violent racial order of this nature existed so extensively in the countryside sheds a different light on the state sponsored pogroms that burst out in the cities and towns.  At best the pogroms have been described as momentary expressions of conquest and triumphalism whipped up by racist religious and political fervour.  At worst they are depicted as Sinhalese retaliation for Tamil prosperity, education or jobs.

But once we bring village life into the picture, we see that the pogroms were not simply momentary madness incited by cunning politicians eager to win the vote.   Instead the pogroms were a way of the Sinhalese state extending the existing violent village social order to the cities.     

Our personal testimonies will communicate so much, visually, verbally, in fine detail, with a human heart, to the wider world.  We need to be dedicated enough to take the time and trouble to learn the skills and make these videos, and brave enough to broadcast them publicly.  It’s a power each of us owns, our own stories, our own words, spoken by our own voices with our own faces.  We should use this power to communicate and help the world realise that the Sinhalese-led state is no golden child that can do no wrong.  It is our best chance of preventing continued international support for Sri Lanka – preventing the destruction of everyone we know and love in our homeland.