The Road to Normalcy

January 25, 2010

By Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe

EPRLF-Naba Secretary Thirunavakkarasu Sritharan, for example, claimed, ‘President Rajapaksa will go down in Sri Lanka’s political history as the leader who ended the fascist violent culture in the country.’

PLOTE leader Dharmalingam Siddharthan, meanwhile, said: ‘We welcome a new era, the reintroduction of democracy and pluralism to the northeast. The LTTE is finally defeated. Democracy and pluralism were long denied to the Tamil community. They [the LTTE] failed to understand the political reality that a separatist state for Tamils was unattainable.’

However, the TNA, a loose confederation of four influential pro-LTTE parties formed in 2001, essentially denounced the government’s victory and rejected conciliatory overtures such as a meeting with Rajapakse (although some TNA members of parliament met with him on an individual basis). There were similarly mixed feelings among ordinary Tamils. For many, although there was a palpable sense of relief that the insurgency was over, they remained burdened by a sense of uncertainty about the future, feelings exacerbated by concerns over how the Sri Lankan government might use its newfound strength.

N. Suntharesan, president of the Batticaloa District Chamber of Commerce and Industry, perhaps best captured the pervading mood when he told The Nation newspaper: ‘In one way we’re really happy that the LTTE is finished. All these days, successive governments accused the LTTE of being a stumbling block to any development or even power sharing.’

‘But now, with the LTTE no longer in existence, we’re waiting to see what’s going to happen. The Tamil people feel that the victory has given the government and especially the armed forces the upper hand,’ he said, noting the government repression surrounding ethnic riots in the 60s, 1977 and 1983. ‘They’re worried that if the government’s military becomes more and more powerful, they won’t have anybody with military power to counteract this. [But] I think with a proper development plan and a meaningful political package, this fear in the minds of the Tamils could quickly be allayed.’

Such views were in large part down to uncertainty surrounding the fate of the nearly 300,000 Tamil refugees who required urgent humanitarian attention. Legitimate concerns over the length of time for screening and resettlement of internally displaced people aroused suspicion–and provoked some international criticism–over the government’s true motives behind severely restricting refugees’ movements, although the government went a long way toward easing these concerns when it granted the majority of such people freedom of movement from last October.

But the general uncertainty and lack of visible improvement in conditions for Tamils likely influenced the results of the Northern Province’s first local government elections. In the Vavuniya Urban Council, a stronghold of the Democratic Peoples Liberation Front–an affiliate party of the PLOTE–lost out to the TNA, which carved out an unexpected victory.

Despite excessive caution following the LTTE’s defeat, the government still took incremental steps toward relaxing its security posture. This was demonstrated as early as last May, when it launched a major drive to recruit 2,000 Tamil-speaking police constables in Eastern Province. On June 17, 2009, The Island newspaper reported in Batticaloa District that the police still had 74 check points.

However, by September, the situation in Eastern Province had changed markedly, as demonstrated in a report by Sunday Leader journalist R. Wijewardene, who wrote: ‘To travel to Batticaloa through the emptiness beyond Medawachchiya and through the once fraught towns of Valaichchenai, Kiran and Eravur in the darkness – without fear or check points is to experience, in a journey, the magnitude of the changes that have gripped this country over the past few months.

‘A night time journey to Batticaloa has been impossible for almost three decades. Daylight reveals the full extent of the changes that have taken place in the town and the surrounding area…there’s a relaxed, unthreatening air on the streets of Batticaloa that speaks volumes about its progress.’

‘Check points are virtually non-existent and newly recruited Tamil officers now patrol the streets and people move freely at all times. Once forlorn bars, restaurants and hotels are crowded extraordinarily not with foreign visitors or NGO workers but with Sinhala businessmen and tourists. Scenes that have been unimaginable for years…are now almost routine.’

Similarly, in Northern Province, the Sri Lankan government eventually restructured its security priorities. In August 2009, for example, the Sri Lankan Army appointed Major Gen. LBR Mark, an ethnic Tamil, to oversee the Jaffna Security Forces. In October, the Sri Lankan Police began a major recruitment drive for the first time since 1979 to enlist 500 Tamil police constables from the Jaffna Peninsula to serve in Northern Province. In November, the government announced that travelling outside Jaffna Peninsula and Up-Country regions no longer required security clearance, while on the last day of last year the night time curfew in Jaffna was finally lifted.