Focus on Sri Lanka

9 May 1996
published by the Massey University
Extramural Students' Society (New Zealand).

Professor Margaret Trawick of the Department of Social Anthropology recently visited Sri Lanka.
The experience left such an impression that she felt a need to share it with extramural students.

Dear Students

It's been over a month now since I got back from Sri Lanka. This was my first time spent in the midst of a war.

The things I saw included countless miles of barbed wire; countless armed soldiers stationed at bridges, at crossroads, in front of the houses of MPs, in front of all government buildings, at the doorways of banks, shopping malls, hotels, at all the roads leading into and out of every city; scores of checkpoints through which civilians on their way to work or to school or to the homes of friends had to pass, open their parcels, show their IDs and answer questions posed by the frightened soldiers; scars on the wrists and ankles of civilians who had been bound and tortured; scars from old bullet wounds on the bodies of young freedom fighters; a loaded rifle pointed at the belly of a small girl; young boys selling fried sweets to passengers on buses stopped at checkpoints; a bus driver arguing with an armed soldier in defense of the children's rights to sell things on buses at checkpoints; fragments of mortars fired upon villages; fresh human blood coating the stems of delicate wildflowers.

The danger to me in observing these things was not so much physical as professional. If I speak too much about what I have seen, I might not be allowed to return, to see and write more. To be denied the opportunity to revisit the Tamil people whom I have grown to love would be a greater hardship to me than to have an arm or a leg shot off. But a greater hardship still would be to lose the ability - the courage, or the foolishness, or whatever - to speak my mind. What to do? What to do? Such are the painful decisions of life.

New Zealand has much in common with Sri Lanka. Both are exquisitely beautiful island nations, both have been likened to paradise by travellers from abroad. Like the New Zealand population, the Sri Lankan population is culturally diverse. For a while people of different cultures, creeds and languages lived together in relative peace.

Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims, speakers of Sinhala and speakers of Tamil, businessmen, fishermen, farmers, fine universities and a great tourist trade flourished. People were friends. They got along. But, also like New Zealand, Sri Lanka was not really paradise. There were social problems.These problems could and should have been addressed and ameliorated decades ago. Everybody agrees about that, now.

But the problems were not treated as concerns that the whole society had to face together and solve: instead they were made worse by political parties and ethnic groups blaming one another for everything. The majority-based government (Sinhala) passed legislation making it more difficult for the largest minority group on the island (Tamil) to obtain education and employment. Descendants of Tamil plantation-workers (about half the Tamil population on the island) were denied citizenship and voting rights.

Tamil leaders petitioned for legislation that would be more fair to the Tamil people. Sinhala leaders reasserted the right to majority rule. Sinhala was declared the national language and a high degree of proficiency in Sinhala was required for government employment.

The claim was that members of the Tamil minority had been too successful, they did too well on exams, they did too well at making money, there were too many of them in high office. This was not fair to the majority Sinhala people, it was claimed. Affirmative action had to be undertaken to help the majority perform as well as the minority, one way or another.

There were demonstrations on the right and on the left. Sinhala conservatives said that, by the mandate of history, the island belonged exclusively to the Sinhala majority; "Sinhala Rule" was their slogan. Sinhala people got to the island before Tamil people, they said; moreover, the island of Sri Lanka was the cradle of Theravada Buddhism, the religion of most of the Sinhalese people (most Tamils were Hindus or Christians). Simmering discontent among Tamil youth began to take shape as an armed struggle when in 1976 the Tamil political parties collectively called for the formation of a separate state. Sinhala youth, also discontent, organized a militant uprising against the government.

The government responded by torturing, jailing, and executing militant youth of both sides. The Tamil militants got more serious, and went abroad for arms and training. The government responded by building up its own military Then one day a small group of Tamil militants ambushed and killed thirteen Sinhala soldiers. When word spread about what had happened, the nation exploded. Sinhala mobs, assisted by onlooking policemen and armed with electoral lists to identify Tamil homes attacked Tamil families and Tamil businesses, killing thousands. Many Tamils fled the country then. Some of them are now in Zealand. Others stayed in Sri Lanka, and suddenly angry young Tamil people began flocking to join the Tamil militant organizations. Sri Lanka had a full-scale civil war on its hands.

The ambush and retaliatory massacres happened in July 1983, and still the war rages through the country. The rebel militants have grown stronger, so has the government military. To date about 50,000 people have been killed in the war, the vast majority of them Tamil. Another half million have been driven from their homes, not counting those who fled the country entirely. How to stop the war now? Nobody knows

.The government army is absolutely determined to destroy the Tamil rebels. The rebels are absolutely determined to fight until the last of their fighters is dead. The Tamil civilians in the north and east of Sri Lanka have lived for thirteen years under the rule of two armies at war with each other. The Sri Lankan military wants the civilians to say that they hate living under the thumb of the Tamil militants. The Tamil militants want the civilians to say that they hate living under the thumb of the Sri Lankan military. Both armies claim to be liberating the civilians over whom they fight. Thousands of Tamil civilians have "disappeared," thousands have been tortured, thousands imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands deprived of shelter, food and medicine, as the army tries to flush out and kill the rebels, and the Tamil rebels find support among the Tamil civilians, who include the rebels' own parents, siblings and loved ones.

Because most of the Tamil rebels are young men, and all of them are the sons of Tamil parents, Tamil people refer to the rebels as "the boys." A combination of fear and affection is conveyed by that term, "the boys." If a young person joins the rebels, his or her whole family is at risk, even if the family is opposed to the rebellion. But many young Tamil people have joined the rebellion because their closest family members have already been killed by the government army, or by mercenary gangs supported by the army, or by the Special Task Forces of the Sri Lankan police.

Many Tamil civilians, caught between "the boys" and "the forces," are exhausted with rage and grief. That they can still laugh, still offer each other solace, still raise their children in hope, is one of humankind's quiet miracles.

But what does all this have to do with you, extramural students of Massey University? Maybe nothing. You decide. I am one of your teachers: my job is to give you something to think about. I've been doing a lot of thinking myself in this past month, and felt it might be appropriate to share some of my thoughts with you.

Margaret Trawick
Professor of Social Anthropology