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Wednesday, May 04, 2005

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Opinion - News Analysis

From killing to killing

Nirupama Subramanian

Sri Lankan Tamils must debate how to stop retributive killings in the community, not who's next.

"ONE DAY some gun will silence me and it will not be held by an outsider but by the son born in the womb of this very society, from a woman with whom my history is shared," wrote Rajani Thiranagama in 1989, a few months before she was killed in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka.

As those who knew journalist Dharmaretnam Sivaram, or knew of him, mourn his brutal death last week, the words of the 35-year-old doctor, teacher in the medical faculty of Jaffna University and committed human rights campaigner seem prescient not only of her own end, but of all the other victims of the cycle of intolerance, killing, and revenge that is the distinguishing hallmark of Sri Lankan Tamil politics.

Sivaram, or Taraki as he was better known, was abducted and shot dead in Colombo on the night of April 29. Clearly, he was killed by forces that disagreed with his political views.

He was no ordinary journalist — as a former member of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam, he brought to his writings first-hand experience of the Tamil militant movement.

In the last decade, he had turned openly in favour of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; his columns in Sri Lankan newspapers and TamilNet, the web site he began, were windows to the LTTE's military and political mind.

Of the several theories in circulation about who might have killed him, the most widely prevalent is that he was the latest victim of the tit-for-tat war between the LTTE and the rebel faction that broke away from it last year under the leadership of Karuna. This mini-war has claimed dozens of victims, including three other lesser-known journalists — one close to the LTTE, the other two opposed to it.

If it is true that Karuna was behind the killing, Tamils are whispering, the LTTE will surely avenge Sivaram's death. So, they are asking, who is next? But instead of such macabre and cynical speculation, the community would be better served by an open and honest debate on why Tamils are killed by Tamils simply for expressing their political views, and how to stop these relentless murders.

Failure to condemn

The past is instructive. The seeds of Sivaram's untimely death were sown early in the militant struggle, with Tamil society's failure to condemn the very first retributive killings. Thiranagama was among the first of the Tamil intellectuals that the LTTE eliminated. The silent acceptance of her death in Jaffna, especially by the academic community, sent out the message to the killers that whatever they did, no one would oppose them.

Thiranagama was the political antithesis of Sivaram. The LTTE's military capabilities were the meat of Sivaram's columns; for him, the LTTE could do no wrong, at least going by what he said in public. Thiranagama was anti-war in every sense, openly condemning the LTTE's wrong-doings and failures, just as she condemned the actions of the Sri Lankan military and the Indian Peace Keeping Force. She was shot dead as she cycled back home from the University one evening in September 1989.

It is telling that the first attempt to piece together Thiranagama's life and death has been made not by a Tamil, but by a Canadian film-maker. Helene Klodawsky's No More Tears Sister, sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada, was screened last week at the Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto (this writer saw it by arrangement in Chennai). The film, based mainly on interviews with members of Thiranagama's family and on archival material, and narrated by the Sri Lankan-Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje, vividly captures Thiranagama's transformation from a sympathiser of the Tigers' cause to one of its fiercest critics. Sivaram's death makes the film all the more important.

Following Thiranagama's killing, Jaffna saw a few protests but they quickly fizzled out when the LTTE began contacting participants individually, asking them to pipe down.

As the documentary notes, those were the last spontaneous instances of free expression in northern Sri Lanka.

Since then, Tamils have watched without protest as the LTTE eliminated almost every voice of opposition in the community. Worse, so deeply have they internalised the LTTE rule of thumb that dissent gets a bullet in the head that there are always enough voices to justify the killing of a person who breaks ranks.

After its February 2002 ceasefire agreement with the Sri Lankan Government, the LTTE has blatantly taken out every Tamil opponent on whom it can lay hands. Many Tamils, including those in the media, have defended its actions, including the morally reprehensible practice of recruiting child soldiers.

When Karuna broke away from the LTTE, and the group vowed to hunt down and kill him, there were those who came up with the pathetic argument that for the sake of Tamil nationalism, the best place for the rebel leader was six feet under. It is no surprise that Karuna chose to hit back in exactly the same way as the LTTE — he was after all a Tiger once.

State's indifference

In all this, the Sri Lankan state's near indifference is frightening. Those under threat from the LTTE have looked to the Government for help and support to survive, but have received little assistance. It is as if this is a family feud between Tamils that no one else but they can settle.

The attitude was exemplified in the Government position that the fighting between the LTTE and the Karuna faction is an "internecine" war that it has no power to stop.

In these conditions, Tamils find it easier to say that sanity will return to the community with a permanent solution to the ethnic conflict.

This may help to shift part of the blame for what is happening within the Tamil community to the Sri Lankan Government.

But it would be suicidal for Sri Lanka's Tamils to think they can put off the fight against internal repression and terror until after a political solution is found, because any settlement built on the fascistic conditions that prevail in the community today would be akin to building a house without a foundation.

If the Tamils want to halt the community's slide into darkness, the time to tackle the problem is now.

It has to be done by condemning Sivaram's murder in no uncertain terms, and, at the same time, by condemning unequivocally the killings of Thiranagama, Yogeswaran, Pathmanabha, Sarojini Yogeswaran, Neelan Thiruchelvam, Mylvaganam Nimalrajan, Thambirajah Robert Subathiran, and of all the others.

It is not yet too late to do this. In any case, this is the only way forward.

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