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Atoning for an uncivilised act

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka must be commended for its prompt order of interim stay on an unconstitutional and anti-human act by the Sri Lankan state against hundreds of its Tamil citizens. This relief came in response to a fundamental rights application by the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Colombo based think-tank, challenging the virtual extradition from the capital of unemployed Tamils to their places of permanent residence in the north and east. Most of these hapless civilians renting rooms in low-budget lodges were either internal refugees from the extremism of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; or people who had come to the capital seeking jobs or educational opportunities or were there for medical treatment. The unprecedented police operation, in which 376 Tamils of all ages were bundled into buses and dispatched to Batticoloa and Vavuniya, has outraged all segments of democratic opinion in Sri Lanka and abroad. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has done well to make clear the uncivilised character of the police action. The widespread suspicion is that what appeared to be a mindless act actually flowed from a high-level policy perception that the presence of Tamils `without valid reason' in Colombo posed a threat to national security. The original official justification for the extradition of innocent citizens from one part of the country to another was that the conspiracies behind 90 per cent of terrorism-related incidents in and around Colombo over the past few years were hatched in these lodges. Among other things, this amounts to an admission of police incompetence in preventing and detecting terrorist acts.

It is true that the Sri Lanka government has legitimate security concerns, internal and external. Its primary duty is to safeguard the sovereignty of Sri Lanka and take care of the safety and interests of all the people of Sri Lanka. Aside from being morally and legally beyond the pale, collective punishment inflicted on Tamils plays into the hands of the Pol Potist leadership of the LTTE entrenched in the Vanni. Coming close on the heels of the unsatisfactory unitarist proposals made by the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party to resolve the ethnic conflict, it feeds LTTE propaganda that Tamils have no place in Colombo and a separate state comprising the north-east of the island is the only viable alternative. Fortunately, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremenayake has attempted to atone for the `big mistake' by accepting his government's responsibility and expressing unqualified regret. The military strategy of the Rajapaksa government has been effective in weakening the Tigers or, at the very least, squeezing them out of their strongholds in the east — and thereby containing their military and political menace. A serious political initiative, which offers a substantial measure of devolution to the Tamil region within the framework of a united Sri Lanka and underlines the genuine equality of all citizens, is overdue.

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