Amplify and celebrate Tamil voices of moderation

Report no. 28 brought out by the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), UTHR, just ahead of the Human Rights Day on Dec 10, is an eye-opener not just for the graphic account of the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils but also for the tone of moderation.

In a world increasingly sought to be painted in black and white, those concerned about the plight of our brethren yonder have been forced either into supporting the violent acts of the LTTE or into staying silent seemingly indifferent to the issue.

Perhaps, no one follows the credo of “if you are not with us, you are against us” more virulently than the LTTE and by implication the Tamils who back it.

The price that moderate Tamil politicians and thinkers have paid for differing with the LTTE has indeed been too high. Neelan Thiruchelvam, Thambirajah Subathiran and Ketheeswaran Loganathan, who were shot dead for daring to speak in a voice different from that of the Tigers, serve as reminders of what awaits political activists who refuse to subscribe to extremist thought.

It is for this reason that the UTHR report assumes significance. Holding the LTTE equally responsible for the sad plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils, it adds in no uncertain terms, “The LTTE having irretrievably bound itself in suicide politics, would continue to plead the futility of a political settlement with Sinhalese Governments. Both sides would trot out seemingly logical arguments to back their stand. That is the tragedy of Sri Lanka.”

The LTTE’s instinct in putting all its destructive genius into a relentless quest for Eelam runs counter to well founded arguments that it would come a cropper against local, regional and global realities.

This instinct, in which Tamil nationalists feel continually vindicated, is one that sees the Sinhalese political leadership as permanently malignant, unable, even out of enlightened self-interest, to advance a rational political approach one for which there are ample precedents around the world.

In the hands of the LTTE, this instinct is bolstered by the confidence that even when rays of hope dawn on the Sinhalese political landscape, it could by strategic acts of violence extinguish this hope, by pushing the Sinhalese polity into a reprisal mode. And thus the LTTE’s narrow nationalist instinct wrought the most dreadful suicide cult a negation of humanity, vindicated and continually reinforced by the State.”

Such strident criticism is contained in its website, in the alternative media, that the Sri Lankan Tamils have so cleverly exploited to further the cause. But most observers will vouch for the fact the war has extended to areas beyond the North and East of Sri Lanka. It has moved on to cyber space. And it is as deadly as in the North and East of the island.

If civil society has been the casualty in the North and East, public sphere has been hijacked in cyberspace. If the LTTE has developed sophisticated weapons to counter army attacks and silence their critics on the ground, the ‘Tamil nationalists’ have ways of silencing dissenting voices in cyberspace.

It probably requires an ethnographic study to assess how indeed the numerous ‘Tamil nationalists’ who people the virtual world zero in on commentaries that are perceived as not supportive of the struggle or the LTTE, but much like in the North and East they attempt to create an atmosphere of fear where people who have reservations about the issue dare not speak up for fear of reprisal.

The number of Tamil websites is innumerable and keeps growing. All that is needed is for one Tamil website to take slight to an article and put out a stinging rejoinder and it is picked up and reproduced in countless other websites.

A long list of writers who have not toed the extremist line have been purposely misunderstood, quoted out of context, vilified and ridiculed in cyberspace and the Internet being what it is, the links remain for all to see. Reproduction of the articles or even providing links to them would be pointless as it would only further the cause of the online nationalists.

In an atmosphere of heightened national rhetoric and hyperbole, the UTHR’s report provides perhaps the only oasis of sanity. Its effort is indeed remarkable considering that its founding member Dr Rajani Thiranagama, the author of the book The Broken Palmyra, was shot dead by the LTTE for her views and the organisation now functions from outside Jaffna for ‘obvious reasons’.

It is now perhaps one of the few organisations that has not changed its professed aim since 1988: “to challenge the external and internal terror engulfing the Tamil community as a whole through making the perpetrators accountable, and to create space for humanising the social and political spheres relating to the life of our community.”

The UTHR stands out for its attempts “to argue that the political imperative is to deal with the political aspect of the problem and find ways and means to restructure the state in a more meaningful way to accommodate the aspirations of the ‘others’.”

Even though, by its own admission, it does not function as it used to in the early days, its efforts “to make room for free expression and an edifying debate” need to be lauded.

Perhaps with the likes of Neelan Thiruchelvam, Thambirajah Subathiran and Ketheeswaran Loganathan removed, the Tamils who have found in the Internet another weapon in the war against the state, have set about ‘cleansing’ cyberspace as well.

In an atmosphere where political activism is suicidal, the occasional voices of moderation need to be celebrated and amplified.

[Source: http://www.dailynews.lk/2001/pix/PrintPage.asp?REF=/2007/12/17/fea01.asp]