Sri Lanka and state terrorism

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Various groups and individuals have accused the Sri Lankan government of commiting acts amounting to state terrorism. They characterize certain instances during the Sri Lankan government's handling of the uprisings by the terrorist JVP organization and various other instances during the course of the long drawn civil war against the terrorist LTTE organization as "state terrorism".The government on its part denies the allegations and has also proscribed many of the militant groups themselves as terrorists.

Background information

Template:Totally disputed Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, a Harvard University social anthropologist specializing in studies of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tamils, as well as the anthropology of religion and politics, has termed acts by the Sri Lankan state against secessionist supporters during the 1971 JVP Insurrection (Sri Lanka), the 1987-89 JVP Insurrection (Sri Lanka) and the Civil war as state terrorism. According to Ching-In Moon and Chaesung Chun the origins of the conflict lie in a number of actions by the Sinhalese dominated government, including the 1970 "Sinhala Only Act", the enshrinement of Bhuddism as the foremost religion of the state, and oppression of Tamils and democratic Tamil movements. Additional government acts exacerbated matters:

Because of the Sinhalese army occupation of Jaffna and the state terrorism let loose on the people, hostility began to grow and the emotional division between Sinhalese and Tamils became more acute. A group of highly organized young Tamil militants, first calling themselves the New Tamil Tigers and later the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, emerged in 1976 to confront the government terrorism by bearing arms.

James and Brenda Lutz see both sides in the conflict as resorting to terrorism:

This tension eventually led to the outbreak of violence between the communities, and this violence quickly generated terrorist actions in a variety of situations. Both government forces and Tamil dissidents became perpetrators.

Dr. Daya Somasundaram of the University of Jaffna asserts that the ethnic war in Sri Lanka is "a good example of the modern use of terror on a mass scale". Though "ll parties in the conflict have restored to the use of terror tactics," in his view "in the scale, duration, and sheer numbers of victims, it is the Sri Lankan state that is most guilty of the massive use of terror". According to Somasundaram:

Gradually, state terror became institutionalized into the very laws of the land (Amnesty International, 1996), structures of society and mechanisms of governance. Arbtrary detention, torture, massacres, extrajudicial killins, disappearences, rape, forced displacements, bombings, and shelling became common. The minority Tamil community... experience the brunt of the terror.

From 1985 to 1989, according to Gananath Obeyesekere, Sri Lanka pracised state terror against the Sinhalese majority as well:

The 'time of dread' was roughly 1985-89, when ethnic Sinhala youth took over vast areas of the country and practised enormous atrocities; they were only eliminated by equally dreadful state terror.

Chandrika Kumaratunga, the President of Sri Lanka from 1994 to 2005, has also stated in an in interview with David Frost that at the time that her husband Vijaya Kumaranatunga was assassinated, "Sri Lanka had a killing fields, there was a lot of terror perpetrated by the government itself, state terror."

Response to the post 1983 civil conflict

As part of the military actions against the rebel LTTE group many massacres of civilians and series of prison massacres, assassinations of political opponents have taken place.

Involuntary disappearances

The Asian Human Rights Commission has complained that in 2006 up to 400 people have been disappeared, 245 of who were detained by the army, with another further 25 by the LTTE. The pro-LTTE Tamil daily Uthayan, which has close links with the Tamil terrorists, has called it "state terror".

Backing of paramilitary group

According to the AHRC, the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court identifies

"conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities" as a war crime.

The agency has accused the allegedly Sri Lankan government backed forces of recruiting children, describing is a "state teror" and has appealed to the international community to refer Sri Lanka to the ICC for investigation into the violations of the Rome Statute.

Reactions

Template:Totally disputed Many acts associated with the Sri Lankan civil war have been termed as acts of "state terror" by Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora who fund the Tamil Terrorist LTTE organization and without whom the LTTE cannot survive, but the Asian Human Rights Commission(AHRC) has noted that it seems that the war's major contributions to the prevalence of torture and state terror in "peaceful" areas have been:

The permeation of its horrific levels of violence and terrorism into social institutions and
The acceptability and legitimacy that it has provided for further proliferating the "traditions" of violence and domination.

The report concludes that acts of State terror have become institutionalized throughout the country not just in the war torn North and East.

References

Piyadasa, L. (1986). Sri Lanka: the Holocaust and After. Zed Books. ISBN 0-906334-03-9.
Tambiah, Stanley (1984). Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-78952-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
http://www.jstor.org/view/00044687/di014482/01p0352y/0
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v008/8.1de_silva.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/jvp-n28.shtml
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9242/
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/37191.htm][http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/security/terrorism-and-the-law/terrorism-act/proscribed-groups
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/ns/le/cle-en.asp#ltte
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/ltte.htm
Tambiah, Stanley (1984). Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. University of Chicago Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-226-78952-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
Ching-In Moon and Chaesung Chun, "Sovereignty: Dominance of the Westphalian Concept and Implications for Regional Security", in Muthiah Alagappa, Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 128. ISBN 080474629X
James M Lutz, Brenda J Lutz, Global Terrorism, Routledge, 2004, p. 216. ISBN 0415700507
Dava Somasunduram, "Short- and Long-Term Effects on the Victims of Terror in Sri Lanka", in Yael Danieli, Danny Brom, Joe Sills, The Trauma Of Terrorism: Sharing Knowledge And Shared Care, An International Handbook, Haworth Press, 2005, p. 216. ISBN 0789027739
Gananath Obeyesekere, "Narratives of the self: Chevalier Peter Dillon's Fijian cannibal adventures", in Barbara Creed, Jeanette Hoorn, Body Trade: captivity, cannibalism and colonialism in the Pacific, Routledge, 2001, p. 100. ISBN 0415938848
BBC Breakfast with Frost Interview: President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka , BBC, October 28, 2001.
http://www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/2006statements/729/
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/sril-s27.shtml
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=33117
http://www.ahrchk.net/ahrc-in-news/mainfile.php/2006ahrcinnews/866/
http://www.achrweb.org/Review/2006/141-06.htm
http://www.ctconline.ca/bro.pdf
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=2618

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