State Terrorism in Sri Lanka

by Vettivel

The ‘War on Terror’ seems to be a slogan for the world for the past few years. There are actually two types of terrorisms: state and non-state terrorism. The world seems to have less concern about state terrorism for obvious reasons.

Most western and European states have a list of foreign terrorists, but how many of them have a list of state terrorists? If these nations really want to eliminate terrorism, they should create a list of state terrorists who act against humanitarian values. Some states abuse the slogan terrorism to suppress part of their population. We may need to know what state terrorism is and why the Sri Lankan government is a state terrorist.

The state media and other Sinhala media continue to call the Tamil leadership terrorists, even in peace time. However, most of the Tamil media is reluctant to call the Sri Lankan government a state terrorist, and it may give a wrong impression to the international community.

It is important to call the Sri Lankan government a state terrorist and Tamils should request the foreign countries to put bans and sanctions on the GoSL. Instead of trying to defend the Tamil leadership by asking foreign governments to not to ban Tamil leadership, the Tamil Diaspora should start lobbying for bans and sanctions on Sri Lankan state.

State terrorism may include acts of violence or repression perpetrated by a national government. Unfair trials, torture, terror bombing, and extrajudicial execution are said to be common practices of state terror, often used to terrorize domestic populations by sovereign or proxy regimes. Extrajudicial execution, or political murder, takes place when state agents kill citizens who are viewed as threats, or to intimidate communities. Extrajudicial execution may be carried out by the official military, police forces, or unofficial but sanctioned paramilitaries. In the latter case, there may be strong ties between the paramilitaries and official forces, with an overlapping membership and/or a "blind eye" turned to illegal activities.

The Sri Lankan state, through its actions against Tamils, qualifies as a terrorist state. Until 2004, Sri Lankan state terrorists killed at absolute minimum 27, 302 Tamils, disabled 3061, injured 5753, disappeared 2067, arrested 6969, tortured 2346, and mentally affected 243. These numbers are from preliminary surveys by the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR), and the actual numbers must be significantly higher. A complete report is available at www.nesohr.org. An even more complete report is available through the Tamil Human Rights Centre at www. tchr.net.

By looking at these numbers, anyone can understand the nature of the Sri Lankan government. The Sri Lankan government bombed civilian places of habitation randomly, tortured Tamil civilians, used paramilitary forces to kill Tamils, committed many extra judicial killings, and chased away a huge amount of the Tamil population from their homes.

The relationship between the Sri Lankan government and the paramilitaries has beenexposed by the SLMM (Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission). However, the International Community (IC) does not seem to worry much about these violations and acts of state terrorism. They would rather put the blame on the Tamil Tigers that fight against this state terrorism than condemn or ban the Sri Lankan state.

The IC put sanctions on Iraq, Iran, Columbia, and some other countries. Most of these actions were taken because of these countries' relationship with western and European nations, rather than the country's own human right violation record. The IC never put any kind of ban on the Sri Lankan state in the past, even after the 1983 pogrom, in which more than 3000 Tamils were killed or disappeared by the state-sponsored Sinhala thugs and armed forces.

One of the reasons for this lack of IC awareness can be blamed on Tamil Diaspora and Tamil political parties who could not properly bring these abuses to the IC's attention. The other reason is that , in the past, Tamils did not have any media to reach the IC, and the Sri Lankan state had the upper hand on media manipulation. The state produces its own modified versions of the incidents and releases them to the IC while hiding the atrocities committed by its armed forces.

There were innumerable examples, such as Navali church bombing campaign that killed more than 75 Tamil refugees by the Sri Lankan air force. The Sri Lankan government claimed that they bombed Tamil Tiger targets, even after the ICRC revealed the truth. However, nowadays, the Tamils have more sophisticated media, and it has the ability to reach the IC, therefore, difficulties reaching the IC is not a valid excuse anymore. [Whether the IC wants to listen is another matter -- Editor]

Recently, the ambassador of the US to Sri Lanka and Australia released reports condemning the Tamil Tigers, but did not utter a single word about state terrorism. Recently a peaceful Jaffna University demonstration was suppressed by using terrorism by the state military, and several students and university staff were injured. This month five Tamil students were killed by Sri Lankan armed forces at short range, and this was proved in the postmortem and police investigation as well, but there were no actions against the government.

In the last two months, Sri Lankan armed forces have killed more than 40 Tamil civilians, disappeared more than 30 Tamils, raped and murdered at least one Tamil girl, assassinated a Tamil parliamentarian in church, and assaulted several Tamils. All these acts of state terrorism have been simply given little attention by the International Community, especially by US and Australia.

The foreign governments, including the EU, are keen on putting pressure on the Tamil Tigers that is the legitimate Tamil leadership, while keeping a soft approach on Sinhala hardliners that lead the government. Did any of these nations put a travel ban on the Sri Lankan state because of its violation of human rights?

This type of duplicity will certainly encourage the Sinhala majority state terrorists to go wild and kill, rape, torture Tamils. By releasing such biased and one-sided statements, these nations, especially US and Australia, encourage state terrorism in Sri Lanka.

Will the international community consider Sri Lanka as state terrorists, and ban them as state terrorists in future? The answer mostly depends on the Tamil Diaspora and its powers of persuasion, rather on foreign nations, because these nations, by default, only listen the government version of events.

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