The former Sri Lankan President made her moral position clear despite personal risk to herself, which she spelled out candidly in response to a question. Kumaratunga understands the thuggish atmosphere in her nation when elected officials murder their rivals with impunity and the credible support of the Rajapaksa brothers. She did not feel immune to assault and retribution due to her former position, and especially not when the general responsible for waging the war against the Tamil Tigers is now in jail for making an honest statement of the facts as he knew them. The observed official behavior has rivaled the behavior of street gangs and criminal syndicates to the point non-political Sinhala elites have begun to take notice and react against it.
The United States would not necessarily need to commit funds to Tamil aid, although that could help facilitate a positive transition given the Sri Lankan government’s recalcitrance and failure to move Tamils out of resettlement and rehabilitation camps into permanent housing where they can begin to build positive future prospects. On this, Kumaratunga compared her own record building new housing with the palpably disdained, poor performance of the Rajapaksa government. These matters seem unlikely to be addressed without international leadership and insistence because the police state and virtual prison camp environment created in Tamil areas makes the punitive nature of the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I look charitable by comparison.
More positive action should be as much in the interest of the nation’s government as it is in the interest of the Tamils, if officials would understand that. They cannot because majority opinion has been poisoned by behavior on both sides. Wars have unconstructive consequences, and that is why help is needed from others to help restore a balance. This is part of the picture making U.S. policy both lamentable and inappropriate.
The war crimes charges make the international human rights issue more pressing, and both the U.S. government and the democratic ideal should be embarrassed for failing to address them. The U.S. people would be embarrassed to see only three senators stand up on the matter if they knew enough to track the matter at all. They do not know enough partly because their media have not enabled them to be informed. As on other foreign policy priorities, the Obama-Biden administration continues Bush-Cheney policy as if the Tamil Tigers were still authoring violent separatism. Both sides need to be encouraged to find a future in inclusive reconciliation and mutual accommodation, but support for that objective needs to be strongly stressed internationally and publicly stated by U.S. leaders, especially when their quiet diplomacy clearly is not working and has not worked.
The prominent statement from Europe manifested by Miliband and Kouchner also was not enough to stimulate action any more than did the work of the UN panel of experts. Yet, if the effort is not advanced, angry and frustrated Tamils could once again feel violence and separation is their only hope—apart from migrating into the diaspora, as almost a million Tamils have done. The departure of so many is a problem because those who leave could also help to provide needed internal leadership. As always in such situations, the most skilled and most needed people are the people in the best position to leave.
The Tamil diaspora exhibited strong financial support for the Tigers, keeping them in the violent game for years, but these same members of the larger Tamil community also have the skills most needed to build a unified nation. The Tamil struggle started as a non-violent movement to achieve rights of self-determination, and a federalist answer could have resulted, but it did not. In the end, neither side may be more to blame than the other, but the question is what to do now as long as an opportunity continues to exist.
Violence resulted partly in response to encountered brutality and discrimination against the Tamils starting soon after Independence in 1948. To respond to this circumstance, starting long ago, positive advocacy and support for better efforts was needed but not provided. A spotlight was needed to prevent what resulted, but the island did not have a Ghandian figure ready to stand up, and no one in the international community stepped into the peace-building moccasins, as they would have needed to do—and might have done.
The British delivered Independence and walked away. They washed their hands of the ensuing problems. Sri Lanka is only one example of how this policy failed. Many more exist, and similar U.S. failures of productive policy continuity have ensued in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan, among other places. The U.S. also could have done better at providing support for post-Soviet Russia, to point out another much different example. If better had been possible, the troubles there now might have been eased before they occurred. Maybe a better U.S. example in the conduct of the presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 would have been enough. Instead, the United States became an internationally negative example.
A political window of opportunity is still potentially open in Sri Lanka, and it might possibly be seized before it closes—if the political will would exist in all the places it is needed. International action is required to promote justice, just as it has been in other places facing similar inter-ethnic and tribal hostilities. As part of the necessary process, attention to justice is needed before reconciliation and inclusion can happen. That is why the international inquiry is basic to establishing trust and goodwill as the foundation for the rest of the process. As history shows in many places, this element of the work cannot be ignored without painful and even more destructive future consequences.
Sri Lanka could become a beneficial example, pointing the way for others, but to enable that, under the observed circumstances, external leadership is needed from somewhere. The required leadership is not likely to come from the Sri Lankan government on its own, anymore than a resolution of the conflict in Palestine can come without international support, help, pressure, and scrutiny. If the Sri Lankan government could do what is needed, they would have advanced the project already. Because they have not, others must understand the need and possess the humanitarian empathy to step up.
To influence others, including valuable prospective events and attitudes in Iran, India, Pakistan, Kashmir, Tibet, China, and Myanmar, among other nations in South and Central Asia, a respected and honorable moral example needs to be visibly set. Positive change now being observed in Myanmar cannot be well-reinforced when contrary behavior is seen in a nearby nation. Accommodation of sovereign relationships and elite alliances is not good enough to advance the cause of peace and reconciliation in many important places. Following a peace-building example, a positive message could be sent to the leaders of nations where inclusive rights of self-determination have been imperiled or neglected.
Expediency in service to governing elites does not promote democratic values, and Sri Lanka is just one place where the United States has failed to set an admired example to promote justice and beneficially inclusive harmony, but taking humane action there now could be a good start. The smaller the world gets, the more important principled pursuit of harmony becomes, and the more insufficient interest-based policy becomes, just as in any neighborhood. The basic principle is: any nation brutalizing people needs to be collectively engaged by the international community because the international interest in constructive nation building, analytical problem solving, and consensus-building policy in the collective interest is not served when alienated and polarized communities are driven to think violence can be a promising answer.
Unfortunately, the United States needs to be engaged on this point as much or more than other nations. Despite the end of the U.S. Civil War almost 150 years ago, the way to achieve civilized political consensus still has not been learned in the United States. Many still think consensus is about compromise, but it is not. Compromise is only a destructive shortcut imperiling the future through expediency again. The pursuit of consensus is about finding the best answers in the collective interest and doing the analytical work needed to get there. While relations between the two largest ethnic groups are the problem in Sri Lanka, the problem in the United States is polarization and antipathy between the two largest ideological and political tribes.
Standards for mutual accommodation of diversity need to be set much as Kumaratunga set them in Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda, and in that interest we need to remember Jefferson feared dogmatic ideology and much as he feared the destructive impact of dogmatic religion. Kumaratunga spoke in the best Jeffersonian spirit by promoting a coming together in celebrating the value of pluralistic diversity. Best answers need to be relentlessly encouraged in both Sri Lanka and the United States and in neither more than the other—with celebration of diversity and humility pursued to the full extent possible, because both are necessary to successful democracy.
The International Declaration on Human Rights was written a half century ago, but collective action to realize its objectives is still awaited, and too often its ideals are repudiated. Even if U.S. policy toward Sri Lanka were to change tomorrow morning, much more remains to be done, and it probably cannot be done until the people of the United States can set a better example at home. Positive words are one thing and supportive actions are another; both have been in short supply in the best interest of all the people of Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Minorities and majorities there and elsewhere have suffered enough, and everyone needs help finding the best way to end that.
We should be providing help, but we may need to help ourselves before we are capable of relating to others with more than arrogant and self-righteous preaching or aloof, disconnected irrelevance. We need to roll up our sleeves and get connected to the issues on the ground instead of standing apart, talking only to the political elite. Part of that may involve electing leaders with more direct international experience and empathy. U.S. isolation from the world-wide human rights challenge will be tolerated only at high cost.
