Jaffna Still Has To Learn To Live Without Fear

The Sri Lankan government is doing its best to build bridges across the chasm of mistrust between its agencies and the Tamil population of Jaffna district. Maj Gen Balagalla, who commands the army's 5 Div, says he has set up human rights cells in every brigade and advertised phone numbers at which anyone can make a complaint and expect a reply within 24 hours.

And, he says, villagers now volunteer information about the Tigers' whereabouts. Some of the rural Tamils clarify that they do this not for any love of the establishment but to buy peace. The army can be harsh on villages around which Tigers are caught. Even those who want peace are uneasy, though, about the ubiquitous LTTE informers.

 

It seems unlikely that the mistrust will be overcome without a major political initiative, for humiliation and a sense of defeat are obvious everywhere. Mayor Ponappa Shivanathan of Jaffna, looking somewhat ridiculous in a bright silk robe and silver-coloured necklace, complains volubly about his "chair" being disrespected.

He is upset that the army has brought a group of foreign reporters to him towards the end rather than at the beginning of their visit to Jaffna.

Shivanathan belongs to the Tamil United Liberation Force, the strongest Tamil political formation working within the Sri Lankan system. One of its MPs, Neelan Tiruchelvam, explains in Colombo that the political package proposed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga a couple of years ago could help solve the ethnic problem only if the two major Sinhalese-dominated parties agree on it.

There is no prospect of the minority ruling party getting the package, which envisages the devolution of almost all powers to local authorities, passed. So, "we have to wait for the next elections and see if the (Sinhalese majority) south will give this party enough seats to get this passed," says Tiruchelvam. A senior professor at the Jaffna University holds that 75 per cent of the Tamil people would welcome the package and that many of them could turn to the TULF if it came through.

Most of the poorer Tamils, though, have no idea of the package and see the war in black and white terms as a conflict between the government forces and the Tigers, whom they perceive as their protectors.

Many of them look forward to India getting involved on the side of the Tamils. "It was India (the IPKF) which destroyed Pirabhakaran when he was at his peak. Now it is up to India to help us," says a young villager.

However, as Tiruchelvam acknowledges, the Tigers lost the tremendous moral support they used to get from Tamil Nadu after they assassinated Rajiv Gandhi. Since then, India has kept off the tangle and supported the integrity of the island nation. Beleaguered as it is by Pakistan's enthusiastic campaign for third party mediation on the Kashmir issue, India cannot in any case afford to get involved in the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict.