Ethnic conflict, the state and the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka

Bibliographic Data

ID8095262
AuthorsJayadeva Uyangoda (Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume6
Issue3
Pages341-352
Publication date2005-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInter-Asia Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9373 • E-ISSN: 1469-8447
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649370500169979
OpenAlexW2035458345
LanguageEN
Citations received27

This paper examines how the Tsunami of 26 December 2005 re‐defined some key dimensions of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict and peace processes. It first shows how the contending perspectives on the post‐tsunami recovery strategies had brought back to the centre of Sri Lanka's political debate issues of power sharing, regional autonomy, and national sovereignty. It demonstrates that the responses to Tsunami disaster and the advancement of the stalled peace process are closely interwoven and that they cannot be de‐linked. It then argues that the post‐tsunami recovery process has been intensely politicized in a context of the unresolved ethnic conflict and an incomplete, stalled peace process. The paper argues against the approach of ‘reconstruction from above.’ It also shows that the post‐tsunami reconstruction is not about constructing buildings, roads and economic infrastructure, but that it involves rebuilding communities, community lives and livelihoods while enabling nearly a million of people who suddenly found themselves in absolute poverty and destitution. It argues that unless the affected communities are active participants in the exercise of re‐building their lives, livelihoods and communities, the rebuilding process will be thoroughly undemocratic. It makes a case for re‐building local autonomy in the South as well in the North and East in order link the peace process with the tsunami recovery process. The paper concludes with two arguments. Firstly, Sri Lanka's post‐tsunami recovery process necessitates new ways for constructive handling of the ethnic conflict as well as the peace process in a ‘conflict and peace sensitive’ recovery framework. Secondly, a sustainable recovery process can productively be linked to a programme of state reform conceived in a framework of ‘deep federalization.’ Keywords: Post‐tsunami recovery processstate reformsconflict and peace‐sensitive disaster responsesdeep federalization Notes 1. The LTTE is Sri Lanka's main Tamil nationalist movement. It has been engaged in a prolonged armed struggle against the state with the objective of establishing a Tamil ethnic state in Sri Lanka's Northern and Eastern provinces. Since early 2002, the LTTE has been engaged in a peace process with the state. A ceasefire agreement signed by the government and LTTE in February 2002 regulates their mutual relations. 2. The crisis has become intensified with the reports that President Kumaratunga and the LTTE were likely to sign an agreement on a Joint Mechanism before the end of the month of April. Mrs Christina Rocca, the US Deputy Secretary of State urged while on an official visit to Colombo that the government and the LTTE soon agree on a ‘joint mechanism for tsunami relief, to ensure that assistance finds its way to people who need it, wherever they are in Sri Lanka’ (Daily Mirror, 20 April 2005). Meanwhile, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), an influential constituent party of the UPFA coalition, has threatened to pull out of the government if the President signed the proposed agreement with the LTTE. According to the JVP, the proposed joint mechanism will endanger the territorial integrity of the country and further erode national sovereignty, because under the proposed mechanism the government will ‘share its supreme power to handle finances with the Tigers [LTTE]’. 3. For the 2002–2003 peace process in Sri Lanka, see Uyangoda and Perera (Citation2003). 4. The notion of ‘unintended war’ denotes in the Sri Lankan context that although returning to war may not be on the agenda either for the government or the LTTE, continuing violence in the Eastern province and the increasing tension between the government soldiers and the LTTE cadres in specific local situations might generate a logic of war that the two sides would not self‐consciously encourage. 5. The data released by the Sri Lankan government on 4 January 2005 recorded 30,527 deaths, 15,686 injured, 3,884 missing and 773,636 displaced people throughout the island. Source: http://www.statistics.gov.lk/tsunami. 6. ‘Interim administration’ is one of the controversial concepts that emerged in Sri Lanka's political discourse during the 2002–2003 peace process. It simply meant that before the state and the LTTE reached a final agreement of settlement, there should be a transitional administrative arrangement in the Northern and Eastern provinces in order to carry out rehabilitation and reconstruction work. However, in the political debate, it generated a great controversy because of the competing construction of the ‘interim administration’ by the LTTE, the government, and others involved in Sri Lanka's politics. While the LTTE conceptualized the interim administration in terms of consolidation of its administrative control over the entire Northern and Eastern provinces as a prelude to final negotiations, the Sri Lankan government was reluctant to accord such importance to an interim administrative arrangement. 7. For example, see Polity (Citation2005). The ‘Civil Society Message to G8’ specifically outlined principles for a peace‐sensitive, multi‐partial and consultative recovery process. 8. The basis of this power struggle was the issue of succession when President Kumaratunga completed her second term as the President at the end of 2005. According to Sri Lanka's constitution, no person can hold the office of the President after the end of two consecutive terms in office. While President Kumaratunga's second term comes to an end in December 2005, the issue of who should succeed her as the party leader remains unresolved. Mrs Kumaratunga's inclination is to prevent Mr Mahinda Rajapaksha, the present Prime Minister, from becoming the party leader. It appears that by concentrating the entire machinery of post‐tsunami response in her office, President Kumaratunga sought to prevent the Prime Minister from using the post‐tsunami process in his campaign to succeed her. 9. Interviews conducted by the author on 15, 16 and 28 January 2005. 10. In my field visits to affected coastal areas, I spoke to many survivors who had been thoroughly traumatized by the government decision that they would not be allowed to re‐build their houses within the buffer zone. For many families, the government's buffer zone policy was a second shock. They had lost everything in the tsunami and what survived was the little piece of land which many of them had occupied, as the government claimed, without ownership or legal rights. But dealing with human beings in conditions of disaster and trauma requires more than bureaucratic correctness. 11. After the LTTE was banned in the UK and placed in the terrorist list in the USA, many countries have been reluctant to deal directly with the LTTE. Financial assistance to the LTTE areas for the post‐tsunami rebuilding could have come through the TRO, LTTE's humanitarian assistance agency, but the amounts would have been much less than any official assistance to the LTTE that could have come via the Sri Lankan government. 12. The negotiations for a ‘joint mechanism’ had primarily been restricted to the government and the LTTE, although these talks were facilitated by the Norwegian government. Even the partners of the government's coalition have not been consulted in these talks. Obviously, this is a wrong process for conflict management. While the controversy on the joint mechanism was raging, Rauff Hakeem, leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, said that his party would ‘reject the joint mechanism if the Muslim community was given fair representation’ (Daily Mirror, 20 April 2005

Autonomy · Context (archaeology · Development economics · Economics · Ethnic conflict · Ethnic group · Geography · Livelihood · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Power (physics · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Sri lanka · State (computer science · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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