"Peace requires consensus and joint action by the
major political parties"-
President at NY's Asia Society
14th September 2005
It is a pleasure to be here at the Asia Society once again. Over the past eleven
years as President of Sri Lanka, I have had the occasion to visit New York City,
several times. During these visits, I have also invariably visited your Society and
addressed you. My visits to New York and the United Nations have become
inextricably linked to my having to deliver a talk at the Asia Society. So that now I
have begun to think of a visit to New York as a visit to the Asia Society. I also take
great personal pleasure in getting an opportunity to brief the distinguished
members and guests here about the situation in Sri Lanka, and to reflect on the
challenges Sri Lanka faces in achieving peace and development, and
consolidating democracy.
Speaking before a distinguished and learned audience such as you is also a
challenge. As someone who left a doctoral academic program in politics because I
could not resist the lure of politics in the real world, I continue to suffer from envy
of those who engage on a daily basis in intellectual activity, and hold in awe those
who have something to say that is not just novel, but intellectually so. So Mr.
Chairman my opportunity to address you has also become for me an intellectually
fulfilling challenge to describe our policies with regard to the key issues we face,
and also how our thinking about it has evolved. I hope this could give you some
elements to reflect upon similar political challenges in other parts of Asia, if not the
world. This is also the last address I will make to the Asia Society as President of
Sri Lanka. And I wish to express that I will always cherish the hospitality the Asia
Society has extended to me over the years.
It is a sad and tragic moment in the United States today because of the destruction
wrought by hurricane Katrina. We have been humbled before the power of nature,
just as we were on December 26th last year by the Tsunami. I wish to express the
sympathy and solidarity of myself, my government and the people of Sri Lanka
with you at this moment of incredible challenge. In an address to the nation two
days after the Tsunami struck in Sri Lanka, I said:
"This is a moment of great humility for us all. We have been incredibly humbled by
Nature's great forces. An ineluctable truth has been laid bare before us all. The
mighty forces of Nature have compelled us to learn a lesson that some of us
refused for long to learn……This disaster has not been selective in the
destruction it has wrought. …Nature does not differentiate in the treatment of
peoples. Loss of life, loss and destruction of property take place irrespective of
whether it is in the North or South. It knows no difference between religions or
castes: the high and low in society or the rich and the poor. It is necessary that we
reflect carefully upon this lesson nature has taught us."
I dare say that these thoughts are no less relevant to you as Americans, even
though, or especially because, you live in what many call the sole superpower in
the globe today. And so my heart goes out to the people of Louisiana, Mississippi
and Alabama, and the wonderful city of New Orleans, especially the poor and the
helpless who have suffered from the hurricane, and my government and I are
ready to assist in any small way we can.
Mr. Chairman, you may recall that my Foreign Minister, Hon Lakshman Kadirgamar
was with me, here, last year when I visited you at the Asia Society. He was
assassinated just over a month ago. His killing is a dastardly act committed by the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Mr. Kadirgamar was an opponent of
Tamil and Sinhala extremisms.
He opposed the terrorism of the LTTE and he supported a federal solution to the
conflict within a democratic and plural Sri Lanka that addressed the aspirations of
all communities - a longtime demand of many Tamil political leaders. He was killed
for his courage in acting on his views. And he was killed because he happened to
be born a Tamil, who worked for a united and democratic Sri Lanka. Something
the LTTE, which claims to be the sole representative of the Tamil people, does not
yet agree with.
His assassination not only challenged my personal commitment, but also that of a
vast majority of the people of the country to pursuing a negotiated settlement with
the LTTE. Although, my government had the option of a military response, we
rejected it. And instead chose a different approach - to re-iterate our commitment
to a ceasefire and to a political solution, whilst reviewing the approach towards
negotiating with the LTTE we had hitherto taken. Such a review has just begun at
a practical level with a call to the international community to help exert real
pressure on the LTTE, in order that we can engage them in a process that will
lead to a lasting peace, bringing about democracy and human rights.
This is also a good time for such a review because of Sri Lanka's political
calendar. A new President will be elected in the next few months and he will get an
opportunity to begin fresh efforts to move the peace process. And so I can be a bit
more self-reflective about what such a peace process may look like.
As I reflect upon the different elements of the peace process at the national level
in Sri Lanka – bringing an end to violent hostilities, rebuilding the conflict-affected
areas, strengthening human rights, and working out a political solution – and the
need to link these elements in a way that leads to what we hope maybe a positive
cycle of peace - I see a resonance with the Secretary General's Report to the
2005 Summit – "In Larger Freedom".
There he observes that security, human rights and development go hand in hand.
Some say that in Sri Lanka, or in other peace processes, it may be desirable in
theory to tackle each element of the peace process one step at a time – first to
end hostilities, then rebuild conflict-affected areas, then strengthen human rights,
and finally to workout a political solution. However, reality is more complicated.
For example, a breakthrough in the political solution can promote opportunities for
development. Or efforts at improving human rights can contribute to working out a
political solution. Or for that matter, socio-economic opportunities gained from
development can provide an incentive for avoiding war. In other words, we need to
be open to the possibility that the world (particularly the world of war and peace)
works in a non-linear and sometimes chaotic fashion, even as we, as rational
human beings, may try to bring order to our understanding of it.
Conceptual Underpinnings of "Larger Freedom"
Before I get into the details of the Sri Lankan peace process, I would like to begin
with basic principles, and ask: what are the fundamental sources of conflict in a
political community where many different people live together? I see three such
sources of conflict: moral conflict over competing, if not contradictory ideals;
inequality even in the presence of a moral consensus; and competition over goods
and services. Let me elaborate, briefly.
As human beings, blessed with reason and imagination, we think about the world
we live in. We ask questions of ourselves. Why are we here? What are we meant
to do? How should we treat others? What happens when we die? These questions
are so common, that they may appear trite? But they underlie an important
universality about us, and reflect our yearning for something more than the
houses we live in, the food we eat and the pleasures we enjoy.
While these questions are common, the answers we supply to them are diverse.
They differ if you are a Hindu, a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Jain, or
if you are a liberal, a Marxist, a rationalist, a utilitarian or a libertarian. Clearly,
each of us thinks that some answers are better than others. And so we differ in
where the answers to these fundamental questions will lead us. But, if there is one
thing we have learned from these thousands of years of human civilization, it is
that we will always differ in the answers to these questions.
They have differed, in the past, and they will continue to, in the future. No amount
of rational and reasonable debate will lead to a convergence on these ideals. You
in the west have a greater experience with the kind of violence this conflict can
cause with the religious wars that were a tragic part of European history. But they
led to important lessons, and so political institutions evolved that gave expression
to human freedom – freedoms of conscience, expression and association. These
freedoms have now become an integral part of all democratic societies, and we
have learned to avoid the dark lessons that you were forced to learn through
experience.
The second source of conflict is inequality. This is particularly true of societies that
have a democratic tradition, where there is both a belief that human beings
deserve to be treated with equal dignity, and that this ought to be enshrined in
practical arrangements. It is of course hard to find a political community today
where such sentiments do not exist. So when people, even if they share the same
moral values, feel that they are not treated equally they can resist and fight. While
it has become fashionable today to disregard inequality as a source of conflict,
particularly globally, I believe that it will always be an important source of conflict,
because of the deep belief we all have that unfair advantage over another is,
unjust.
And it is hard to find a political constitution today where the equal worth of a
human being is disregarded or seen as irrelevant to setting up the rules that will
govern a society.
The third source of conflict is competition for scarce goods and services, because
we still do not live in an egalitarian world of abundance. We want more, so we get
together in groups to ask for more and fight for more. These groups may be ethnic
groups, political groups, neighbourhood groups, religious groups or language
groups. The source of conflict here is not necessarily the group identity itself, but
the claims made by a group for a greater share of the resources. When a province
says that its development has been neglected or when an ethnic group asks for
more admissions to university or when a city asks for more resources, they are
making claims for greater resources to be shared with them. Whether or not these
claims are justified, they can lead to conflict.
These three sources of conflict are clearly intertwined and can also be sources of
conflict, globally, when we fail to recognize and act on the equal dignity of all
humans who live in the world today. The United Nations Secretary General, Mr.
Kofi Annan, understands this when he says in his report: "I have named the
present report "In larger freedom" to stress the enduring relevance of the United
Nations and to emphasise that its purposes must be advanced in the lives of
individual men and women."
The Secretary General's report is a search for a practical way of recognizing and
acting upon this equal dignity globally, in a world of great inequality of wealth and
power. He seeks to do this politically by integrating human rights, with
development and security. The deeper conceptual point in the Secretary
General's report then is not just that people must have equal access to say health,
and equal civil and political rights. But that equal access to health care is needed
for equal civil and political rights.
And equal civil and political rights are required for people to have equal access to
healthcare. The political philosopher John Rawls captures this point by talking not
just about equal basic liberties but about the equal worth of basic liberties.
Similarly, Professor Amartya Sen refers to "Development as Freedom" in order to
emphasize that development is not simply to increase growth rates in order to
increase per capita income and purchase more goods, but to improve health,
education, housing, so that people will have improved quality of life.
But it is not just political philosophers who are concerned about the practical
implications of treating people as equals. We have interesting developments in
what is called "game theory" among economists that develops mathematical
models for dealing with the technical challenges of equal division of goods among
"n" persons in day to day situations. In a friendly critique of the talk I gave last year
at the Asia Society, a web blog – pointed out some of these important technical
advances in conflict resolution, curiously known as cake theory, because these
models use cake cutting as a metaphor for dividing goods equally.
These theories, even those that are technical, have common assumptions. The
first is that people want more goods, not less. Second, the rules for how to divide
up the goods must be fair for all players or citizens, otherwise the game stops or
the political community ruptures. And third, whatever value conflicts exist (religious
or ideological) they cannot affect the fairness of the rules of the game or how
societies make rules. In other words a constitution that says people X must have
fewer rights than people Y (and sadly their were constitutions at one time, such as
that of the United States that did imply this) is not something that the world, or for
that matter people X or Y would propose, leave alone accept today.
I say this not to belabour a conceptual point, but to emphasise that the ordinary
citizens of societies that are deeply divided about the rules of the political game,
will never argue that some must be treated less equally than others. I have found
in my experience of campaigning for a just and stable peace in Sri Lanka, that the
vast majority of Sri Lankans do not believe that they must have an advantage over
others simply because of their ethnicity or religion. Like the hardnosed
mathematicians who think they are doing models without any ethical standpoint,
Sri Lankans who collide with each other about the rules of the game, share with
philosophers like Rousseau and Rawls a basic commitment to equal dignity for all.
And this is a moral and political resource that I have always drawn on in advancing
peace in my country.
Reviewing the Peace Process
It is this confidence in the people of Sri Lanka that gave me the courage in 1994 to
campaign on the basis of a political solution to the ethnic conflict. We had a
resounding victory at nine out of eleven rounds of elections in a period of eleven
years, because the people unequivocally endorsed my policy of a negotiated
settlement in place of war, and a federal solution as against a separate State. With
the support of a broad multi-ethnic coalition of parties I proceeded to talk with the
LTTE about ending the war, and discuss with all the parties in parliament about a
new more inclusive, political constitution that would share power with all
communities. While talks with the LTTE broke down and they went back to war, my
governments continued in its efforts to bring them back to the negotiating table. I
proceeded to work with other democratic parties to discuss a political solution and
presented in parliament for the first time in the history of my country proposals for
a federal style constitution. Unfortunately, we lacked the numbers in parliament to
make constitutional changes.
I believe that the qualitative changes wrought by us in the approval to the ethnic
question changed the reality irreversibly in my country. It created the climate for
the two largest political parties to evolve for the first time an important policy
consensus: that war is not a desirable political option for the country, that
negotiations with LTTE to the end the war should be pursued, and that a political
C of a Federal type that addresses the concerns of all communities should be
designed. I am proud to say that it would now be difficult to reverse the political
momentum towards peace created by my Governments.
Mr. Chairman, let me now discuss in some detail the four elements of the peace
process in my country that I mentioned earlier - bringing an end to armed
hostilities, rebuilding the conflict-affected areas, strengthening human rights, and
working out a political solution.
Ending armed hostilities has been an important step in changing the climate for
peace in Sri Lanka. In February 2002, the then Prime Minister, Mr. Ranil
Wickremasinghe, signed a ceasefire agreement with the leader of the LTTE, Mr.
Prabakharan. While there are elements of this agreement that have an adverse
effect on the sovereignty and security of the country, its overall influence on the
context for peace has been and still is positive. For one thing, it saved many lives.
It allowed civilians, particularly those living in the conflict-affected areas of the
North and East, to farm, fish and trade more freely than they had done before.
There was greater people to people exchanges as students, businessmen, civil
society leaders, government officials and even politicians got an opportunity to
see for themselves how their fellow citizens, particularly in the conflict-affected
areas lived. The ceasefire also provided a more conducive climate that enabled
several rounds of peace talks to take place, where important commitments on the
road to peace were sought and made.
Despite these important advances following the signing of the ceasefire, we are
now at a point where we have exhausted the positive climate created by the
ceasefire and are at the risk of escalating violence. The primary reason for this is
the increasing number of violations committed by the LTTE. The Nordic staffed Sri
Lanka Monitoring Mission of observers who monitor the Cease-Fire Agreement
has ruled that the LTTE has committed more than three thousand violations, while
the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka have committed about one hundred and fifty. The
actual violations committed by the LTTE as ruled by the Norwegian led monitoring
mission, includes more than one thousand and five hundred child soldiers have
been recruited and hundreds of cases of extortion. This is backed up by reports
from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UNICEF. The LTTE has
also engaged in assassinating democratic political opponents, mainly Tamil.
Whereas the violations of the ceasefire by the Sri Lankan security forces, the
same Nordic led monitoring team has ruled on, are primarily incidents of
harassment at checkpoints.
While the ceasefire is necessary for the pursuit of a political process that will lead
to peace, it is obviously not sufficient. It is clear that the human rights element of
the Cease-Fire Agreeement needs to be worked out in greater detail and more
attention paid to it, if the peace process is to move forward.
The second element of the peace process is development or rebuilding the
conflict-affected areas of the North and East. I have always believed that one of
the reasons why the Tamil people in Sri Lanka felt marginalized was because the
regions where they have traditionally lived, have been among the least developed
in the country. These areas have some of the lowest literacy rates, lowest growth
rates, and this has been further exacerbated by the armed conflict.
I have, since 1995, tried hard to develop these areas, including areas dominated
by the LTTE, and even during the fighting. Initially these efforts were rebuffed by
the LTTE. They tried to kill a senior minister I sent to Jaffna to engage in
development work for the Tamil people.
Over the last few years we have quietly changed the attitude of the LTTE towards
development activities carried out by the government. They have extended
cooperation to the Ministry of Relief, Reconstruction and Reconciliation, which I
happen to head, in carrying out work in areas they dominate. We are deeply
committed to undertaking development work in those areas. It is the Governments
duty to ensure that all of our citizens irrespective of where they live, what ethnicity
they belong to, or even who they are forced to live under, must have access to
health, education and economic opportunities. Second we believe that
development is good for peace. It gives the people living in those areas,
particularly the youth, options other than being recruited and forced to carry arms.
And it gives the LTTE an opportunity to engage in useful and constructive work
that benefits the people directly, instead of preparing for war. Finally, it provides
an area where the government and the LTTE can work together on concrete
activities that can build confidence and even some trust that is vital for any peace
process to move forward.
It is for this reason that I risked the stability of my government and signed a joint
mechanism – Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure – with the LTTE to
engage in reconstruction of the tsunami affected districts of the North and East.
Unfortunately, some clauses of this mechanism are being temporarily stayed by
the Supreme Court for constitutional considerations.
Nevertheless, the idea animating it – that the government, the LTTE, leaders of
the Muslim and other communities can cooperate on development and build
mutual confidence - should not be underestimated as steps towards peace. We
believe that development is an area of common concern with the LTTE, which
offers a great deal of political space for greater cooperation. This is because while
there is a real desire for more developmental work in the North by the people living
there, there is also a recognition and support for this work in the South.
The LTTE has been engaging in a systematic campaign of child recruitment,
where they are abusing the lives of the most vulnerable members of the Tamil
community. The LTTE have also been killing political opponents – members of
Tamil groups who do not agree with them. The fact that these activities also took
place prior to the Cease-Fire Agreement, and did so at a higher rate, is no excuse
for not making every effort to bring them to a halt now.
A peace process, Mr. Chairman, cannot and does not operate in a vacuum.
People demand that a process of peace should include active engagement,
commitment and good conduct of all parties to a conflict. In a democratic society,
the opinion of the people is paramount and fundamental freedoms are sacrosanct.
Therefore a peace process cannot move forward as long as the people of the
country, comprising of all communities, perceive and believe that a party to the
conflict remains immune to the consequences of its actions and does not
demonstrate signs of sincere commitment to peace. This has serious implications
for the ability of any elected Government to garner the support of the people to its
approach to the peace process.
Strengthening human rights in the context of the peace process is vital to saving
lives, improving peoples living conditions, and restoring public confidence in the
possibility of peace. It is therefore important that the parties seriously consider
ancillary arrangements derived from the Cease-Fire Agreement that can lead to
new mechanisms for monitoring and implementing human rights as a part of the
peace process. This is also an area where the United Nations with its panoply of
conventions and its universality can play an important guiding role. Whatever the
risks to the peace process inherent in dealing with a challenging issue like human
rights, it is my conviction that the failure to do so will lead to a greater risk to the
peace process.
The fourth element of the peace process is the political solution. I have always
stated that you cannot defeat terrorism, militarily alone. It is also a political, social
and economic phenomenon. While there may always be individuals who may take
up arms or engage in wanton acts of violence, these individuals become strong
and powerful, because they attract large numbers of others who feel marginalised
to join with them. So when I understand terrorism as having root causes, I mean
political social and economic causes, and not military ones. To put it more
concretely, we as a responsible government would have to address the challenge
of transforming the State so as to include all communities – Sinhala, Tamil and
Muslim - equally. And this requires a durable political settlement.
I have argued that it is hard to neatly separate the key elements of a peace
process – ending armed hostilities, rebuilding the war-affected areas,
strengthening human rights and working out a political solution. Rather than
thinking of a political solution as following these developments, we should think of
it as making these developments possible. In other words a political solution is a
framework that will contribute to ending armed violence, re-building the country
and strengthening human rights, not one that precedes or succeeds these.
Concluding Comments
So security, human rights, and development are linked, both at the national level
and the international level. And a durable peace is not possible without
understanding these links.
I want to conclude my talk by highlighting what I see as the dual challenges we
concretely face in Sri Lanka – transforming the State and transforming the LTTE.
As I have mentioned in my talk we need to transform the State so it is more
inclusive - equally reflecting the concerns of all communities. My view and the view
of overwhelming sections of Sri Lankan society is that this will involve transforming
the State from a unitary one to one that is plural and federal in nature. Through a
series of proposals to parliament and discussions inside and outside parliament
my party and I have been at the forefront of the efforts to transform the Sri Lankan
State.
While a transformation of the Sri Lankan State from a unitary to a federal one may
help include the Tamil community and the Muslim community, it alone will not bring
lasting peace. To achieve peace we also need to deal with the second equally
important, but neglected challenge - transforming the LTTE from a dictatorial and
ruthless militant group that regularly engages in the use of terror, to a political
force that engages with the State and does not resort to violence to make its
arguments heard.
This process needs to be analyzed and addressed in a conscious and systematic
manner together with the LTTE. And just as the LTTE has a stake in the
transformation of the Sri Lankan State, all Sri Lankans have a stake in the
transformation of the LTTE.
The challenge of dealing with these dual transformations will not be easy for any
single political party in Sri Lanka, however powerful. It requires a broad consensus
and joint action between the major political parties and groups in the country.
Thank you.