Sri Lanka and the International Community – Indian Role is Crucial

27-May-2011

Guest Column: By Sivanendran.
(The views expressed are his own)
"To employ the coercive apparatus of the state in order to maintain manifestly unjust institutions is itself a form of illegitimate force that men in due course have a right to resist." – John Rawls
What is particularly horrifying about ethnic wars is that people are brutalised and killed not because of anything they have done, not even because of their politics, but simply because who they are. That is what it is so terrible about the persecution of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Kurds in Iraq, the Muslims in Bosnia and the Albanians in Kosovo. Ethnic wars are quite different; they are about malevolence – not quite like other wars conducted according to moral or legal rules. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ like ‘final solution ‘is surely one of the most sinister phrases to enter the political vocabulary of the twentieth century.

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