Why a cultural and academic boycott of Sri Lanka is necessary?
BY SINTHUJAN VARATHARAJAH-26 SEPTEMBER 2012
The recent violent mob attack against Sri Lankan Christian pilgrims, mostly Sinhalese but including a few Tamil speaking, in Tamil Nadu together with the expulsion of Sri Lankan students gave a prominent platform to a number of questions which have prior been confined and limited to Tamil political circles. Can and should the Sri Lankan state be boycotted? And should such a boycott be restricted solely to the government, the military and the economy of the country?
Tamil Nadu’s chief minister Jayalalithaa’s much criticized decision to send home eight students from the Royal College of Colombo and their coach, who had participated in a local sports tournament, catapulted the passionately led debate to new dimensions. By intervening in the normalization of seemingly civil and institutional relations between both countries, the traditional limitations of the boycott movement to government, military and economy found themselves sharply challenged. The sanctions imposed by the TN government upon representatives of civil institutions opened a floodgate that remained closed for a long time for many people. As a result, the crucial question whether Sri Lankan academia and cultural institutions function autonomously from the state and societal structures became critical to re-examine. The TN’s chief ministers’ forceful intervention brought further issues to light, such as the question whether it is imperative for a call to boycott to incorporate wider aspects of Sri Lankan society. Can academic and cultural institutions be absolved from claims of direct and/or indirect complicity under present systems of injustices and inequalities that constitute the island state? And is the expulsion of Sri Lankan pilgrims and students from Tamil Nadu an abomination that needs to be condemned?
Whilst strongly opposing the recent violence perpetrated against Sri Lankan civilians in Tamil Nadu and whilst equally questioning the intentions and timing behind the AIADMK’s political stunt, I have nonetheless come to support attempts of breaking up ties to cultural and academic institutions of Sri Lanka. In the spirit of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement and the Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural & Academic Boycott of Israel, I support and plead for a general cease to collaboration with institutions, both civil and non-civil, that fail to acknowledge and struggle against the occupation and oppression of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.
Similar to cultural institutions that function(ed) throughout slavery, apartheid, genocide and other forms of racialized violence, Sri Lankan institutions have actively or passively become complicit in the production and perpetuation of systems of discrimination and segregation by either denying, justifying, diverting and whitewashing or acquitting Sri Lanka of its repeated violations of customary human rights and international humanitarian laws against Tamils.
The process of silencing the structures of power and violence in the island serves therefore to place cultural institutions as agents of collaboration in the maintenance of inequality and the denial of fundamental rights and freedom to Tamils.
