END OF CONFLICT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SRI LANKA – PRANAB TELLS RANIL
April 5, 2013
The end of conflict is a good opportunity for Sri Lanka to ensure national reconciliation, President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday told visiting Sri Lankan Opposition and UNP Leader Ranil Wickremasinghe.
Wickremesinghe called on Mukherjee in New Delhi, a Rashtrapati Bhawan statement said.
“The President said India-Sri Lanka bilateral relationship is based on shared historical, cultural and ethnic ties as well as extensive people-to-people interaction. It has always been close and cordial. As a neighbour with thousands of years of close ties, India has a natural interest in Sri Lanka. People of India cannot remain untouched by developments in Sri Lanka.
“The President said India has always felt that the end of the conflict in Sri Lanka provided a unique opportunity to pursue lasting political settlement, acceptable to all communities. Sri Lanka must seize the opportunity for genuine national reconciliation and move ahead,” the statement quoted him as telling Wickremasighe.
Wickremesinghe warmly reciprocated the President’s words, the statement added, PTI reports.
Domestic
tensions provoke worse relations across the Palk Strait
THE men
untangling nets in Akkaraipettai harbour, in Tamil Nadu, southern India, know
how to ease growing tension with Sri Lanka: scrap the international frontier.
“You can’t put a border on air, so how can you do it on water?” says the leader
of a fishermen’s union. In any case, trawlermen pay it little heed. Their
frequent clashes with Sri Lanka’s navy are part of a serious and widening
quarrel between the neighbours.
Waters on the Indian side of the narrow Palk Strait are
fished-out and polluted. So 600-800 trawlers venture daily to Sri Lanka.
Fishermen in Akkaraipettai cheerily admit to trespass, and confess that some of
them carry out destructive and illegal “bottom trawling”. By dragging nets
weighted with iron bars they wreck coral and other life on the seabed. Their
defence: running a trawler for a week costs up to 70,000 rupees ($1,300) in
diesel alone. To turn a profit they need the well-stocked waters across the
strait, little fished during Sri Lanka’s civil war, from 1983-2009.
Yet Indians are furious, too. A fisherman describes
how, in March, a Sri Lankan naval vessel rammed his boat. Sailors then tied up
him and eight crew, beat them and stole their catch. Others tell of thuggish
naval sailors who smash boats and engines, spike fuel and break their
bones.
The dispute should be solvable. A Sri Lankan official
snorts of the Indian navy that “of course” it can stop Indian fishermen
crossing. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan navy could mend its rough ways. More likely,
however, clashes will increase. Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated government sees
a long-term threat from Tamil Nadu.
The Indian state’s 72m people (compared with the
island’s 21m) are mostly ethnic Tamils. Many backed their kin in Sri Lanka in
the war. It remains home to some 100,000 refugees. And Tamil Nadu’s hostility to
Sri Lanka is growing more overt. In March two Buddhist monks visiting the state
were beaten by Tamil crowds. Sri Lankan cricket stars have been told to stay
away. Tamil Nadu’s film actors held an anti-Sri Lanka hunger-strike on April
2nd.
A Sri Lankan official responds by warning against
travel to the state. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s powerful defence secretary,
growls that Tamil Nadu dictates policy to feeble Delhi. Airlines have cut
flights. Traders who once bustled to-and-fro now stay at home. Textile shops in
Colombo say stocks are running short.
Sri Lankans see the current surge of Indian hostility
as being for electoral ends. The largest minority partner of the Congress-led
government in Delhi, the Tamil DMK, quit last month, critical of the government
for not being more robust in its handling of Sri Lanka. The state government,
led by the rival party, the AIADMK of the chief minister, Jayaram Jayalalitha,
wants India to promote a referendum in northern Sri Lanka and among the Tamil
diaspora on a separate homeland for Sri Lankan Tamils.
India’s national government avoids such talk. On March
29th Salman Khurshid, the foreign minister, rebuffed suggestions to label Sri
Lanka unfriendly, let alone impose sanctions. Instead India continues as a big
aid donor, trading partner and investor. However, demands to boycott a big
Commonwealth summit to be held in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, in November
may grow too strong to resist.
Tamil politicians are indeed posturing ahead of India’s
general elections in 2014. Either the AIADMK or the DMK is likely to help form
the next coalition in Delhi. But, elections aside, a genuine concern for fellow
Tamils also exists. Growing evidence of massacres in the war and cover-ups since
are widely discussed in India. Off the record, a Sri Lankan official now admits
the family of the Tamil rebel leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was “wiped out”.
Other stout denials may also be revised.
The government also still shows signs of hostility to
Sri Lankan Tamils. Leading politicians now look ready to use sparring with Tamil
Nadu as an excuse to scrap plans to devolve power to the regions. Mr Rajapaksa,
the defence secretary, told a local paper on March 27th that regional autonomy
would be a threat. “Could we afford to have a provincial administration here,
which pointed a gun at the national leadership at the drop of a
hat?”
Domestic tensions provoke worse relations across the Palk Strait
THE men
untangling nets in Akkaraipettai harbour, in Tamil Nadu, southern India, know
how to ease growing tension with Sri Lanka: scrap the international frontier.
“You can’t put a border on air, so how can you do it on water?” says the leader
of a fishermen’s union. In any case, trawlermen pay it little heed. Their
frequent clashes with Sri Lanka’s navy are part of a serious and widening
quarrel between the neighbours.
Waters on the Indian side of the narrow Palk Strait are
fished-out and polluted. So 600-800 trawlers venture daily to Sri Lanka.
Fishermen in Akkaraipettai cheerily admit to trespass, and confess that some of
them carry out destructive and illegal “bottom trawling”. By dragging nets
weighted with iron bars they wreck coral and other life on the seabed. Their
defence: running a trawler for a week costs up to 70,000 rupees ($1,300) in
diesel alone. To turn a profit they need the well-stocked waters across the
strait, little fished during Sri Lanka’s civil war, from 1983-2009.
Yet Indians are furious, too. A fisherman describes
how, in March, a Sri Lankan naval vessel rammed his boat. Sailors then tied up
him and eight crew, beat them and stole their catch. Others tell of thuggish
naval sailors who smash boats and engines, spike fuel and break their
bones.
The dispute should be solvable. A Sri Lankan official
snorts of the Indian navy that “of course” it can stop Indian fishermen
crossing. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan navy could mend its rough ways. More likely,
however, clashes will increase. Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated government sees
a long-term threat from Tamil Nadu.
The Indian state’s 72m people (compared with the
island’s 21m) are mostly ethnic Tamils. Many backed their kin in Sri Lanka in
the war. It remains home to some 100,000 refugees. And Tamil Nadu’s hostility to
Sri Lanka is growing more overt. In March two Buddhist monks visiting the state
were beaten by Tamil crowds. Sri Lankan cricket stars have been told to stay
away. Tamil Nadu’s film actors held an anti-Sri Lanka hunger-strike on April
2nd.
A Sri Lankan official responds by warning against
travel to the state. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s powerful defence secretary,
growls that Tamil Nadu dictates policy to feeble Delhi. Airlines have cut
flights. Traders who once bustled to-and-fro now stay at home. Textile shops in
Colombo say stocks are running short.
Sri Lankans see the current surge of Indian hostility
as being for electoral ends. The largest minority partner of the Congress-led
government in Delhi, the Tamil DMK, quit last month, critical of the government
for not being more robust in its handling of Sri Lanka. The state government,
led by the rival party, the AIADMK of the chief minister, Jayaram Jayalalitha,
wants India to promote a referendum in northern Sri Lanka and among the Tamil
diaspora on a separate homeland for Sri Lankan Tamils.
India’s national government avoids such talk. On March
29th Salman Khurshid, the foreign minister, rebuffed suggestions to label Sri
Lanka unfriendly, let alone impose sanctions. Instead India continues as a big
aid donor, trading partner and investor. However, demands to boycott a big
Commonwealth summit to be held in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, in November
may grow too strong to resist.
Tamil politicians are indeed posturing ahead of India’s
general elections in 2014. Either the AIADMK or the DMK is likely to help form
the next coalition in Delhi. But, elections aside, a genuine concern for fellow
Tamils also exists. Growing evidence of massacres in the war and cover-ups since
are widely discussed in India. Off the record, a Sri Lankan official now admits
the family of the Tamil rebel leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was “wiped out”.
Other stout denials may also be revised.
The government also still shows signs of hostility to
Sri Lankan Tamils. Leading politicians now look ready to use sparring with Tamil
Nadu as an excuse to scrap plans to devolve power to the regions. Mr Rajapaksa,
the defence secretary, told a local paper on March 27th that regional autonomy
would be a threat. “Could we afford to have a provincial administration here,
which pointed a gun at the national leadership at the drop of a
hat?”
