Threat Of Separation: Possibility Or Hoax?
By Austin Fernando -November 3, 2013 |
Austin Fernando
Before and after the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) election we heard political orchestrations of a “separation threat” by the NPC. It was what the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) hoped, and echoed. Some totally believed it; some pooh-poohed it.
Here I am trying to understand what separation relating to Sri Lanka is, as an academic exercise, because of the comprehended threat the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Election Manifesto’s reference to ‘self-determination’ made, followed also by statements of its leaders and consequential Southern dialogue.
Self-determination
Self-determination has a history. World leaders after World War I realized that national peoples groups, with a shared ethnicity, language, culture, and religion, should be allowed to determine their fate, giving birth to the concept of self-determination. Later it was applied to colonial peoples, and by the sixties it was accepted that oppressed colonized groups ought to possess similar rights to auto-regulate to choose their political and sovereign status.
Courts and scholars introduced two different self-determination formats: “internal” and “external”. The former signified that all people should enjoy and deserve respect by mother state for their above-mentioned rights. As long as this happened, the “people” were not oppressed and need not challenge the territorial integrity of its mother state. If this is what TNA expects, the allergy the majority has against self determination will become redundant. Has this message gone down to the Southern majority?
The external self-determination applies to oppressed peoples whose above-mentioned rights are generally disrespected by the mother state and often subjected to heinous human rights abuses. In socio-political theory, such oppressed peoples have a right to external self-determination which included a right to remedial secession and independence.
I think only an eccentric would consider that the Tamils or Muslims in Sri Lanka are faced with such atrocity to demand external self-determination. The NPC Chief Minister (CM) C V Wigneswaran and TNA Leader R Sampanthan have openly disassociated from separation. It is encouraging. Nevertheless, has this message, in its true sense, been received by the southern majority?
When self-determination is publicized by the TNA or Tamil Diaspora, the immediate reaction by the majority is to declare that these rights are enjoyed by Tamils. The ordinary Tamil would not understand the theoretical qualifications for self-determination. But they “feel” for them psychologically: They feel for freedom, dignity, safety, respect, language, religion, places of worship, land etc. But, many authorities then rush to conclude that they are dealing with V Prabhakaran or V Rudrakumaran, self-declared Prime Minister of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam or unruly Diaspora. They do not juxtapose ordinary Tamils’ ‘feelings’ and ‘rights’.
The separatist campaigners aiming to stratify them in the Tamil public eye do not think proactively on how reconciliation could be achieved. They demand the most vulnerable for immediate solution. It is assumed and presumed that CM Wigneswaran has intelligently and strategically opted to approach problems differently.
Occasional behavior of certain Southern groups also causes flaring up of minority group thinking. Some Southerners suspiciously speak in terms of Tamils/Muslims as groups awaiting secession. What they do not plan is to equate the majority enjoyed rights with that of minorities’ which may force them to even demand separation.
