May 18 marked the 12th anniversary of the end of 26-year bloody communal war in Sri Lanka waged by successive Colombo governments against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and more broadly the islands Tamil minority.
Speaking in parliament on the day, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse glorified the armed forces for the liberation of the country from terrorism. He added: We ended the [war] era, displaced refugees were settled into their villages and public representatives from the North and East today are living with dignity, freedom and enjoys the democracy.
This turns history upside down, hiding the brutal truth of the end of the war. The relentlessly military offensives in the early months of 2009 drove the LTTE along with hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians into a small pocket of land near Mullaitivu on the northwest coast of the island.
The Sri Lankan military mercilessly pounded the area with artillery shells, and from the air, deliberately targeting hospitals, aid centres and designated civilian areas. According to UN estimates, at least 40,000 civilians were slaughtered. When the LTTE defences finally collapsed, the military murdered surrendering LTTE leaders and herded some 300,000 civilians into army-controlled detention camps. Hundreds of young people were hauled off for re-education to unknown locations.
Mahinda Rajapakse, who was Sri Lankan president at the time, was directly responsible for these war crimes and gross abuses of democratic rights. His younger brother, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is now the countrys president, oversaw these criminal military operations as defence secretary. He is directly implicated in the murder of LTTE leaders, who giving themselves up and carrying white flags of surrender.
As for the situation facing Tamil people today, those incarcerated in camps were resettled and many still living in abject poverty in huts with elementary facilities. Around 90,000 war widows in the islands North and East are struggling to survive. The two war-torn provinces remain under heavy military occupation, with the Tamil population, particularly young people, constantly harassed and intimidated. Protests are taking place to demand information about the disappeared and the release of political prisoners.
While it was celebrating its victory over the LTTE in the South, the government unleashed a military-police crackdown in the North and East, arresting dozens for paying their respects to their loved ones who were killed in the massacre at Mullaitivu.
The government was forced to hold low-key victory celebrations this month because the COVID-19 pandemic is surging in the country. The Colombo regime is nervous about the developing mass opposition among workers and the poor who are facing wage and job cuts and rising prices for essential foods and other basic items.
The governments response to growing social unrest is to strengthen the armed forces in preparation for class war. As part of the victory celebrations, thousands of soldiers were promoted to higher ranks. In response to the defeat of the LTTE, the military has been expanded, not contracted, with its budget allocations increasing again this year to a massive 440 billion rupees ($US2.2 billion).
In opposition to the jubilation in ruling circles in 2009, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: The military defeat of the LTTE has done nothing to resolve the issues underlying the civil war. It has merely proved that the unity of the Sri Lankan state on a bourgeois basis could only be maintained through bloody repression and atrocities. (WSWS perspective on May 21, 2009).
Eruption of the war in 1983 was the result of the communal politics pursued by the Sri Lankan capitalist class and successive governments since the formal independence in 1948 from the British imperialism.
Unable address any of the democratic or social questions facing working people and the oppressed masses, Colombo governments resorted to Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism and anti-Tamil chauvinism in every political crisis to divide and weaken the working class.
Shortly after independence, the government of the day abolished the citizenship rights of around a million Tamil plantation workers brought from India as cheap labour by the British colonial rulers. In 1956, following a profound crisis of rule that led to an uprising by workers and the rural masses in 1953, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party won the election on the basis of a Sinhala-only policy that made Sinhala the only official language and relegated Tamils to second-class citizens.
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party, which claimed to be Trotskyist, had initially acted as a brake on communalism, promoting the unity of the working classSinhala and Tamil. But its degeneration and betrayal in 1964, when it entered the capitalist government of Sirima Bandaranaike and embraced Sinhala populism, led to the formation of petty bourgeois radical organisations based on the armed struggle and communal politicsin particular, the LTTE among Tamil youth in the North and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) among rural Sinhala youth in the South.
The right-wing United National Party (UNP) government of J. R. Jayawardene, which came to power in 1977, responded to the countrys economic crisis by implementing pro-market restructuring and encouraging foreign investors to take advantage of its cheap labour. As the working-class opposition erupted, Jayawardene rewrote the constitution to establish an autocratic executive presidency and engaged in one anti-Tamil provocation after another culminating in the devastating anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 that led to outbreak of open warfare.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP)and its forerunner Revolutionary Communist League (RCL)is the only party that consistently opposed the communal war on the basis of the fight to unite the working class. We demanded unconditional withdrawal of the military from the North and East and defended democratic rights of Tamil minority. At the same time, the RCL/SEP opposed LTTE separatism which promoted the communal division of the working class.
In 1987, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the RCL advanced the perspective of Sri Lanka-Eelam Socialist Republic as part of fighting for a Union of Socialist States in South Asia. This program was based on the Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution, which emphasised that only the working class can provide the leadership to the rural poor and oppressed masses in solving the democratic tasks as part of the struggle for socialism.
The protracted and devastating war demonstrated the inability of any section of the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie, all deeply mired in communal politics, to meet the democratic aspirations and social needs of working people. While Colombo governments sacrificed the lives of Sinhala youth to maintain the power and privileges of the majority Sinhala establishment, the bourgeois Tamil parties were seeking greater autonomy or a separate Tamil capitalist state to exploit the Tamil working class.
The SEP explained that the defeat of the LTTE in 2009 was not primarily a military question but was the result of its bourgeois-nationalist perspective. The LTTE was organically incapable to make class appeal to Tamil workers let alone in the working class elsewhere in Sri Lanka and internationally. As the devastating final army offensives were underway, it issued pathetic appeals to the international communitythat is, to the very powers including the US and India that were backing Colombos war and turning a blind eye to its atrocities.
The twelve years since the end of the war have only led to a deepening political crisis as Sri Lanka has been swept up in sharpening geo-political tensions, particularly the US confrontation with China, and worsening global economic situation, all of which has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. The military and its brutal methods used during the war are now being prepared for use against the working class as unrest grows over the worsening social conditions facing working people.
The end of the war coincided with the 200809 global financial crisis. The Sri Lankan economy already burdened with the heavy costs of the war and its devastation was hit hard. The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance, implemented its austerity dictates and resorted to military and police repression against opposition from workers and the poor.
At the same time, the US was deeply hostile to Rajapakses ties with China which had supplied arms and finance for the war. In a regime-change operation orchestrated from Washington, he was ignominiously defeated in the 2015 presidential election that brought Maithripala Sirisena to power with the support of the UNP, the bourgeois Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and also the pseudo-left groups.
The national unity government led by President Sirisena and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister rapidly jettisoned its promises of good governance and to improve living standards. Deeply implicated in war and its atrocities themselves, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe ensured there was no genuine investigation into the crimes of the Rajapakse regime. As the economic crisis deepened, the government again turned to the IMF, imposed new burdens on the working class and poor, and used police state methods to suppress social unrest.
The pseudo left groups and trade unions that had promoted and helped Sirisena and Wickremesinghe into power, defended the national unity government to the hilt and assisted in suppressing a growing wave of strikes and protests. The TNA, the chief representative of the Tamil bourgeoisie, was a de facto partner in the government.
The national unity government also led to a further fragmentation of the political establishmentwith the two major parties of the ruling class, the UNP and SLFP reduced to shells. In this highly unstable situation, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, backed by the military and significant sections of big business, exploited the mass disaffection to win the 2019 presidential election which was deeply divided along communal lines. While Tamils did not vote for Rajapaksethe man responsible for war crimes, Sinhala working people did not vote for the United National Front candidate Sajith Premadasa who has imposed new social burdens as part of the national unity government.
Rajapakse and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that backed him was also able to exploit the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attacks by a local Islamist extremist group that killed 270 people and injured many more to promise a strong and stable government that would be tough on national security.
The fact that Sri Lanka is now governed by the Rajapakse brothersthe two figures that bear the greatest responsibility for the militarys crimes and atrocities in the final months of the warmust serve as the sharpest warning to the working class. In the midst of a profound and social crisis, the bourgeoisie is relying on Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his promise of strong government to suppress mounting opposition from working class.
President Rajapakse has installed retired and in-service generals to key positions of the government, including retired Major General Kamal Gunaratne as defense secretary and Army Commander Major General Shavendra Silva as head off the national COVID-19 operation centre. At the same time, he rests heavily on Sinhala extremist groups and has helped whip up anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim chauvinism.
Workers need to draw the necessary political lessons from the disasters resulting from communal politics. Gotabhaya and Mahinda Rajapakse who presided over the slaughter of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians will not hesitate to use the same brutal methods against the working class and the urban and rural poor.
The working class cannot defend any of its democratic and social rights without rejecting all forms of nationalism and chauvinismboth Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism and Tamil separatismthat were responsible for the war. Only through a unified struggle against the capitalist classtheir joint oppressorsprofit system on which it rests can workers win to their side the rural toilers and fight for a workers and peasants government. Such a government would implement socialist policies to meet the pressing needs of the majority not the profit requirements of the wealthy few, as part of the fight for socialism throughout South Asia and internationally.
We urge the workers and youth to join the SEP which alone fights for this program.
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Twelve years since the end of Sri Lanka's communal war - WSWS