Security Without Weapons by Wallace M. S.;

Author:Wallace, M. S.; [M. S. Wallace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317369899
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

As genocide involves not only killing people but a broader strategy to wipe out a whole ethnic or racial group, it becomes pertinent that the GoSL is engaged in a campaign of “Sinhalisation,” evident in the “hoisting of Lion flags, the erection of Sidharthan statues, the renaming of Tamil streets with Sinhala names, the building of Buddhist temples,” and the “mushrooming” of “Sinhala settlements [] in the Tamil homeland” (Prabhakaran 2007). Genocide is the worst, most damaging label that could be applied to an enemy’s violence for three reasons. First, it denotes one-sided violence, an armed force against unarmed civilians who are being killed simply on the basis of their ethnic or racial identity, and therefore there is wide agreement on its status as illegitimate violence. Second, genocide is an historically loaded term, calling to mind the Nazi Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, both characterized by outrage over the fact that the “international community” did not do more to stop them. And, third, the word “genocide” is a legal trigger, requiring signatories to the Genocide Convention of 1948 to respond if they recognize violence somewhere as genocide (UN 1948).

In a move, then, that over-determines the illegitimacy of the GoSL’s violence, Prabhakaran combines his representations of this violence as both genocide and terrorism, indicating that “the Sinhala state [has] aggravate[d] its genocidal war against the Tamils with a terrorist audacity” (2008). He goes on to argue that “this is not a war against the LTTE as the Sinhala state professes. This is a war against the Tamils; against the Tamil nation. In short, a genocidal war” (Prabhakaran 2008). Making the point that this is not a conventional war solely between two sides of combatants but a war against combatants and civilians, against Tamils as Tamils, underscores Prabhakaran’s claim that this is genocide. No matter which of these representations – genocide, war of aggression, shadow war, or state terrorism – Prabhakaran employs, however, the GoSL’s violence comes across as illegitimate, as a form of violence that contravenes global norms and ought to be globally condemned.

Finally, the LTTE’s earnest and honest commitment to the peace process (noted earlier) is met only with further deception and an underlying devotion of the GoSL to military solutions, which eventually caused the “failure of the talks” (Prabhakaran 2008). So, according to Prabhakaran’s representations of self and other, while the LTTE/Tamil people employ violence legitimately for just purposes – sovereignty, self-determination, liberation – and only after it has become clear to them through serious effort that peaceful strategies will not work, the GoSL eagerly employs the most illegitimate forms of violence during and/or after deceitful and half-hearted participation in peace processes, and all for the false, misguided, mythical agenda of Sinhalese-Buddhist chauvinism.

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