The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Rita Izsak-Ndiaye released a Statement on Sri Lanka
on October 20, 2016 following a ten day visit to the island.
Representing the position of the ‘international community’, her
Statement identifies ‘Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian leadership’ as the
main reason behind minority grievances and Sri Lanka’s ‘long civil war’.
The Rapporteur expresses fears that keeping Article 9 of the Sri Lankan
Constitution which refers to the primacy of Buddhism, ‘could lead to
further suppression of and discrimination against minority religions and
communities’.
The mandate of the U.N. Rapporteur on Minority Issues is to ‘promote
and protect the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic,
religious and linguistic minorities’, is a laudable one. This mandate,
however, does not grant the Rapporteur freedom to curtail the rights of
those belonging to majority communities using conceptually and factually
flawed approaches. The Rapporteur is deemed an ‘independent expert’ by
the United Nations. Unfortunately, her recent Statement on Sri Lanka
which is built on a narrow majority vs. minority concept and a lack of understanding of historical, regional and international contexts, exhibits neither independence nor expertise.
Majority Aggressor vs. Minority Victims
Like the dominant international perspective on Sri Lanka, the
Rapporteur’s Statement is based on a simplistic dualism: Sinhala
Buddhist majority aggressor vs. Tamil, Muslim, Christian and other
minority victims. This monolithic characterization ignores basic
incongruent realities. For instance, although Article 9 the Sri Lankan Constitution
gives ‘foremost place’ to Buddhism (the religion of 70% of the island’s
population) and refers to the duty of the state to protect and foster
Buddhism, Article 10 asserts that “Every person is entitled to freedom
of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to
adopt a religion or belief of his choice”.
Unlike most other pluralistic countries in the world, Sri Lanka has
Cabinet level Ministries each to protect and foster Hindu, Islamic and
Christian Affairs in addition to Buddhism. The critics of Article 9,
including the U.N. Rapporteur, fail to acknowledge that Article 9 has
not prevented Sri Lanka from allowing widespread Christian
evangelical and Islamic Wahabi proselytization and conversion which are
not permitted in Islamic and many other nations. In contrast,
international attempts to sever the historical link between Buddhism and
the Sri Lankan state, is sowing seeds of disharmony, aggravating
tensions, resistance and inter-religious conflict.
While the U.N. Rapporteur enumerates extensive mechanisms to be put
in place to promote and protect minorities, she does not acknowledge
minority dominance in the Sri Lankan economy and the influential and
strategic Cabinet Ministerships,
in Investment Promotion, Urban Development, Disaster Management,
Industry and Commerce, Tourism, etc. held by persons from minority
communities, especially the Muslims. She also fails to recognize the
powerful government positions recently acquired by members of the Tamil
community and the ethical and legal controversies surrounding some of
those appointments. In a seeming return to the ‘dominant minority’
position they enjoyed during the British colonial period, Tamil elites
have been appointed as the Chief Justice and the Governor of the Central
Bank. A Tamil politician was appointed as the Leader of the
Parliamentary Opposition even though his Tamil National Alliance party
won only 16 seats as opposed to the much larger number of seats gained
by the United People’s Freedom Alliance of the Sinhalese.
The U.N. Rapporteur’s Statement brings strong charges against the
Buddhist majority for construction of Buddhist places of worship ‘in
areas that were traditionally non-Buddhist’. It blames ‘Buddhist
extremists’ for inciting ‘violence and hatred against religious and
other minorities while proclaiming the racial superiority of Sinhala
Buddhists’. The widespread destruction
of Buddhist places of worship in the island’s north and the east and
incidences of aggression, extremism and violence by members of other
religious groups towards the Buddhists, however, are not mentioned in
the Rapporteur’s Statement.
The Rapporteur’s Statement ignores the grievances of the Sinhalese
even where they are a minority, as in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo
and in the Tamil majority Northern Province. It does not mention the
plight of Buddhist monks who have been ordered to remove their historic
temples from the Northern Province by Tamil politicians. It does not
address the case of Sinhala students at the University in Jaffna who
were attacked and compelled to leave the campus for seeking to include a
Sinhala dance form at a campus ceremony. Nor does the Statement address
the Special Gazette notification of 21 August 2015 which allegedly
transferred the only remaining Sinhala village of Bogaswewa in the
north, from the Northern Province to the North Central Province. Failure
of the ‘international community’ to condemn ethnic cleansing of
Sinhalese from the Northern Province helps the creation of an exclusive
Tamil separate state.
Regional, International and Historical Contexts
Neither Sri Lanka, nor any other country exists in a vacuum. Local
realities are shaped by regional and international forces.
Notwithstanding the U.N. Rapporteur’s mandate which is restricted to the
local state level, minority and majority identities and grievances have
to be understood in relation to regional and international demographic
realities and political and cultural pressures. Although the majority in
Sri Lanka, Sinhalese are a small minority in the South Indian and
global contexts (some 60 million Tamils in Tamil Nadu and a total 76
million globally in contrast to 15 million Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and 18
million globally). Although the majority in Sri Lanka, Buddhists are a
small minority in the global context (about 5% in contrast to 32%
Christians and 22% Muslims). Any serious attempt to address
majority-minority relations in Sri Lanka must grapple with the
complexities of India’s role in Sri Lanka’s separatist conflict and the
fears and resistance generated among Buddhists by evangelical Christian
and Wahabi Islamic expansion. These issues are not recognized in the
U.N. Rapporteur’s Statement.
According to the U.N. Rapporteur, ‘Since independence, ethnic and
religious identity has come to be of a huge significance in Sri Lankan
society’. Sri Lankan history does not begin with independence from
British colonial rule. Ethnic and religious identities evolved over
centuries in the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Historical evidence
shows that in the regions in the north and the east of Sri Lanka which
the U.N. Rapporteur assumes as ‘traditionally non-Buddhist’, Buddhist
civilization flourished prior to Hindu and Islamic settlements. As
Buddhism began to be wiped out of India, the challenge of safeguarding
the Buddha’s teaching and Buddhist culture was taken up by Sri Lanka and
other neighboring Buddhist countries. Support from the state and the
monarchy was crucial for the survival of Buddhism in these lands. The
foremost place given to Buddhism in Sri Lanka’s Constitution (as well as
in the Constitutions of Myanmar and Thailand) is a homage to that
historical and continuing challenge. Many are asking: is the attempt to
change that historical relationship between Buddhism and the state
through international intervention, a deliberate attempt to destabilize
and control these countries?
The United Nations today has little political legitimacy and moral
authority given its many failures across the world. The U.N. Secretary
General Ban Ki-Moon himself has admitted the failure of the United
Nations in averting the humanitarian crisis at the end of the armed
conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. To rebuild
global acceptance and respect for the United Nations, its
representatives, such as, the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues must
provide accurate and balanced accounts that build unity and harmony
instead of division and conflict between majority and minority
communities. (Dr. Asoka Bandarage)