Freedom of Hate Speech

*Reader discretion advised: Post contains quoted content which could be considered objectionable or offensive.

Lately, sentiments of violent Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism have turned into powerful Orwellian prolefeed (From 1984: a constant stream of mindless entertainment produced to distract and occupy the masses), not simply stirring up repugnant chauvinism but actively promoting hate and violence against those who do not subscribe to their novelty Sri Lankan Buddhism. This prolefeed has found a fertile breeding-ground on social media; regional, local, national-level pages belonging to various extreme Sinhala Buddhist factions mushrooming at alarming frequency. Each group has disturbing reach and terrifying engagement by members who post vile, incomprehensibly hateful, racist comments provoking and even on occasion, threatening physical and sexual violence and death.

These Facebook pages have become spaces for free but detrimental expression that demands our action, considering the spate of violence against places of Christian and Muslim religious worship, Muslim-owned businesses and even patrons. These hate campaigns have gained wide, concerning ground on Facebook in particular, where a demographic comprised of (arguably impressionable) young males whose malevolence is commended and egged on unchecked.

The BBS page for example, posted photographs of participants from the peaceful vigil which happened in Colombo last week under the album title ‘Treasonous Savages Who Distorted the National Anthem’ and ‘Enemies With No Race or Religion’ (translated from Sinhalese), requesting members to help identify the traitors. The comments attacking race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality and gender on these photographs which were mostly made in Sinhala (transliterated and text) by members of the Facebook group were truly horrifying.

‘He’s a (expletive) that sells his mother for a living’

‘Tiger prostitutes (expletive)’

‘Nightclub prostitute bitches’

‘May these people be struck by lightning the sons of prostitutes (expletive) devouring this country. This is our country, a Sinhala country, devils.’

‘They are prostitutes with no race or religion’

‘These people haven’t even grazed past Buddhism. They are NGO people. If they were so concerned about the country and Buddhism, where were these (expletive) when temples were being bulldozed? They are just giving (expletive) here, it would be good if they mind their business without getting murdered by the real Sinhalese’

‘Bastard dogs’

‘These are a bunch of Colombo people trying to be cute. Have they even taken shelter from the rain at a temple? They are trying to teach us religion they should be taken in for questioning to the CID.’

-> Response: ‘Excellent comment. They should be raped.’

‘They  look like midgets chased out of South India. There’s not even an speck of Buddhism in them. They look like Ethiopian cows.’

‘Don’t worry I was there when this NGO band protested in front of the Bodu Bala Sena Base. They have even distorted the National Anthem. They are rising to destroy the Buddhist power, but the security forces and the priests of the Bodu Bala Sena intervened and successfully defeated this treasonous, unpatriotic effort. (BBS Monk)

‘(Expletive) if I see you in Battaramulla, I will definitely open up your (expletive), you dog. Be careful when you’re on the road, you NGO cow born to a dog. (expletive)’

-> Response by BBS monk: ‘Help us identify this man’

‘These (expletive) planned this while Gnanasara Priest (BBS monk) was out of the country. If Gnanasara was there these people would have been stripped and forced to run away naked.’

‘Nature will punish these people. When you’re on the road be extra careful, there are big lorries and buses coming your way’

‘Don’t be disheartened by these efforts, even Lord Buddha defeated the Demons. This protest was not done by real Sinhalese, but a flock of mixed-race miscreants. If you need anything priest, we are always with the Bodu Bala Sena’

These comments are a mere sampling of what is being said in response to the photos of the participants who attended the peaceful vigil. Not only was the content aimed at identifying participants in order to orchestrate an abhorrent response on-line (and frighteningly maybe even potentially off-line, given the identification of people’s names and places of employment), the comments unquestionably call for murder, physical violence and rape.

The process of reporting the page and its contents to Facebook appears to be straightforward: The ‘I think it shouldn’t be on Facebook’ option provides you with another to report ‘Hate speech’ under multiple categories of  targeting race or ethnicity, religious group, based on gender and orientation, based on disability or disease. While there is no ‘all of the above’ option which sum up the BBS page’s contents, myself and many others have reported this page and similar pages repeatedly. Facebook, however, does not find this reason enough to either issue a warning to the page owners to moderate, clean up the content or have it taken down. Understandably, the content is in transliterated and text Sinhala, which at first glance will not check any hate speech boxes, but does terrifying and unapologetic hate speech only deserve Facebook’s attention if it is in English?

While liberals may argue that shutting these pages down are a threat to the freedom of speech in a country where most freedoms are delusional at best, do these pages deserve space for engagement (and evident indoctrination as far as an impressionable young membership is concerned)? While the admin-uploaded contents do not directly threaten harm to anyone (save for requests to members to help identify so-called perpetrators and distastefully condemn them in captions and album titles), the administrators are allowing rabidly racist commentary to continue, irrefutably violating Facebook’s Community Standards.

While the BBS page was taken down briefly yesterday, today it has returned with English language comments deleted (likely for the benefit of Facebook checks on hate speech), while the Sinhala language content remains untouched. Additionally, when those captured in the photographs reported the content to Facebook as harassment, the social media platform failed to respond to multiple complaints. Meanwhile, these photos are being shared and commented on, rapidly replicated in similar pages, subject to streams of comment abuse, shocking misuse and photo-manipulation. We must be weary of the pervasive and fluid nature of social media, and consider its impacts outside the relative freedoms, anonymity and bravado of the Internet.

Where freedoms have been fought for over centuries of human history, they are not simply easy entitlements won by others long-gone for willful abuse, but must like all rights be tied to responsibilities. Those who do not respect these responsibilities, are entirely undeserving of these freedoms- especially where they are actively encouraging hatred and inciting violence against those who do not subscribe to their beliefs.

A Quiet People

In August 2012, examining the  ethnic violence against the Rohingya and the attack of the Dambulla mosque in Sri Lanka incited on both instances by Buddhist monks, I wrote,

The tenet of reincarnation forms the core of Eastern-religions, by which the soul renews itself in new guises, moulded by the sins and virtues of one’s biological life. Thus, at the conclusion of a life’s consciousness, another manifestation comes into being – human, animal, divine or malevolent… Buddhism in its socio-political samsara has begun to embody a malevolent reincarnation in the face of tense identity politics, the political self-determination of monks and intolerant calls for violence antithetical to its teachings of wisdom, morality and discipline.

Many months later, the massacre of the Rohingya continues and virulent Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism continues to gain disconcerting momentum in post-war Sri Lanka, with multiple attacks on places of Christian and Muslim religious worship and the vicious inciting of violence against minorities by Fascist monks who make a mockery of the thoughtful introspection of their Teacher.

The Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) Organization, a Buddhist extremist group extolling an anti-everything-but-jingoistic-novelty-Buddhism, has been visibly responsible for a spate of vitriolic hate-mongering. At first it seemed laughable (perhaps naïvely so); was anyone so gullible to be swayed by their vocal and virulent claims of  extreme nationalism and attacks against other religious groups? Yet, their belligerent rhetoric against genocidal candy, Halal certifications, clothing choices, on international conspiracies to destroy their version of Sri Lankan Buddhism have gained disturbing ground, legitimised by unapologetic corporations and the obedient actions of many and the quiet inaction of others.

Yesterday (12th April 2013), a group of citizens organised a peaceful candlelight vigil against the Bodu Bala Sena, expressing their concern regarding the hateful stance of the BBS.

The contents of these videos require no interpretation; the complicity of the state manifesting in the unacceptable behaviour of the police in obstructing freedom of association, movement and speech; the reality that we have no rights or space to voice concerns that fall outside the sanctions of sugarplum state propaganda of peace and progress; and most significantly the sheer necessity for our collective quiet to end, to oppose the injustices we so resolutely ignore, perhaps in optimism that they will subside, in fear that we will be reprimanded or worse in apathy because we no longer care.

In 1983, there was quiet, as violent mobs rampaged unchecked murdering Tamils and destroying their homes and livelihoods.

1987-87, there was quiet, as thousands were culled in the name of skewed politics.

1983-2009, there was quiet, as explosions shattered our towns and bullets riddled our people.

In 2009, there was quiet, as thousands of civilians were massacred in the final stages of the civil-war and others were detained in inhuman conditions.

Nearly at the four-year mark since the end of the war between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE), the island lolls in a warm ocean of delusional contentment. We are told the economy is flourishing, for surely, the viral red pavements and white elephant harbours and airports are testament to prosperity. We are sung songs of triumphalism heralding that the ethnic conflict is no more, as all people now know a peace that was paid for by the sacrifice of a thousand of heroes.

We are told that Sri Lankans are an entitled people.

Yet to most like the BBS, the only true Sri Lankans are those who speak a particular shade of Sinhala, worship a particular variation of Buddhism, and embrace a particular sentiment of Sinhala-Buddhist entitlement, who shun the tongues, gods, heritage and choices of others, who by those vices are somehow less Sri Lankan and consequently treacherous conspirators who must be dealt with, lest we pollute this rabid flag-waving chauvinism with non-compliance.

Yes, we the minority who do not fall into their trappings of Sri Lankan, because of the language we choose to speak, the gods we choose not to worship, our education, associations, desires, callings and commitments which make us lesser and unworthy of voices, and unworthy of Sri Lanka, for we are simply not them.  We are a quiet people.

Feminised Migration: The Empowerment Paradox

In 2011, The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that the number of international migrants in 2008 rested at 214 million, having increased from 150 million people in the year 2000, amounting to 3.1% of the world’s population. The immense economic consequence of these labour flows are made evident in the fact that in 2009, approximately $414 billion were sent as remittances, $307 billion of which were sent to developing countries, double the official aid and nearly two-thirds of foreign direct investment. As made evident from the sheer volume of not only migrants but significant remittances, particularly to the developing world, through the employment relationship of migrant labourers, the incentives for migration are visibly economic.

Despite the growth of permissive economies where human capital flows have become a significant feature, issues of citizenship and national sovereignty directly affront the optimism of international treatises, particularly within the informal sector. International organisations have become the stern-faced puppets of geopolitical powerhouses, owing to rising differences in wealth, power and security hand in hand with economic liberalisation.

Within an inclined geopolitical playing field, both wealthy and lowly nations were able to benefit from the need for labour, however, what must be interrogated is, at what cost to the labourers themselves and whose responsibility is their safety?

Global Care Economies: An Empowerment Paradox?

Care as a socially-reproductive form of labour, has been identified to sustains human beings as distinct from commodities and products, involving biological reproduction and/or socialisation processes such as childcare or housework. Care, much like other service sectors, has become assimilated into the globalisation project, as a low-cost service sector as what has been dubbed as the ‘hidden labour market’. Women’s labour, particularly in those sectors that are regarded as inherent to their biology, are rendered invisible and thus valueless. These also manifest as unregulated, economic spaces particularly in the realm of the domestic, where national laws or international promises for equality cannot be honoured.

Within a globalised world, where wealthier women needed the support of carers to look after matters of house and children while they engaged in their own employment, or simply out of unwillingness and the ability to afford domestic labour, a new trend of feminised migration was instigated. This need for care-giving as both a formal and informal service within the developed world, saw a rapid incline in the number of unskilled female migrants, who were incorporated as domestic labour into the most intimate microcosm of the global production chain; the household. The category of unskilled was thus inherently tied to womanhood, which engenders domestic labour, by which women continue to be compelled to commoditise their patriarchally-reinforced social role as mothers or wives.

The inequalities of wealth play a crucial role in this flow of labour, for unskilled women who are unable to gain employment within national labour markets, through the thinning boundaries of globalisation and an attractive wage differential, are able to leave their home countries for employment opportunities overseas. Although economic independence is an attractive incentive for women, they are compelled into an employment relationship that preys on their gender as a skills-qualification. Through globalisation and the care economy of domestic labour, women are confined into roles that underline their subordination and highlight patriarchal social biases bolstering a gendered separation of the labour market which disallows mobility or the gaining of other productive skills. Moreover, the informal nature of the domestic sphere marked by grave racialised prejudices also creates a uniquely liminal space where national or international labour  conventions and laws cannot be monitored or enforced, making female migrant labourers exceptionally vulnerable to abuse and discrimination that victimise their most intimate forms of self-identification such as gender, ethnicity and nationality.

Cheap Labour in the Middle-East

Working conditions of labourers in the Middle-East have been consistently marked by a lack of protection, clearly defined rights, ineffective local legal systems, a complete dependence on the good will of their employers and the ever-present possibility of deportation. Furthermore, an ethnic and national stratification was in place informally, whereby European expatriates were paid the most, other Arabs and Asians occupying a middle-rung and Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans getting paid the least. What began as a tide of male migration, soon led to a demand for domestic labour in the prosperous Arab households, owing to the very low participation of Arab women in the labour market as a consequence of social and ad religious customs that restricted females working outside the home.

Thereby, cheap domestic labour from South Asia and beyond was funneled into the Arab states, where the even more vulnerable category the female servant was laid over the plethora of existing biases and constraints that marginalised the male workers. These women often remained isolated in private households where they had no access to any form of external protection or any legal recourse in the event of employer abuse. Moreover, existing national labour laws specifically excluded domestic work from its sphere of influence that made reporting harassment or maltreatment virtually impossible.

Although Sri Lanka has been marked as a developing nation that has fared well in matters of human development, economically it has consistently faltered. In the 1984, with a per capita income of $360, it was among the 30 poorest countries in the world having succumbed to very high inflation and unemployment rates in the 1970s. The demand for labour in the Middle-East proved to be a beneficial solution to the Sri Lankan government, which was able to solve some of its worst economic problems and also enable an income and alleviate unemployment. Sri Lanka, having advertised itself internationally has having the cheapest labour in Asia, proved to be an attractive source for Arab employers owing to higher wage differentials, regional proximity, liberalised economic policies that encouraged labour flow out of the country and its comparative regional advantage for not having imposed restrictions on female labour over issues of culture or religion. Many of the women were unskilled outside the domestic sphere which made them pertinent candidates for housekeeping and child-rearing. Given that there was no possibility of them being paid this amount with similar jobs at home, the wage differential was the single most influential ‘pull factor’ in the feminisation of Sri Lankan migration to the Middle-East.

Since the 1980s, Sri Lanka maintained itself as a rich labour resource for the Middle-East, which has sustained its economy throughout as second largest earner of foreign exchange in the Sri Lankan economy. According to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (2009), there are approximately 1.7 million Sri Lankans working overseas (amounting to nearly 10% of the country’s population) remitting Rs. 382,801 Million (47.03% of total foreign exchange earnings of the country) back to Sri Lanka. During the past decade 70% of labour had been exported in the category of unskilled sector of which nearly 66 % had been female domestic workers who formed 89% of the total female migrant workers. Given the low levels of female employment in Sri Lanka alongside its economic and political instability in the civil war years, migration as domestic labour was motivated almost solely by dire financial necessity among respondent women. Poverty is also tied to the pursuit of social and economic status including ambitions such as building a house, purchasing land, paying off family debts or educating children.

Abuses and Violations

The economic promise of domestic labour in the Middle-East is virtually unequivocally bound to the high probability of abuse.

HRW (2007) reports that not only are women victim to wage exploitation, unpaid or underpaid salaries, heavy workloads, excessive hours of work, food deprivation, inadequate living conditions, confiscation of passports, forced confinement, restricted communication, forced labour, prohibitions on returning home and a series of exploitative practices by recruitment agencies in both Sri Lanka and the Arab States, but also violent physical, psychological and sexual abuses. In Lebanon, the abuses are often centred on racial and ethnic prejudices and ensuing stereotyping that creates a hierarchy of nationality and interlinked wages appropriate for domestic labour, but also categories for recruitment basing nationality as an indication of trust or degradation. Racial slurs and offensive stereotyping are a manifestation of symbolic violence that negate and debase the identities and personhoods of these women. Not only are the human and civil rights of unskilled migrant labourers constantly challenged, and their existence marginalised through these practices, their citizenship becomes a burdening category of identification.

Whose Responsibility?

Universal standards of living are prescribed and marginalised social groups are given legal protection through documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that recognises ‘the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. However the existence of such idealised and optimistic provisions does not account for the lack of support by human rights or humanitarian organisations in the realms of ‘hidden labour markets’ not simply in the Middle-East, but beyond.

Inter-governmental understandings and solidarity in policy formulation could possess a positive impact on these relations in the long-run although relevant legislation has been slow in implementation.

HRW (2007) states, ‘International human rights law places positive obligations on states to protect the rights of individuals against acts, including ill-treatment and discrimination, committed by private persons or entities. States must take appropriate measures (in some places referred to as “due diligence”) to prevent punish, investigate, or redress the harm caused to individuals’ rights by private persons or entities. States must also provide effective remedies to those so harmed.’ Given that much of the abuses taking place in the domestic sphere, face very legitimate problems of reporting and monitoring, efforts have been made to account for the process of migration itself.The Sri Lankan government has been increasingly wary of abuses in the system through recruitment agencies and has introduced a stringent system of licensing for regulation (Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, 2009; HRW, 2007). Similarly, the establishment of embassies and consuls in the recipient countries has played a considerable role in providing registration services for labourers and sanctuary for women who manage to escape oppressive domestic relations.

However, the process of creating bi-lateral understandings with the Arab States which have very little to gain besides the cost of implementing mechanisms for monitoring labour within the private homes, has been very slow. The core nations’ dependence on the Arab Gulf for oil and its remarkable financial capital, helps maintain its interests within potential threats from international laws. Although a space for civil society activism has opened up in the form of NGOs within these countries where women are given advice and shelter if needed, the problem of abuse and forced labour within the households remains a persistent problem as news reports of violence against female domestics gather momentum, and the expectation of violence becomes grotesquely normalised.

As stated by HRW (2007) the Arab governments remain notably inactive in this sphere, and the critical importance of remittances to Sri Lanka’s economic strategy for poverty alleviation implies that, it too is reluctant to enforce any major restrictions on labour migration. Thereby, what must be questioned is even though globalisation in its neoliberal economic manifestation has become a successful flow for securing employment overseas and interlinked financial independence and gains in socio-economic status owing to high wage differentials, at what disjunctive cost to human dignity and life must these financial incentives be pursued?

Rights and Sovereignty in the Household

Saskia Sassen posits, highlighting the declining sovereignty of states over their economies, posits that global markets created a space for legal regimes that mediated between national autonomy and the transnational practices of economic players.For example, Human rights are not dependent on nationality, overriding political, social and civil rights which elude those categorised as aliens.  However the existence of such idealised and optimistic provisions does not account for the lack of support by human rights or humanitarian organisations in the realms of domestic labour not simply in the Middle-East. These debates on legality and citizenship in relation to migration must be re-examined in relation to enforcement in the liminal, hidden space of the domestic sphere where the employment of domestic labour, the international and national have begun to intersect with the private.

In these spaces and beyond, human rights violations, exist in reality much like the thought experiment of a falling tree in a forest, crimes that did not take place unless it is reported and acted upon.

Relevant Reads:

Abu-Habib, L. (1998). The Use and Abuse of Female Domestic Workers from Sri Lanka in Lebanon. Gender and Development , 6 (1), 52-56.

Anthias, F. (2000). ‘Metaphors of Home. Gendering New Migrations to Southern Europe’. In F. Anthias, & G. Lazaradis, Gender and Migration in Southern Europe. Women on the Move. (pp. 15-47). Oxford: Berg.

Athias, F., & Yuval-Davis, N. (1992). Racialised Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle. London: Routledge.

Bannerjee, D., & Goldfield, M. (2007). Labour, Globalisation and the State: Workers, Women and Migrants Confront Neoliberalism. Oxford and New York: Routledge.

Brochmann, G. (1990). Middle East Avenue: Female Migration from Sri Lanka, Causes and Consequences. Oslo: Institute for Social Research.

Human Rights Watch (HRW). (2007). Exported and Exposed: Abuses against Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia,Kuwait, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates. Human Rights Watch.

Moukarbel, N. (2009). Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon: A Case of ‘Symbolic Violence’ and ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Sassen, S. (1998). Globalisation and its Discontents. New York: The New Press.

Sassen, S. (1996). Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalisation. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. (2009). Annual Statistical Report. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.

Yeates, N. (2009). Globalising Care Economies and Migrant Workers: Explorations in Global Care Chains. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Nations for Sale: How Much Is that Cheap Labour in the Window?

The North-South divide possesses powerful signification within labour structures, creating diminishing hierarchies and reshaping inequality on a tilted global scale.The factory fire in Bangladesh and its aftermath highlights a real predicament caused by the inequalities perpetuated by globalisation.

Cross over to The Platform Blog for my thoughts.

 

 

The Malevolent Reincarnation of Buddhism

‘Social markers within neoliberal political economies, even those which demarcate spiritual commitments, cannot be ignored. Where religious and nationalist extremism lurks as a many-headed monster, is Buddhism’s militant reincarnation really unexpected?’

Wee bit late on updating this, but cross over to The Platform Blog for thoughts on ‘The Malevolent Reincarnation of Buddhism’

North by Northwest

I recall the events of May 2009, from my flat on City Road, thousands of miles away, and mostly as snatches of news, press photos, mobile phone footage and lengthy online conversations with my friend Saville. We were both so distant from what was taking place in our island home , our only information filtering in through the news and sometimes friends and family from home, who seemed more sheltered from the news than we were, as we sifted through the news sites wondering how and when it would all end.

I read through an old post Ayubowan dated the 16th of May 2009.

‘I trawl the Internet for news every few minutes, wondering what has changed. I see people’s digital patriotism and ponder if the rumours are true, as photochemical evidence surface on the news as breaking alerts and exclusive footage. If the war is really at an end.

It frightens me the uncertainty as Sri Lanka’s future appears to hang in a balance.  It seems to be the word on everyone’s tongue, this impending war victory. The end is nigh, they say as they look for out of season firecrackers. The great feats of soldiers of a government who have managed to “destroy terrorism”.  Sri Lanka’s problems always arise from a legacy of myopia we seem to have inherited from the generations before us. We have selective memories and we forget too soon. 

Weeks later, I recall my return to Colombo, where riotous celebrations had already taken place. Parliament junction was covered in flattened Coca-Cola cups. A veritable explosion of flags and bunting lined my road home as I drove back from the airport.

—

The North continues to remain as distant to me as it had been before. I am unable to reconcile others’ travels to the newly freed North; smiling family holiday photos against the post-war exotica of a barren shelled landscape, bullet-ridden homes, pristine shrapnel dunes, and the victors’ military spoils.

3 years later, I am living in Colombo, working in post-conflict development, embroiled in bureaucracies and wordplay, pushing for structural changes and social change like the clichéd development Samaritans that we have turned into, believing that there are differences to be made. The past few months have felt like betrayal as I learn to put my ideological differences aside for necessary work I try everyday to believe in greater good and other inevitable spin-doctoring.

When work-related travel to the Mullaitivu presents itself, I brace myself, partly intrigued and partly angry at myself for what has transpired. A formerly LTTE controlled area, Mullaitivu was the location of a large rebel base and the ground on which numerous battles were fought since 1983, until the Sri Lankan army took control of the town in January 2009 in the Battle of Mullaitivu.

I have now learned to be more positive. Perhaps that’s just the spin-doctoring talking.

We travel through the North-West, via Puttlam, through Anuradhapura and Vavuniya. The roads are unfamiliar, progress snaking across arid emptiness punctuated by repetitive towns and the occasional marker of archaeological significance and mytho-historical nationalist propaganda.

At Omanthai, the shells of old checkpoints form a warren that announces entry into the North with a cursory check by the army. I learn to reconcile many stories spun by the news and friends, into the relative realities of what I was seeing.

The road works power through full speed ahead, even in the dark absence of street lights at night-time, for infrastructure is where the development money is, we know. Yet long stretches remain broken and trying, with public transport links, houses, shops and even the occasional pedestrian conspicuously absent. The sun beats down on huddles of construction workers, men and women, I note. The dry scrub is barren, fringed with dry-zone wilderness. The ground is razed in part, singed blackened grass forming indelible shadows of the devastation this earth has known.

Our unholy trinity and its phalanx of messengers have left their flimsy marks on landscape, pledging their generous support to the region’s upliftment. Aluminum signboards crafted by the hands of the development aid apparatus, allude to geopolitical tilts and strategic alliances that funnel charity in return for dependency. Ferguson, Escobar and Moyo are the ghosts of my own past.

Concrete and tin shells of progress do not conceal the pronounced poverty of the makeshift dwellings that make up scant towns.

Puliyankulam. Odusuddan. Nanthi Kadal. Maankulam. Puliyankulam. Mallavi. Tunukkai.

News stories ring the place names familiar. Perhaps we are free in our passage, only occasionally halted by polite police or military personnel, but my mind and heart are heavy.

There is a young optimist our company; a protagonist of the war he has been in the region since the last phase of the war, for six years. He is enthusiastic about the progress that I fail  to see. ‘Many people have been successfully resettled and the development, we are just starting! patanganme abhimukhaye innava vage…‘ Schooled propagandist rhetoric, I resist judgment- it is what he knows, it is what he believes. ‘Roads are being built and after all  we must make the most of our victory.’ There is genuine, even perhaps endearing pride in his voice. Later he admits, there is not much change to be seen in our destination. It has been two years since he had last been there. ‘There’s not much development to be seen here. They built the state banks before the president visited… Mehe nam sanvardhanayak penne nehe. President enna kalin, banku tika nam haduva‘

There is an unspoken acknowledgment of reality, but he remains optimistic. There is even an effort to learn English and Tamil.

It only occurs to me many hours later what he may have been a part of, what he may have endured.

I do not hold him responsible, but I cannot share his pride.

Development, he confidently repeats, is happening.

Of Protests and Introspection

Tuesday.

Protests. I am hesitant to weave through the crowds at Town Hall after work, but I am curious. Patriotic music echoes. Head aches. Black and white corporates assembled. Signage in English, a language that a fraction of the population speaks. Who are these signs intended for?

No War Crimes in Sri Lanka, Look Elsewhere

Don’t Be Mislead by Terrorists, Listen to the People

All Sri Lankans Hate Violence.

Help Sri Lankans Live As One Nation

They are mostly young. Women in sunglasses fan themselves, shading their faces from the evening sun. Men in ties tote corporate banners photographing. They link arms and grin for photo after photo. Amateur photographers armed with camera phones click. Pose. Click. Pose. Click. New profile pictures are buzzed off into cyberspace. Such amusement, it could have been a cricket match.  A confusion of slogans and Sri Lankan flags wrapped on their heads or shoulders as a sign of respect, perhaps?

A mockery of the three decades of life that was lost to the island unfolds. Its suffering reduced down to an ideological pissing contest between geopolitical overlords and Third World underlings. These puppets revel, they cry ‘NO to war crimes and NO to Western Conspiracies’. I wish I could ask them to define both.

Estimates of the war’s casualties range from 80,000-100,000. The numbers from its later phase remain hotly contested. Ranging from 40,000 as suggested by international observers to the government’s ever-fluctuating numbers between 0 – 1,400 – 3,500 – 5000. Perhaps, we will never know save for those of us who knew real loss then, of family or friends. Real people with names and faces, who were loved and mourned for.

In May 2009, when the government confirmed its military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) following months of intense fighting, it also left an estimated 300,000 civilians displaced. Housed in welfare camps, Sri Lanka‟s internally displaced population faced a devastating humanitarian crisis riddled with critical predicaments of nutrition and sanitation. According to the United Nations’ Joint Humanitarian and Early Recovery Update as late as September 2011 (well over 2 years after the end of the armed conflict), 7534 internally displaced persons remained in camps waiting to return to their areas of origin, while 384, 401 people returned to the Northern Province (UNOCHA, 2011). A few thousand still remain suspended in the limbo of internal displacement. A bloodied past, a purgatorial present and an uncertain future.

They protest in vehement denial, so unabashed about their heritage, their pride, their arrogant patriotism. Sri Lankans, they roar! Yet I wonder what they have done to earn this glory besides hold up a placard, wrapping a flag around their heads and choosing sides in a game they have not even bothered to understand.

By denying the realities of the war they deny the existence, the humanity of those victims whose lives will forever be shaken in ways they cannot ever comprehend. They forget or ignore the uphill battle left in revising policy and discriminatory practices so deeply engrained in Sri Lanka’s social fabric. They deny thousands of fellow Sri Lankans equality of citizenship by decrying their tenuous present and horrific experiences are fictions concocted by the international humanitarian apparatus.

I wonder why such public gusto, such concern has not been channelled towards pressuring an internal mechanism for fostering reconciliation, to push through necessary policy documents that still stutter between ministries and attitudes towards inclusion, integration and the sustainable peace we as a nation owe to those civilians who fought and survived three decades of war.Not just those of us who were touched by a history of bleak news reports and the lurking fear of a bomb blast in the city, but those who have lost far too much for words or tears.

The LLRC even with its apologist contradictory wording and repetitive lip-service calls for changes that need speedy implementation. In the very words of the polemic resolution there exists,

‘.. The need to credibly investigate widespread allegations of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances, demilitarize the north of Sri Lanka, implement impartial land dispute resolution mechanisms, re-evaluate detention policies, strengthen formerly independent civil institutions, reach a political settlement on the devolution of power to the provinces, promote and protect the right of freedom of expression for all and enact rule of law reforms..’

Are these protestors denying the existence of these realities and the interlinked need for changes? How many of them even bothered read the LLRC, or even this resolution they are so opposed to?

—

Thursday

The resolution passes and the sentiments pendulum between unapologetic apathy and ignorant rage. I am disgusted, as hate is spewed towards the United States and India. A cricketing rivalry with the latter turned vitriolic against its supportive stance on the resolution. India raised the LTTE, someone announces to cyberspace. Or perhaps it was such anger and ignorance directed at a section of our own people.

Implementation with technical assistance, the resolution calls. Sri Lanka is indignant, bitter, even. Its pissing contest against the galactic empire lost, even with the support of China’s rebel force.

The rage, the ignorance the horrific claims that clutter my virtual world sadden and disgust me as I see more protesters still uncertainly lurking at Town Hall.The conflation of anti-US sentiment with the purpose of the resolution thickens.

G.L Peiris states,

‘The most distressing feature of this experience is the obvious reality that voting at the Human Rights Council is now determined not by the merits of a particular issue but by strategic alliances and domestic political issues in other countries which have nothing to do with the subject matter of a Resolution or the best interests of the country to which the Resolution relates.  This is a cynical negation of the purposes for which the Human Rights Council was established.

Many countries which voted with Sri Lanka were acutely conscious of the danger of setting a precedent which enables ad hoc intervention by powerful countries in the internal affairs of other nations.  This is a highly selective and arbitrary process not governed by objective norms or criteria of any kind.  The implications of this were not lost on many countries.

As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, our policy in respect of all matters will continue to be guided by the vital interests and wellbeing of the people of our country.  It hardly requires emphasis that this cannot yield place to any other consideration.’

—

Perhaps what we as a Nation, should be concerned with instead is our grave need for introspection and realising what passive crimes occur each day through our own choice of ignorance, apathy and prejudice in the name of a misguided patriotism.

Knowing that I am not alone in my sentiments however, comforts me.

Perhaps there is hope? Perhaps.

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished

Has been met with silence. Or so it appears to me on the relatively mute social network feeds. A smattering of protests stir traffic in Colombo, but really, they could be protesting anything. Good old apathy, short Sri Lankan memories or fear, the lines have grown blurry.

Please cross over to The Platform for my thoughts on the Channel 4 Documentary on the final phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war which culminated in May 2009.

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished

*A more comprehensive review by indi.ca can be found here: Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields 2 (A Review) Well worth a read.

Sri Lanka, Reconciliation and Lessons from Polanyi

Polanyi. Markets. Coase. Firms. Olson. Collective Action. Ostrom. Tragedy of the Commons. Knight. Social Conflicts. Chambers. Poverty. Kabeer. Gender. Akerlof. Identity.

Analysing Institutions in development was the bane of my existence a year ago. From social hierarchies to the bureaucracy of aid, endless readings and long-winded essays on how economic principles meet and mesh with social realities do not feel distant enough just yet. Being in the business of development however, has provided an intriguing counterpoint to this labyrinth of policies, practicality and the ‘packaging’ of jargon and its potential for social change in a manner that can be widely understood.

Numbers games are easy enough.  State-sponsored extortion covers fuel, electricity, potatoes and otherwise. Pay hikes compelled by union action culminates in a few blokes swinging off the Lipton Circus Fountain and the police getting trigger-happy with teargas. Wages are increased and prices go up since Western powers are after all conspiring to pack Sri Lanka back off to the Third World where fly ridden children are sucked into the neo-colonial aid machine, catalogued, photographed as the face of an organizational calendar and paid in awareness leaflets and oversized teddy bears from First world primary school pen pals. $9.99 a month salvation and one less distended-bellied child. Praise be!

The relevance of social and political context informs Polanyi’s conception of the market’s “embeddedness” which suggests that economy is integrated into society. This view inevitably challenges good ole’ Adam Smith’s description of man’s “propensity to barter, truck and exchange one thing for the other”. This subordination of the economy to politics and social relations underscores what Polanyi further asserts as the need for the government to play a role within the economy through the imposition of sanctions protecting national interests, rather than relying on the intangible economic theories of self-equilibration. While the markets of the world play the number games of hunger games, what of social change? Polanyi tells us that the market cannot be disembedded from society, but do the same gold standards and price tags apply? Can we measure social change in numbers or achieve it through lingo-heavy policy recommendations?

Policy design in Sri Lanka resembles something akin to a Smithian free market; the disembedded marionette strung by the ‘invisible hands’ of political and legislative powers. An uncanny automaton awkwardly flailing amidst real people and real social problems, one that’s trying to get these people, their politics and their problems in line with repeated mechanical recitations of the equality-for-all constitution.

Within development, the predicament of the numbers game (or the epic failure of economists as the rest of us social scientists like to believe) is being noticed. Mostly because the IMF and World Bank’s history of basic needs approaches and structural adjustment programmes caused more problems than they solved. The call for the integration of the global into the local forms an oxymoron of a one-size-fits-all square scheme being shoved into the triangle of a local market. The international development apparatus’s failure to account for the social and political embeddedness of local institutions and recognise that these institutions are not necessarily socially efficient and calibrated to fit into the neat boxes of a monitoring and evaluation report has proved to be detrimental to achieving any real development. Or do I mean empowerment and upward mobility?

After my automaton-like flailing (anthropology strings attached) amidst a group of economists versed the finer points of Keynes, I realise that within the framework of institutional analysis, what becomes significant is the agency of human behaviour and choice that economic theories limit as a set of axioms upon which predictions might be based. Much like policy yes? Wordy promises that fail in localised implementation initiatives. The development apparatus too is reluctantly learning from its mistakes and doing bold, hippie things like qualitative studies that are no less patronising in obtaining quotes on what it’s like to experience poverty from a ‘poor woman in India’ (calendar girl photo included). It is also looking at institutional analysis as a means of tailoring solutions to ground-level, social problems, by examining social institutions with an ethnographic astuteness that I promise you will herald significant positive changes towards achieving development goals like ending poverty and creating world peace (anthropologist’s bias, savvy?).

As far as reconciliation in Sri Lanka goes, a policy automaton is being ‘perfected’ (I suppose) in the hallowed halls of ministries with long names and shallow goals. The three-year mark since the end of the civil war in 2009 is creeping up on us and little progress has been made towards implementing anything tangible.

The LLRC was (should have been?) Sri Lanka’s institutional analysis; a document of ethnographic thoroughness that addresses the social minutiae through a broad-based consultation process that considers the deficiencies, hierarchies and limitations which are hindering the country’s progress towards reconciliation. Douglas North suggests that if an institution is made up of humanly devised regulations and enforcement, one must also consider the human limitations that factor into the creation and maintenance of these institutions, particularly the perpetuation of hierarchies and creation of ideologies by those in power. Within the more specific example of ethnicity (which I don’t believe requires too much explanation as a key agent in Sri Lanka’s social, economic and political landscape), Posner suggests that if ethnic politics serves the purpose of coalition building to gain greater advantages by virtue of a shared ethnicity, policy design will mirror these imbalances. Thereby, what can be questioned is whether a valid institutional analysis can be conducted from within an institution comprised of those positioned within the institution to serve a public mandate within for example, a democratic political system or a governmental one such as the LLRC?

A panel of old timers in talcum wigs failed or perhaps inadvertently (too optimistic?) brushed over this necessity, producing 400 odd pages of carefully selected (repetitive and sometimes contradictory) statements and legal gobbledygook. Thus we arrive at a familiar stalemate: the one-size-fits-all scheme square that attempts to fix a veritable Rubik’s cube of social problems pertaining to ethnicity, conflict, affirmative action and a return to square one policy capable of instrumenting social change. Yes that is two-dimensional ink on paper apologetically recommending more two-dimensional ink on paper legal and constitutional changes. What must be considered also is that institutions themselves are able to further inculcate the social divisions from within which they arise.

So, what now? Mandates, imbalances, validity and all? Invite the sticky-fingered West in for a ‘independent investigation’?

Civic responsibility comes to mind, but civil society and policy are equally bland in these parts. No collective action zing, until those marginalised by poor policy and a majority’s apathy return to a repetition of armed conflict. Fight for your rights, yes? ‘Che Guevara want you to rebel!‘ The sticker on a tuk-tuk I see every morning proclaims.

Upon realising this, we must question and challenge (covered under broad-based public consultation yes?) its limitations. Given the sheer number of people who are so clearly aware of/care about foreign intervention, should care enough to get some local awareness intervention going? Ha.

It is necessary that legal and constitutional fairness is in place, but implementation cannot succeed as shining idealization in an ink on paper promise.

It must be methodical, meticulous; examining social, political and economic bodies as ideologically founded and politically motivated institutions that function in their own right. It is necessary that the social “embeddedness” of these are thoroughly scrutinized and not reduced to a series of series of bureaucratic interactions of exchange, but as those subject to the tides of human prejudices, society and politics. The need lies in identifying the social divisions, issues of integration, not as our now proverbial free market independent from the social and political context. Reconciliation in Sri Lanka does not simply require state of the art policy perfection sparkling with idealist jargon and a mention of South Africa thrown in, but a thoroughly localised examination of the social and political realities upon which institutions are built. It requires analysing the powerful social divisions of ethnicity that draw on the potency of language, history, heritage and culture, how it features deeply and pervasively within the formal institutions of politics and governance. What must also be acknowledged is that Sri Lanka’s history has been mapped on what Posner (2005:2) identifies as the ‘formal rules, regulations and policies that structure social and political interactions’ and how these institutions in turn have shaped people’s identity choices, where ethnic politics can be viewed as a form of coalition–building for greater political and economic advantage. Policies and politics which led to ethnic groups acting in their own self-interest as they could only receive knowledge or human capital from members in their own group resulting in a phenomenon of ‘ethnic capital’, which subsequently leads to income differentials between groups.

Easterly  suggests that good institutions are founded to provide minorities with legal protection and ‘constrain the amount of damage one ethnic group could do to another’, but what of institutions that are inherently tilted? What we can hope for is a worthy effort as both state and civil society to fix the tilt. Where many a nation is plagued with the challenges of establishing sustainable democracies or combating ethnic inequalities, the least we can do is strive to genuinely understand what made us this way.

Readings:

Easterly, W. 2001. ‘Can Institutions Resolve Ethnic Conflict’ in Economic Development and Cultural Change, 49, 4.

Knight, J. 1992. Institutions and Social Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

North, D.C. 1995 ‘The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development’, in Harriss, Hunter, and Lewis (eds), The New Institutional Economics and Third World development. London and New York: Routledge.

Olson, M., 1971, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Ostrom, E., 1990, Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Polanyi, K. 1944. The Great Transformation: The Political Origins of Our Time, Boston MA: Beacon Press.

Posner, D. N. (2005). Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Twenty Twelve

First of all, I would like to wish everyone reading this a very, very happy new year! May 2012 bring you happiness and success in everything you do hand in hand with a wish for peace and prosperity world-round as we forge through and past economic, social and political crises towards a more inclusive and just global society.

I would also like to avoid cluttering this post with pessimism about where the world is going. We can never know, unless we all try harder to be better people. This is why I would also like to urge you to make this effort. Change like charity, begins at home with small acts of kindness, forgetting to keep score of our own but remembering and reciprocating those of others.

So here’s something for you reader to think about, in a little (uncannily and uncharacteristically optimistic) post I wrote for The Platform where I’ve tried to look beyond this culture of blame that salts the wounds of our existence, because sometimes hope for better things to come is all we have left.

Taking Back Democracy in Sri Lanka

I do believe that ‘Change lies in the hands of people, not just in that of governments.’ And I do not mean simply in protest, violent or otherwise, but rather in bearing equal responsibility to foster equality and inclusivity.