YAHAPALANA GOVERNMENT, SOCIAL INCLUSION AND ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW (PART 1)
Posted on August 14th, 2018

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Soon after a Yahapalana government elected to the office in 2015, the major promise (under the social inclusion policy) given to the country, was to introduce anti-discrimination law and a drafted bill for the legislation also published, but it was withdrawn and the reason to withdraw the bill was informally publicized that certain minor parties did not like to the law.  The general public of Sri Lanka has understood that minority parties consider that discrimination to lower class people or other religions is a right of them, however, democratic societies don’t recognize this wonderful right and principally accepted that human have equal rights irrespectively any dictions or differences.  Nevertheless, the Rajapaksa regime was in power recognised the requirement of anti-discrimination legislation. People have not seen any statement or comments made by Yahapalana advocates or international human right organizations on the government stand in regard to anti-discrimination and this situation is very astonishing to people who trust on democracy in Sri Lanka.

Why Sri Lanka had been suffered by an ethnic-based civil war for a long time?  Many policymakers in the country did not seriously consider the root cause of the problem.  It seems that the minority ethnic groups in the country had a reasonable feeling of discrimination being done by the major ethnic group, though there is no convincing evidence for it.  The basis for ethnic problems in all over the world appears to be no any other reasons than the feelings of minority ethnic groups that they are discriminated by the majority.  When compared to animals, human being is subject to provoked by discrimination, which motivates acting against discriminators by peaceful or violent manner (The Ghandian movement in India) and when there are economic, social, cultural or ethnic differences in the society, discrimination feelings have an upward trend.

Discrimination feelings are vigorously influenced by colour bars, racial and religious differences, provincial differences, caste dictions, political and social ideology and many other diverse factors and people are naturally reacting against discriminators, if there is no effective comportment to the issue.  The experience in some countries showed that the response from the people subject to discrimination was violent. The best example was South Africa.  From the point of views of academics and psychologists, the lack of a cultural design in the society for preventing discrimination is the major cause for collective violence.  Historically, there is no hard evidence that Sinhala majority in Sri Lanka has discriminated minority provoking them to take arms against Sinhala majority.  In fact, it was not clear whether LTTE terrorism was a military response against Sinhala majority, but not a single Tamil leader has expressed that Sinhala people discriminate Tamils except few Tamil leaders such as Mr Sundaralingam and Mr A. Amirairthalingam. However, certain reactions of LTTE such as killing people in Dollar and Kent farms, Killing Buddhist monks in Arantalava, killing innocent people who were travelling in Buses and Trains, and Killing people attacking to Central Bank and Telecom office displayed that the war was indirectly against Sinhala majority as the bulk of deaths in those reactions were people of Sinhala majority.

Tamil people are reluctant to state that their community is discriminated by Sinhala people as there is no provable evidence for such a statement. In some instances, Tamil leaders expressed that Sinhala government does the discrimination, but they were purely political rhetoric for attracting votes from minority. Similar statements were made by Tamil politicians before independence and at that time rulers were British, who were regarded as democratic administrators. The democracy is defined as a rule of majority and if Sinhala people were the majority of the population, the majority of Sinhala representatives would be elected to the state assembly.  On the other hand, visible truth is that the majority of Tamils in the country are peacefully living with Sinhala people and there are no records that Sinhala people in the government services or the government services in the country have rejected to provide services to Tamils. All kind of services in Sri Lanka are provided together without any discrimination to minorities.

LTTE terrorist’s movement was originated with the support of India and Indian policy was to create puppet regimes in surrounding countries and originally LTTE movement was armed by India against the UNP regime, which was led by Mr JR Jayawardane.  After the defeat of LTTE terrorism, Indian strategy failed, however, associated with the old enemy, UNP to get revenge from the Rajapaksa regime, which worked to bring China closer. Therefore, it is clear that the issue was not discrimination to ethnically related Tamils but having a close relationship with China.

According to past experience in Sri Lanka the minority attitudes toward violent reactions of LTTE was seemingly justified by Tamil leaders as such violence have severely affected to the majority.  If we stand on impartial point of views, humans are equal whether they are belonging to minority or majority. if any violence recorded against majority or minority, they are crimes against humanity and it could not be justified or excluded that any violence done by minority against majority is justifiable and the violence of the minority are also needed to treat as criminal acts. Many ordinary people of Sri Lanka have general understanding that the Geneva process on the war crime investigation appears to be partially justification of minority violence and the behaviour of Arm forces to protect humanity (minority and majority) was accused as a war crime.  International official of human rights has not explained to Sri Lankans that they are performing impartial role and they take actions against LTTE also for monumental crime that committed during 30 years.  However, there is no one to take responsibility on behalf of LTTE, but Arm forces and the government of Sri Lanka have to take responsibility for impartial role of arm forces. The opinion of general public is that there is no justice in Geneva process as they are appeared to be bias against the arm forces of Sri Lanka.

The behaviour of Tamil parties in regard to the introduction of anti-discrimination law, appears that the minority attempt to justify discrimination, if discrimination is done by the minority. If high caste Tamils discriminate lower class people, it is justified. Many lower-caste Tamils are not allowed to enter some temple of high caste Tamils, which against the social inclusion that the major social policy of European union.  Many educated Sri Lankans are of opinion that the halting of anti-discrimination law was a mistake and if Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna comes to power, it should be passed by them and anti-discrimination should be a law of the country. Mr. SWRD Bandaranaike was the person first adapted social inclusion by his Sanga, Weda, Guru, Govi and Camkaru Policy.

Since the manifestation of human being to this world, the diversity has been a part of our planet.  Diversity exists not only in the human being but also in other areas such as weather, soil structure; water, forestry and many other areas.  The diversity in the environment is being treated as an asset to human being, however, the diversity among human is shown as a negative factor because many violence in the world is caused by people due to diversity.

Many economists and social scientists interpret that Japan achieved a quick economic progress after the World War 2 as the major contributing factor was a single ethnic group in the country, where had a strong trust on each other and a single ethnic community did not support to discriminate Japanese citizens or create discrimination feelings among Japanese people.  One language and one ethnic base maintained harmony among the Japanese nation.  This truth also can be seen at reasonable extent in Korean, Vietnam and Chinese societies.  The rapid economic growth in those Asian societies was supported by the uniformity of the ethnic base of citizens. Despite the unity in Asian nations, we can see disastrous events in Indian sub-continent countries.

In Western societies, it is observable that the uniformity in skin colour of people has contributed to economic and social progress because the uniformity in skin colour was a factor in maintaining ethnic harmony. This may be a critical point because wars such as Norman invasion and Nazism were between white people in the history. The uniformity in skin colour was not really contributed to avoid wars or social problems. Even in the modern world, there is a war between West and Middle East, despite both groups have same skin colour.  However, when there was a labour shortage for economic development, Western society allowed black and brown skinned people entering into their countries as the white majority needed the labour of black and brown skin people. This means that when people are economically prosperous, they tend to ignore differences

As a result of ethnic mixture, discrimination mentality created in the Western society. In such a situation, Western countries introduced anti-discrimination laws to tackle the problem rather than dividing their countries by power sharing in new constitutions.  The fundamental beliefs and actions in Western countries for Asian and African countries to divide countries by introducing power sharing constitutions.  However, in western countries introduced anti-discrimination laws rather than power sharing and division of countries. For example, Britain faced with serious divisive problems but never changed its unitary status of the country.  On the other hand, white people positively tolerated ethnic entrance as it supported to their economic wellbeing.  The Western example proves that when people are economically in a better condition, they are ready to ignore ethnic differences and intolerance.  The best examples from Asia for this argument is Singapore and Malaysia, where the majority of Chinese and Malays tolerate entrance of other ethnics such as Indians, it creates jobs and business to them.

Sri Lanka also can develop a homegrown solution to ethnic problem rather than listening to ill advices of Western countries. The Sri Lankan government needs analysing the historical background of the ethnic issue without bias.  The historical evidence of Sri Lankan society provides information that, in spite of Sinhala and Tamil names Sri Lankans have a uniform ethnic base and two factors contributed to hate the peaceful environment were religion, and discrimination.  According to Mahavamsa, Senna, Gutthika, and Elara invaded Sri Lanka with Soli, Pandi and Kerala soldiers who horribly discriminated and abused Sinhala people and later invaders such as Maga also followed the same discriminatory and destructive policies in the country.  That is how discrimination and hate began between the two communities in terms of Mahavamsa.  There is no doubt that religious differences, social discrimination and physical abuses of South Indian invaders massively contributed to ethnic problems in the country.

One Response to “YAHAPALANA GOVERNMENT, SOCIAL INCLUSION AND ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW (PART 1)”

  1. Christie Says:

    This Yahapalana government is an Indian one run by Indian puppets.

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