{"id":65613,"date":"2017-04-28T03:53:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T10:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65613"},"modified":"2017-04-28T03:53:51","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T10:53:51","slug":"repeating-the-error-of-self-inflicted-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/04\/28\/repeating-the-error-of-self-inflicted-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"Repeating the error of self-inflicted torture"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
Any conflagration and especially one marked by the clash of arms that lasts over several decades can be defined in multiple ways.\u00a0 For some, the conflict in Sri Lanka, was a matter between the Sinhalese and Tamils.\u00a0 They call it \u2018Ethnic Conflict\u2019.\u00a0 Others could say that it was a battle between state entities and a terrorist outfit or one between democracy and insurgency.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
Portrayal is naturally informed by ideological bent and of course, since identity is involved, the play of communal angst often decides the issue of definition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Emotion typically bests reason in the process.\u00a0 To the extent that the protagonists were to a large extent identifiable in terms of a particular community and since the conflict was framed emphatically (at least by one party and often by the other) in communal terms, the \u2018ethnic\u2019 label is not without logic, although the complexity of it all rebels against such convenient descriptions. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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There could be one area where there\u2019s agreement.\u00a0 It was a tragedy.\u00a0 Lives were lost.\u00a0 Properties were destroyed.\u00a0 An economy was strangled, development arrested.\u00a0 People were maimed and displaced.\u00a0 There was despair and gloom, fear and foreboding.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Only the obdurate afflicted with strong identity fetishes would claim absolute innocence on behalf of his or her community.\u00a0 Even if that weren\u2019t the case afflictions of such nature do inform exercises in \u2018rational\u2019 apportionment of blame.<\/div>\n
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One thing that has been left out of the entire \u2018in retrospect\u2019 business is the self-inflicted.\u00a0 Just the other day,\u00a0 Lord Justice Sales, one of Britain\u2019s most senior judges, in what could be a landmark 22,000-word appeal ruling, has observed that a Sri Lankan had allowed himself to be tortured with iron bars to support his bid to stay in that country.\u00a0 The court ruled that the man probably consented to the torture as part of a ruse called Self-infliction by proxy\u201d or SIBP to buttress a case for asylum. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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KV, as the claimant is identified, is not a one-off asylum-seeking Tamil from Sri Lanka and neither is Britain the only country where his ilk have applied for asylum.\u00a0 Asylum seekers are required to submit solid evidence and in a world where the visual dominates testimony inscribed on body can be quite compelling.\u00a0 There\u2019s enough evidence to prove that \u2018torture-marking\u2019 is a lucrative business, run of course by \u2018well-meaning\u2019 Tamil expatriates.\u00a0 There are agencies that \u2018take care of things\u2019.\u00a0 For a price.\u00a0 And part of that price can be self-inflicting torture. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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An investigation launched by the Sri Lankan military a few years ago unearthed a lot of information regarding the process.\u00a0 One woman who was asked to follow a \u2018rape-script\u2019 to secure asylum in the UK refused because the objective was outweighed by the shame of \u2018admitting\u2019 have been raped even if it was just theatre.\u00a0 Self-respect counted.\u00a0 In the course of that investigation, it was found that a veritable army of operators were involved in the \u2018asylum business\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
There were torture-artists, lawyers who argued \u2018torture,\u2019 physicians who would affirm \u2018torture\u2019 and handlers who had profiled courts and judges and figured out which were \u2018easy\u2019. There still are, apparently.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
All this could be dismissed as \u2018constructed propaganda by the Sri Lankan government\u2019.\u00a0 At the time, for reasons that had nothing to do with immigration policy or upholding the dignity of judicial processes, the submissions from Sri Lanka were ignored.\u00a0 Lord Justice Sales, however, is not \u2018in the pay of the Rajapaksas\u2019 (as has been the excuse for summary dismissal of such claims).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Britain\u2019s Home Office will have to act, sooner or later, especially in a context where terrorism (a menace selectively spawned, nurtured and apologized for) has secured a kind of residency that was unanticipated but impossible to ignore. \u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
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The relevant question here is this: \u2018Why would anyone suffer the shame of lying about being raped or submit him\/herself to being torture-inscribed unless he\/she believes it is a better option than living in their home country?\u2019\u00a0 One could argue that the truth or otherwise of torture-claims, submission to such pain is a superior choice to suffering the \u2018hurt\u2019 of discrimination.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The key issue is that once a certain threshold of escalation has been crossed the claim is legitimate regardless of who did what to whom and when.\u00a0 People flee conflict for a reason, to put it simply.\u00a0 What\u2019s important is to understand that the true self-infliction of torture preceded cases such as the one on which Lord Justice Sales deliberated. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Let\u2019s ask ourselves some questions to drive home the point.\u00a0 Who wanted a 50-50 split for a community that made just over one tenth of a total population? Who created and\/or played on the nationless-angst of a particular community, drawing inter alia,<\/i> a nation-map traced on the arbitrary exercises in cartography indulged in by the British? Who interchanged (often inflated) grievance and (ridiculous) aspirations easily and frequently enough to legitimate a demand unsupported by history, archaeology and demography?\u00a0 When such sentiments as were generated found articulation in an election result in 1977, why did not the Government of the time call for a historical audit?\u00a0 When extremism reared its ugly head why did successive governments respond with utmost brutality that conflated \u2018Tamil\u2019 with \u2018Terrorist,\u2019 especially in the 1980s?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Who dropped parippu <\/i>and effectively postponed by twenty years the eradication of the terrorist menace and therefore paved the way for tens of thousands of deaths and other destruction?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Why did those who claimed to stand for a negotiated settlement give credence to that conflation (which had been un-tangled to a large extent) by legitimating terrorism and ‘conceding\u2019 that the LTTE was indeed the sole representative of the Tamils?\u00a0 Why wasn\u2019t what was essentially a hostage-rescue operation named as such (Read about ‘The wretched of the Wanni Earth’ <\/a>by D.B.S. Jeyaraj)?\u00a0 Why (let us ask again) is no one calling the Tamil nationalist bluff by commissioning a historical audit? \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
There was a turning point in 2009.\u00a0 History however is not rolled out in a bell curve.\u00a0 There can be other twists.\u00a0 Tragedy is a visitor who does not require a formal invitation.\u00a0 Escalation is easily orchestrated.\u00a0 In all this there\u2019s self-inflicted torture.\u00a0 \u2018KV\u2019 is, in this sense, an embarrassment to Tamil chauvinists but all things considered, nothing more than a distraction.\u00a0 This country has let itself become a classic case of self-inflicted national torture.\u00a0 A re-definition is needed not just for national dignity but national survival.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.\u00a0 Email: <\/i>malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Blog:<\/i>malindawords.blogspot.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Twitter: malindasene<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE Any conflagration and especially one marked by the clash of arms that lasts over several decades can be defined in multiple ways.\u00a0 For some, the conflict in Sri Lanka, was a matter between the Sinhalese and Tamils.\u00a0 They call it \u2018Ethnic Conflict\u2019.\u00a0 Others could say that it was a battle between state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}