NOT BY A LONG SCHALK
Intellectual dishonesty in the service of terror:
Prof Peter Schalk's sleights of hand to justify terrorism
Secretariat for Coordinating
the Peace Process (SCOPP)
05th May 2008
I was sent recently an essay entitled 'Pax Americana, the EU, and the
Tamil Resistance Movement (TRM), written by Peter Schalk of Uppsala
University. Prof Schalk has been concerned with Sri Lankan affairs for
many years now, and this shows, in his rather dogged adherence to the
battles of the seventies. His view is that the EU ban on the LTTE is
'part of a falling in line with a worldwide pax americana' which the
man explains as analogous to the pax romana, which he also then has
to explain.
His explanations are simplistic, but they suggest a splendid cunning
that he doubtless thinks justified, since he clearly believes in a world
without morality, provided the cause is good enough. This does not however
preclude him from snide asides about similar views in others. Thus,
his very first paragraph describes 'water torture sanctioned by the
President of the United States' as part of the 'martial pax Americana'which
he claims 'is presented with a Christian-evangelical signature also
as jus ad bellum, 'just war', and as jus in bello, 'just (method) in
war', fighting Communism in the 1950s and now terrorism.
A little learning is indeed a dangerous thing. The man then brings
in Cornelius Nepos and conflates the theory of just war with 'the formulation
paritur pax bello, 'peace is won by war', and then talks of India and
China also having 'ideologues of just war'. George Orwell would have
had a delightful time taking this essay apart. You do not need ideologues
to justify what common sense dictates, that self-defence is ample justification
in itself for war, and that extrapolations as to what constitutes self-defence
have always been acceptable as justifying war. Unfortunately that does
not solve the problem since there will generally be questions about
the acceptability of such extrapolations. Most people for instance accept
that the wars against Iraq in 1991 and Afghanistan in 2001 were acceptable
in terms of self-defence (and were authorized as such by the UN), but
the war against Iraq in 2003 was not (and was not so authorized).
Then again there will be questions as to the legitimacy of the means
employed. Schalk's confounding of confusion becomes understandable at
this point because, having chided the American president, he then claims
that, in its own concept of just war, revived as he claims 'by the Buddhist
monk Walpola Rahula in 1992 and by President Chandrika Kumaranatunga
Bandaranayake (sic) in 1995', Sri Lanka included 'counter terrorism
methods like terrorizing civilians by making them homeless, raping,
torturing and killing them'.
And then the man declares that 'Being confronted with a 'just war'
of the Lankan Government, the Tamil Resistance Movement (TRM) responded
by its own version of a just war known in Tamil as punita por, 'holy
war', in the terminology of Veluppillai Pirapakaran, to resist an attempted
genocide of the Tamil speakers. Significantly, at no point in his 14
page article does Prof Schalk note that the Tigers, or the TRM as he
terms it, uses terror as a tool.
Now there can be no question as to the fact that, in the course of
war, illegitimate methods are used. The question is, are they sanctioned
and justified by government. Using his sleight of hand, Prof Schalk
insinuates that, just as the American President sanctioned water torture,
so the Sri Lankan government sanctioned rape and torture and killing
of civilians.
This is nonsense. Prof Schalk may complain that the Sri Lankan government
is slow or inefficient in punishing such activities - a trait it shares
with all governments - but it has never sanctioned them. With regard
to the Tigers the case is different. Though often they deny obvious
atrocities, the rulings of the Scandinavian Monitoring Mission alone
show how they were systemic. The claim that they have reformed with
regard to child soldiers may or may not be credited, but it makes clear
the fact that they did engage in forced recruitment in the past. And
the ethnic cleansing of Muslims they engaged in in 1990 was not only
patent, it still finds apologists in the form of Mr Vaiko, their apologist
in Tamilnadu. Even though both Mr Pirapakaran, as Prof Schalk calls
him, and Anton Balasingham came as close as Tigers can to an apology
for the action, even though Sri Lankan Tamils to a man seem to regret
it now, Vaiko's recent justification recently in Oslo, on the grounds
that the expelled Muslims included collaborators with the Sinhala government,
suggests that at least some elements in the LTTE believe that tactics
such as 'terrorizing civilians by making them homeless' are acceptable,
in the context of what is justified as a 'holy war'.
In short, what Prof Schalk's collection of conflations is designed
to do is to belittle the European Union ban on the Tigers as being not
a conscious decision based on recognition of their terrorist nature
but rather simply obeisance to self-righteous American impositions that
include immoral methods; to claim that the Sri Lankan government asserted
the righteousness of not only war but also similar immorality in the
form of terrorizing techniques; to suggest that the Tigers are fighting
only because they were confronted by such tactics; and finally to characterize
the EU ban on the Tigers as 'biased and evil, because it insinuates
motives'. The theologian in Prof Schalk comes out here, as benefits
a denizen of Uppsala, but whilst the attribution of motives may be a
terrible sin, equally nasty is the assertion as well as the insinuation
of falsehoods designed to denigrate. When he then claims that the EU
action 'is immoral and counteracts scientific principles of interpretation'
and complains about 'the sloppy way historical facts are handled by
the EU' one wonders whether his biblical studies ever extended to the
man with the beam in his eye who pointed out the mote in another's.
***
The archaic nature of Schalk's mindset becomes even clearer in the next
section of his essay, when he privileges the Tigers, whom he continues
to call the TRM, on the grounds that it 'is the only party that sticks
to the election program from 1977 that demanded a separate state for
the Tamils'. The fact that in successive elections since then that program
has not figured matters not a whit to Schalk's sense of history. Indeed
the program of the TNA in 2004 was different, but their victory is simply
seen as 'democratic proof that the Tigers are considered the bulwark
and guarantee of the Sri Lankan Tamils' existential interests'.
Further slight of hand is apparent here in that he asserts that the
TNA 'obtained 22 out of 23 seats in the Tamil dominated electoral districts
of the Northeast. First, the fraudulent nature of that election in the
Northeast has been amply documented, including by European Union election
observers. Second, while the TNA won all but one of the seats in the
three districts of the Northern Province, it won only about a third
of the seats in the three districts of the Eastern Province, thus providing
democratic proof that the LTTE cannot be taken as the authority for
the East. Third, since by then the Eastern Tamils were trying to break
free of LTTE domination, the latter killed one candidate at the time
of the election, and then forced another who topped the poll to resign,
and subsequently killed him as well. This was their way of eliminating
Tamils who supported the Eastern breakaway group. Doubtless for Schalk
such murders of Tamils are quite acceptable, as part of a strategy 'to
resist an attempted genocide of the Tamil speakers'.
Another example of Schalk's scientific principles of interpretation
is apparent in his dismissal of the EU's characterization of the Karuna
group, the Eastern Tamils who broke away from the LTTE, as 'effectively
a third party to be considered in the conflict'. He asserts that this
is 'disingenuous' because the then UNP government 'boasted having secretly
helped (sic) the Karuna group to split off from the LTTE', because 'the
LTTE revealed what had been an open secret that the paramilitaries work
hand in hand with the army' and because 'according to the CFA of February
2002 it is the responsibility of the GOSL to disarm the paramilitaries,
a stipulation which, however, has at no time been implemented'.
If Schalk cannot see that all this is nonsense, he has no claims to
being a serious academic. The validity of the determination of the Karuna
group to split from the LTTE cannot depend on whether anyone helped
them, let alone boasted of having secretly helped them. Characterization
by the LTTE of the Karuna group as paramilitaries does not make them
paramilitaries unless the LTTE too are seen as paramilitaries, on the
grounds that that is the right term to describe any unofficial armed
group - in any case, since the LTTE has no mechanism for allowing different
perspectives to be weighed democratically, a group that broke away from
the LTTE is still in essence of the same genus as the parent group.
Finally, the GOSL did disarm the former militant groups in terms of
the CFA, only to find the LTTE picking them off ruthlessly, with no
mechanism for them to point out that this violated the CFA since complaints
were only entertained by the Monitoring Mission from the government
or the LTTE.
In this section of his essay Schalk also suggests that the LTTE is willing
to negotiate whereas 'no concession has been offered by the Singhalese
parties and governments'. This again is nonsense. The agreement in Oslo
to explore a solution based on a federal solution within a united Sri
Lanka was questioned initially by the LTTE leader Mr Pirapakaran, who
seemed indeed to have lost confidence in his chief negotiator, Anton
Balasingham, because of that agreement. It was the LTTE that subsequently
withdrew from negotiations, and stayed away for three long years.
Schalk then refers to the P-TOMS, 'the organizational set-up suggested
for the distribution of aid to the tsunami victims', which was of course
a concession offered by the government, rejected by the Supreme Court
as being unconstitutional. Now Mr Schalk might disagree with that judgment,
as many others did including the President at the time, but none of
these opponents has argued against it on a legal basis, as opposed to
simply asserting prejudice. Unfortunately for Mr Schalk, as the present
government too has found, Sri Lanka has an independent Supreme Court,
unlike the Tigers would have, given that their guidelines on the 'Judicial
Administration of Tamil Eelam' begins with the stirring assertion 'It
functions on the basis of the direct approval of His Excellency, Mr
V Prabhakaran, the National Leader…Only he has the authority to
reduce or increase the sentences of the courts wherever the need arises.
All laws are made with his approval.'
Finally, Schalk asserts that the EU listing will make 'the already
socially marginalized, legally insecure Tamils living in the EU…subject
to permanent surveillance and rampant denunciation', and quotes approvingly
a Professor John Neelsen, also called Nelson, who says that 'it is high
time that not only the Tamils but all immigrants in the EU and, not
least, the native citizens of Europe themselves rise in protest against
this new government sponsored attack on human rights.
***
After this clarion call, Schalk beats his breast to say that he too
once fell in with a trend of calling the TRM ruthless, though he makes
it clear that he will not succumb to 'the influence of pax americana'
so as to describe it as terrorist. He approves of what he describes
as the brave reaction to the EU ban by a German Minister who has demanded
sanctions against Sri Lanka, but then goes on to criticize 'leading
EU politicians' who are dependent on the work of 'administrative officials'
who do not know 'Tamil and/or Sinhala but are in part dependent of partisan
Lankan propaganda in English'. He does not mention in what language
Tiger propaganda is presented. Presumably the German Minister he celebrates
knows to resist propaganda, unlike everyone else in Europe who he claims
was compelled 'to vote for a proposal in the EU, even against their
conviction'. For good measure he adds, perhaps realizing the idiocy
of suggesting that Lankan propaganda achieved this, that the real pressure
was from pax Americana.
Then Schalk critiques diplomats as well as politicians who claim the
TRM will not reform, allowing his guard to slip for a moment in that
he seems to accept that the TRM did at some stage engage in 'child recruiting,
assassinations, terrorizing the population under its control, violating
cease fire agreements, etc'. His final dismissive assertion is that
such views arise from historical determinism but these misguided individuals
have a limited historical perspective, unlike he Peter Schalk.
To display his 'long historical perspective' he then discourses on
the 'Flexibility of the TRM', basically to assert that the TRM is flexible
about its methods but will not change its aim. Assessing this section
of the argument is hardly necessary, because Schalk makes clear his
total amorality when he seems to celebrate 'conditioned flexibility',
the TRM being 'extremely goal and gain oriented, but this is an advantage
in peace negotiations', 'a tactical surrender that again transformed
into fatal attacks on the IPFK', a situation which has 'no place for
ethics', flexibility 'with regard to methods, but of course only conditionally
within certain boundary conditions. The method must lead step by step
to the ultimate aim, which is Tamililam'. He seems to relish the fact
that 'True, the TRM is not democratic movement. It is an armed resistance
movement in a situation of war. It hits right and left, wherever a threat
appears, much likethe French resistance during World war II. The internecine
fights between groups with the French resistance cost many lives …
A resistance movement in war cannot afford pluralism. Pluralism is historically
a democratic achievement in a situation of peace.'
Finally, in this section, Schalk claims legitimacy for the TRM on the
grounds of its own 'conviction that the TRM is now the only movement
that represents the will of the Tamil people from the 1977 election,
when a majority of them elected the TULF. As mentioned above, it had
on its programme the achievement of Tamililam by peaceful methods, agitation
and struggle. The TRM acted completely in accordance with the mandate
that was given to the TULF, but which the TULF did not follow up'. Schalk
does not mention that such action involved killing the leader of the
TULF who had received a fresh mandate in 1989 for working within a revised
constitutional structure that included devolution through Provincial
Councils. In short, the legitimacy of the Tigers depends on a mandate
conferred in 1977 for 'peaceful methods, agitation and struggle', which
is assumed to justify violent armed struggle that incorporates 'child
recruiting, assassinations, terrorizing the population under its control,
violating cease fire agreements, etc'. That is now cast in stone, and
the different mandates conferred in subsequent years count for nothing.
Finally in this section Schalk turns the Tigers into lambs in claiming
that the 'TRM has pushed to get the Government to accept a meeting for
a renewal of the Cease Fire Agreement'. He does not date this push,
suggesting it was long ago in that he thinks it odd that 'the EU in
January 2006 urges exclusively the TRM to agree to meet representatives
of the Government without delay to discuss the implementation of the
Ceasefire Agreement'.
At this stage it would seem that Schalk has lost his head completely.
The EU made its plea at a time when the Tigers had stayed away from
negotiations for nearly three years. They did in conformity with this
plea meet the Government for negotiations, one and a half times. There
were discussions in February, after which they fought shy of negotiations,
telling the Norwegian ambassador that the issue of child soldiers should
not be a matter for discussion. They then tried to assassinate the army
commander. Despite this the Government agreed to negotiations in June,
the Tigers came to Oslo, and then refused to appear. They then launched
two massive attacks, in the North and the East, in August. When these
were successfully repulsed, they returned to negotiations in October,
but withdrew after just one day.
Throughout 2007 the Government tried to resume talks but the Tigers
were adamant, making it clear to the poor Norwegian ambassador in his
last visit to them that they would not talk. Then, after the Government
formally abrogated the Ceasefire - which the Tigers had according to
the Scandinavian monitors violated nearly 4000 times, with Government
violations less than a tenth of that number - they declared that they
wanted to go back to the Ceasefire Agreement which they now promised
to observe 100%.
Most people would of course have assumed that, when they first signed
the Ceasefire Agreement, they intended to follow it 100%. But Schalk's
casuistry suggests that he quite understands the mindset and approach
of those who make reservations in their hearts that they will not proclaim
publicly. So, having criticized the EU, he waxes lyrical about the charms
of life in the Vanni where 'the armed forces of the TRM are invisible…Law
and order prevails. The surplus of production is redistributed among
the poor.' The forcible recruitment of the children of the poor is ignored
by Schalk - unless, that is, he is now delighted that such recruitment
extends now to all families, including those working for international
NGOs. Doubtless such egalitarianism would excite him considerably, as
a tremendous blow against pax Americana.
***
The next section of Schalk's essay is a charming interlude about how
the TRM was educated about different systems of state building and democracy
and federal structures and demilitarization and other delights - which
are then promptly shattered in the next section with its paean to Pirapakaran's
intransigence. Entitled 'The Norwegian Connection', this section is
a forceful critique of the ambition of 'Norwegian diplomats…to
move the two parties explicitly towards federalism'. This is first seen
as counterproductive because of 'the ethnonationalist side of government
supporters', characterized as those who came together under the current
President, ignoring the fact that mention of federalism was way back
in 2003, and that Mahinda Rajapakse was not even the leader of his party
until a couple of years later.
Conversely, Pirapakaran's opposition to federalism is eulogized, on
the grounds that the TRM fighters take an oath to die 'for the liberation
of a self-ruling / independent Tamililam…None has died for federalism.'
So Pirapakaran cannot be expected to change, but Mahinda Rajapakse must
of course abandon the political manifesto on which he won a democratic
election.
And to conclude this wonderful exercise in lunacy, Schalk criticizes
the latest FBI analysis of the TRM as being possibly inspired by Dayan
Jayatilleka, 'the present Ambassador of Lanka at the UN in Geneva'.
Given Dr Jayatilleka's forceful critiques of American policy in many
areas, the idea of him influencing the FBI is quite wonderful, confirming
the image of Prof Schalk as a sixties socialist warrior, seeing collusion
with capitalism in any radical who differed in even the smallest particular
from the preferred formula.
It is sad that Schalk's formula is basically totally commitment to
terror. No compromise is required from Pirapakaran, because his is a
just cause, whereas the Sri Lankan state may need to be crushed militarily
because, though democratic, it is unjust in the eyes of Pirapakaran
and Schalk. So, forgetting the history of East Timor, and the willingness
of the Indonesian government to accept self-determination for an area
they had invaded several years earlier, Schalk demands military offence
against the Sri Lankan government, assuming this will be like East Timor
where 'many thousands of lives were saved'.
One would assume the man had finally fallen over the edge into madness,
were it not that he figures on the Resource Network of the Centre for
Just Peace and Democracy, which the Berghof Foundation said it helped
the LTTE to set up in the hope that it would move them towards democratic
practices. Others on this Network are Karen Parker, who tried to justify
child soldiers over fifteen to a recent United Nations Human Rights
Council meeting, while Schalk's fellow apologist for terrorism, John
Neelsan (as he appears here, from Germany it seems where he doubtless
bombards the celebrated German Minister with truth rather than propaganda)
is on the Advisory Board.
With resources and friends and advisers like these, it is no wonder
that the LTTE is being driven further and further into terrorism and
intolerance. John Neelsen or whatever he really is may believe that
the native citizens of Europe will rise in protest 'in their own long-term
interest' at the proscription of the Tigers, but until the Tigers are
saved from such friends and realize that most people in the world abhor
terrorism, they will not be able to do much for the Tamil people they
claim to serve.
Prof Rajiva Wijesinha
Secretary-General
Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process
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