Sri Lanka defeated terrorism, but is yet to defeat extremism: Prof. Gunaratna

By Shanika Sriyananda

An international counter-terrorism expert, Prof. Rohan Gunaratna said that Sri Lanka, which was a prosperous island nation,better off than many of the other countries in Asia in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, lost stability, harmony and security as it got its geopolitics wrong.

“Sri Lanka suffered for 30years as a result of the geopolitical conflict,” he said.

Prof.Gunaratna said that Sri Lanka, which was more prosperous than Japan and Hong Kong in the 1950s, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore in the 1960s and Taiwan in the 1970s, was surpassed by those nations as Sri Lanka’s security and stability was threatened due to geopolitics.

Addressing a packed audience of over 2,000 participants at the annual convention Viyathmaga 2018 forum, which was organised to form a vision for ‘An Intellectually Inspired Sri Lanka,’ he spoke on ‘Geopolitics and National Security of Sri Lanka: Continuity or Change?’

Prof.Gunaratna, who was Research Assistant to former President J.R. Jayawardena, said that during Jayawardena’s era Sri Lanka was closed to America but under late Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s regime, Sri Lanka had strengthened its relationships with the Soviets.

He also said that when India was within the Soviet sphere of influence, Sri Lanka had strayed out of the Non-Aligned Movement and came within the American sphere of influence.

India’s fears

“India feared US was using the Voice of America (VoA) station to spy on India. Late Prime Minister of IndiaIndira Gandhi had once asked the late President Jayawardena to get rid of Israel interest section in Sri Lanka. But when Jayawardena asked about the Israel consulate in Bombay (Mumbai now), Gandhi had replied that she couldn’t do anything as there was a large Jewish community in Bombay. In many ways, Indo-Sri Lanka relations had created a huge tension,” he noted.

Prof.Gunaratna claimed that after the July riots in 1983 in Sri Lanka, India had financed the training of over 20,000 LTTE cadres and other terrorists based in Tamil Nadu and given training in batches in different parts of India, including to Danu, the woman who killed the late Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi.  

“It was a huge challenge and a huge miracle that Sri Lanka could achieve peace because it fought not just a terrorist group but a highly-capable force, which was very much like fighting the force of another country. Sowe got our geopolitics wrong,” he stressed.

“What is the solution for this?” he asked, adding that the Asian region was going to be a region of great competition with rivalry and challengescreating massive tension in the next 10years.

Geneva in Sri Lanka 

Prof.Gunaratna proposed that Sri Lanka should adopt a neutral strategy and have no special alliance with America, India or China but be a country which other countries could work with.

“Why not build Sri Lanka’s profile, which constitutionally says that we are a neutral state, which advocates freedom of navigation, advocates issues where we resolve disputes and challenges? As world power shifts from the Asia Pacific to Indo-pacific region, Sri Lanka can play a pivotal role by being a neutral state,” he said.

Prof.Gunaratna proposed for Sri Lanka to become similar to Switzerland, which adopted the same policy during World War II for the country to survive, prosper and also raise its profile.

“The country has to explore the idea of becoming the Geneva in Asia by offering land to the UN to base one of its entities in Sri Lanka,” he added.

Cyber protection force

Prof.Gunaratna said Sri Lanka was at the cutting edge of innovation and that was the reason it defeated the ruthless terrorist outfit and now Sri Lanka needed to think of another innovative capability, a fourth force. 

“We have the tri-forces – the Army, Navy and the Air Force – butwe need to create another capability, the Sri Lanka Cyber Force, as the real challenge is not only coming from the physical space but from cyberspace. This is a force not for offence but for defence to protect the country’s IT infrastructure, to protect the cyber domain and to protect our gateway. In the event of conflicts, transformation of defensive weapons to offensive weapons is not difficult,” he emphasised. 

Prof.Gunaratna, the Head of International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore, said that maintaining stability and security in Sri Lanka was paramount to maintain good inter-ethnic and inter religious relations in future. 

“There is nothing more important than building a harmonious Sri Lanka – that is one Sri Lanka,” he said, stressing the urgent need to criminalise hate speech and make it a penal offense to insult any religion or race and also bringing in the Harmony Act to treasure each other’s cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. 

Referring to the riots in Digana, Prof.Gunaratna said that it could have been stopped if the Police Intelligence service was very vigilant on things that might go wrong. “After the three-wheeler incident, there were groups which were waiting for that man to die to strike and create chaos,” he said.

“The greatest challenges in the world are terrorism and extremism,” he said. “Sri Lanka defeated terrorism. But still this nation has a challenge of defeating extremism. Terrorism is a vicious by-product of exclusiveness and extremism; we all have to work towards inclusiveness.”