The Port City project: Reconciliation process

Friday, 13 March 2015 01:50 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By D.C. Ranatunga It’s very rarely that there is news about Sri Lanka in the media in Australia. While the electronic media occasionally takes up the refugee issue, the print media hardly publishes anything. So it was quite unusual for the newspaper ‘Weekend Australia’ to devote quite a lot of space for not one but two news features relating to Sri Lanka recently. The World News page carried the lead story under the heading ‘Sri Lanka’s $1.9 b

China port deal put on hold’ with the Asia-Pacific Editor, Rowan Callick starting off: “China’s relationship with Sri Lanka, the most lustrous of the string of pearls that comprises President Xi Jinping’s dream of a Maritime Silk Road, risks losing its shine.” After quoting Sri Lankan Government Spokesman, Callick states that Sri Lanka being strategically located for Indian Ocean mercantile and naval traffic, it provides a crucial element in the Maritime Silk Road that in Xi’s vision would link the Indian and Pacific oceans and pull the seaboard nations – including Australia – in to closer economic ties with China. “This strategy would open the sea lanes to China’s growing naval fleet, with its attack submarines last year visiting Sri Lankan ports twice.” Pointing out that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited China seven times during his decade in office, Callick says that Xi, during his visit to Sri Lanka last September described the country as an “all-weather friend” – a term used previously for Pakistan. “It appeared, however, that China had not prepared itself adequately for the contingency of Rajapaksa’s defeat at the polls. This points to an important area for greater Chinese diplomatic alertness and agility – in relating to countries with democratic governance.” The writer adds that the port projects in Sri Lanka (he refers to the $1.3 b zone at Hambantota which is planned to include a container [port, bunkering system, oil refinery and airport as well) had taken an added significance after India elected in a landslide last year Narendra Modi as its new prime minister. “Since then Mr. Modi, while developing cordial relations with Mr. Xi, has also built warm personal links with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US president Barrack Obama,” he concludes. Less fear in the north The other article headlined ‘Sri Lanka’s uneven highway to harmony’ by Amanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent of the newspaper, reviews the Sri Lankan Government’s performance halfway through its first 100 days in office working through “an ambitious checklist”. “Sri Lanka’s bureaucratic landscape has already changed drastically with (Prime Minster) Wickremesinghe sweeping a broom through crony-filed corridors, just as the towering Rajapaksa cut-outs have disappeared from Colombo’s streetscape,” she reports. She says that the most marked change is an absence of fear among a population accustomed to the sometimes violent intrusions of the State. “Not that the security apparatus that threw such a long shadow has disappeared; the military presence in the country’s former Tamil Tiger-held north remains overwhelming. The Air Force operates the only flights into Jaffna, the rebels’ former capital; the military still occupies thousands of hectares of private land; and military intelligence maintains its presence – though no longer with a free hand to intimidate.” Emphasising that the prospects for reconciliation of the long-fractured nation are better than they have been in years, she says that expectations are huge and many Tamils, sensing their best opportunity to secure political autonomy are showing a potentially self-defeating impatience with the Government. She quotes NP Chief Minister Wigneswaran as saying that Tamil impatience is justified. He admits there is a sense of freedom even in the north now. “Fear is no longer there, (But) reconciliation is only possible if you know what truth is,” Amanda Hodge quotes him. “We have suffered under the boot of the Army in the north for decades. People who own those lands have been living in welfare camps for 20 years,” he had said. The article discusses the problems connected with land distribution. “Since 2013 the military has demolished thousands of houses, temples, churches and schools on the land, making it impossible for displaced families to identify their properties without a new survey. Not everyone managed to grab their land deeds as they ran for their lives. Besides, families have since multiplied, meaning lands must be divided between greater numbers. How to finance the rebuilding of these razed communities is also a problem yet to be settled.” According to Amanda, for thousands of other families hoping to return to their land, the issue is complicated by substantial military development. “The Army now runs tourist resorts, a golf course, a restaurant, an officers’ recreation club, a bakery and farm plots on seized Jaffna land. North of Mullaitivu, it has built holiday bungalows on the edge of the Nandikadal lagoon where thousands of civilians died, trapped between the advancing military and a remnant rebel force.” Quoting Prime Minister Wickremesinghe whom she has interviewed, the writer says he talks of a new era of transparent development and his determination to unravel contracts secured under the former Government and financed with Chinese loans at interest rates so far above market rates they appeared “more an exercise in money laundering than genuine investment”. “Everyone is important for reforms,” the Prime Minister says. “But the genocide resolution (by NP Chief Minister Wigneswaran) was irresponsible and gave ammunition to Rajapaksa allies seeking a return to power through the June parliamentary elections.” The comprehensive article concludes that after 26 years of war and another six of unequal peace, the road to reconciliation will not be smooth.