By Tisaranee Gunasekara
SUNDAY LEADER
“We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart’s grown brutal from the fare; More substance in our enmities Than in our love….”
Yeats (The Stare’s Nest)
On 22nd October 2007, a group of Black Tigers launched a devastating attack on the Saliyapura air force camp. Prior to setting off on their fatal mission, the attackers participated in the usual Black Tiger rituals with Vellupillai Pirapaharan. The pictures of young men and women, destined for death, being blessed by the stolidly middle-aged Tiger Supremo were publicised by the LTTE, even before the attack was over. That act of ruthless premeditation was a chilling reminder that Mr. Pirapaharan’s claim to greatness rested on human sacrifices and the Tiger prospered by devouring its own young.
Yeats (The Stare’s Nest)
On 22nd October 2007, a group of Black Tigers launched a devastating attack on the Saliyapura air force camp. Prior to setting off on their fatal mission, the attackers participated in the usual Black Tiger rituals with Vellupillai Pirapaharan. The pictures of young men and women, destined for death, being blessed by the stolidly middle-aged Tiger Supremo were publicised by the LTTE, even before the attack was over. That act of ruthless premeditation was a chilling reminder that Mr. Pirapaharan’s claim to greatness rested on human sacrifices and the Tiger prospered by devouring its own young.
Once the attack ended, the Lankan Forces packed the naked bodies of the attackers (including three women) into two tractors and paraded these grisly ‘trophies’ in the Anuradhapura town: “Sri Lankan authorities stripped the bodies of Tamil Tiger guerrillas killed in an attack on a key military air base and put them on public display, local residents said” (AFP – 23.10.2007). That this display of barbarism happened in a locale which nurtured a great civilisation and was home to a king, who taught posterity a pivotal lesson in civility by honouring the fallen foe, was a frightfully ominous irony. (Incidentally, many Sinhalese responded to this horrendous spectacle not with approbation but with embarrassment and even outrage).
The memory of that old barbarity returned, as I watched the Channel 4 documentary, ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’, bringing with it a frightening sense of déjà vu. My knowledge of anything mechanical/digital is abysmal. My response to the movie is premised on a layman’s perception. And from that vantage, there does seem to be something terrifyingly similar between that old atrocity and several scenes in the Channel 4 movie. In both, the dead foe is stripped naked and displayed, with a vindictive gleefulness. Incidentally, Vellupillai Pirapaharan too was treated in a similar manner, in death. In the initial photographs, his body is clad in the customary Tiger-fatigues but in the subsequent ones, he is stripped to his underpants. It is as if stripping the enemy has become a signature-deed, a symbolic act redolent of hatred and contempt.
This similarity in old and new atrocities can be coincidental; it neither confirms nor denies the authenticity of the footage. That task belongs to experts. Channel 4 contends that the footage was authenticated by four experts: forensic pathologist Daniel Spitz, forensic video-analyst Jeff Spivack, firearms-evidence expert Peter Diaczuk and forensic-video expert Grant Fredricks. Colombo argues that the footage was debunked by experts; unfortunately the sole expert cited is a Sri Lankan-Australian, Siri Hewavitharana, described in the Defence Ministry website as ‘one of the world’s leading experts on digital video systems’. Logically, rationally, the four experts cited by Channel 4 seem more credible than the regime’s sole authority. And there cannot be any doubt as to which set of experts the world, including India, would find more credible.
From a layman’s point, the Channel 4 movie looks, sounds (the Sinhala voices in the background, the terminology used) and feels horrifyingly real. Just watching it is a searing experience. The atrocities would have been horrendous enough had they been attributed to the LTTE; the mere thought that they could have been committed by the Lankan army, and in the name of all Sinhalese, is an undying shame and an unbearable burden. The movie, and the accusations it levels, is a political and moral-ethical millstone around our collective necks.
The charge that Lankan soldiers tortured, raped and executed Tamil prisoners is echoing round the world and will return to haunt us, even years from now. Denial cannot slay this Hydra; the only way is for Colombo to commission its own panel of international experts with sufficiently well-established credentials. If such a panel concludes that the videos are fakes, the issue will die a natural death and Sri Lanka’s name can be cleared and her honour restored. But if the panel authenticates the footage, we need to accept that judgement and make a serious and sincere effort to deal with the problem.
Dehumanisation
“William L Calley Jr., 26 years old, is a mild-mannered, boyish-looking Vietnam combat veteran with the nickname “Rusty:’ The Army is completing an investigation of charges that he deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians… in March 1968 in a Vietcong stronghold known as ‘Pinkville’”. Thus began the groundbreaking exposé by legendary reporter Seymour Hersh about one of the most heinous war-crimes of the 20th Century, the Mai Lai Massacre. A comment made by another participant indicates why war crimes can be committed by any fighting force, irrespective of the real or perceived justice of its cause: “We were under orders. We all thought we were doing the right thing. At that time it didn’t bother me” (St. Louis Post Dispatch – 25.11.1969).
A Soviet soldier who fought in Afghanistan described this process of dehumanisation to which no army is immune: “Before I went into the army, it was Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy who taught me how I ought to live my life. In the army it was sergeants….. ‘What is a para? Answer: a bloody-minded brute with an iron fist and no conscience!’… The message given to some of the Soviet army in Afghanistan was…‘we must banish pity from our minds’” (quoted in ‘Humanity’ – Jonathan Glover). To facilitate their gory task, and to justify it, a soldier needs to dehumanise the enemy; but in doing so, he would, inadvertently, dehumanise himself. That is how normal, decent boys (and girls) become thoughtless, pitiless killing machines. As another Mai Lai veteran put it, “Why did I do that? This is not me. Something happened to me. You reach a point where you snap… Somebody flicks a switch and you are a completely different person. There is a culture of violence, of brutality, with people all around you doing the same thing” (ibid). This is why most civilised countries provide soldiers who had been in combat situations with counselling facilities. As far as I know this is not happening in Sri Lanka; in fact it cannot happen, so long as our leaders cling to that absurd obscenity: humanitarian operation with zero-civilian casualties.
The contamination does not stop with soldiers; it eventually affects the society they represent. So Tamils justified Tiger atrocities including child conscription. Similarly many Sinhalese will try to ignore/excuse the horrendous content of ‘Killing Fields’. But if this footage is authentic, those dead men, women and children represent crimes which no human being, no Sinhalese, no Buddhist can excuse let alone condone. To do so would be to demean our humanity and degrade our country. Torture is torture, rape is rape and murder is murder irrespective of the identity of the perpetrator or of the victim.
Once we accept torture, rape and murder as legitimate weapons of war, what would be the moral-ethical difference between us and the LTTE? Once society sanctifies such atrocious measures, what is to prevent the state from using them against other (real or perceived) enemies, including someday, the democratic opposition and the Southern masses?
A Soviet soldier who fought in Afghanistan described this process of dehumanisation to which no army is immune: “Before I went into the army, it was Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy who taught me how I ought to live my life. In the army it was sergeants….. ‘What is a para? Answer: a bloody-minded brute with an iron fist and no conscience!’… The message given to some of the Soviet army in Afghanistan was…‘we must banish pity from our minds’” (quoted in ‘Humanity’ – Jonathan Glover). To facilitate their gory task, and to justify it, a soldier needs to dehumanise the enemy; but in doing so, he would, inadvertently, dehumanise himself. That is how normal, decent boys (and girls) become thoughtless, pitiless killing machines. As another Mai Lai veteran put it, “Why did I do that? This is not me. Something happened to me. You reach a point where you snap… Somebody flicks a switch and you are a completely different person. There is a culture of violence, of brutality, with people all around you doing the same thing” (ibid). This is why most civilised countries provide soldiers who had been in combat situations with counselling facilities. As far as I know this is not happening in Sri Lanka; in fact it cannot happen, so long as our leaders cling to that absurd obscenity: humanitarian operation with zero-civilian casualties.
The contamination does not stop with soldiers; it eventually affects the society they represent. So Tamils justified Tiger atrocities including child conscription. Similarly many Sinhalese will try to ignore/excuse the horrendous content of ‘Killing Fields’. But if this footage is authentic, those dead men, women and children represent crimes which no human being, no Sinhalese, no Buddhist can excuse let alone condone. To do so would be to demean our humanity and degrade our country. Torture is torture, rape is rape and murder is murder irrespective of the identity of the perpetrator or of the victim.
Once we accept torture, rape and murder as legitimate weapons of war, what would be the moral-ethical difference between us and the LTTE? Once society sanctifies such atrocious measures, what is to prevent the state from using them against other (real or perceived) enemies, including someday, the democratic opposition and the Southern masses?
No comments:
Post a Comment