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By Dr Jehan Perera

The anti Muslim violence in Aluthgama last week has once again highlighted the vulnerability of Sri Lankan society to ethnic and religious polarisation. The attack on Muslim-owned shops and houses in the town was by people who came from outside for the most part.

They were members of the BBS that has taken up an anti-Muslim stand and engaged in other acts of violence against Muslim interests. However, previous such attacks were on individual targets, including mosques and shops. In most of those previous incidents the responses by the police and security forces was slow or ineffective with the miscreants going free, which created a climate of impunity for the attackers. The costs have been high with at least two persons being reported killed, more than 40 injured and many shops and houses destroyed or damaged. The actual casualty figures may be more.

The government failed in its duty on more than one count. The immediate failure was to permit a public rally in Aluthgama that led to the mob violence. The rally was held in the aftermath of an altercation between a small group of Muslim men and a Buddhist monk over a traffic dispute on the road. The version that appeared in the media was that three Muslim men assaulted a Buddhist monk after getting into an altercation with his driver. Another version is that it was the driver who got assaulted and not the monk. Whatever be the truth of the matter, it is totally  nacceptable that there should have been any sort of attack on shops and homes of others merely because they belonged to the same ethnic or religious community of the persons with whom a private dispute had arisen. Such acts of collective vengeance are what racism is about.

Government failures

Sri Lanka’s own history and international experience shows that inter-community relations are fragile, and there is a need for eternal vigilance, which is the price of democracy. This is where the government is failing badly. It is reported that appeals were made to the police by Muslim community leaders in Aluthgama not to give permission to the BBS hold its rally. For the past two years the BBS has been active in anti Muslim propaganda and also in violent actions. Therefore the police had grounds on which to deny permission to the holding of the rally.

There had been a history of tension in the Aluthgama area, with a Muslim-owned shop having been attacked several weeks earlier. The police have shown alacrity in denying permission to groups they suspect of being trouble makers, be they student groups or trade unions.

The deeper failure of the government has been its unwillingness to come out and affirm to the country at large that the Muslims are part and parcel of Sri Lanka’s plural society. Instead the government has been permitting the BBS to propagate the view that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country, and that the Muslims in particular are a threat to its unique identity. This incident follows a sustained hate campaign against the Muslim community in the Aluthgama area and elsewhere in the country which has not been countered by either legal or political means. It is tragic that five years after the end of an ethnic-based civil war, another dimension of communal violence is opening up to cause immense suffering to innocent people.

Three commitments

In the aftermath of the Aluthgama violence there are three commitments that the government needs to provide the Muslim community with. The first is that it will affirm the plural and multi religious nature of the Sri Lankan polity. Since the end of the war the government has been propagating a contrary message of nationalism, in which the position of the ethnic majority has taken pride of place. While this may have logic in terms of obtaining majority electoral support, it is detrimental to national unity. The second commitment that the government needs to give is to compensate all who lost their homes and businesses due to the violence. This is incumbent on the government as it contributed through its negligence to the violence. The third commitment is to improve on its performance in terms of rule of law. Since the end of the war, Sri Lanka has witnessed a gradual decline in the rule of law and an increase in levels of impunity often reportedly due to political patronage at national, provincial and local levels. This trend needs to be arrested forth with and the guilty not shielded from facing the due legal processes. The government needs to restore the rule of law and ensure that the truth behind the incident will be made public so that the perpetrators of violence and destruction will not go free to continue with their rampage elsewhere.

WAY FORWARD

The danger in permitting the situation to drift is that it can lead to radicalisation. Inter community relations between Sinhalese and Muslims are currently not based on fear of each other. Undoubtedly there are misapprehensions and prejudices that members of different communities have with each other. But even though some of them might look down or in askance at the other, there is no fear of each other. This can change if the present sporadic violence engaged by organisations such as BBS are permitted to grow. Sections of the media that valorize those who have been at the forefront of attacking the other community can create role models for youth which will lead to violence in the future. If the situation deteriorates the next step in the downward spiral will be fear of the other. Sri Lanka will move in the direction of further entrenched conflict. We only recently got out of one, now we are heading towards another.

Thus far the Muslims have chosen the path of engagement as their way of conflict resolution. They have stayed within the framework of overall government policy even while asserting their rights. This is because the Muslims have decided that they are going to live side by side with the other communities in Sri Lanka and there is no desire for separation on their part. Although the SLMC presented a document to the UN Human Rights Commissioner giving details of incidents of harassment of Muslims, it continues to remain a partner of the government.

Although Minister Rishard Bathiudeen filed legal action against the BBS for marching into his ministry and defaming him, he remains committed to the government. This is evidence of both pragmatism and also the desire to solve problems within the existing framework. There is also a need on the part of the ethnic and religious minorities in Sri Lanka who are feeling themselves vulnerable to the juggernaut of Sinhala nationalism which has grown stronger due to political backing from within the government itself to study the approach to conflict resolution of the great American Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King. He stood for equal rights for the black American people, but not for separation. He couched the demands of the black people within the framework of upholding the Constitution and justice for all.

He appealed to the higher ideals of the white Americans, without threatening the whites that their country would be endangered by giving the black people their rights. Likewise in Sri Lanka there is a need to place higher ideals of reconciliation, unity and pluralism before the people and win their hearts and minds.

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2014/06/22/post-aluthgama-strategies-for-regaining-inter-community-trust-and-harmony/