21st May 2005
On the occasion of the release of No
More Tears Sister, a film on the life and times of Rajani
Thiranagama
Fifteen
years after Rajani Thiranagama’s brutal murder at the hands of the LTTE, the
Canadian National Film Board has released a film based on her life. No More Tears Sister documents Rajani’s intellectual and activist
journey from militant politics in the seventies to her commitment for the human
rights of ordinary people, for democratic space and dissent and her courageous
stand against internal terror which led to her murder in 1989. We, who worked
with her in UTHR, welcome the long overdue examination of the life of a Tamil
woman whose unwavering commitment to social justice, to her people and to Sri
Lanka remains part of our determination to carry on writing UTHR reports and to
open up a democratic space within and outside Sri Lanka to talk about the
rights of ordinary Sri Lankans. The significance of Rajani’s life and political
writings have not faded in fifteen years. This film allows us to reflect upon
Rajani’s political legacy and the current political climate in which the
murders like Rajani’s continue unabated.
Rajani
like many socially committed youth joined the LTTE only to find that it was
rigidly authoritarian, undemocratic and committed only to extending its
military power. While many disillusioned by what they saw within the LTTE left
the country or disappeared into obscurity, Rajani refused to be silenced. She felt
responsible for her contribution towards extending the LTTE’s power over the
community. A socialist and a feminist, she believed that she owed it to the
people to challenge the State, the LTTE and other undemocratic forces and build
democracy from the grass roots and give people a voice in their future. Coming
from a generation where revolutionary violence was accepted as a concomitant of
struggle, she saw how it could lead to draconian abuses and mass murder. She
valued life and the right to it irrespective of whether it was that of a friend
or enemy. Towards the end of her life she came to the unshakable conclusion
that all politically motivated killing was wrong – as she showed by her own
example, even to protect one’s own life.
When
Rajani came together with us to form UTHR we were working at a time when
political killings and child recruitment were rampant. Our work, while exposing
all killers, explored the political underpinnings of the killings and the
tragedies of families and individuals affected. This was of special concern to
the LTTE, because it went to the heart of its ideology. According to the LTTE,
its killings were a sacred ablution by great heroes to clean the society of
traitors, and to criticise or even discuss them was supreme treachery. Our
documentation shows that persons, motivations, actions and attitudes were much
more complex, and appealed to the community to transcend artificial dividing
lines and recognise the essential humanity in all. The Broken Palmyra, centred on the Indian Army’s operation to take
Jaffna, was coauthored by Rajani and three others in the same spirit.
Reflecting
on Rajani’s life and death, we find it no coincidence that that her murder
happened in the midst of a ceasefire announced then by the Indian Government
and the withdrawal of its Peace Keeping Forces. Rajani’s murder came in the
wake of the Premadasa government’s appeasement of the LTTE – the precursor to
today’s not so original peace process presided over by Norway. Rajani’s murder
was quickly followed by mass arrests of dissidents and another round of war
triggered by the LTTE’s inability to cope with the expectations of peace and
internal problems within it. Thousands perished in its torture camps and bunker
prisons, including two students Chelvi Thiagarajah and Manoharan who were close
to the UTHR (Jaffna). Once more we are amidst a peace process riddled with
killings, abductions and mass imprisonment in bunkers with its routine of
torture similar to those testified by the LTTE’s detainees in the early 1990s(
Report 9, 10 at www.uthr.org). Internal cracks in the LTTE are more in evidence
than ever before. As for the peace process itself, there are few illusions
left. The excitement of three years ago where expatriate Tamils thought they
had a role to play in rebuilding the North-East is gone. It was Rajani’s vision
as a teacher to produce a socially committed medical cadre. Today Jaffna, which
sent thousands of doctors overseas, finds its main teaching hospital shockingly
understaffed. Rajani wanted a plural and tolerant University, but today not
only Sinhalese but also Tamil speaking Muslim students are with good reason
afraid to study in Jaffna, once renowned for its education.
To
many of us close to Rajani, the legitimisation of LTTE’s politics in the name
of peace is a travesty of justice. UTHR(J) has consistently strived towards
creating space for internal accountability within the community. We hoped that
external actors too would enhance that space. But in the current peace process,
neither the Government nor the other peace makers are interested in
accountability. The MoU signed under
the ceasefire agreement does not include any mechanisms to ensure
accountability, and there is no monitoring of human rights violations in the
LTTE held areas. Large scale child
recruitment and daily political killings by the LTTE do not seem to be taken
count of by the peace brokers.
Given
the current political climate, it is hard not to compare it with what Rajani
wrote in the late 80’s, and so prophetically. There were no mass organizations which could effectively mobilize the
people or voice their needs and opinions…there were all the externals of
change: murals, Tiger courts, ribbon cutting by the Tigers! But the people had
no role. They were spectators, bystanders…unable to determine the course of
their struggle. Her analysis of the LTTE and its politics is as relevant
now as it was then. Rajani held that the LTTE’s fascist politics, rather than
liberate the Tamil people, would instead bring tragedy and domination. She
predicted the impact it would have on the Tamils in the East as well as on the
Muslims. Hardly since the ink had dried, Muslims were massacred in the East and
evicted from Jaffna by the LTTE. Today
LTTE domination is even more far reaching. Her writings also challenged the
South, its narrow Sinhalese nationalism and its inability to move on a
political solution to the North-East. The Southern polity never showed much
respect for the democratic aspirations of the Tamils. The attitude of its elite
has been based on mental paralysis, taking at every crisis what appeared to be
the short cut demanding the least from them, however damaging to the
North-East. This has involved a cycle of war and violence with contempt for the
well being of Tamils, and when this led them into a cul de sac, the
appeasement of the LTTE.
We
give below an extract from her Last Thoughts (The Broken Palmyra II 9):
“We have now been living under the long shadow of the gun for
more than a decade and a half, holding hope against hope for the survival of
our children who are dominated by violence from all directions without a
purpose or meaning. But, on the other hand, we also note the glazed faces of
people accepting it all with a sense of resignation. Under these circumstances,
to be objective or analytical seems to be a major effort, like trying to do
something physical in the midst of a debilitating illness. Whenever we write we
are dogged by this reality, fearing our losing the thread of sanity and the
community submerging without resistance into this slime of terror and
violence………
“Thus after a
decade of national liberation struggle and a ruthless striving for leadership
that caused enormous loss of life and the denudation of the people's moral
strength, the Tigers seem to be at a dead end. Their pursuance of a supremacist
struggle at the cost of the very concept of liberation and their moulding of
the spirit of their cadre on a fanatical dedication to the Leader and the
Movement, was to be their undoing, as it is within all such narrow nationalist,
fascist movements. Thus we as a people are also having a countdown. We can wait
years. For a people, history does not change overnight……
“The militancy did little to remove the discomfort
felt by Eastern Province Tamils against the Jaffna dominated politics. Some of
the abler and politically sensitive leaders of the L.T.T.E. from the Eastern
Province had faced difficult times with the hierarchy. In trying to force a
Tamil identity on the Muslims of the North-East, the Tamils are flying in the
face of their own historical experience at the hands of the Sinhalese dominated
state. The Tigers, while enjoying a spell of unchallenged power, can hardly be
unaware of these factors. Their attitudes to the recruitment of children
reflect a sense of despondency. In the early days of the militancy, when mature
recruits came in large numbers, the ideals of freedom were much talked about.
The reasons talked about today have a fatalistic ring. When parents approach
L.T.T.E. leaders to ask for their children who had left home and
"volunteered," they are frequently reminded by the leaders that they
too are missed by their parents. Little is said about any great cause.
It is hardly surprising that the propaganda thrust of the struggle must
hinge around the two words "Traitor" and "Martyr." Indeed,
the hundreds who ultimately made sacrifices for the same cause and were killed
abjectly as traitors, speak not just for the enormous wasted potential, but
also for the widespread frustration and anger that lie simmering below the
surface. With room for democratic activity largely non-existent, it is easy to
underestimate grossly this anger and the resulting insecurity for Tiger
aspirations. This is reflected in the increasing obsession with
"traitors."…..
“What
has won widespread admiration is the destructive aspect of the Tigers. Their
methods ensured that no one else was allowed to do anything, good or bad.
Lacking the ability to face up to the Tigers, all other parties were driven by
their weaknesses to show themselves in such a bad light, that the Tigers were
welcomed back with widespread relief and their legitimacy was enhanced.
However, recent events in the East have shown that, when challenged, the Tigers
too could behave towards civilians in harsh military fashion. Many consciously
acknowledge a negative reason for accepting the Tigers - that without them,
they would be fighting once more. Again, one must not lose sight of the fact
that the remarkable success of the Tigers and their fatal weaknesses are reflections
of Jaffna society itself.
Apart from the failure of the society to take a stand or question the massive
destruction of life and energies through internal developments, yet another
factor most vividly reflects its fatal politics and its destructive value
system. It is its failure even to see what is being done to its own children
who are being cajoled and cornered into carrying arms, with no idea of what
they are doing. All armed parties are guilty in this respect. It is hardly the
case that people are unaware of what is going on. The earlier conscription for
the T.N.A. was well known. The prevalence of armed sentries so small that their
presence is known only through gun barrels peeping over walls, is much talked
about in Jaffna. National newspapers too have presented photographs of baby
faces carrying AK 47s as though they were pop guns.
But the leading sections of society,
whether religious authorities, professional associations or associations of
teachers, do not appear to acknowledge that there is a problem. There is,
rather, much glib talk of the "Boys" delivering the goods. Some go so
far as to justify the children being "guided and used" in view of the
manpower shortage resulting from the older boys shying away from involvement.
They would argue that these young persons have to be sacrificed to protect the
"gains" of the struggle in which so much has already been lost. There
is no questioning the kind of society we have been creating through this
struggle. It is hardly surprising that many visiting outsiders have been
astounded by these attitudes. This insensitivity and moral degradation is seen
to go much deeper, when one looks at the politics that is articulated by the
Tamil elite. Anyone who stands out and projects a qualitative difference, is isolated
and destroyed. The weapons used may include slander, the misuse of
institutional power and more indirectly, even murder.
What we have today is a weak society tending towards fascist regimentation. It
has produced so-called traitors in dizzying proportions and little that is
creative. To hide its mediocrity and the poverty of human qualities in its
leadership, it needs to strengthen patronage and stifle intellectual
development. This is reflected in its politics. There is a cost to the
propaganda edifice that is being erected in Tamil Nadu, incorporating the Tamil
militant struggle in Ceylon and the militarism of the Chola empire (from the
10th to the 13th centuries A.D.) so as to project a Dravidian racial mystique.
This cost must eventually be borne by misused children and paid for in the
blood of hapless victims.
It
reads disturbingly fresh after 17 years.
We hope that the film No More
Tears Sister stands as a
testimony to the lives of people who have sacrificed their lives by challenging
their own past and standing up for truth within the Tamil community. The film
is a reminder that peace cannot be built through the legitimisation of those
organisations that condemn independent, socially motivated activists as
traitors. We ourselves continue with our reporting of violations of human
rights which Rajani inspired us as academics to consider our duty and
obligation rather than a choice.