Discuss, debate and then deliver

By Feizal Samath

The international conference that drew top scholars and human rights activists from across the world to honour Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam who was assassinated in July, ended in Colombo last week with a brimful of ideas on constitution making, diversity, pluralism and civil society.

If the two-day meeting held to coincide with the late Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam's birthday was meant to celebrate his extensive local, regional and global perspective and the world of ideas that he generated, then it also spurred immediate action from some participants.

At the end of Tuesday's meeting, a group of South Asian participants led by former Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral made an impassioned plea to leaders of India and Pakistan for restraint in the face of confrontation.

The group urged Pakistan and India to take urgent and decisive steps to defuse tensions between the two countries before it is too late.

"We the participants for the South Asian countries who have assembled in Colombo to honour the memory of a colleague who sacrificed his life for peace make an earnest and urgent appeal to the leaders of India and Pakistan to take urgent and decisive measures to defuse tensions before it is too late and to revive the Lahore process so that both India and Pakistan along with other South Asian neighbours march together building a vibrant and prosperous South Asian community," they said in a statement.

The signatories included former Bangladesh Foreign Minister Kamal Hossein, former Pakistan foreign secretary Niaz Naik, Sri Lankan intellectuals Radhika Coomaraswamy, Jayadeva Uyangoda and Prof. Stanley Tambiah, and India's Ashis Nandy, Veena Das and retired chief justice P.N. Bhagwati.

From Pakistani Asma Jehangir's plea for a South Asian civil rights movement and UN minority rights official Asbjorn Eide's suggestion of a South African-styled Truth Commission to handle Sri Lanka's ethnic strife, to African professor Julius Ihonvbere's fervent appeal for constitutions to be within reach of the people not merely the political elite, the conference threw up a whole heap of ideas for global outreach.

The meeting itself drew one of the biggest and most distinguished intellectual gatherings in Sri Lanka and probably in the world, according to some international participants.

"I am amazed at the magnetic power that Tiruchelvan had across the world, for this conference has drawn intellectuals representing the cultural kaleidoscope of the world," said Egyptian Prof. Mahmood Mamdani from the Institute of African Studies at New York's Columbia University.

Ian Martin, former Secretary-General of international human rights group Amnesty International, said the meeting was a significant event not only for the region but for the entire human rights community in the world as it brought together the north and south.

All the 150-odd international and local participants were close friends, associates and colleagues of Tiruchelvam. Accolades and tributes flowed throughout the conference for a man who was described as South Asia's most vocal human rights activist. Participants said they were astonished at the extent of his knowledge and understanding on a range of issues like politics, constitutionalism, civil society, arts, culture and even cricket.

India's Bhagwati described Tiruchelvam as a man deeply committed to the preservation and advancement of human rights who was above all, a humanist. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was honoured to join others in Colombo to celebrate Tiruchelvam's work.

"The United Nations stands ready to support any peace effort that would bring a political solution in Sri Lanka based on the principles for which Neelan stood ," Annan said, in a message read out by a UN official at the inauguration of the conference.

Jehangir, Pakistan and South Asia's foremost human rights scholar said that the region's economic progress has been poor compared to other countries while the quality of life has actually deteriorated because of the violence that mars societies here, unjust distribution of resources, increasing lawlessness and intolerance.

She said there was ethnic violence in Sri Lanka, religious and ethnic tensions in India, political bickering and polarization in Bangladesh, a Maoist insurgency in Nepal and religious militancy and militarisation in Pakistan, all of which sapped the region's potential.

"The very factors that have been exploited to oppress and divide us; the very factors that are seen as the source of the tensions giving rise to violence that are seen as the source of the tensions giving rise to violence can be unifying factors."

"We as South Asians, represent a wonderfully rich regional society. There are hundreds of cultures, languages, ethnicities, and at least five major religions of the world found in the region. We should be the richer for it, not the poorer," she said. Jehangir, currently UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions, proposed the setting up of a human rights movement in South Asia not limited to human rights only but broad-based to include people of all walks of life.

Some top international experts, after listening to a range of papers presented by South Asians, said the region had an array of experts in human rights and constitution making.

"I have heard, and I find the strongest discourse on constitution and the constitutional process from South Asia," noted Justice Albie Sachs from South Africa suggesting that this could be because of conflicts in the region, which have resulted in an abundance of talent and knowledge in this field.

Sachs is a member of the South African Constitutional Court and was a close aide to former president Nelson Mandela. A respected human rights activist, Sachs lost his right arm in a car bomb explosion in the struggle against apartheid.

Some participants viewed with skepticism the suggestion by Asbjorn Eide, chairperson of a UN Working Group on Minorities that a Truth Commission on the lines of the South African experiment could help to resolve the Sri Lankan conflict. Egypt's Mamdani said that in some cultures, accountability was necessary whereas in the case of the Truth Commission, perpetrators were given an amnesty so that they could "spill the beans" on their wrongdoing. They were not prosecuted.

He said a mechanism like the Truth Commission could create a culture of impunity and ensure that perpetrators are never held accountable for their actions. This mechanism would not work in all countries, Mamdani said.

Sri Lanka's Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister G. L Peiris, who chaired a panel discussion on constitutionalism, made use of the meeting to explain his government's efforts in constitutional reforms.

He said a ruling party committee was now reviewing draft constitutional reforms - prepared more than a year ago - and would meet minority Tamil parties and the main opposition United National Party in the next two weeks to ascertain their views on reforms needed to provide regional autonomy for Sri Lanka's minorities.

The government says it is prepared to accept a third country or institution in a role of a facilitator in resuming peace talks with Tamil rebels. Government ministers have also not ruled out third party mediation if peace talks progress satisfactorily to the satisfaction of both sides. Norway has said it is willing to help Colombo in this effort.

Perhaps of all the presentations at the conference, which had no general theme but dealt with human rights, diversity and pluralism, constitutionalism and civil society, two of the most striking views came from Sri Lanka's Valentine Daniel and Africa's Ihonvbere.

India's Nandy was not far behind in his critique of South Asian civil servants who bash non-governmental agencies but join them on retirement. "NGOs which are anathema to civil servants, become their lord and master in retirement. Experts who created the nuclear bomb and espoused its causes, on retirement joined the anti-nuclear lobby to destroy the bomb," he said making the point that money and power controlled everything.

Nandy, former director and now senior fellow of the Indian-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, said Pakistani generals were famous for joining the Cricket Board like some Sri Lankan politicians on retirement, while the favourite pastime of retired government servants in Bangladesh was to set up an international NGO!

Daniel, an anthropology professor at Columbia University in the United States, related three real-life stories to illustrate different aspects of the Sri Lankan ethnic divide. His first example was about the father of a childhood Sinhalese friend who was slapped by a "white" planter on a Sri Lankan tea plantation in the 1960s.

"My friend's father was walking on an estate road when this superintendent came on his motorcycle. Tamil workers on the road immediately got onto the drain while the Sinhalese man stepped aside but not into the drain. The planter got off his motorcycle and slapped him," said Daniel, a Tamil, who noted that his friend, angered by the incident, became a Sinhalese nationalist.

The second episode was about a Tamil village official, who was slapped by a Sinhalese army officer in the post-independence period in the northern city of Jaffna for not standing to attention when the soldier's jeep drove past. The official's sons eventually became Tamil rebels.

The third incident related to a Tamil refugee girl, Daniel met in the US. She was fleeing Sri Lanka and heading for Canada, after an incident where her friend was shot dead by a pro-Indian Tamil militant group in Jaffna for "smiling" when the militants were passing by. This happened when Indian troops were in Sri Lanka implementing a peace pact.

"This girl was terrified. She said she didn't want to hear anything about Sri Lanka, about peace, about the war or Tamil militants. She just wanted to get away from it all," Daniel said.

Ihonvbere, a director at the US-based Ford Foundation, said constitution making should not be the preserve of the political elite. "A constitution should have broad consensus from all people, all groups and all sections of society. A constitution that does not follow this pattern, in my view, is a constitution that is illegal," he noted.

He said the process of constitution making was its transparency and accountability, and was more important than drafting one. "There shouldn't be any hush-hush in this process. It should be open and the people should be daily informed of the developments."

The conference was a success in the context of bringing some of the best brains and minds in the world to discuss and debate on vital issues to society in honour of a prominent Sri Lankan activist.

But, as we journalists always believe, the wide range of ideas and solutions discussed at the meeting should not be imposed on the poor and the deprived in Sri Lanka but rather be debated and discussed with grassroots activists and village people.

Perhaps a fitting tribute to Dr. Tiruchelvam would be the convening of a conference in the future bringing together some of the best thinkers in the region or even the world and the ordinary man, woman and child in the village whose destinies we seek to change by a whole heap of ideas and solutions, without asking them what they feel, what they like or what they aspire to be.

The Vague Poetess

"The Vague Poetess" a novel by Shavindra Fernando, was released by Ceylon Printers in Colombo recently. The novel is based on a University theatre company's attempt to produce Lorca's play "Blood Wedding" during rather unsettled times.

The author says "the escape (of the students) into the little world of theatrical is perceived as reactionary by students who are already drawn into the quagmire of anarchical politics. The scene unfolds amidst real and imaginary revolutionary fervour.

The protagonists of the play discover their real selves and their motives in attempting to fashion the lives around them as they search for order."

On intimation of publication by Fernando, the Garcia Lorca foundation in Madrid has agreed to include the book in a collection of books related to the playwright.

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