Memoricide

 

(ↄ) May 2011, Husam Zakharia

... When the bombs and bullets aren't enough -- the eraser will do! The comic above was drawn by a close personal friend of mine, a Palestinian-American whose other art (including this comic) is showcased here. It's uncanny how much the bridges of solidarity built between struggles against injustice, discrimination, and oppression are more like mirrors -- wherein we see the same process of power exploiting the same tools for control: misinformation, repression, oblivion (to borrow a Zapatista expression). It is a process of destroying memories, rewriting histories; it is a process refuted by Edward W. Said in his 2003 Preface to his 1978 text, Orientalism, when describing the destruction of the Iraq National Library and Archive in the wake of the US-led 2003 invasion:

What our leaders and their intellectual lackeys seem incapable of understanding is that history cannot be swept clean like a blackboard, clean so that "we" might inscribe our own future there and impose our own forms of life for these lesser people to follow. (Preface, p. xviii)

 Reflected in my mind as I read these words -- once more I caught a glimpse of the 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library -- and I felt a surge of the same defiance. The library in Jaffna has since been rebuilt, but the process of suppressing the memory and history of the suffering of Tamil people is still in effect: particularly in the context of the Sri Lankan government's refusal to acknowledge the UN Panel of Experts report (a.k.a. the Darusman Report) on alleged war crimes committed (by both sides) in the final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009.

So to attempt to reconcile the concept of "memoricide" -- the systematic and  comprehensive erasure of the history of a people and their struggle against injustice -- we will attack the following key issues: (1) Memory (i.e. the recognition of injustice) as crucial to institutional integrity and as a precursor to honest reconciliation; (2) The importance of impartiality -- which cannot be separated from the corresponding pitfalls and the illusion created by confusing impartiality with symmetry; and (3) To whom does the responsibility of upholding the integrity of institutional memory fall?


On Memoricide:
Two years ago the government of Sri Lanka hailed with trumpets and fanfare the defeat of the LTTE and victory in the civil war that had plagued Sri Lanka (ostensibly) since 1983 (although the roots of the conflict go back much further -- some would say to Independence in 1948). And with the end of the war the government has heralded with equal celebration the beginning of an age of "reconciliation" -- complete with a (purportedly) South Africa-inspired reconciliation commission known as the Commission on Lessons Learned and Reconciliation in 2010. However, it is now two years on and -- independent of the continued suffering of Tamil people living under military occupation, not to mention in poverty with limited access to resources -- the government continues to refuse to even acknowledge the memory of the war and the brutal scars left it upon the experiences of the Tamil people. I can say with conviction that there has been no good-faith effort on the part of the Sri Lankan government taken to bring about reconciliation -- in fact, even the bare minimum, i.e. an honest evaluation of the tragedy and the human cost of war, has not been done. The Commission on Lessons Learned, with it's severely watered-down findings and skewed, lackluster results, has produced -- I can imagine -- some trove of documents on the narratives of people whose lives have been ruined by the war; a mountain of data that I'm sure will never again be read, let alone acted upon. This severe historical nearsightedness -- now with the rejection of the UN report -- is another link in the chain that the Sri Lankan government would love to use to wrap up Sri Lankan Tamil history and culture and throw it in the sea.

This is not the first time our memories have been expunged from the "official record". As a part of their project to remake Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese and Buddhist nation politicians, and academics, citing the Mahavamsa, made a case for the historical continuity and the antiquity of the Sinhalese presence in Sri Lanka. Nevermind the hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence, or the archaeological finds (including potsherds with Tamil Script in Jaffna) that suggest that Tamils have lived in Sri Lanka at least as long as the Sinhalese. The government (and at times the population) conveniently forgets these facts to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from the massacre of their brothers and sisters -- whom they would much rather call foreigners. This is a truth that we, as Tamils, must remember as well -- we must cling to the understanding that Tamils and Sinhalese are both Sri Lankans with compassion and hope if reconciliation is ever to succeed.

This is the message of A. Sivanandan's novel When Memory Dies, published in 1997 -- the book makes the argument that if reconciliation is to succeed we cannot forget our common heritage and our shared history. This is the same appeal made by the Zapatistas to the "civil society" of Mexico and the world -- when they claim at once to be Indians and Mexicans -- invoking as the colors of their rebellion the flag of Mexico. I wonder if such a consciousness is not beyond us, as Tamils -- continuing to struggle against oppression in the aftermath of open warfare. More on this later...

There is one specific memory that I would like to share (at the risk of the Sri Lankan government accusing me of digging up old ghosts): that is, the police attack on the 1974 World Tamil Research Conference. This incident is first and foremost an example of a direct attack on Tamil culture as an institution; the police in this instance were very literally attacking Tamil history, both in the sense of the assembled scholars and of the historic event (the first and last of its kind to take place in Sri Lanka). But more personally, I remember searching for the details of this event a few years ago, while trying to help a friend with a project on the war in Sri Lanka. I remember having the surreal experience of being absolutely unable to find any details regarding this event -- an event which I knew happened, because my father was there -- in a "credible" source (i.e., one that could be used in a research paper). The only sources I found were first hand accounts or commemoration articles posted on "pro-Tamil" websites. This was an event that I would think would be central to illustrating the grievances of the Tamil people -- an attack on their culture, history, and heritage -- and I could not find any discussion of it anywhere!

This problem seems chronic -- when coupled with the nearsightedness of the current regime, especially in their approaches to reconciliation, the only thing that can be said is that there is a fundamental lack of sincerity and more importantly integrity in the reconciliation process. There is a glaring lack of meaningful discussion about Tamil grievances (minus some pandering, half-hearted talks with Tamil political leaders), and a concerted effort to sweep government abuses under the rug while playing up the "terrorist" nature of the LTTE (and the "heroic" role of the government in stopping them).

The necessity of institutional integrity in the reconciliation process goes hand in hand with the importance of impartiality. Impartiality, I believe, is the most difficult standard for the reconciliation process. Even proponents of the Darusman Report -- for all its third-party "objectivity" -- fall prey to a type of fallacy. Many, predominantly Western, news agencies have equated the impartiality of the Darusman Report with the fact that it makes allegations of war crimes committed by both sides. The underlying assumption here is that the magnitude and impact of war crimes committed by each side is equivalent -- however, making such an assumption crucially undermines the reconciliation process! Such assumptions, though common in the West, are blind to the asymmetry of abuses -- the imbalance of power concentrated in the hands of the government means that: (a) abuses committed by the government impact the Tamil civilian population more heavily and pervasively than LTTE attacks on civilians; (b) LTTE abuses, undertaken out of desperation, (unintentionally or intentionally) hurt their own (Tamil) civilian population compounding their woes; (c) the LTTE is no longer a factor (which can be said -- cynically, perhaps -- to be their "punishment") -- meaning that the only institutional entity that can be held accountable is the government; because (d) any former LTTE members are now civilians, in name and in deed, and therefore, attempting to hold the Tamil civilians en masse accountable for the LTTE's actions (vis-à-vis their leadership's decisions) is tantamount to collective punishment.

That is not to say that we Tamils are exempt from the responsibilities that come with reconciliation. The Tamil people, especially those of us in the diaspora, are among the few who can hold the Sri Lankan government accountable to history and memory. Though, that is not to say that we should ourselves forget: the importance of dignity; the feeling of unity, of compassion; and the meaning of integrity. It is our responsibility not to let our discourse devolve into the competing propaganda that characterized the discussion about the situation in Sri Lanka while the war was going on. At the same time, we have a responsibility to give voice to the situation as it exists "on the ground" in Sri Lanka for our Tamil brothers and sisters -- although, we should also reach out to Sinhalese organisations and individuals who are guided by good faith.

There is a reason it was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa -- without truth there is no reconciliation, and without integrity there is no truth. Therefore, discipline in our discourse, as well as in our minds, is paramount -- we must be committed to restoring Sri Lanka to a land of peace and dignity if we are ever to take pride in our heritage or find promise in our future.

Forgive me for the long post! There were a number of ideas that I wanted to express, hopefully I still managed some semblance of cohesion. To conclude, I want to emphasize the theme that was present in the beginning: Sri Lanka is not special -- "memoricide" is common in conflicts around the world, and I think, in addition to integrity, solidarity makes a fine weapon! So long as our narratives continue to intersect, and our stories continue to be mirrors, we will share in each others' memories and push forward towards justice.

~DC