State Violence in Sri Lanka: The International Community and the Myth of ‘Normalisation’

Abstract

This essay examines the foundational role of state violence in the context of the recently concluded military conflict between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Sri Lanka's conflict, I argue, enables a broader global discourse concerning state violence. I proceed to analyse the operation of state violence in terms of a crucial instrument of counterinsurgency, in which the collective punishment of Tamil civilians presented a Faustian bargain between physical security and political rights. Situated in this context, I demonstrate how the discourse of human rights, in the absence of a jurisprudence of group rights, was itself conducive of state violence. In the course of my analysis, I bring into focus how the discourse of liberation too, created its own legitimising myths. Individual human rights were placed subordinate to the LTTE's privileging of ‘armed struggle’ as the chosen mechanism of liberating the ‘group.’ Both the divergent political narratives of the state and the LTTE, and the use of violence to prosecute it, had a contagious relationship with each other. The use of violence by each party served to confirm the legitimising myths of the other, contributing to the conflict's escalation. Counter claims of genocide and counter-terrorism paradoxically blunted the real questions which were: what kind of violence did the Sri Lankan state commit against Tamil civilians, on what scale and with what intentions? In the latter part of my essay, I examine the wide-ranging implications generated by such questions.