論 文
Do Horizontal Inequalities Significantly Defuse Conflict?
A Case Study of the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka
A.M. Rashika Saman Kumari Abesinghe
Content Pages 1. Introduction
1.1 General overview of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka (LTTE Terrorism) 17-18
2. Introduction to Horizontal Inequalities 18-19
3. Did Horizontal Inequalities cause the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka ? 19
3.1 Political Horizontal Inequalities 19
3.1.1 Imperceptible Disentanglement Tamils from conventional political wave 19-21
3.2 Economic Horizontal Inequalities 22
3.2.1 Reduction of Tamil’s participation in public sector employment 22-23
3.3 Social Horizontal Inequalities 23
3.3.1 Reduction on the university entrance for Tamil students 23-24
3.3.2 Anti-Tamil riots and communal violence 24-25
3.4 Cultural Horizontal Inequalities 25-26
3.4.1 Discrimination on the acceptance of Tamil language 26
4. Conclusion 26-27
5. References 27-28
1. Introduction
1.1 General overview of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka (LTTE Terrorism)
Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a developing island country locates in the south Asian Region. Sri Lanka was a british colony from 1815-1948 and received independence from Britain on 04th February 1948. The overall population in Sri Lanka is 21,803,000 (United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects, 2019 Revision). Most significantly, Sri Lanka is having diverse social layer with various ethnic groups. The Sinhales consist as the large majority of Sri Lanka while the Tamils become the largest minority of the country.
Sri Lanka witnessed several youth insurgents and ethnicity based conflicts & violations. But the issue
of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) can be recognized as the most influential one which bought numerous social, cultural, Political, Economical impacts to the Sri Lankan society. The specialty of the LTTE terrorism is that the struggle began with the demand for equal rights and opportunities for the minorities of the country. This ethnicity based terrorist conflict finished on 18th May 2009 after the Sri Lankan security forces defeated LTTE. Still there is no any official, an announcement regarding the exact number of war victims. But according to general estimate, around 75,000 civilians had killed since 1983 and 290,000 civilians had reported as displaced persons (UN News Center : 2009).
2. Introduction to Horizontal Inequalities
The term “conflict” had been originated from the Latin “to clash or engage in a fight”. Peter Wallen- steen (2002) defined three major types of conflict as interstate, internal and state formation conflict. According to the definition in Cambridge Dictionary,
“Conflict is an acting disagreement between people with opposing opinions or principles and fighting between two or more groups of people or countries”
Generally, conflict consider as the overlapping of war, violence, discrimination and crime. Thus, the definition of conflict consists as fairly unclear and it is difficult to finalize universal definition for it. Horizontal inequalities had recognized as a the tool to define the relationship between poverty and conflict. In order to recognize the origin of the conflict the scholars such as Grasdstein & Milanovic (2005), Langer (2005), Nurshed
& Gates (2005) defined that the conflict can be arose as a result of social, cultural, economic, political inequal- ities among diverse groups. Furthermore, this argument emphasizes that when a group has a strong identity and if they experience injustice or discrimination in the particular society layer they can have a motivation to involve with conflicts in order to achieve the equality and win their rights. These differences have been defined by Frances Stewart as the Horizontal inequalities. Frances Stewart discussed Horizontal Inequalities as “inequal- ities among groups of people who share a common identity. Such inequalities have economic, social, political and cultural states and dimensions”. This motivates current multi ethnic societies to have serious conflicts among different ethnic groups.
According to Frances Stewart, there are several categories of Horizontal Inequalities such as,
◂ Political Horizontal Inequalities
◂ Economic Horizontal Inequalities
◂ Social Horizontal Inequalities
◂ Cultural Horizontal Inequalities
These Horizontal inequalities can have long term impacts to the particular community. Those impacts
can be the motivation for the victims of inequalities to win equal rights and opportunities through the conflicts.
Most significantly, the tendency of conflict can be more likely with high level of political, social and Economic Horizontal Inequalities.
3. Did horizontal Inequalities cause the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka?
This chapter mainly explores the relationship between horizontal inequalities and the conflicts. As a case study here, there is a discussion about the causal connection between the ethnic conflict (LTTE Terrorism) in Sri Lanka and how the social, cultural, political, economic horizontal inequalities inspired the great destruction of conflict.
3.1 Political Horizontal Inequalities
Once Stewart (2002) had recognized through his research study that “Political exclusion is a key driver in motivating protest with violence” (Don Embuldeniya 2015). That is evident that these recognized political exclusions can emerge through formal or informal procedures or institutions. Restrictions for political partici- pation or representation can be recognized as a one of the examples there. The parliamentary process can be blocked to reduce their access of the different ethnic groups to involve with the political wave of the country.
Gurr (1993) & Wimmer (1997) mainly emphasize that the marginalized political speculators had create the argument about the ethno nationalism and the violations of the representation opportunities in the modern national states. The major reason there is that the influential state elites involve in the ethnic favoritism in their politics, which became a disadvantage for the minority population. This scenario can directly inspire the conflict among those affected groups and the dominant group. This situation points out that extremity acuteness of political neglection interlinks with the extreme probability of conflict. Thus, this section mainly discusses how the extremity political neglection of Tamils influence a desired environment for LTTE to convert political struggle into a violent struggle.
3.1.1 Imperceptible Disentanglement of Tamils from conventional political wave
Sri Lanka was a colony of Britain from 1815–1948. Many scholars highlighted that the British Colonial policies and empirical constitutional reforms which increased Horizontal inequalities had mainly influ- enced for the ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka. Because, in 1815 the British introduced the ethnic based represen- tation scheme into the Sri Lankan legislature. Under this scheme, though the majority of the population consisted with the Sinhalese equal number of Tamils (Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils) and Sinhalses received equal opportunities to bear the legislative seats. But unfortunately, the concept of equal representation scheme lasted in 1920 and British introduced a new representation scheme which mainly based on ethnic and territorial factors. As a result of this reform Tamil political elites began to demand 50 : 50 representation oppor-
tunities in the legislature. As expected, this proposal did not accepted by the government with the majority Sinhalese and even didn’t receive the opportunity to materialize it. This in-balancing representation scheme had interpreted by many Tamils and the Sinhalese as the beginning of the recent ethnic conflict, LTTE terrorism in Sri Lanka. With the feeling of the discrimination, in 1921 the Tamil elites separated from the National Congress (Which established under the cooperation of both Sinhala and Tamil political parties) and was inspired to establish a mino ethnic, political organization as “Tamil Mahajana Sabha (The Great Council of Tamils).” This establishment highlighted their necessity to secure their ethnic identification.
Furthermore, The Federal Party (Tamil ethnicity based political party) demanded a federal political structure and sufficient representation opportunities in the government. They believed the federal system can use as a practical mechanism to spread Tamil autonomy specially in the Tamil dominated areas.
The freedom party was able to establish the Government mainly through the support of Sinhala Buddhist community in 1956. As a result of that, the Freedom Party (SLFP) introduced the “Sinhala Only Act” (Official Language Act No 33 of 1956) recognizing the ‘Sinhala Language’ as the official language of this multi- cultural country. As an objection to this government policy the federal party conducted a disobedience movement and the governmental activities became weak in the North Eastern Areas. As a response for this movement the governmental armed forces sent to the North East to maintain the law & peace and totally able to control those Tamil disobedience campaigns.
Later that, under the 1972 constitution the ‘Sinhala Language’ defined as the official language of the country and emphasized that the Buddhism has the ‘foremost place in the country’. In 1975 S. Chelvanayagam responded to this government action as,
“It is regrettable fact that successive Sinhala government has used the power that flows from indepen- dence to deny us our fundamental rights and reduce us to the position of a subject people. I wish to announce to my people and to the country that I consider that, the Tamil Eelam nation should exercise the sovereignty already vested in the Tamil people and become free.” (Wilson 1986 : 85, 86 & originally quoted from Don Embuldeniya 2015 : 120)
The Fedral Party suggested to establish the federal system under an Amendment to the constitution and it also was rejected by the government. As a response for that rejection the federal party leader S. Chelvan- ayakam resigned from his parliamentary seat. S. Chelavanayakam made an effort to re-contest to his Jaffna political district through a mini- referendum and tried to create an opportunity to develop Tamil access for a new constitution. But, “the government delayed the by election by three years” (Wilson 1994 : 90). Under this debate the Tamil youth began to believe that the old men’s politics can not achieve the dream of Eelam state and it was the opportunity for youth to start their struggle.
The 1977 Sri Lankan parliamentary election can be recognized as a turning point of the ethnic
struggle among diverse ethnic groups of the country. Because in the 1977 parliamentary election United National Party (UNP) was won and received 5/6 seats. The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) was also able to achieve almost all the seats in the North.The TULF was received one fifth of overall votes and won 18 parliamentary seats. Thus, for the first time in the Sri Lankan political history Tamil political party (TULF) became the opposition party of the parliament and it’s leader S. Chelvanayakam became the opposition leader.
Tamils considered this as a conclusive opportunity to value their ethnic identity and influence of the legislative power. Especially, they made an effort to win the state of Eelam through peaceful measures. TULF was demanding the referendum on nationhood to gain self determination for the North- Eastern areas. Some argue that the 1977 parliamentary election as the last free and fair election in the North Eastern. The Tamil political leaders began to discuss about the necessity of a separate ethnic state openly. Because of this demand the UNP government recognized TULF as a perpetrator who tried to divide the sovereignty of the state and cold war started between the Sinhala government and the Tamil opposition in the parliament. The TULF leader “accused of acting against the interests of the country while during his foreign trips, the leader of the TULF advocated separation” (Don Embuldeniya 2015 : 122). The UNP government brought a no- confidence motion to remove him from the position. But that effort was unsuccessful and later the UNP government approved the Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution highlighting,
“No person shall directly or indirectly in or outside Sri Lanka support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate state within the territory of Sri Lanka.” (Commonwealth legal information institute 2012).
Under this legal framework the TULF members were debarred from the legislature. Also, this success- fully prohibited the one and only legitimate Tamil voice which advocated the separate Tamai state in the peaceful way.
The literature (Qustby 2004, Stewart 2005) illustrates that the different groups ought to be marshal peacefully through the legitimate sanctions such as free and fair elections, or with affirmation or strike. But if there is not such a background under the democracy there is tendency to influence these groups to involve with violence under their powerlessness. This situation similarly can recognize in the scenario of Sri Lanka. Thus, once Tambiah (1986 : 150-151) had mentioned that majority Sinhala Buddhist political leaders do not favor to obtain a common political space among the ethnic cultural diversity of the country. This tendency created the divider lines further split the ethnic diverse groups. Under this political pressure Tamil youth motivated to join with the militant groups and majority Tamil citizens began to justify the emerge of LTTE terrorism.
3.2 Economic Horizontal Inequalities
Stewart (2005) noted that, economic inequalities can be identified as a conclusive element of the causality of violence when it occurs among diverse groups of the people. The economic inequalities can have a wide scope, such as inequalities to access the economic opportunities and employment, limited access to resources for selected groups of the people, discrimination on distributing economic benefits among different ethnic groups. When the discrimination occurred against a certain group in a specific region, there is a high possibility to have a conflict.
3.2.1 Reduction of Tamil’s participation in public sector employment
“Differential opportunities for Economic advancement also exacerbated the emerging political conflict between the representation of the Ceylon Tamils and Sinhalese communities” (Samaranayeke Gamini 2007 : 175). While Sri Lanka was a colony of Britain, they introduced the British education system through newly established “Misanary Schools”. But the majority Sinhalese used to send their children to “Piriven”, the religious Buddhist educational institutions. Under the policies of Britain Government the people who had English Literacy skills received opportunities to engage with government sector jobs. This was a huge opportunity for Ceylon Tamils who conducted their education in British “Missionary schools”. As a result of that, the British Government favored “the Ceylon Tamils who held 60 percent of the professional positions employed by the state at independence in February 1948” (Samaranayeke Gamini 2007 : 175). In the early 20th century, Sinhalese also preferred to engage in the government sector jobs and it created a competition among Tamils and Sinhalese to secure limited job opportunities under the British Government. This situation also created a cold war between these two ethnic groups. Then, the freedom party was able to establish Government mainly through the support of Sinhala Buddhist community in 1956. As a result of that the Freedom Party (SLPF) introduced the “Sinhala Only Languahe Act” (Official Language Act No 33 of 1956) which accepted “Sinhala Language” as the national language. This was identified by the Tamil community as an effort of Sinhalese to reduce their access to governmental employment opportunities, and “as an instrument of cultural oppression and as a denial of Tamil identity” (Hassain 2010 : 35).
The Tamil’s contribution towards the public sector employment often estimated by the Sinhala community as a growing authority of Tamils for public interactions. Most significantly, in 1955 the Sri Lankan civil servants, mainly consisted with the majority of Tamils by 1970“it consisted with most of the Sinhala Buddhists and number of Tamil civil servants had exacted to leave their jobs highlighting their deficiency of Sinhala language” (Tambiah 1986 : 149). Due to the lack of Sinhala language proficiency & as the ethnic composition of the public sector employment most of the Tamils lost their opportunities to engage with the public sector employment.
Table 1: Ethnic Configuration on Public Sector Employment in accordance with the total population Total employment 1980 (%) Total Population 1981 (%)
Sinhala 85 74
Tamil 11 18
Others 4 8
Source ; Department of Census & Statistics, Sri Lanka : 1980 & originally cited from Don Embuldeniya 2015: 127
The above figure shows how the ethnic identity influenced for the government’s employment possi- bility. This situation had recognized by Samarasinghe (1984 : 79) as,
“The Tamils have already lost the relative position in central government employment that was enjoyed in the past. Apart from the obvious economic loss this entails, there is the psychological adjustment that many Jaffna (Tamil) families must make in the wake of this chance” (Samarasinghe 1984 : 79).
Also from the other side, since early 1980s practically there is a tendency to not to take on Tamils to he Police and armed forces. Under this situation number of Tamil professionals tended to migrate to western countries. Also, many of the frustrated Tamil youth purposely joined with the Tamil military groups including the LTTE.
3.3 Social Horizontal Inequalities
The social forms of inequality can be recognized as one of the primary interpretations to have conflict between different ethnic groups. Thus, this section mainly discusses how the social inequalities inspired the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
3.3.1 Reduction on the university entrance for Tamil students
University entrance exam in Sri Lanka can be recognized as the one of the most competitive examina- tions in Sri Lanka. In the early 1970s the admission policy of the university entrance mainly conducted via an island wide competitive examination. Those who obtained the highest marks in the entrance examination was able to enroll into the different faculties in the university ignoring their district or ethnicity. Later that, in the 1972 Constitution “Sinhala Language” recognized as the national language of the country. Under the later measures to 1972 Constitutution there was an “introduction of quotas and unequal examination requirement” in 1973 which were perceived as a way to prevent Tamils from entering university, public and professional services” (De Votta 2007: 13).
In 1970s island wide merit policies Tamils students in the Jaffna district were able to enroll in science and engineering courses successfully. As an example, under the 1969-1970 admission quarter Tamil students
enrolled, 35% and over 45% of the medical faculties (Perera 2001). But after the introduction of the quarter system in 1973 that rate was minimized in 7% (Don Embuldeniya 2015). The overall dropping rate of the Tamil students into the science faculties was from 35% to 21%. From the other side the increasing rate of the Sinhala students from 75% in 1974 to over 80% in 1975 (De silve 1979).
From the other side in order to secure their foreign exchange in 1970s the Sinhala Buddhist government introduced a new policy restricting “foreign exchange for the long established practice of the Tamil students going to India for university education” (Don Embuldeniya 2015).
This situation inspired Tamil political parties to strength together and establish primary political party named as “Tamil United Liberation Front”. This was a peak of social horizontal inequalities. Tamil youth started to believe that the old man’s peaceful political struggles cannot bring justice or obtain inequality. As a result of that, they started to fight for equality & justice through armed conflict. At that time, approximately 20 Tamil militant groups were born and its top five militant groups recognized as,
Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO)
The People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE)
The Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF)
Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS)
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
In 1987 under the Indo – Sri Lanka Accord first four militant groups (TELO, PLOTE, EPRLF, EROS) engaged in a legitimate political wave dropping the weapons. But, LTTE did not trust the peaceful political solutions & expand itself as a terrorist organization.
The policy of the standardization of the university entrance was unoccupied in 1977 and 80% of the university admissions started to fill up with students raw marks. Anther 20% places assigned to the students in the rural districts with less education facilities (De Silva 1997: 254-259). In order to minimize Tamils protests against the discriminations the government built few Tamil medium public universities in the northeastern areas. Generally, these policy reforms mainly effected to the Tamils to enter into the universities and also contribute for the emerging ethnic turbulence in the society layer. Because, the Sinhalese began to believe that the university entrance reforms balanced the population ratio, while Tamils understood that as, “standardization and quota system harmed their community and gave an opening for Tamil nationalists to use the reforms as Anti- Tamils” (Don Embuldeniya 2015 : 143).
3.3.2 Anti-Tamil riots and communal violence
While analyses the social horizontal inequalities, anti-Tamil rights and communal violence incidents
can be recognized as the turning points there. In the Sri Lankan history 1956 the establishment of the ‘Sinhala Only Language Act’ links with the emerge of the first anti-Tamil riots and communal violence occurred against the Tamil community in Sri Lanka. The violence spread in the Colombo and the eastern province and while the
‘Sinhala only language bill’ discussed in the legislature. The Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence (2002 : 14) had mentioned about this incident as the first ethnic disposed violence where different ethnic groups involved attacking other groups. As a result of this incident, huge amount of property of Tamils destroyed and total number of reported deaths were 500-600 and most of them recognized as Sri Lankan Tamils (Bandarage 2009 : 50). The second reported anti-Tamil rights occurred in 1977, a month after the UNP (United National Party) received 5/6 majority power of the parliamentary election. Though there is no any official estimate of victims Kearney in 1985 noted that over 300 Tamils killed during this incident (Kearney 1985 : 275). Most significantly, president J.R. Jayawardena didn’t effort to prevent this aggressive wave against the Tamil minorities and the government accused the Left political parties and hadn’t conduct any official investigation regarding that.
The 1983 anti-Tamil rights (Balack July) was a brow bitton attack towards the cooperation and unity among the Sinhala & Tamil communities in Sri Lanka. Most importantly, before the 1983 Black July, the president J.R. Jayawardene stated that,
“I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people now. Now we can not think of them. Not about their lives or their opinion about us, the more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be. Really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy” (Sebewiratne 2006 & origi- nally cited from Don Embuldeniya 2015 : 145).
According to the results of the Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic violence the major reason for the outbreak of the Black July rights where the LTTE killed 13 Sinhala army soldiers (2002 : 15). As a response to that incident Sinhalese killed hundreds of Tamils and Thousnads became homeless (Pavey 2010 : 6). Under this situation, number of Tamils in Colombo migrated to European Countries and other shifted into the north eastern Tamil dominated areas. Thousands of Tamil youth joined hands with the Tamil military groups, mainly with LTTE in order to fight against the Sinhalese. It’s also important to mention that many Sinhalese also involved to protect their Tamil friends and neighbors too.
3.4 Cultural Horizontal Inequalities
According to Langer and Brown,“ Culture plays a fundamental role in framing socioeconomic and political (horizontal inequalities) generally since it is a common culture or identity which binds groups together” (2008 : 42). Prioritizing one language or religion can originate frustration of the diverse groups with the different languages and religious identities. Under that hypothesis, this section mainly discusses how the cultural inequal-
ities contributed for the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
3.4.1 Discriminations on the acceptance of Tamil language
The 1956 new SLFP (Sri Lankan Freedom Party) government appointed under the support of the majority Sinhalese. Also SLFP leaders S.W.R.D Banddaranayaka developed his image as the representative of the Sinhala Buddhist identity throughout his election campaign. Thus, after the victory of the parliamentary election the SLFP government introduced the “Sinhala Only Act” (Official Language Act 1956). This legal definition of the ‘Sinhala language’ as the official language of the country, mainly frustrated the minorities of the country, especially largest minority ‘Tamils’. Later that, under the first republic constitution (1972), the
“new constitution move formally subordinated the states of the Tamil language and removed some of the existing provisions for protecting the minority status” (Don Embuldeniya 2015 : 150). This inequality of the language acceptance mainly influences for the social, economic and political stability of the Tamils. This feeling of discrimination motivated Tamil youth to involve with guerilla war against the majority Sinhalese and Sinhala dominated government. With the sense of the ethnic conflict in the country, the 1978 constitution accepted both Sinhala and Tamil languages as the official languages and the national languages which used as a mechanism to remove the sense of discrimination from the Tamil mindset.
4. Conclusion
The crimes & violations of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cannot be justified. Though this ethnic conflict finalized in 2009 still Sri Lanka is struggling to overcome damages which caused upon to it’s social layer. Though, there is no generally agreed interpretation about the relationship between poverty and conflict, Horizontal inequalities can be recognized as the conclusive dimension which creates the link there. The case study of the ethnic conflict of the Sri Lanka can be recognized as the one of the best examples to prove this relationship. While analyzing the birth of the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, it is visible that the Social, Cultural, Economic and Political Horizontal inequalities had mainly caused its establishment. Currently, Sri Lanka has secured the equal rights and opportunities of all ethnic groups under the Constitution. This can be recognized as a positive step to reduce the Horizontal Inequalities which lead the conflicts. Though many scholars had recog- nized power sharing as an effective, practical solution to reduce Horizontal Inequalities and conflict the scenario of Sri Lanka can be fairly different. The new language policy (accepting Sinhala and Tamil as national languages) can recognize as a positive step towards the equality in this multi ethnic society. But it is important to develop a citizen’s ideology towards equality & cooperation. The National Anthem can be used as a very effective mechanism to spread the feeling of cooperation and equality in the Sri Lankan society. Therefore, it is essential to address the problem of the langue policy of the National Anthem. Though the LTTE terrorism issue finalized in 2009, still the Sri Lankan community is suffering from the numerous ethnicity related conflicts
as a result of Horizontal inequalities. Therefore, it is important to strengthen the policy framework of Sri Lanka securing equal rights of all ethnic groups, before an another serious ethnic conflict occurs.
〔投稿受理日2020. 10. 15／掲載決定日2020. 12. 23〕
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