BIRDS OF FREEDOM

Abstract

The article explores how the dominant discourses of identity politics in the Sri Lankan conflict have silenced people in northern Sri Lanka and closed spaces for political participation. In order to understand the discursive processes and their material outcomes, the article addresses in particular the role of young people in northern Sri Lanka and explores their relationship to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The author examines the LTTE's discourse on gender, young people, nationalism, and governance through the lens of two books written separately by Anthon Balasingham and by Adele Balasingham. Birds of Freedom, the LTTE's women's wing, is shown to be an example of how the warring parties have monopolized liberation discourse through the uncompromised nationalism of a militant movement. The article discusses how this dominant discourse informs young people's lived experiences, material realities, and life opportunities for participation as social actors in their communities in the Jaffna peninsula. A particular feature of people's everyday lives in northern Sri Lanka is described as a complex citizenship characterized by the presence of several governing and uncompromising actors to whom people must relate. The latter part of the article analyzes the way young people in the north of Sri Lanka relate to this context of complex citizenship, with particular reference to the LTTE.

Acknowledgments

Notes

1. Jeganathan and Ismail 1995, 8.

2. Kaldor 1995.

3. Within northern Sri Lanka, I here refer mainly to the Jaffna peninsula, but I also interviewed young people in other areas of Sri Lanka who originally came from the North (such as in Mannar and the Vanni).

4. Balasingham 2001.

5. Balasingham 2004.

6. Of Sri Lanka's approximately 19.5 million citizens, about 5 percent are Indian Tamils, 8 percent are Muslims, 4.5 percent are Sri Lankan Tamils, and 82 percent are Sinhalese, in addition to a small number of other groups (Peace in Sri Lanka 2006).

7. Hettige and Mayer 2002.

8. Ministry of Education 2004.

9. According to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Education, literacy in the total population increased from 39.9 percent in 1921 to 57.8 percent in 1946.

10. Fernando 2002.

11. Gunaratna 1998.

12. Increased tension and militarism culminated in the worst riots in Sri Lanka's history, the 1983 pogrom, or Black July. The violence broke out in Colombo after a landmine attack and an ambush by the LTTE killed thirteen government soldiers near Jaffna — the first time an attack on this scale had taken place. After the soldiers' bodies were flown to Colombo for a mass funeral, retaliatory attacks commenced against Tamils in the city; these soon spread to other places in the country where Tamils lived. An estimated two to three thousand Tamils were killed. In Colombo alone, 150,000 Tamils lost their homes (Thiruchelvam 2000).

13. Nissan 1998; Smith 1999.

14. Balasingham 2001, 2.

15. Fuglerud forthcoming.

16. Spivak 1988.

17. Young 1990.

18. Gunaratna 1998; Uyangoda 1999.

19. Uyangoda 1999.

20. Balasingham 2004, v.

21. Balasingham 2001; Balasingham 2004.

22. Balasingham 2004, 6.

23. See, for example, the homepage of the Peace Secretariat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam: http://www.ltteps.org/; accessed 26 February 2007.

24. “Ahimsa” is a Sanskrit term meaning nonviolence.

25. Balasingham 2004, 9.

26. Ibid., 201.

27. An exception to this is found in the book by Adele Balasingham where she discusses the meaning of caste and gender. I return to this point below.

28. In neither of the Balsinghams' books is it entirely clear, however, how the LTTE became the dominating force in the Tamil community. Some discussions on the movement's relationship to other organizations are presented throughout the books, but there is no elaboration on why the Tamil organizations became such fierce enemies. What is emphasized is the fact that Tamil people supported the LTTE more than the other groups because of the cadres' discipline and dedication to the Tamil cause as well as the movement's preservation of chastity and high morals among the Tamil youths.

29. Balasingham 2001.

30. “Vanni” is a generic term for the four mainland districts of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, namely Kilinochchi, Mannar, Mullaitivu, and Vavuniya (Sarvananthan 2007). Areas under LTTE control are today in the Vanni, and the term Vanni is often used (in literature and by the interviewees) as synonymous with the LTTE‐con‐trolled areas.

31. Brun 2005; Coomaraswamy 1997; de Alwis 1998; de Mel 2001; Maunaguru 1995; Schalk 1997.

32. See, for example, Coomaraswamy 1997; de Mel 2001.

33. Balasingham 2001, 269.

34. Balasingham 2001, 78.

35. Rape is a well‐known practice of gender‐based violence in civil wars. In Sri Lanka the case most discussed by the youngsters I interviewed was the raping and subsequent killing of 18‐year‐old Krishanthi Kumaraswamy by government soldiers at the Kaithady checkpoint in 1996. When family members went to inquire about her at the checkpoint they too disappeared.

36. Pongu Tamil started as a student demonstration at the University of Jaffna to demonstrate in favor of the peace process. LTTE influence is believed to be quite strong in the university, and the Pongu Tamil is seen as a demonstration of support for the LTTE.

37. Young people were not willing to leave Jaffna for less‐developed Kilinochchi as the latter did not have a mobile phone network, had limited access to electricity, and the regime was very strict and controlling.

38. Cockburn 1998; Enloe 1993; Indra 1999; Manchanda 2001.

39. Brun 2005.

40. Rajasingham‐Senanayake 1999.

41. Korf 2006.

42. Ismail 2005, 107.

43. Spivak 1988, 276.

44. Ismail 2005.

45. Generally, citizenship refers to membership in a political unit — usually the nation state — and defines bounded populations with a specific set of rights and duties (Smith 2000; Soysal 1994). The term refers to the range of formal and informal processes that determine people's inclusion in, and exclusion from, a variety of symbolic and material spaces and resources. Most commonly, citizenship is discussed at the national level, as a relationship between an individual and the nation state, or between a group of individuals and a nation state. Although, we are not talking about a nation state as yet recognized by the international community, we are talking about the LTTE, which aspires to state power and the creation of a nation state for the Tamil population. Thus, the notion of citizenship is useful in this connection. This means, however, that some of the general criticisms leveled toward citizenship are also useful to keep in mind when discussing the LTTE. The traditional understanding of citizenship stresses the principles of sameness, such as equal rights and equal treatment for all members in the nation state. However, the understanding of citizens as unitary, and as stripped of identities of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, caste, religion, and region (Marston and Staeheli 1994) or defined only by their ethnicity, may also be problematic.

46. Fuglerud forthcoming; Sarvananthan 2007.

47. Stokke 2006.

48. Ibid., 1035.

49. Cornwall 2002.

50. Jeganathan and Ismail 1995.