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Round The World
New Delhi, 17 February 2015
Unresolved
Tamil Issue
INDIA-LANKA
COSY ON SECURITY
By Ashok B
Sharma
New Delhi has moved
an inch forward to secure the Indian Ocean
from the growing Chinese influence. It has seized the right opportunity with
the change of leadership in Sri Lanka
to strike a civil nuclear pact with the nearest island and agreed to expand
defence and strategic cooperation, including “the trilateral format” with the Maldives. The
civil nuke pact is the first of its kind that Colombo has signed with any country. This can
be seen as India’s
attempt to pre-empt any such move by the Chinese to ink a similar deal with the
island country.
China has been
extending its “String of Pearls” in the Indian Ocean.
Beijing has recently developed the island
nation’s Hambantota port and has offered an investment of $1.4 billion for the Colombo port city
project. The new Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister
Ranil Wickremesinghe during the election campaign had criticized their opponent
and former president Mahinda Rajapaksa for incurring huge loans from China for
building roads, ports and other infrastructure.
The new dispensation also opposed
the proposed Colombo
port city project with Chinese assistance as this would entail huge ecological
damage. But after assuming power President Sirisena made a U-turn and preferred
not to displease the Chinese and gave a go ahead signal to Beijing
for the Colombo
port city project.
Just to recall, the Former President
Rajapaksa during his tenure opted to move closer to China,
much to the annoyance of India.
He allowed
Chinese submarines to dock at Colombo port twice
and threatened to turn Sri Lanka
into a strategic asset for China
at New Delhi’s
expense. Hope that President Sirisena would be wiser to maintain a balance in the
interests of his country and not afford to embitter its relations with a
valuable and strategic neighbour like India. Apart from trade and
investment relations and other ongoing areas of cooperation, both the countries
recently inked pacts on extending their cooperation in the spheres of culture
and agriculture.
The civil nuke pact inked with India
during the recent visit of President Sirisena intends to facilitate cooperation
in transfer and exchange of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources,
capacity building and training of personnel in peaceful uses of nuclear energy
including use of radioisotopes, nuclear safety, radiation safety, nuclear
security, radioactive waste management and nuclear and radiological disaster
mitigation and environment protection.
Such an agreement was necessary. Colombo had earlier expressed apprehensions over India’s Kudankulam atomic power project in its
vicinity at the coast of Tamil Nadu as it
thought that in case of any Fukushima-like disaster, the island country will
have to bear the consequences. Therefore, this civil nuke pact will not clear Sri Lanka’s
apprehension but also help in its energy security programme.
India’s concern is for securing
sea lanes of communications (SLOCs) in both Indian and Pacific oceans that
handles two-third of world’s energy trade, half of global containerized cargo
and a third of world’s bulk cargo. A considerable amount of India’s trade
pass through this region including its energy requirements. The strengthening
of India-Sri Lanka-Maldives trilateral is, therefore, necessary for ensuring
security architecture in the vicinity.
India is also a party to other
trilaterals in the region like India-US-Japan, India-Japan-Australia,
India-Indonesia-Australia to mention a few. India is already a member of the
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), East Asia Summit, Asia Europe Summit Meeting
(ASEM), ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting plus Eight (ADMM+8), Indian Ocean
Naval Symposium (IONS) and Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).
During the recent Sirisena-Modi
delegation level talks in New Delhi much of the contentious issues relating to
Sri Lankan Tamils like the devolution of powers under the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution, rehabilitation, repatriation of Tamil refugees
now in relief camps in India and the problems of Indian fishermen were not
resolved. These issues are likely to be taken up when the Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi visits Colombo
in March.
At the time of elections, President
Sirisena had assured the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to devolve political and
financial powers to the Tamils, but would retain military presence in the north
and northeastern provinces. There are about 130,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees
in various relief camps in India,
out of which 90,000 are in Tamil Nadu.
The Tamil refugees are waiting for
return of normalcy and adequate environment for rehabilitation for their return
to their home country. The rehabilitation process has been slow and tardy. Added
to this Sri Lanka had refused to hold an independent inquiry into the
state-sponsored deadly massacre of thousands of Tamils in 2009 despite being
pulled up by UN Human Rights Council and other human rights organization
worldwide.
However, there is relief for
President Sirisena. The UNHRC has decided to postpone the release of the report
on alleged war crimes committed in 2009 civil war till September this year.
Initially it was planned to release the report in March 25 during the 28th
session of UNHRC, but on request of President Sirisena it has been deferred on
the pretext of the island nation conducting an internal inquiry. New Delhi had so far
soft-pedalled whenever the issue came up before the UNHRC. But with the recent
change in the political dispensation in India, it depends upon the Modi Government
how it deals with the issue.
Another contentious issue is of the fishermen
of both the countries being apprehended and put in jail for crossing
territorial waters. The problem has been accentuated by India handing over the uninhabited Katchatheevu
island to Sri Lanka which
has caused a loss of territorial waters to India and has placed Indian
fishermen at a disadvantage.
Sri Lanka has become
a partner in the Nalanda
University project. The
Buddhist majority island country is very much interested in developing
Buddhists sites in India
and President Sirisena has said that Buddhism and Hinduism have close
relations. It depends upon him how effectively he resolves the Tamil issue in
his own country, keeping in view the close relationship between the two
religions. Prime Minister Modi intends to give some time to President Sirisena
to settle down and resolve the issue and make Sri Lanka an effective security
partner in the Indian Ocean region. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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