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Round The World
New Delhi, 17 February 2016
Indo-Lanka Ties
A NEW CHAPTER
UNFOLDS
By Amrita Banerjee
(School of
International Studies, JNU, New Delhi)
India-Sri Lanka relations have not looked better, following Foreign
Minister Sushma Swaraj’s recent visit to Colombo.
Not only did she chair the 9th Joint Commission meeting with her Sri
Lankan counterpart Samaraweera fruitfully to discuss the entire gamut of
relationship pertaining to economic cooperation, trade, power and energy,
technical and maritime cooperation but also discussed the fishermen’s issue and
rights of minority Tamils with the top Sri Lankan leadership.
The successful chairing of the Joint Commission (an
initiative started in 1992 to foster bilateral relations) states the fact that
the Indo-Lanka ties are in a happy space today. The new dynamics between the two
followed the dramatic regime change in Sri Lanka
in January 2015 when the Rajapaksa government (that was dangerously inclining
towards China)
was replaced by the Sirisena government. New Delhi
promptly reached out to the new government and things got a reciprocal touch
when President Sirisena made New Delhi
his first port of call after assuming charge.
In no time, the neighbours cemented diplomatic ties in a
series of high-level visits, Narendra Modi’s in March last year, the first
bilateral visit to the island by an Indian Prime Minister in almost three
decades. Soon after, following victory in Sri
Lanka’s August parliamentary elections PM Wickremesinghe
made his customary visit to New Delhi.
Eager to cash on the new goodwill, India has been pushing for a Comprehensive
Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which New Delhi
and Colombo
have been discussing since 2000. India said the pact could be a
breakthrough, for it would not only open up the Sri Lankan market for Indian
goods, services and investment but would also further consolidate the
Indo-Lanka economic relations.
To achieve this end, India
also gets ready to address Sri Lanka’s
concerns on an economic pact by holding a workshop in Colombo in future. This was one of the
outcomes of the Joint Commission. The initiative was in response to criticism
from certain quarters that the proposed agreement would take away jobs of Sri
Lankan professionals. The other take aways from the Commission meeting was the
reconstitution of CEOs forum to set up a special economic zone in Trincomalee
and an IT park in Sri Lanka
that could attract investments.
Positivity in their bilateral relationship also gets infused
to a great extent by the baby steps the new government takes to bring about
inclusion of the estranged Tamils in the Sri Lankan society like the recent
proposal of the Sirisena government to convene a ‘Constitutional Assembly’ to
draft a new Constitution for the island country. This would be indeed a
historic opportunity for Colombo
and its third attempt at Constitution making whereby the government seemed
ready to devolve power to minority Tamils aimed at resolving the ethnic
conflict and achieving reconciliation with them.
Besides this, the Sri Lankan government even lifted the
unofficial ban on Sri Lanka’s
national anthem (imposed by Rajapaksa) which was also sung in Tamil along with
Sinhala at the country’s 68th Independence Day ceremony. Swaraj has
not only lauded these efforts but added that her nation stood behind the
Maithri-Ranil leadership on reconciliation and development.
As domestic politics seemed to be played out blatantly over
the issue of human rights in the country, quite recently, the UN human rights
chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein even visited the country to review the measures
taken by the island-nation to investigate alleged atrocities committed during
the long civil war that left up to 100,000 people killed and hundreds still
missing in the 26 year-old ethnic conflict.
In the hard-hitting report submitted by him at the UNHRC
last September, Hussein had criticized Sri Lanka’s failure to deliver
justice to the victims. He has prescribed an international ‘hybrid court’ with
foreign judges, prosecutors and investigators to Sri Lanka and also cited historical
attempts to cover-up investigations through domestic mechanisms, rather than
genuine processes to seek the truth.
The UNHRC resolution co-sponsored by Sri Lanka has
mandated an accountability probe focused both on the government troops and the
LTTE. During his regime, Rajapaksa ignored three UNHRC resolutions claiming these
attacked the island's sovereignty. Even though the Sirisena government has
adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the UNHRC, he has cited constitutional
difficulties in allowing foreign judges to operate on the island and instead
agreed to a domestic probe on human rights allegations.
Having said this, the Sri Lankan government seems to be at
crossroads. At one side, there is domestic pressure from the Sinhala majority
nationalists that has made the government reiterate the fact that it would
‘protect’ its soldiers in the investigations amounting to human rights
violation; on the other side there is international pressure to do more to
ensure reconciliation in the ethnically divided nation.
The need for national reconciliation through a political
settlement of the ethnic issue also has been reiterated by India at the
highest level. The Lankan Government has conveyed its assurance that political
proposals building on the 13th Amendment (as a result of Indo-Lanka Accord) to
the Constitution will be discussed with the Tamil leadership.
In an effort to untie the knot, Swaraj not only reached out
to the Sirisena government but also to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA)
leader, R. Sampanthan to take a stock of the various reconciliation efforts
made since January 2015. Even as the Minister lauded the various measures taken
in the direction of reconciliation, it continued to remain concerned in getting
the issue resolved “in a reasonable way and in an amicable manner”.
At present a sticky issue in the blossoming New
Delhi-Colombo relationship is that of the fishermen that invariably gets deeply
intertwined with the ‘Tamil Nadu’ factor. There have been several alleged
incidents of Lankan Navy personnel firing and also arresting several
Indian fishermen fishing in the Palk Strait, much to the distaste of New Delhi. Not only this
but Sri Lanka has also asked the Indian government to ban the use of mechanized
trawlers in this region as they deprive the Lankan fishermen including Tamils
of their catch, damages their fishing boats and is also ecologically damaging.
So far no concrete agreement has been reached since India favors regulating these
trawlers instead of banning them altogether.
India has always taken up the issue of
safety of its fishermen on a priority basis with the Lankan Government. However,
the Tamil Nadu government alleges apathy on part of the Centre and as they
state that not enough has been done in this regard.
As New Delhi consolidates its
ties with Colombo and pursues its economic
vision in Sri Lanka,
it has the responsibility of addressing the fisheries issue convincingly and
with a sense of urgency. Anticipating the shrill and unreasonable demands from
Tamil Nadu, aimed at electoral gains, New
Delhi will have to come up with a sound strategy to
address this problem.
All in all, the present government seems to have hit the
right note with Colombo and the way forward,
from the vexed problem of fishing rights to the larger question of India’s
strategic goals in the region is to engage in a more vigorous bilateral
dialogue for a stronger comprehensive relationship.--INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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