The problem with running a disingenuous military campaign is that victory is never as sweet as it should have been. In a world on alert against bombings and gunmen randomly attacking civilians, the Sri Lankan government had expected to be congratulated for concluding the twenty-six-year civil war on the island by defeating one of the world's most abusive armed groups, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Meenakshi Ganguly works on south Asia for Human Rights Watch

Also by Meenakshi Ganguly in openDemocracy:

"Sri Lanka: time to act" (10 September 2006)

"India's Dalits: between atrocity and protest" (9 January 2007)

"China and Bhutan: crushing dissent" (4 July 2007)

"India and Burma: time to choose" (14 January 2008)

"Nepal: the human-rights test" (28 April 2008)

"India's election season: bad for minorities" (3 November 2008)

"After Mumbai: India's democratic test" (2 December 2008)

"Sri Lanka under siege" (30 January 2009)

"Sri Lanka's displaced: the political vice" (8 April 2009)

It is hard to mourn the passing of a group that pioneered suicide-bombings, murdered Tamils who opposed Tiger tactics, and ran a near-totalitarian state-within-a-state. The evil of the Tiger leadership was never more evident than in the final days of the conflict when Tiger forces shot Tamil civilians attempting to flee the fighting and heavy government shelling.

Yet the celebrations in Sri Lanka were very one-sided, with even Tamils who opposed the LTTE wary about what the government has in store for them (see Robert D Kaplan, "Buddha's Savage Peace", Atlantic Monthly, September 2009). Many in the international community, while pleased at the end of a long-running and brutal conflict, remain concerned about the violations of the laws of war that paved the way to victory; they are also worried about the authoritarian behaviour of the Colombo government, which includes continuing intimidation of the media and human-rights defenders and expulsion of foreign journalists and aid workers deemed critical of the government.

Colombo's evasion

Perhaps the biggest blight on military victory is the way in which Tamils displaced by the fighting have been treated. More than 260,000 Tamil civilians are now in detention camps for what the government calls security reasons. Instead of breathing freedom now that they are out of the clutches of the LTTE, people who suffered the horrors of a brutal conflict are essentially prisoners in their own country.

The government claims it needs time to filter out LTTE members who may have escaped with the civilians. At least 10,000 alleged LTTE fighters are believed to have been removed from the camps and separately detained. Only a few thousand of the displaced have been released and allowed to return home or to stay elsewhere. But many of the camp residents have relatives, including close family members, with whom they can live if they are allowed to leave. Humanitarian organisations have long advocated the release of the displaced from the camps; they have been ignored.

There are genuine concerns that many of the villages where these people lived are heavily mined and badly damaged, making it unsafe for them to return until the areas have been cleared and rebuilt. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government is seeking international assistance to run the camps. The United Nations has called for $270 million in aid to Sri Lanka. In July 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $2.6 billion loan to Sri Lanka that was held up for several months because of international concerns regarding the treatment of the displaced. The Indian government has committed a million dollars in its annual budget to assist Sri Lanka in rehabilitation and reconstruction of the northern war-zone.

Now heavy rains have led to flooding in the sprawling camps, unnecessarily putting camp residents at risk. Oddly, the minister of resettlement and disaster management told the Sri Lankan Daily Mirror that he held United Nations agencies responsible for the flooded camps, saying "(The) Government cannot be blamed for the poor condition of the drainage systems which burst and failed."  

This evasion of responsibility is not surprising. The Sri Lankan government had first refused to admit that the civilians being held hostage by the LTTE numbered several hundred thousand, instead making claims that only a few were at risk from the heavy fighting. Then the government insisted that it was respecting its self-declared no-fire safe zone to protect civilians. But satellite images and accounts by witnesses made it clear that civilians instead suffered a continual barrage of military shelling. The Sri Lankan government also claimed that hardly any civilians had died in the final weeks of the fighting; but United Nations figures and personal accounts indicate that several thousand were killed. Some government officials still make the ludicrous claim that the not a single civilian was killed by the Sri Lankan army (see War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni, Human Rights Watch, February 2009).

The people's right

Thus when the government doctors who had earlier sent out anguished messages to the world reporting heavy civilian casualties came out from weeks of largely incommunicado detention to repudiate their own accounts, claiming that they had made their reports under pressure from the LTTE, it raised more questions than it answered. There are reasonable suspicions that the retractions were made under pressure from the government, which has accused the doctors of supporting the LTTE and has threatened them with criminal prosecution.

One reason the government has held so many people in detention camps is that tens of thousands of civilians who were in the conflict zone may be able to corroborate the doctors' reports. The Sri Lankan government's denial of access to the camps to independent journalists and human-rights workers creates suspicions that the government has much to hide.

Foreign assistance is clearly needed both to help those who have been displaced now and to help rebuild. But the aid should be given on the understanding that humanitarian aid principles and human-rights standards are met. The 260,000 civilians in the camps should be free to leave if they want to and stay with family, friends or charities. Freedom of speech should be restored to people who didn't have such freedoms while living under LTTE rule. The government needs to stop running the camps like prisons and allow aid workers and independent observers full access.

Sri Lankans want lasting peace. But to reassure its Tamil citizens that this is possible, Colombo needs to end its mistreatment of Tamils displaced by the war and allow an independent international inquiry into the conduct of the fighting by the LTTE and government forces. Until this happens, there can be no real victory.

When the fifty-ninth division of Sri Lanka's army entered Mullaitivu on 25 January 2009, it marked the fall of the last major town under the control of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The end may be in sight for the conventional armed conflict between government and LTTE forces which since 1983 has taken the lives of some 70,000 people, primarily in the island's north and east. 

Meenakshi Ganguly is senior researcher on south Asia for Human Rights Watch

Also by Meenakshi Ganguly in openDemocracy:

"Sri Lanka: time to act" (10 September 2006)

"India's Dalits: between atrocity and protest" (9 January 2007)

"China and Bhutan: crushing dissent" (4 July 2007)

"India and Burma: time to choose" (14 January 2008)

"Nepal: the human-rights test" (28 April 2008)

"India's election season: bad for minorities" (3 November 2008)

"After Mumbai: India's democratic test" (2 December 2008)

The capture of the town followed an advance by government troops during which they had gradually squeezed the LTTE forces into Mullaitivu district in their northern Vanni stronghold. The seizure of Mullaitivu itself means that the remaining Tamil Tiger forces have headed for long-prepared fortified areas deep in the area's thick jungles - taking many civilians with them. The army leader, Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka, announced Mullaitivu's capture by saying that the war was "95% over" and that it "was a matter of time" before his troops had gained complete control over the entire area previously held by the LTTE. 

The LTTE, long notorious for suicide-bombings and political assassinations, has been among the most abusive rebel movements in the world. Even as it has claimed to be fighting for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, the Tigers' leadership has never hesitated to eliminate any Tamils who proposed defending Tamil rights through other means. Within the areas it controlled, it ruled through heavy-handed repression. Its attacks on civilians led to the proscription of the LTTE in many countries, including India, the United States and the European Union zone. 

But even as the Sri Lankan government makes triumphant claims of victory, it is timely to recall that success on the battlefield is no guarantee of ending the causes of war. The political grievances that fuelled the creation of the LTTE and other militant Tamil groups are no nearer to resolution than when the conflict started a quarter-century ago. 

The Tamils' trauma

The situation of Sri Lanka's Tamils has become worse under the present government of President Mahinda Rajapakse, elected in November 2005. A scourge of enforced disappearances, in which hundreds of Tamils have been abducted rarely to return, can be traced to the state-security forces and paramilitary groups operating on their behalf. There have also been massacres of Tamil aid workers, students and other non-combatants, some of which have led to well-hyped but feckless government inquiries - and absolutely no prosecutions.

Since major fighting resumed between the government and the LTTE in mid-2006, neither side has shown much regard for the security of the largely Tamil civilian population in the north and east. In the most recent round of fighting that began in September 2008, the Sri Lankan government has refused to allow either humanitarian agencies or the media to operate in the conflict area. The United Nations was forced to withdraw. During the fight for Mullaitivu, there have been credible allegations of large numbers of civilian deaths; but without independent monitors on the ground, the true scale of the tragedy is unknown. 

Those civilians who escape the LTTE's grip and flee from the fighting in the Vanni are kept under detention by the Sri Lankan government in heavily militarised camps. The Rajapakse government has ignored both human-rights groups and United Nations humanitarian agencies who have called for a transparent registration of persons displaced in the conflict and then allowing them freedom of movement, including permission to stay with relatives and host families. 

Alan Keenan, "Sri Lanka's election choice" (17 November 2005)

Alan Keenan, "Sri Lanka: between peace and war" (14 May 2006)

Nira Wickramasinghe, "Sri Lanka: the politics of purity" (17 November 2006)

Nira Wickramasinghe, "Multiculturalism: a view from Sri Lanka" (30 May 2007)

Sumantra Bose, "Sri Lanka's stalemated conflict" (12 June 2007) 

The defeat of LTTE forces elsewhere in Sri Lanka has sadly replaced one form of oppression with another. In the east, where a breakaway faction of the LTTE is now responsible for civilian administration with the support of the Rajapakse government, human-rights violations continue on a daily basis. Government officials say they need time to return the area to normalcy, but have installed former LTTE fighters in powerful positions and have taken virtually no action to address killings, abductions and extortion that plague the local population. Instead of benefiting from a peace dividend, many residents of the east continue to suffer violence. 

In Colombo, Tamil civilians are being ethnically profiled in an attempt to identify suspects. The message of the Rajapaskse government seems clear: all Tamils are suspected LTTE supporters unless proved otherwise. Tamils live in fear of being expelled from the city as Sinhalese ultra-nationalists attempt to settle long-standing scores with a community it falsely believes unanimously supports the LTTE. 

The capital's targets

The army's success has not meant an easing of the government's repression of  freedom of expression and the press. Instead, the Rajapakse government chooses to silence critics with intimidation and arbitrary arrests. The media is a particular target. A columnist with the Sunday Times newspaper in Colombo, JS Tissainayagam, and the paper's publisher V Jasiharan and his wife V Valamathy, have been in detention since March 2008 on transparently political charges. Upali Tennakoon, editor of the Rivira newspaper and chairman of the editors' guild of Sri Lanka, was attacked, along with his wife, on 23 January 2009. The Tamil human-rights activist and parliamentarian, Mano Ganesan, was interrogated about his meetings with the LTTE, even though these were held during a ceasefire when the government was engaged in peace talks with the rebels. 

On 8 January 2009, the editor of the Sunday Times, Lasantha Wickrematunge was assassinated by unknown gunmen on motorcycles while riding in the back seat of his car in a heavily protected area of the capital city. Lasantha's death made international headlines because he had written an editorial to be published in the event of his death - and blamed his murder on the Rajapakse government (see "And Then They Came For Me", 11 January 2009, Sunday Leader, 11 January 2009).

Since Lasantha's murder, many journalists and civil-society activists have fled into exile. Those who remain worry each day about being abducted in trademark white vans, about being summoned for interrogation by the security forces, or being killed by gunmen who operate with  impunity even in high-security areas of Colombo. The government's own records indicate that in 2007-8, nine journalists have been killed and twenty-seven assaulted.

The government's test

Any proclaimed victory is hollow if what remains is a terrified minority population that anticipates discrimination and fears retribution. If the Rajapakse government is serious about resolving long-standing Tamil grievances, it must deliver justice and fair treatment to this and other minority communities. It must ensure that human rights are protected and that all those responsible for abuses, even government officials regardless of rank, are held to account. The failure to do so will means continued human-rights abuses in a nation where genuine respect for rights has proven elusive. 

Indeed, the government will be helping itself as well as all Sri Lanka's people if it learns to listen to and protect those who have long suffered at the hands of the LTTE. It must show that it will take on those who murder and threaten Sri Lankans of all ethnicities just as seriously as it has taken on the LTTE. The government must accept that peaceful critics are not enemies, they are an uncomfortable conscience. Unless those voices are heeded, there is little chance of winning the war for lasting peace.

The world's largest democracies are holding great election contests in 2008-09. There are intriguing parallels and contrasts in the way that prominent issues are discussed and managed by the respective political systems in Washington and New Delhi.

Meenakshi Ganguly is senior researcher on south Asia for Human Rights Watch

Also by Meenakshi Ganguly in openDemocracy:

"Sri Lanka: time to act" (10 September 2006)

"India's Dalits: between atrocity and protest" (9 January 2007)

"China and Bhutan: crushing dissent" (4 July 2007)

"India and Burma: time to choose" (14 January 2008)

"Nepal: the human-rights test" (28 April 200

The United States presidential election, which reaches its climax on 4 November 2008, was dominated for a good part of its course by debates about race and gender; the result has been to make the prospects of a first black president and first woman president look far more normal than they once did. India's election (to be held by May 2009) will take place in a country which has had Sikh and female prime ministers, as well as Muslim, Sikh and Dalit presidents; today, a Dalit woman is a serious contender for the prime-minister's job (see KV Prasad, "Can Mayawati do a Barack Obama?", The Hindu, 4 November 2008). In this, India could try to claim that it has already successfully addressed the problems which the US is now only beginning to face. 

But the reality is not so benign. India's experience also shows that access to a position of power does not of itself entail an end to rampant discrimination against minorities or marginalised groups. In 2008, some of India's largest political parties and their supporters have instigated or defended violence and hate against ethnic minorities - thus demonstrating that electing a woman or a Dalit is far from enough to guarantee equality and human rights. Rather, electing leaders from disadvantaged populations can - unless this is matched by coherent social action and education - come to be a shiny facade that conceals a vacuum where real commitment by the state to protect minority rights should be. 

A turn inward

A number of recent events has focused attention on the wounded status of minorities in India. Since August 2008, Kandhamal district in Orissa state has been the scene of acts of religious violence following the murder on 23 August of an elderly leader of the extremist, rightwing Hindu group the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). In retaliation, mobs went on a protest rampage of killings, rape and arson. Initially, a Maoist insurgent group active in the region was held by many to be responsible for the death of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and his four aides - and even made a claim of responsibility itself. But the VHP and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal - which are closely affiliated to India's main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - chose instead to blame and target the local Christian community.

For decades, Christian missionaries have offered health and education programs to marginalised tribal groups in Orissa and similar areas; this has led many residents subsequently to convert to Christianity. The Hindu groups have over the last decade demanded that they "reconvert" to Hindusim, in a campaign that often included force and intimidation. Thus, when the VHP leader was shot, they found it convenient immediately to assume that local Christians were responsible (see Jacob Ignatius, "India's Christians: politics of violence in Orissa", 1 September 2008).

Among openDemocracy's articles on Indian politics and democracy:

Rajeev Bhargava, "Words save lives: India, the BJP and the constitution" (2 October 2002)

Rajeev Bhargava, "The political psychology of Hindu nationalism" (5 November 2003)

Antara Dev Sen, "India's benign earthquake" (20 May 2004)

Rajeev Bhargava, "India's model: faith, secularism and democracy" (3 November 2004)

Ajai Sahni, "India and its Maoists: failure and success" (20 March 2007)

Sumantra Bose, "Uttar Pradesh: India's democratic landslip" (29 May 2007)

John Elkington, "India's third liberation" (21 August 2007)

Kanchan Lakshman, "India in Afghanistan: a presence under pressure" (11 July 2008)

Ajai Sahni, "India after Ahmedabad's bombs" (29 July 2008)

Paul Rogers, "China and India: heartlands of global protest" (7 August 2008)

Antara Dev Sen, "India at 61: here's looking at you, kid!" (19 August 2008)

Jacob Ignatius, "India's Christians: politics of violence in Orissa" (1 September 2008)

Muzamil Jameel, "Kashmir's new generation" (13 October 2008)
One family described how they managed to flee into the nearby jungles when the mob arrived. But a relative, confined to a wheelchair, could not get away and was beaten and killed. Priests described how they suffered extensive beatings; one of those attacked, Father Bernard Digal, died in hospital on the night of 28-29 October. Two days later, on 31 October, five police officers were suspended for dereliction of duty after a nun recounted her rape. Nearly forty people were killed, scores injured and thousands displaced in the violence. 

The perpetrators of this brutality show no remorse. Instead, they display a confident assertion of Hindu identity, no doubt in the hope that such aggression will be rewarded with Hindu votes for the BJP. The attacks on churches and Christians have even spread to other parts of India, including the states of Kerala and Karnataka. In Orissa, where the state government failed to anticipate and prevent the violence, villagers still report that they are allowed to return to their ravaged homes only after they have been through a "reconversion" ceremony. 

The VHP and Bairang Dal have also sought to exacerbate tensions in the troubled state of Jammu & Kashmir. In an election-year there, a dispute exploded over the proposed transfer of land to build shelters during an annual Hindu pilgrimage into the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley; some parties (including separatist groups) mobilised to oppose this, and when the transfer was revoked the Hindu-majority areas of Jammu in turn erupted in protest (see Muzamil Jameel, "Kashmir's new generation", 13 October 2008). Some demonstrators attacked police officers and government property. There are persistent allegations that the violence was to a large degree instigated by vote-seekers. 

In Mumbai (Bombay), the cosmopolitan capital of Maharashtra, the glorious bustle of emerging India is often disrupted by violence from supporters of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a regional party that claims to speak for people native to the state. The supporters of the hardline MNS leader Raj Thackeray, regularly harass and assault migrants to the city from the poorer Hindi-speaking states of northern India.

The effect is to coarsen and politicise local discourse and social relations. Two incidents in October 2008 are emblematic. First, MNS activists broke into a railways-recruitment examination, insisting that such jobs should be reserved for locals, and beat up and chased away the candidates from other parts of the country. Second, around a quarter of the near-800 Jet Airline employees who were to lose their jobs appealed to Raj Thackeray for support and found a ready response, including threats to the airline.

From words to action

After a spate of terrorist bomb-attacks in several Indian cities in 2008, police arrested a number of alleged members of the group that claimed responsibility - which called itself the "Indian Mujaheddin" (believed by investigatoes to be affiiliated to the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami [HuJI] and Students Islamic Movement of India [Simi]). The true perpetrators of such indiscriminate attacks should indeed be brought to justice, though a long history of "rounding up the usual suspects" (which usually means Muslims) and failing to arrest the perpetrators mean that there is little faith in the Indian authorities' counter-terror efforts (see Ajai Sahni, "India's urban war: through the smoke", 17 September 2008).

Moreover, Indian politicians usually ignore demands for transparent and independent investigations into incidents of arbitrary arrests or deaths in custody. Now, however, elections are due: and suddenly, the issue of human rights finds itself at the centre of extraordinary attention in political debates. Some parties are demanding judicial investigations into allegations of police killings in New Delhi, while other parties oppose this; each accuses the other of base attempts to appeal to their Muslim or Hindu voters. 

An election is supposed to be the cornerstone of a democracy, the event where its core principles of debate, plurality, tolerance, and free choice are displayed and celebrated. The electoral process in India is increasingly distant from this ideal (see Sumantra Bose, "Uttar Pradesh: India's democratic landslip", 29 May 2007). What it churns out is a lot of ugliness, a poisoning of societies with hate simply in an effort to gain votes.

India's political parties would serve citizens, the country and ultimately also themselves better if they remember that what voters want most is safety and security. These can be achieved only through respect for minorities - whether migrants from other parts of the country or people of different religious faiths.

India may have had a Dalit president, and the country has laws that outlaw descent-based caste discrimination; yet the practice remains all-pervasive and deeply rooted. The authorities do little to punish lawbreakers.

India's prime minister Manmohan Singh once despaired out loud that India was surrounded by failed states. The rest of the sub-continent, concerned about the military and economic might of India, was outraged. Yet, the neighbourhood is in more trouble than ever. Pakistan is in crisis, Sri Lanka is at war with itself, Bangladesh remains in a state of emergency under de facto army rule, the peace process in Nepal has stumbled and Burma's generals used abusive and at times lethal force to put down a peaceful campaign to demand democracy.

Meenakshi Ganguly works on south Asia for Human Rights Watch

Also by Meenakshi Ganguly in openDemocracy:

"Sri Lanka: time to act" (10 September 2006)

"India's Dalits: between atrocity and protest" (10 January 2007)

"China and Bhutan: crushing dissent" (4 July 2007)

At the same time, India's claims that its standing in the region and growing economic power should give it more clout in global diplomacy are under the microscope. India often calls for peace, negotiations, or early elections. Oddly, though proud of its standing as the "world's largest democracy", when it comes to human-rights violations in neighbouring countries, officials in New Delhi describe the situations as "internal affairs" of those countries. India does not want to be seen as the regional bully, they explain.

When it is pushed to do more, New Delhi retreats into belligerence. Its officials, told of widespread "disappearances" in Sri Lanka, respond by pointing to the secret renditions that have been carried out by the United States during its global war on terror. Allegations of torture in Bangladesh are compared to the practices at Abu Ghraib. The ill-advised support to the Burmese junta draws comparisons to US support of dictatorships in Pakistan and the middle east.

While these are satisfying debating points, they do not make good or sensible policy. As with every government that tries to hide behind the faults of others, the Indian government should certainly not emulate what it criticises. Instead, India should show that it can take the lead.

This is particularly crucial when it comes to the repressive junta in Burma. Although Burma has dropped off from network news-cycles and newspaper editorials since the protests of August-September 2007, the global community is largely united on this issue, saying that human-rights abuses are no longer acceptable. But unless China, India and Thailand take a strong stand, the regime will simply ride out the storm, stuffing dissidents in jail and getting away with the killings of unarmed protestors.

Also on Burma's crisis and protests in openDemocracy:

Aung Zaw, "Burma's question" (12 September 2007)

Robert Semeniuk, "A chronic emergency: on the Burma-Thailand border" (10 October 2007)

Joakim Kreutz, "Burma: protest, crackdown - and now?" (12 October 2007)

Little was ever expected of China and Thailand, but India is celebrated as a democracy, one that accommodates religious and ethnic diversity, boasts of its active civil society and free media. So it has come as a great shock for many around the world to see India continue with a business as usual approach. Burmese foreign minister U Nyan Win visited New Delhi on 2 January 2008, and Manmohan Singh apparently urged political reform in a process that included detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and all the various ethnic groups. However, a $100 million project to provide a transit route to India's northeastern states was also discussed.

In December 2007, Human Rights Watch called upon members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), China, India, the European Union, the United States and other countries that have economic ties to Burma to suspend any further development of Burma's oil and gas sector and for targeted financial sanctions on companies owned and controlled by the Burmese military or whose revenues substantially benefit the military. It is lucrative revenues from gas sales that help allow the regime to ignore demands to return to civilian rule and improve the country's human-rights record. India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is among the twenty-seven companies based in thirteen countries as having investment interests in Burma's oil and gas fields.

Do the right thing

This is an opportunity for India to show leadership. Under pressure from the international community, India has suspended military assistance to Burma. India should insist to the generals that they show flexibility and begin serious negotiations for a return to civilian rule. The regime has allowed the United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari and human-rights envoy Paulo Pinheiro to visit Burma. But these tightly controlled visits will mean little for a regime that is determined to consolidate its repressive rule.

India can no longer afford embarrassing friendships. It should say that without tangible progress on democracy, release of political prisoners and accountability for violations in recent crackdown, all business deals (and not just military sales) will be put on hold. Given the massive poverty in Burma - remember, the spark for the protests was a sharp rise in fuel prices that meant that many were paying more than half of their daily wage just to take the bus to work - and the plundering of the country's wealth by the country's leaders, it should be clear that doing business with Burma is not helping average Burmese. Instead, it is lining the pockets of the elite.

The protests have been silenced for now. But the clamour for freedom in Burma will re-emerge. This is the fifth time in nineteen years that major protests have erupted. Ultimately, the will of the people will be heard.

Doing the right thing in Burma could be the beginning for India to take a leadership role in global politics. It will also send a message that India will not support human-rights abuses, whether in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Nepal. It will put India on the right side of history.