1

Atrocity and Proto-Genocide in Sri Lanka

Christopher Powell and Amarnath Amarasingam

Introduction

This paper discusses the concept of “proto-genocide.” This concept adds clarity to studies of cultural genocide by helping to distinguish between situations where a collective identity is under violent attack and situations of full-blown genocide. The distinction between “genocide” and “proto-genocide” is analogous to the distinction, in the conservation status of species, between “endangered” or “critically endangered” and “vulnerable” or “near threatened.”1 Proto-genocide helps to define the boundaries of the genocide concept while still relating it to less totalizing forms of ethnic violence.

Our argument has three main components. First, we discuss the question of what distinguishes genocide from other atrocities, and hence what are the ultimate practical implications of a campaign against genocide. This discussion provides the rationale for a concept of proto-genocide. Second, we address the boundaries of the concept of genocide. Since cultures change all the time, it is important to distinguish cultural change, even in the context of violence and atrocity, from genocide per se. To this end we propose our notion of proto-genocide, in which enabling conditions for genocide are established but wholesale cultural extermination is not yet underway. Finally, we examine the current situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Although the historical pattern of severe atrocities against Tamil people has led some commentators to describe the situation as genocidal,2 we argue that these events can be more precisely understood as an instance of proto-genocide. This analysis supports the view that tendencies toward genocide are a systemic feature of modern global society.

The Atrocity of Genocide

It seems a truism to point out that genocide is an atrocity. For many, it is the worst of all atrocities, the “crime of crimes.”3 The danger with this way of thinking is that the atrociousness of genocide becomes, implicitly, part of its definition so that one must prove an act is atrocious before one can establish that it is genocidal and, conversely, the atrocious quality of an act contributes to the case for its being considered genocidal. We propose that scholars should identify and set aside this kind of thinking wherever they encounter it. Just as atrocity cannot be its own explanation,4 it cannot be its own definition either. This is because the label “atrocity” refers not to intrinsic properties of an act, but to our responses to it. To call something an “atrocity” expresses not only moral objection but an incalculable surplus of moral outrage. In other words, the concept of “atrocity” expresses a traumatized response. Traumatic experiences are those experiences which are so painful they cannot be assimilated normally.5 Assimilating them, either personally or collectively, requires the expression and acknowledgement of the incalculable pain they cause, but it also requires that this pain be translated from an endlessly recurring lived experience to a perception which can be contained and which does not overwhelm our other faculties. The concept of genocide was born in the historical experience of traumatic violence, especially the trauma of the Nazi Holocaust. We must honour those experiences, especially as new or ongoing genocides continue to traumatize their victims and to create vicarious trauma in bystanders. But to understand the source of this trauma we must distinguish between genocide and the trauma it causes, between “genocide” and “atrocity.” We must understand genocide as a structured social process.

If genocide is a structured social process, then it can be defined by its formal properties. Dispute over those formal properties has made genocide an essentially contested concept.6 One crucial point of contention has been whether genocide essentially comprises or necessarily includes physical extermination implicitly,7 or whether the eradication of a group’s social and cultural existence should also be called genocide without qualification.8 This question can be debated through the trading of moral intuitions, but it can also be advanced by considering what purpose we intend for the concept of genocide, what kind of practical difference in the world we are trying to make by using it.

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term and campaigned for the criminalization of genocide in international law, stated clearly that his purpose, in part, was to protect human cultural diversity:

The world represents only so much culture and intellectual vigor as are created by its component national groups. … The destruction of a nation, therefore, results in the loss of its future contributions to the world.9

In contemporary terms, we can say that Lemkin was concerned with ethnodiversity.10 The anthropologist Wade Davis uses the term “ethnosphere,” in direct analogy to the term “biosphere,” to refer to the global totality of all human cultures.11 Different cultures enable different forms of human experience; different “ways of worldmaking”12 at the conceptual level are articulated with different forms of practical relation among humans and between humans and the natural world.13 This is valuable in itself, and may be necessary to the collective future of humanity. But human ethnodiversity is severely threatened. For instance, of approximately six thousand extant human languages, fully half are not being taught to infants and are therefore threatened with extinction, while only six hundred are spoken by a population base broad enough to be considered secure.14 Genocide is therefore a global and systemic problem because it contributes to the drastic collapse of the ethnosphere.

A number of scholars have approached genocide as a systemic rather than a contingent feature of the modern state.15 When genocide is treated as a contingent feature of the modern state, its causes are expected to appear in unique or at least unusual features of the perpetrator society, such as the distinctive ideologies associated with social revolutions, for instance. Systemic approaches recognize the unique features of each genocide, but also consider the ways in which conflicts or practices that are common among modern states can contribute to the occurrence of genocide. Systemic analysis identifies the otherwise normal aspects of modern social life which may need to be changed or compensated for in order to eradicate genocide altogether. Powell’s contribution to this literature focuses on how the institutional power of states is coupled with personal social identity.16 The modern sovereign state exists as a dynamic network of relations of “deferentiation.” In deferentiation, power struggles involving physical or symbolic violence are temporarily resolved when one party performs deference towards the other, thereby deferring further violence and establishing a hierarchical identity-difference relation. Through this process, subjects obtain security for themselves while reproducing the conditions of possibility for social violence. The practices of performing deference, determined by the contingencies of local power struggles, are fetishized as abstract social norms, while subjects are motivated to invest their social identity in the figure of the sovereign. Genocide occurs when social collectivities which have been partially but incompletely assimilated into these networks (and therefore bear markers of social difference, including different identities, norms, and cultural practices), come to be positioned as radically Other, hence excluded from relations of identification and moral solidarity, and when the interest and impunity exist to motivate and enable the massive project of systematic group destruction. State formation, or what Norbert Elias called “the civilizing process,” is therefore a contradictory process, producing both human security and the conditions for violence of varying degrees.17

In the context of this broad historical process, Lemkin’s normative entrepreneurship on behalf of the criminalization of genocide can be understood as an expression of the contradictions of the state system itself. It was possible for Lemkin to invent and successfully market the concept of genocide because modern sovereignty simultaneously raises and disappoints the hope of peace and security for all. Specifically, the modern state raises the theoretical possibility of universal citizenship and universal human rights, but also creates a new security dilemma premised on the question of whose normative standards and cultural identity will inform the relations of deferentiation on which state power depends in practice. This strategic situation invites a distinctly modern politics of “imagined communities” based on ethnic nationalism.18 Thus the genocide concept appears as a reaction against and resistance to the over-coupling of state power with social identity, and the concept appears when it does in history precisely because this over-coupling can be perceived as a systemic problem.

The genocide concept, therefore, serves two purposes, which in the current historical formation are connected: the protection of the diversity of the ethnosphere, and a resistance to the over-coupling of state power with socio-cultural identity. From this perspective, what defines genocide is not so much the intentions of those engaged in its perpetration, or even the moral qualities of the acts involved, but its distinctive qualities as a process in which the use of violence tends towards the destruction of a socio-cultural collectivity as such. Thus, genocide does not always require a campaign of deliberate physical extermination; it can be perpetrated through what Tony Barta has called “relations of genocide” perpetrated by a “genocidal society” in which an entire people is “subject to remorseless pressures of destruction inherent in the very nature of the society.”19 These remorseless pressures can result from what Nancy Scheper-Hughes calls the “small wars” conducted in “the normative, ordinary social spaces of public schools, clinics, emergency rooms, hospital charity wards, nursing homes, city halls, jails and public morgues.”20 In these small wars, not all members of the perpetrator group need intend or even be aware of the overall genocidal trajectory of the actions in which they participate. Genocide may be achieved through a variety of measures that dissolve the social institutions and relationships necessary for the perpetuation of group life without featuring a coordinated program of mass killing.21

However, this conceptual approach may be objected to on the grounds that it makes the boundaries of the genocide concept unacceptably vague. Therefore, it is important to distinguish genocidal from non-genocidal attacks on collective life. We do this by investigating an important process at the boundary of genocide: proto-genocide.

The Boundaries of Genocide

The one constant of all culture is change, so what differentiates genocidal from non-genocidal situations where atrocities are being committed? Powell defines genocide as “an identity-difference relation of categorical obliteration.”22 This terse formulation makes several key points. First, social relations are understood as being practical. A genocidal relation is not a genocidal ideology or even a genocidal discourse (although it may include these), but a sustained flow of practice distinguished by the quality of transformation it effects in the actors involved.23 As a process of practical transformation, genocidal relations, like all other social relations, involves power differentials. Power differentials can be mutually reciprocal; that is, in a situation of equality, all parties to the relation are mutually interdependent and can hold each other accountable. More often they are to some degree asymmetric, and at the furthest extreme of this asymmetry interdependence is transformed into impunity, a condition in which one party can do what they wish to the other(s) without being held accountable in return. Martin Shaw conceptualizes genocide precisely in terms of power dynamics and defines genocidal action as

action in which armed power organizations treat civilian social groups as enemies and aim to destroy their real or putative social power, by means of killing, violence and coercion against individuals whom they regard as members of the groups.24

This conception goes to the heart of the matter: genocide involves a power struggle in which one group faces the realistic possibility of total destruction.

What does the destruction of a group involve, if not the physical annihilation of its members? Relational sociology conceptualizes groups as “figurations,” ever-evolving dynamic networks of relations among individuals. Elias uses the metaphor of a dance to illustrate how the social institutions which we commonly describe in static terms—the family, the state, the church, and so on—can be more fully understood as patterns in the flow of action among individuals.25 To destroy a figuration, therefore, is to disrupt this flow and sunder these relations. A group can be destroyed, as such, without killing a single member if the members are prevented from engaging in the practices which renew their connections to each other and are prevented from sustaining their shared distinctiveness from non-members.26

Powell proposes three conditions under which genocide can and will occur: identity-difference polarization, interest, and impunity. In essence,

a network of actors joined together by common identity will pursue genocide across the boundary of difference if a sufficient interest exists to mobilize such a large-scale action and if the actors have the impunity to do so.27

First, identity-difference polarization allows perpetrators and victims to be defined as groups and for the former to define the latter as radically Other.28 Defining groups as Other excludes the potential victims from what Helen Fein terms “the universe of obligation.”29 For Fein, individuals or groups inside this “universe” are people “toward whom obligations are owed, to whom rules apply, and whose injuries call for amends.”30 When individuals or groups are excluded from this universe, they become categories of people who are so radically Othered and excluded that they are rendered abject.31 However, abjection is not a sufficient condition for genocide. Many oppressed groups—homosexuals, transgendered persons, African-Americans—have at various historical moments been rendered abject without being subjected to genocide. Given the resilience of social groups, genocide inevitably requires a sustained application of force. Such force can be applied incidentally, however, without genocide being a primary or even conscious motivation, but merely as a means to the realization of some other massive project such as colonialism. The second condition that must be present in order for genocide to take place is that there must be an interest motivating the genocidal action. Someone must benefit from the application of force which overcomes the resistance of the victims, even if this benefit is not explicitly recognized. And third, for genocide to take place, the capacity to resist it must be overcome; since this means the violent annihilation of the victim’s “we” identity, which the victim will resist as a matter of life and death, the power relation between the two must be one of impunity.

These elements are dynamic and continue to take shape during the genocidal process itself. However, a non- or proto-genocidal situation may be distinguished from a genocidal situation by the absence of one or more of these elements. For instance, within a social configuration that includes potential perpetrator and potential victim, identity-difference relations may be substantially polarized without the potential perpetrator having either the interest or the impunity necessary to instantiate genocide. A proto-genocidal situation is one in which the developmental process of the whole configuration is tending towards the establishment of these three conditions. A non-genocidal situation is one in which one or more of the three conditions may be partially present, but in which there is no developmental tendency towards the establishment of all three.

Proto-Genocide in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is a small island off the southern coast of India, a little more than 25,000 square miles in size. While its close proximity to its larger neighbour has meant that religious, cultural, and social influences from India have always been present in the country, the Palk Strait that separates Sri Lanka and India has buffered the island-nation from shifts in the Indian political climate.32 Sri Lanka’s significant ethnic and religious diversity lies at the centre of its social and political history. Of the roughly twenty million people in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese, who mostly identify as Buddhist, comprise the majority ethnic group, with 74 percent of the population. The Tamil community is made up of both Sri Lankan Tamils (12.6 percent) and Indian Tamils (5.6 percent), most of whom are Hindu, but with a significant number of Christians (mostly Catholic). The Muslims of Sri Lanka make up about 7 percent of the population.33 And the smaller ethnic groups consist of the Burghers (0.4 percent), who are descendants of European settlers, and the Veddas, the Indigenous peoples of Sri Lanka.

Initially ethnic tensions, which became an intimate part of Sri Lankan society throughout the twentieth century, were for the most part about language and access to government services.34 These tensions eventually spilled over into full-scale violence in the 1970s, increasingly coloured by Tamil demands for autonomy and territorial rights. While the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers) became the dominant, and often only, Sri Lankan Tamil fighting force, numerous other groups were active in the 1970s and 1980s. Over time, most of their leaders either were killed by the LTTE or crossed over to the government’s side.35 Beginning in the early 1980s, the LTTE launched a bloody campaign against the Sri Lankan government, fighting for a separate homeland for the Tamils, called Tamil Eelam. The civil war continued until May 2009, when the Sri Lankan armed forces defeated the Tigers in Mullivaikkal, a tiny spit of land in northeastern Sri Lanka. Civilian casualties were high, with the United Nations estimating that anywhere between forty and seventy thousand civilians lost their lives.36 Since the war’s end, the government of Sri Lanka often argues that the country did not have an ethnic problem—only a “terrorism problem”—and that there was in fact no “war” to speak about.37 Such rewriting of the past, and lack of acknowledgement of Tamil grievances and demands, has coloured how the government has engaged with the people of the former war zones since the guns went silent.

As such, Sri Lankan Tamils’ current situation provides, we argue, an example of a proto-genocidal situation. We assert that the numerous human rights violations committed against Tamils by the Sri Lankan government and the military, while atrocious, have not been specifically genocidal—so far. The decisive factor concerns the figuration of relational processes through which Sri Lankan Tamil culture and identity are (re)produced over time. Anti-Tamil atrocities in Sri Lanka has certainly affected how these processes have taken place, in ways that are very painful and destructive for individuals. The situation is one of grave human rights concern which deserves more international attention than it is getting. However, this persecution has not—so far—threatened to destroy the Tamil collective identity as such. This could change quickly, however. Since the collapse of Tamil military resistance to the Sri Lankan government in 2009, several developments have worked to systematically undermine Tamils’ social power, and if these developments continue then Tamils could become acutely vulnerable to genocide. Indeed, many activists and academics already use the language of genocide to describe the plight of the Tamil community on the island since independence,38 pointing to the 1981 burning of the Jaffna library, the numerous riots and pogroms since then, and the last stages of the civil war, as well as events in the postwar period, as clear evidence of genocide.

All three enabling conditions for genocide are partially fulfilled in this case. To begin with, identity-difference relations between Tamils and Sinhalese have been strongly polarized for many years, as evidenced below by the exclusionary mythology of Sinhalese nationalism. Meanwhile, incentives exist for further persecution of Tamils: ethnically exclusionary Sinhalese nationalism and anti-Tamil chauvinism has for many years provided political leaders with marginal returns, in the state and in civil society, while the appropriation of land and business opportunities in Tamil homelands provides economic incentives for Sinhalese soldiers. Finally, a number of developments push the power relations between Tamils and Sinhalese within the Sri Lankan state further from a condition of reciprocal interdependence and towards a condition of impunity.

Identity-Difference Polarization

Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist ideology defines Tamils as historical oppressors and enemies of the Sinhala nation. This ideology began to emerge in the colonial period. In true Orientalist fashion,39 the British occupiers denied that the Sinhala people had any historical record until the “discovery,” in the 1830s, of the Mahavamsa, a historical chronicle written in the sixth century by the monk Mahanama, whereupon the Mahavamsa was construed as the authentic historical document defining the essence of the Sinhala people.40 Modern interpretations of the text privileged the role of the monarch Dutthagamini, who overthrew the Chola dynasty and restored Buddhism to the island, thereby establishing Sinhalese and Tamils as historical enemies.41 Through the work of anti-colonial leaders like Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1933) and Walpola Rahula (1907–1997), this polarized view of Sinhala-Tamil relations was incorporated into the Sri Lankan national narrative.42

This ideological framework began to be realized in practice after independence in 1948. After its profound defeat in the 1952 election, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) under S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike aggressively exploited communal tensions to win the 1956 election.43 Declaring that Sri Lanka’s 1948 independence from Britain was not yet complete, Bandaranaike promised that, if the SLFP were elected, only Sinhala, and not Tamil, would be given official language status. Further developments in 1956, including the celebration of the 2,500-year anniversary of the Buddha’s entry into nirvana and the publication of The Betrayal of Buddhism by the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress, further asserted an essential bond between Sinhala nationalism and the Buddhist religion. Bandaranaike’s election in 1956 “established a link between the government and the Buddhist religion that has been essential to the political and religious history of Sri Lanka since that time.”44 Shortly after his victory, Bandaranaike proposed the Official Language Act, which declared Sinhala to be the only official language in Sri Lanka. This act would become a long-running symbol of Sinhala nationalism and would solidify in the minds of many Tamils the belief that the Sinhala leadership could not be trusted to uphold the rights of minority populations.45 There was an immediate backlash to the Language Act by Sri Lankan Tamils, represented by the Federal Party, who argued that the legislation placed their language, culture, and economic position in jeopardy.

After Bandaranaike’s assassination in 1959 by a Buddhist monk, his widow, Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, carried forward many of her husband’s policies and aggressively enforced the Sinhala-only act. What made matters worse was a government policy to hire Sinhala into government service. In May 1972, Bandaranaike and the United Front also used their overwhelming majority to introduce a new constitution. The new constitution made the country a republic, officially changed the name of the island from Ceylon to Sri Lanka, declared Sri Lanka to be a “Unitary State,” gave Buddhism a “foremost place” in the country, and made it the state’s duty to “protect and foster Buddhism.” In the very same month that the constitution was passed, the Federal Party, the Tamil Congress, and the Ceylon Workers’ Congress formed the Tamil United Front (TUF).

Perhaps the single most important issue which aggravated ethnic tensions, leading many Tamil youth to throw their support behind militant movements, was the matter of university admissions.46 In the 1960s students were educated in one of three language streams: Sinhala, Tamil, or English. There existed, then, three different sets of entrance exams, which would be evaluated by three sets of examiners. In the late 1970s, critics began to allege (falsely) that Tamil students benefited from Tamil-language examiners’ favouritism. To correct this alleged bias, a language-based system of standardization was introduced, which inevitably favoured Sinhalese students. The numerical scores of applicants in each of the three languages were adjusted to fit a common scale, which was based on the number of applicants in each language. As Sinhala youth were more numerous than Tamils, it meant that the scores of Sinhala students were raised in relation to Tamil and English applicants. “District quotas” introduced in 1974 further established the primacy of ethnicity over achievement in determining university entrance. “Under this system, residents of ‘backward’ districts were given preferential admissions treatment. Under criteria devised by the Education Ministry, these were mostly districts with heavy Kandyan and Muslim populations.”47 The district quotas had a significant impact on the number of Tamils admitted to university science programs. In a single year, the number of admissions dropped by a third.48

After these changes, existing Tamil political leaders lost legitimacy and militant movements like the LTTE began to emerge. Alongside this rise of Tamil militancy, the Tamil United Front made changes to its political objectives. In May 1976, a convention was held in the Northern Province constituency of Vaddukoddai, during which the TUF reconstituted itself as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF).49 The insertion of the word “liberation” reflected the growing belief that fairness, political rights, and economic opportunities would not be guaranteed to Tamils as a minority population within a united Sri Lanka. The TULF manifesto for the 1977 elections makes it clear how far Tamil-Sinhala relations had deteriorated in the previous seven years:

What is the alternative now left to the nation that has lost its rights to its language, rights to its citizenship, rights to its religions and continues day by day to lose its traditional homeland to Sinhalese Colonization? What is the alternative now left to a nation that lies helpless as it is being assaulted, looted and killed by hooligans instigated by the ruling race and by the security forces of the State? … There is only one alternative and that is to proclaim with the stamp of finality and fortitude that we alone shall rule over our land our forefathers ruled. Sinhalese imperialism shall quit our homeland.50

As Richardson notes, “this manifesto marked a sea change in Tamil political organizations and attitudes in the short space of seven years—from Federal Party to Tamil United Liberation Front, from demands for language rights and devolution of power to demands for political independence.”51

While a full examination of the course of the civil war cannot be undertaken here,52 it should be sufficient to point out that following communal violence during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s—including the riots of 1977 and 1981, the burning of the Jaffna library (and the subsequent loss of over ninety thousand rare Tamil manuscripts), the pogroms of Black July 1983, and subsequent Indian involvement in the training and funding of Tamil militant groups—the civil war reached unprecedented levels of destruction. Consequently, the LTTE became one of the most feared rebel groups of the twentieth century, equipped with an air force, a navy, an intelligence wing, an international propaganda and funding structure, as well as close to ten thousand well-trained cadres ready to die for the cause of national liberation.53

Interest in Persecution and Genocide

While ethnic tensions simmered in the country from the time of independence from the British in 1948, the riots of Black July 1983 fundamentally altered the course of ethnic tensions in the country. The shooting death of thirteen Sri Lankan soldiers in the north of the country by the LTTE set the stage for what would become one of the bloodiest decades in the country’s history. Sri Lankan president J. R. Jayewardene tried to keep the funeral for the dead soldiers from turning into a political demonstration. However, the arrival of the bodies from Jaffna to Colombo on 24 July was delayed by several hours, and the funeral had to be cancelled. This provoked a riot which continued for a week. Hundreds of Tamil and Indian businesses were burned, homes were destroyed, and many were beaten, shot, or burned alive in their houses or vehicles. Many women were raped or forced to exhibit themselves in front of heckling crowds. Perhaps the most infamous incident occurred at the Welikade maximum security prison, about 4 miles north of Colombo. On the afternoon of 25 July, Sinhalese prisoners gained entry into the wing of the prison holding Tamil political detainees and killed thirty-seven of them with knives and clubs while guards stood idly by. Overall estimates of the number of people killed during Black July range from two hundred to two thousand, mostly Tamil. In addition to lives lost, the events of July 1983 also forced some one hundred thousand Tamils into refugee camps when their homes, vehicles, shops, and belongings were destroyed. Around thirty thousand people also became unemployed due to work sites being destroyed.

The events of Black July help to explain who benefits from ethnic persecution of Tamils, and how. It is no secret that the violence was highly organized, and that it greatly benefited the business class as well as certain political leaders.54 Economic liberalization operated, and continues to operate, as a vehicle for this benefit:

Economic liberalisation, as a set of economic policies with asymmetrically distributed short-term effects, activates the individual’s understanding of how ethnicity affects his material well-being because of pre-existing ethnic divisions of labour. Political entrepreneurs attempt to utilise this process in order to politicise ethnicity and transform it into a reliable and efficient basis for ethnic group cohesion and collective behaviour.55

As far back as the 1956 elections, Prime Minister Bandaranaike “combined the promise of selective incentives along ethnic lines with the use of mobilizational resources.”56 From 1970 to 1977, Biziouras argues, Sri Lanka experienced a low level of economic liberalization during which Sinhalese political entrepreneurs could selectively allocate to segments of the Tamil population the various incentives they would receive. With increasing economic liberalization after 1977, and ethnic tensions already simmering, a kind of ethnic outbidding became prominent. During this period, the

Sinhalese UNP political entrepreneurs, cognisant of the need to outbid their SLFP opponents in terms of selective incentives, actively distributed selective incentives to their ethnic brethren: public-sector jobs, public investment in infrastructural projects in Sinhalese-majority areas, preferential access to policy-makers, and tailored policies to meet specific demands by the Sinhalese critical masses.57

The 1983 Black July pogrom was not, therefore, a case of deep-seated enmity between Sinhalese and Tamil people finally erupting onto the streets, but rather an expression of the connections between state power, ethno-religious identity, and economic incentives, and the need for this power to translate into economic incentives as well. As Biziouras notes,

the Sinhalese who participated in the Colombo riots demanded material resources, jobs and access to state subsidies and were led by Sinhalese UNP leaders. … [These attacks] were actively organised and implemented on the basis of attacking the Tamils’ economic resources. These attacks were implemented by rank-and-file JSS (Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya, or National Workers Association) members, coordinated by the UNP Minister of Industry Cyril Matthew, often targeting the properties of Colombo-area Tamil merchants.58

More recent attacks, not against Tamils but against the Muslim population in Colombo—such as the attacks on mosques and Muslim-owned businesses in 2013 and 2014—have similar undertones.

Slide Towards Impunity

Suppression of Political Representation

As respected political scientist A. J. Wilson noted, from the beginning of British rule in Sri Lanka, Tamils “remained a community apart … [who] did not wish to be assimilated, and maintained a group consciousness as a separate community and civilization with their own language, culture and territory, and the Hindu faith as their distinguishing characteristics.”59 There has, however, always been a debate in the country about whether minorities can be “Sri Lankan too” while practising their respective religious and cultural traditions, and whether the structure of the state is able to include other national identities within its borders. As Karthigesu Sivathamby once asked, “Cannot a Tamil be a Sri Lankan too? Does being a Sri Lankan Tamil imply that his/her Tamilness cannot be as publicly stated as his or her ‘Sri Lankaness’? Cannot Tamilness and the Sri Lankaness coexist? For Sri Lankan Tamils, these are soul-shattering questions.”60 As Sivathamby points out, whatever internal debates once existed, this identity, as shown above, has been increasingly at risk since independence, and particularly since the outbreak of civil war in the 1980s. We argue here, however, that even with the end of the war in May 2009, the preservation of Tamil collective identity remains at risk.

One of the most pernicious aspects of postwar Sri Lanka has been the continued attack on Sri Lankan, and particularly Tamil, civil society. For instance, on 10 January 2012, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother and secretary of the Defence and Urban Development Ministry, delivered a lecture to the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute and Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited. The president’s brother, arguably the second most powerful man in Sri Lanka, began his lecture by stating that the country still faces “several threats” following the end of protracted civil war. The very first threat he mentioned, and which he discussed at length, was the “reorganization of the LTTE in the international arena.”61 Mentioning several Tamil diaspora groups by name, he argued that even after the defeat of the LTTE, “the rump of the LTTE’s global establishment is still active.” Rajapaksa argued, for example, that the “unwavering intent” of LTTE-linked groups overseas “is the division of Sri Lanka and the establishment of a separate state.” He went on to note: “Most of them say they engage only in political activism and not violence. Almost all of them pretend to have a democratic face. But make no mistake. The Tiger has not changed its stripes.”62

While the defense secretary’s remarks do not necessarily reflect in essence the views of mainstream Sri Lankans or the broader international community, such a stark verdict on diaspora activism by someone as powerful as the president’s brother and defense minister is worrisome to say the least. To make matters worse, in April 2014, the government of Sri Lanka proscribed as “terrorist fronts” sixteen organizations and released the names of more than four hundred individuals who were banned from entering the country.63 The timing of the proscription, occurring concurrently with the twenty-fifth session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, signalled to many that the government decision was, as Human Rights Watch stated, “aimed at restricting peaceful activism by the country’s Tamil minority” against the government.64 Many things were worrisome about this decision. For example, it made it difficult for Tamil political parties on the island to receive support and funding from abroad, it made it impossible for many diaspora activists associated with these banned organizations from visiting family and friends in the country, and it made it quite dangerous for NGO groups and aid workers to receive support, financially or otherwise, from diaspora organizations who have a vested interest in the country.65 The full ripple effect of the Sri Lankan government’s actions remains to be seen, but it is clear that the government is increasingly worried about diaspora activists and organizations, and that it is not shy about targeting them.

However, the government has not only targeted overseas diaspora organizations. Many civil society organizations in the former war zones struggle to function under government interference and surveillance. A case in point is the Northern Provincial Council (NPC). In the diaspora and the former war zones of Sri Lanka following the war, there was much talk about the potential for the establishment of such a council to move the country towards a modicum of devolution and power-sharing. As Kumaravadivel has written, however, the NPC, even after the elections were finally held in September 2013, continues to suffer from interference and heavy-handedness from the government in Colombo as well as the governor of the Northern Province (who is appointed by the president).66 As Kumaravadivel notes, “In the South, the Governors are dormant. They do not interfere with the Provincial Council administrations. However in the North and East, wherein the Governor’s chair is occupied by two retired army personnel, the Governors make maximum use of their constitutionally granted power. The 13th amendment gives the Governor a choice as to whether s/he wants to be active or not. In the North and East the Governors act like Viceroys from an alien land.”67

In addition to its crackdown on diaspora organizations and its interference in the affairs of the NPC, the defence ministry, in July 2014, “banned non-governmental organizations from holding press conferences, awareness campaigns, training for journalists, workshops and disseminating press releases on everything from voter rights to exposing corruption.”68 While this ban applies to NGOs across the country, it has of course had a chilling effect in the former war zones of the north as well. Attacks on journalists have also been on the rise. As the civil war was again raging after 2006, Keith Nohayr of the Nation was kidnapped and beaten before being released, J. S. Tissanayagam was detained and went through arduous court proceedings before being pardoned, and Lasantha Wickrematunge, a prominent anti-government journalist and editor of the Sunday Leader, was killed by four armed assassins on 8 January 2009.69 As the Committee to Protect Journalists noted, at least twenty-six journalists have been driven into exile between 2008 and 2013, Tamil journalists in the north and east of the country have been continuously attacked and targeted for their reporting,70 and the offices of respected Tamil newspapers have been targeted by arsonists.71

Militarization, the Loss of Economic Livelihood, and Women’s Insecurity

As the International Crisis Group (ICG) pointed out, the issue of livelihood and economic development in the north has been intimately tied to the continued militarization of the former war zones.72 According to the ICG, “Since the war ended in 2009, hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into the province, but the local populations, mostly left destitute by the conflict, have seen only slight improvements in their lives. Instead of giving way to a process of inclusive, accountable development, the military is increasing its economic role, controlling land and seemingly establishing itself as a permanent occupying presence.”73 Even as the Northern Province is among the least densely populated, the number of military troops stationed there is very substantial. According to some estimates, sixteen of the Sri Lankan army’s nineteen brigades are located in Tamil-dominated areas, with a soldier-to-civilian ratio of 1:11—one of the highest in the world.74

To be sure, militarization does not refer only to the presence of the military in the north and east.75 Unlike in the years immediately following the end of the war, soldiers are not always seen wandering the city streets of the north. Rather, militarization persists in a more sustained and routinized kind of way. The economic aspects of militarization, in addition to security issues, are becoming increasingly worrisome to people in the former war zones. As scholars and activists have noted, the military has been involved with a variety of economic initiatives in the country: running security companies, a catering service, hotel chains, farming, and conducting whale watching tours.76 The military is often accused by people in the north of flooding the market with their own goods at reduced prices since they have virtually no overhead costs. This frustration extends to land rights as well.77 Many people interviewed in the north by Amarasingam are distressed by the fact that the military is being given lands in the former war zones. This is being done, as one activist put it, to “purposefully redraw the demographic makeup of the region” and to eventually nullify the argument that the north is a “Tamil homeland” with a unique culture and tradition, which deserves to govern itself with a sense of autonomy.78 As Fonseka and Jegatheeswaran point out, “Four years after the war, the military continues to play a major role in the acquisition and alienation of land in the North and East … [and] the large-scale acquisitions happening in the North and East appear to be directed by the central government and the military with limited information available to local officials and affected populations.”79

Within the broader context of militarization and postwar insecurity, it is women who struggle most at the hands of both the military and members of the Tamil population. Three decades of civil war has resulted in over forty thousand female-headed households, with husbands and older male children having been killed in the war. This, combined with inadequate housing and limited livelihood options, has put many women in situations of vulnerability.80 During research visits to the north, Amarasingam was often told that women were much safer during the time of the LTTE. Under the LTTE, sexual violence was apparently harshly dealt with, which served as a deterrent. In the postwar environment, women’s vulnerability has increased drastically in the context of militarization. As Fonseka and Raheem point out, most roads in the north have significant military presence in one form or another, and this “has had a bearing on women who continue to live with host families or in displacement camps as a result of their lands being occupied. For instance, in households in areas of the Vanni but also in Jaffna and Mannar, consisting largely of women with no adult male presence, the residents even sleep the night in other houses for safety reasons.”81 As such, the issue of land—and secure housing—is also intimately tied to women’s security and vulnerability. For example, a recent report by Yasmin Sooka, the executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights, argued that abductions, arbitrary detention, torture, rape and sexual violence have increased since the end of the war in 2009. More damningly, the report argued that “these widespread and systematic violations by the Sri Lankan security forces occur in a manner that indicates a coordinated, systematic plan approved by the highest levels of government.”82

Sinhalization of the Tamil Areas and Tamil Mourning

When Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, visited Sri Lanka in August 2013, she attempted to visit Mullivaikkal and the Nandikadal Lagoon, the tiny spit of land where the civil war came to an end, and where the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed. The government argued that Pillay was attempting to “pay tribute” to the LTTE, and that no more evidence of the UN’s biased stance against the Sri Lankan government was needed. While this particular incident made headlines, it is certainly not an isolated example of the ways in which the Sri Lankan government attempts to dictate how the war should be remembered. For the government, the thirty year civil war was not an ethnic conflict but a terrorism problem. As such, the government has seen fit to destroy the childhood home of the LTTE leader, as well as raze to the ground a series of LTTE cemeteries that used to dot the north and east of the country, often installing army camps directly on top of them.83 The mothers and fathers of the LTTE combatants who were buried at these cemeteries have been traumatized by these actions.

In addition to the destruction and desecration of LTTE cemeteries, public acts commemorating the war’s end have been banned by the military every year since May 2009. While the celebratory pageantry is well planned in Colombo for “Victory Day,” Tamils in the Northern Province are not allowed to publicly mourn their dead. As military spokesman Ruwan Wanigasuriya said in May 2014, “Any persons trying to hoist black flags, distribute leaflets or put up posters will be considered as supporting of terrorism and such persons will be taken into custody under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.”84 Any act of public remembrance, in other words, will be interpreted and treated as a kind of tribute to the LTTE. Despite the ban, however, over two thousand students and faculty at the University of Jaffna observed Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day in 2014. Each attendee stood silently holding a candle, while military personnel and police kept watch outside. Through such bans and surveillance, the government attempts to stifle communal strategies for coping with the immense losses suffered over the last three decades, and therefore contributes to feelings of isolation and dislocation already rampant in the former war zones. As Tissainayagam writes,

May 18 has come to symbolise different things in different parts of Sri Lanka. This precisely is the reason why the restrictions on mourning apply only to the Northern Province—the only Tamil-dominated province in the country. In areas outside the North, the government holds huge victory day celebrations, replete with militaristic symbols—marching columns, parading of military hardware and speeches reinforcing national unity and victory over terrorism and division of the country. These events have strong overtones of racism: the triumph of Sinhala nationalism, embodied by the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse and his family, over the Tamils by crushing their aspiration for dignity, rights and equality. … By criminalising northern Tamils mourning their dead as an act of terrorism, which can be punished by arrest and detention under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), Rajapakse hopes he can contain the Tamils’ moves to cohere as a community once again.85

In addition to the attacks on public mourning and the lack of acknowledgement of Tamil lives lost in the war, the Sri Lankan government is also engaging in a broad project aimed at “Sinhalizing” Tamil areas of the north. As The Social Architects, an anonymous group of activists based in Sri Lanka, recently noted, “Since 1958, the names of ancient Tamil villages and streets have surreptitiously been given Sinhalese names.” Close to one hundred important Tamil villages and cities, which continue to have deep emotional significance for Tamils all over the world, have been “Sinhalized”: Vattukoddai has been changed to Battakote, Manipay has been changed to Mampe, and the island of Nainatheevu has been changed to Nagatheeba.86

The government is also redrawing the boundaries of Tamil border villages and incorporating them into predominantly Sinhalese districts. It is quite obvious that this is being done to reduce Tamil representation in various areas, again in an attempt to undermine and eliminate the argument that there are “majority” Tamil areas or Tamil “homelands” throughout the country.87 What is more hurtful for many Tamils in the country, as well as those in the diaspora, has been the continued destruction of Hindu temples in the former war zones, and the building of Buddhist shrines in their place. One of the clearest examples of this change is the hot spring wells in Kanniya, in the eastern district of Trincomalee. When Amarasingam visited the site in January 2014, the statue of Hindu god Ganesha was being kept under a tin shed, and a giant Buddha shrine had been erected close to the springs.

Conclusion

Our notion of proto-genocide complements and partly overlaps with Gregory Stanton’s concept of the ten stages of genocide.88 It differs in that Stanton’s work is oriented to physical genocide where ours is oriented to cultural genocide. Our notion of proto-genocide also owes much to Tony Barta’s concept of “relations of genocide” and a “genocidal society.” As Barta has written,

My conception of a genocidal society—as distinct from a genocidal state—is one in which the bureaucratic apparatus might officially be directed to protect innocent people but in which a whole race is nevertheless subject to remorseless pressures of destruction inherent in the very nature of the society.89

While we do not suggest that the Sri Lankan state is officially directed to protect Tamil culture—quite the contrary—Barta’s key point is that cultural extermination can be accomplished through a relatively decentralized collection of institutional practices and structural relations. Similarly, Keith Doubt’s discussion of “sociocide”90 shows how even physical genocide involves violent attacks on the social institutions through which a group maintains its solidarity and shared identity. Furthermore, Sri Lanka’s colonial history enables us to situate its proto-genocide on a continuum with the subaltern genocides examined by Robins and Jones.91 The concept of proto-genocide therefore helps to define a field of inquiry which up to this point has been suggested but not focally explored by genocide scholars.

Powell has argued that modern genocides are a systemic by-product of the globalizing expansion of Western civilization.92 The imposition of the nation-state through colonialism has increased the stakes of local struggles over collective identity and created new incentives for mass violence. Under these conditions, we can expect to find proto-genocidal situations alarmingly common. Many of these might involve tribal or Indigenous peoples with small populations,93 but the condition of Tamils in Sri Lanka is nonetheless illustrative of the structural qualities of a proto-genocidal situation.

Since independence, and especially during the civil war, Sri Lankan Tamils have suffered severe atrocities. While some of these atrocities have affected vital Tamil cultural institutions, they have not amounted to a coherent program (intended or otherwise) of cultural extermination. However, that could change. Sinhala nationalist ideology excludes Tamils from the universe of moral obligation; this ideology, along with Sri Lankan policies towards Tamils, and the civil war itself, have contributed to what Hinton calls “genocidal priming,”94 pushing Sinhala-Tamil relations towards the kind of polarization which enables perpetrators to legitimate genocide.95 Economic and political incentives exist for the progressive disenfranchisement of Tamils, potentially up to and including their total abjection. Militarily and otherwise, Tamils have demonstrated the capacity to resist abjection and to defend the social institutions which maintain their coherence as a people. But the ongoing suppression of Tamil politics and civil society, the colonization and Sinhalization of Tamil areas by Sinhalese military officers, the loss of economic livelihood by Tamil families, and restrictions placed on Tamil mourning have the potential to gradually erode Tamil society. If this erosion goes far enough, Tamils could be unable to effectively resist more thoroughgoing measures such as the complete prohibition of Tamil language, forced conversion to Buddhism, economic expropriation, and forced dispersion—measures that could amount to a program of cultural extermination. With the election of Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015, many in the country and abroad expressed hope that the postwar situation would change. Indeed, there are many positive signs that change is afoot: the military governor of the Northern Province was replaced with a civilian, and President Sirisena expressed some interest in inviting exiled journalists back to the country. However, Sirisena has not yet expressed a commitment to the demilitarization of the former war zones. Only time will tell whether a change in leadership will result in a change in political culture. In language analogous to that of ecological conservation, Sri Lankan Tamils are not yet critically endangered, but they are threatened. This is an issue of interest to genocide scholars, and of concern to genocide and human rights activists.

NOTES

1 International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria, Version 3.1, Second Edition (2014): 14–15, http://s3.amazonaws.com/iucnredlist-newcms/staging/public/attachments/3097/redlist_cats_crit_en.pdf (accessed 9 September 2016).

2 See for example Francis Boyle, The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka: The Global Failure to Protect Tamil Rights Under International Law (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2013); Rosie DiManno, “Sri Lanka’s Hidden Genocide” Toronto Star, 4 November 2013; A. Sivanandan, “Ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka,” Race & Class 51, no. 3 (2010): 59–65.

3 William Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

4 Mahmood Mamdani, When victims become killers: colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 228.

5 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (London: Pandora, 2001).

6 W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1956): 167–198; Christopher Powell, “What do genocides kill? A relational conception of genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 4 (2007): 527–547; For summaries of the definitional debate see Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge, 2010), 16–20; Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

7 See for instance Frank Robert Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The history and sociology of genocide: analyses and case studies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Israel W. Charny, “Toward a Generic Definition of Genocide,” in Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, ed. G. J. Andreopoulos (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 64–94; Pieter N. Drost, The Crime of State, 2 vols. (Leyden: A. W. Sythoff, 1959); Helen Fein, Genocide: a sociological perspective (London: Sage, 1993); Barbara Harff and Ted R. Gurr, “Toward empirical theory of genocides and politicides: identification and measurement of cases since 1945,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 3 (1988): 359–371; Irving Louis Horowitz, Taking Lives: Genocide and State power (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002); Steven T. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context, vol. 1. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

8 Tony Barta, “Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia,” in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and case studies of mass death, ed. I. Wallimann and M. N. Dobkowski (New York: Greenwood, 1987), 237–252; Jeff Benvenuto, “What Does Genocide Produce? The Semantic Field of Genocide, Cultural Genocide, and Ethnocide in Indigenous Rights Discourse,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 9, no. 2 (2015): 26–40; Barbara Cassidy, “Getting Rid of the Indian Problem: Aboriginal Suicide as a Manifestation of Genocide,” PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 2002; Roland Chrisjohn, Sherri Young, and Michael Maraun, The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada (Penticton, BC: Theytus Books, 2006); Ward Churchill, “Genocide By Any Other Name: North American Indian Residential Schools in context,” in Genocide, War Crimes and The West, ed. A. Jones (New York: Zed Books, 2004), 78–115; Ward Churchill, Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2004); Robert Davis and Mark Zannis, The Genocide Machine in Canada: The Pacification of the North (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1973); Peter E. Dawson, “The Relocation of Aboriginal People in Canada, 1952 to 1967: A United Nations Human Rights Analysis From a Cultural Perspective, Cultural Genocide,” PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 2001; Anges Grant, No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 1996); Bonita Lawrence, “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004); Manitoba Review Committee on Indian and Metis Adoptions and Placements, “No quiet place: final report to the Honourable Muriel Smith, Minister of Community Services” (Winnipeg: M. C. Services, 1985); Dirk A. Moses, “An antipodean genocide? The origins of the genocidal moment in the colonization of Australia,” Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 1 (2000): 89–106; Dean Neu and Richard Therrien, Accounting for Genocide: Canada’s Bureaucratic Assault on Aboriginal People (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2003); Eric Robinson and Henry Bird Quinney, The Infested Blanket: Canada’s Constitution-Genocide of Indian Nations (Winnipeg: Queenston House Publishing, 1985); Roseau River Anishnabe First Nation Government, Genocide in Canada. Manitoba: Roseau River Anishnabe First Nation, 1997; Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide (Cambridge: South End Press, 2005); Andrew Woolford, “Ontological Destruction: Genocide and Canadian Aboriginal Peoples,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 4, no. 1 (2009): 81–97; Andrew Woolford and Jasmine Thomas, “Genocide and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: A Dialogue in Waiting,” in Genocide of Indigenous Peoples: A Critical Bibliographic Review, eds. S. Totten and R. K. Hitchcock (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010): 61–86.

9 Raphael Lemkin, Axis rule in occupied Europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Division of International Law, 1944), 91. For a more detailed discussion of the importance of cultural destruction in Lemkin’s conception of genocide, see Adam Muller’s contribution to this volume, “Troubling History, Troubling Law: The Question of Indigenous Genocide in Canada.” Also in this volume, Steven Leonard Jacobs’s “ ‘We Charge Genocide’: An Historical Petition All But Forgotten and Unknown” discusses anti-black racism in the United States as a form of systematic social and cultural oppression which Lemkin knew about but did not treat as genocide.

10 Hans-Dieter Evers, Anis Yusoff, and A. BB. Shamsul, “Ethno-diversity and bio-diversity: Methods and measurement,” Munich Personal RePEc Archive, MPRA Paper No. 24429 (2010).

11 Wade Davis, Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures: (Toronto: Douglas & Mcintyre, 2007).

12 Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).

13 Davis, Light At The Edge Of The World.

14 Ibid.

15 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State, vols. 1–2 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005); Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Dirk A. Moses and Dan Stone, eds., Colonialism and Genocide (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008); Richard Rubenstein, “Afterword: Genocide and Civilization,” in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, eds. I. Wallimann, M. N. Dobkowski (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 283–298; Robert van Krieken, “The barbarism of civilization: cultural genocide and the ‘stolen generations’,” British Journal of Sociology 50, no. 2 (1999): 297–315.

16 Christopher Powell, Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011).

17 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization, trans. E. Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

18 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

19 Barta, “Relations of Genocide,” 239–240.

20 Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Specificities: Peace-Time Crimes,” Social Identities 3, no. 3 (1997): 472.

21 Christopher Powell and Julia Peristerakis, “Genocide in Canada: A Relational View,” in Colonial Genocide and Indigenous North America, eds. A. Woolford, J. Benvenuto, and A. L. Hinton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

22 Powell, Barbaric Civilization, 84

23 Powell, “What do genocides kill?”; Powell and Peristerakis, “Genocide in Canada: A Relational View.”

24 Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? (Cambridge: Polity, 2007): 154.

25 Elias, The Civilizing Process, 482

26 Powell, “What do genocides kill?”; Powell and Peristerakis, “Genocide in Canada: A Relational View.”

27 Powell, Barbaric Civilization, 12

28 Note that the definition of the victim group can be a product of the perpetrator’s ideology: partly, as in the Nazis’ racialized definition of Jews, or almost entirely, as in the Khmer Rouge’s definition of the bourgeoisie. See Powell, Barbaric Civilization, 63

29 Helen Fein, “Scenarios of Genocide: Models of Genocide and Critical Responses,” in Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide: Proceedings of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, ed. I. W. Charny. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984): 3–31.

30 Ibid., 4

31 Powell, Barbaric Civilization, 216–219.

32 Chandra De Silva, Sri Lanka: A History (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1997), 9.

33 Ibid., 3–5; Dennis McGilvray, Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

34 Stanley Tambiah, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 74; A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, The Break-Up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhala-Tamil Conflict (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988).

35 de Silva, Sri Lanka.

36 UN Panel of Experts, Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, 31 March 2011, www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf (accessed 12 April 2013).

37 Neil DeVotta, “The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Lost Quest for Separatism in Sri Lanka,” Asian Survey 49, no. 6 (2009): 1021–1051; Andi Schubert, “Victorious Victims: An Analysis of Sri Lanka’s Post-War Reconciliation Discourse,” ICES Research Paper No. 6. (Colombo: ICES, 2013), http://www.ices.lk/victorious-victims/ (accessed 4 January 2015).

38 See for example Guruparan Kumaravadivel and Sivakami Rajamanoharan, “Four Years On, Genocide Continues Off the Battlefield,” OpenSecurity, 20 May 2013, https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/kumaravadivel-guruparan-sivakami-rajamanoharan/four-years-on-genocide-continues-off-bat (accessed 22 May 2013).

39 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).

40 Anne Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 71–78; Nira Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History of Contested Identities (London: Hurst & Company, 2006), 89; Steven Kemper, The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Pradeep Jeganathan, “Authorizing History, Ordering Land: The Conquest of Anuradhapura,” in Unmaking the Nation: The Politics of Identity and History in Modern Sri Lanka, eds. Pradeep Jeganathan and Qadri Ismail (Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association, 1995), 112; Sudharshan Seneviratne, “ ‘Peripheral Regions’ and ‘Marginal Communities’: Towards an Alternative Explanation of Early Iron Age Material and Social Formations in Sri Lanka,” in Tradition, Dissent and Ideology: Essays in Honour of Romila Thapar, eds. R. Champakalakshmi and S. Gopal. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); Elizabeth Nissan, “History in the Making: Anuradhapura and the Sinhala Buddhist Nation,” Social Analysis, 25 (1989): 68.

41 Alice Greenwald, “The Relic on the Spear: Historiography and the Saga of Dutthagamini,” in Religion and Legitimation of Power in Sri Lanka, ed. Bardwell L. Smith (Chambersburg, PA: Amina Books, 1978), 13–35; Neil DeVotta, Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 26; Patrick Grant, Buddhism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009), 48–50.

42 Walpola Rahula, The Heritage of the Bhikku (New York: Grove Press, 1974); DeVotta, Blowback, 31–32; Grant, Buddhism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, 81; H. L. Seneviratne, The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 191.

43 John Richardson, Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars (Kandy: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2005), 144.

44 George Bond, The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: The Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation, and Response (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988): 90.

45 Neil DeVotta, “Illiberalism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka,” Journal of Democracy 13, no.1 (2002): 84–98; DeVotta, Blowback.

46 de Silva, Sri Lanka, 130–132.

47 Richardson, Paradise Poisoned, 297.

48 For a detailed analysis of the university admissions issue, see Chandra De Silva, “The Politics of University Admissions: A Review of Some Aspects of the Admissions Policy in Sri Lanka, 1971–1978,” Sri Lanka Journal of Social Science 1, no. 2 (1978): 85–123.

49 Robert Kearney, “Ethnic Conflict and the Tamil Separatist Movement in Sri Lanka,” Asian Survey 25, no. 9 (1985): 898–917; W. I. Siriweera, “Recent Developments in Sinhala-Tamil Relations,” Asian Survey 20, no. 9 (1980): 903–913.

50 Quoted in Richardson, Paradise Poisoned, 294.

51 Ibid.

52 But see for example A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000); M. R. Narayan Swamy, Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerillas (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 1994).

53 Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, “The ‘Groups’ and the Rise of Militant Secessionism,” in The Sri Lankan Tamils: Ethnicity and Identity, eds. Manogaran Chelvadurai and Bryan Pfaffenberger (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).

54 L. Piyadasa, Sri Lanka: The Holocaust and After (London: Marram Books, 1984).

55 Nikolaos Biziouras, “The Political Economy of Ethnic Mobilization: Comparing the Emergence, Consolidation, and Radicalization of Ethnic Parties in Post-Colonial Sri Lanka and Malaysia,” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 51, no. 4 (2013): 482.

56 Ibid., 486.

57 Ibid., 490.

58 Ibid., 491.

59 Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1.

60 Kartigesu Sivathamby, Being a Tamil and Sri Lankan (Colombo: Aivakam, 2005), xxi.

61 Gotabaya Rajapaksa, “LTTE Linked Overseas Groups Want Armed Struggle to Resume in Sri Lanka,” 11 January 2012, http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/3587 (accessed 11 January 2012).

62 Ibid.

63 D. B. S Jeyaraj, “Sri Lanka Proscribes 15 Suspected LTTE Front Organizations Abroad as Foreign Terrorist Entities Under UN Resolution 1373,” 2 April 2014, http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/29147 (accessed 3 April 2014).

64 Human Rights Watch, “Sri Lanka: Asset Freeze Threatens Peaceful Dissent,” April 2014, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/07/sri-lanka-asset-freeze-threatens-peaceful-dissent (accessed 6 January 2015).

65 Ibid.

66 Guruparan Kumaravadivel, “Much Ado About Nothing,” Colombo Telegraph, 21 April 2013, https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/much-ado-about-nothing-2/ (accessed 6 January 2015).

67 Ibid.

68 Amal Jeyasinghe, “Sri Lanka’s NGO Crackdown Woes,” China Post (Taipei), 21 July 2014, http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/afp/2014/07/21/412869/Sri-Lankas.htm (accessed 24 July 2014).

69 See Gordon Weiss, The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers (London: Bodley Head, 2011), 147–157; Raine Wickrematunge, And Then They Came for Me: The Lasantha Wickrematunge Story (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2013).

70 Reporters Without Borders, “Army Surrounds Tamil Daily’s Headquarters in Jaffna,” 20 May 2014, http://en.rsf.org/sri-lanka-army-surrounds-tamil-daily-s-19-05-2014,46308.html (accessed 23 July 2014).

71 “Tamil Paper Uthayan attacked in Northern Sri Lanka,” BBC News Asia, 3 April 2013, http://www.genocidewatch.org/srilanka.html (accessed 30 April 2013).

72 International Crisis Group, “Sri Lanka’s North II: Rebuilding Under the Military,” 2012, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka/220-sri-lankas-north-ii-rebuilding-under-the-military.aspx (accessed 1 April 2014).

73 Ibid., i.

74 Eric Ellis, “The Smugglers’ Prey,” The Global Mail, 2013, https://markfinger.github.io/recent-work/sri-lanka/smugglers-prey.html (accessed 20 December 2013).

75 Minority Rights Group, No War, No Peace: The Denial of Minority Rights and Justice in Sri Lanka, 2011, http://minorityrights.org/publications/no-war-no-peace-the-denial-of-minority-rights-and-justice-in-sri-lanka-january-2011/ (accessed 6 January 2015).

76 Brenden Brady, “Soldiers at Your Service,” Slate, 30 August 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roads/2013/08/sri_lankan_army_goes_into_tourism_busness_after_crushing_the_tamil_tigers.html (accessed 30 August 2013).

77 Bhavani Fonseka and Dharsha Jegatheeswaran, “Politics, Policies and Practices With Land Acquisitions and Related Issues in the North and East of Sri Lanka,” (Colombo: Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2013), http://www.cpalanka.org/policy-brief-politics-policies-and-practices-with-land-acquisitions-and-related-issues-in-the-north-and-east-of-sri-lanka/ (accessed 6 January 2015); Bhavani Fonseka and Mirak Raheem, “Land Issues in the Northern Province: Post-War Politics, Policy and Practices” (Colombo: Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2011), http://www.cpalanka.org/land-issues-in-the-northern-province-post-war-politics-policy-and-practices/ (accessed 6 January 2015).

78 See The Social Architects, Salt on Old Wounds: The Systematic Sinhalization of Sri Lanka’s North, East and Hill Country (Colombo: The Social Architects, 2012), http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2012/03/20/salt-on-old-wounds-post-war-sri-lanka/ (accessed 6 January 2015).

79 Fonseka and Jegatheeswaran, “Politics, Policies and Practices,” 8.

80 Amantha Perera, “Single Mothers Battle on in Former War Zone,” Inter Press Service, 7 July 2014, http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/07/single-mothers-battle-on-in-former-war-zone/ (accessed 30 July 2014).

81 Fonseka and Raheem, “Land Issues in the Northern Province,” 111.

82 Yasmin Sooka, “An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka, 2009–2014,” Stop Torture, 2014: 6. http://www.stop-torture.com/ (accessed 6 January 2015).

83 Jennifer Hyndman and Amarnath Amarasingam, “Touring ‘Terrorism’: Landscapes of Memory in Post-War Sri Lanka,” Geography Compass 8, NO. 8 (2014): 560–575.

84 Quoted in J. S. Tissainayagam, “From Tiananmen to Jaffna: Banning Community Commemoration,” Asian Correspondent, 15 May 2014, http://asiancorrespondent.com/author/js-tissainayagam/ (accessed 20 May 2014).

85 Tissainayagam, “From Tiananmen to Jaffna.”

86 The Social Architects, Salt on Old Wounds, 42–43.

87 Ibid., 24.

88 Gregory Stanton, “The Ten Stages of Genocide,” 2013, http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html (accessed 6 January 2015).

89 Barta, “Relations of Genocide,” 239–240.

90 Keith Doubt, Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006).

91 Nicholas A. Robins and Adam Jones, Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009).

92 Powell, Barbaric Civilization.

93 See for example Survival International, “Annual Report 2014,” http://www.survivalinternational.org/info/annualreview (accessed 25 September 2014); Davis, Light At The Edge Of The World.

94 Alexander Laban Hinton, “The Dark Side of Modernity: Toward an Anthropology of Genocide,” in Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, ed. Alexander Laban Hinton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 1–42.

95 See for comparison Powell, Barbaric Civilization, 250–271.