• Human rights, political conflict and compromise
• Landmarks in the history of the tea industry

It was a great privilege for legal scholars and others although a very sad one, to be among the many human rights activists who gathered here in Colombo for the Neelan Tiruchelvam Commemoration Programme six months ago. It is an even greater privilege to have been invited to be again in Colombo on the saddest day of all, and to give a lecture in his memory. You and I would gain so much more if we were here to listen again to Neelan.

On that day last year I was in East Timor, working for the United Nations to try to ensure that the people of East Timor at last had the opportunity to exercise their internationally-recognised human right to self-determination, in a ballot which we were organising amid violence and intimidation - past violence, current violence, and violence threatened to come. A month later that ballot would take place, on a day more peaceful than we had dared to hope, only to be followed by an orgy of destruction in which hundreds of East Timorese were killed, an entire population displaced, and buildings razed on a scale which I think was truly without precedent.

Today one of the major issues facing East Timor, with tens of thousands of its people still across its border with Indonesia, in West Timor, is how to achieve justice for those who were the victims of these crimes, and at the same time to reintegrate into a peaceful, independent East Timor those guilty of participation or complicity in them. One of the major issues facing Indonesia is how to bring to justice those Indonesian military personnel whose responsibility for these crimes was in many ways greater than that of the East Timorese militia they created, armed and directed; and that in turn is part of a larger question of establishing the truth and bringing a degree of justice for human rights violations perpetrated by its military across many Indonesian provinces and over several decades.

Before my first United Nations assignment, and when I first met Neelan, I was working for Amnesty International. Amnesty International took then, and takes now, the firm position that the perpetrators of human rights violations must be brought to justice, as a matter of principle and as an essential means of checking on-going human rights violations. It is one of the greatest achievements, not just of Amnesty International but of the non-governmental human rights movement as a whole, that this position of principle has become increasingly firmly enshrined in international law. Still more significantly, it is becoming increasingly likely that justice will in practice catch up one day with major human rights violators.

Until 1990, I used to sign letters from Amnesty International to the then President Pinochet of Chile, calling for justice for the killings, disappearances and torture carried out after he came to power: it would have been inconceivable to me then that in less than a decade he would be arrested in my own country, and that the Chilean Supreme Court would today be considering whether to allow his prosecution. We now stand on the verge of the creation of an International Criminal Court to generalise the work begun in the ad hoc Tribunals on Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. When last September the Indonesian Government agreed to allow an international force to check the violence in East Timor, one factor among the many pressures which overcame their strong initial resistance was, I believe, the reminder by the United Nations Secretary-General and High Commissioner for Human Rights that if the violations continued they would not be able to escape responsibility for crimes against humanity.

These are great advances. But the claims of justice in the cause of human rights are not without serious dilemmas when it comes to the practicalities of negotiating and sustaining an end to political conflict. Addressing human rights violations can contribute to the negotiation of peace: as you know all too well in Sri Lanka, a cycle of gross abuses-on one or both sides of a political conflict deepens and perpetuates its bitterness. But human rights violations are rarely entirely gratuitous: they are the symptoms of the struggle over political power or control of economic resources. Campaigning against human rights violations on its own can limit them, but it is only the resolution of the underlying conflicts that will altogether end them. Those of us whose perspective on conflicts is that of human rights activists must therefore have great respect for the role of those whose task is to seek to resolve them.

I find this reflected in the writings of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, in a paper he wrote in 1994, following the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, entitled "Human Rights: a Post-Vienna Agenda for Policy and Research". He identifies as a challenge for further analysis: "the accountability of the perpetrators of human rights violations of the recent past". The problem, he wrote,

"is a moral and legal one; the need for truth and justice; the need to repair the damage caused and to prevent such atrocities from happening again. But the problem is also political and practical: the need to bring the country together as a functioning unit. Widely diverse countries have had experiences of dealing with the problem of past human rights abuses, which experiences need to be distilled and made available to others."

In this spirit, I wish tonight to illustrate three of the dilemmas which have been or are still being played out in practice in countries where I have worked in recent years. First: to what extent may it be necessary and justifiable to compromise human rights principles of accountability in order to negotiate a peaceful solution to a conflict? Second: once conflict has been halted, how far may it be necessary to compromise those principles to bring about reconciliation? - does the pursuit of justice threaten or sustain the peace? Third: what is to be done if the aftermath of conflict leaves human rights principles of equal validity in conflict with each other?

But let me first make clear that in two crucial respects, the positive relationship between the respect for human rights and the negotiation and sustainability of peace is unambiguous, and should pose no dilemmas. A commitment by all parties to a conflict to respect fully humanitarian and human rights principles can greatly enhance the climate for successful negotiations leading to an end to a conflict. This is not just a theoretical proposition: it is one which has been proved in practice. In both E1 Salvador and Guatemala, the first major step towards the end of long and bitter civil wars was the commitment that both government and rebel forces would fully respect humanitarian and human rights principles: not just rhetorical commitments, but a mutual signing of detailed undertakings, and an invitation to international verification of the respect of these undertakings in practice. The presence of human rights observers then helped to ensure that the undertakings were increasingly respected and reduced the suffering of civilians, while enhancing the confidence of each side to the conflict that they were being sustained by the other. It should be noted, too, that the role of civil society in demanding such undertakings, and in helping to shape the human rights aspects of the agreements and to insist upon their implementation was a crucial one. It was in this increasingly positive context that negotiations progressed, in each of these two cases, towards a ceasefire and an eventual comprehensive peace settlement.

The second unambiguous relationship is that the sustainability of peace will be enhanced by - indeed it depends on - the respect for the human rights of all sectors of the population after armed conflict has come to an end. It is for this reason that it is now well recognised - certainly by the United Nations Secretary- General, in his guidance to his Special Representatives - that human rights guarantees and the institutional arrangements necessary to sustain them should be an explicit part of peace agreements. It is correspondingly recognised that one of the highest priorities in post-conflict peace-building is the restoration or creation of the institutions essential to the rule of law: an impartial judiciary; a civilian police force drawn from the local population whom it is to police, trained in the respect for human rights and able to maintain order while the military remain in their barracks; decent detention facilities in which the human rights of inmates are respected.

So in these two respects the positive synergy between promoting human rights and promoting peace is clear. Let me now, however, illustrate from situations in which I have had some personal involvement what I believe are real dilemmas.

The first of these - to what extent may it be necessary and justifiable to compromise human rights principles of accountability in order to negotiate a peaceful solution to a conflict? - was a feature of the international efforts to reverse the military coup in Haiti, which had ousted democratically-elected President Aristide in 1991. A combination of sticks and carrots were deployed to seek to persuade the military leaders to agree to the restoration of the President and of constitutional order. At first the sticks were weak ones: regional sanctions, which did something to impoverish the majority of poor Haitians who had voted for Aristide, and little to touch the military and their allies. And from the beginning the carrots included the promise of an amnesty from prosecution.

Continued tomorrow

Landmarks in the history of the tea industry
By A. C. B. Pethiyagoda

Commercial agriculture in Ceylon commenced over two centuries ago and much has been written on the subject over the years by scientists, economists, agriculturists and others. This effort is by one who was actively connected with the several aspects of the tea industry for about two decades. Needless to say the events which took place in the early years are recorded following reference to several writings such as ‘A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea’ by D. M. Forrest, ‘ A History of Sri Lanka’ by K. M. De Silva, ‘Tea Planting in Ceylon’ by E. C. Elliott, ‘Tea’ by T. Eden, ‘Tea Planting in Ceylon’ by E. C. Elliott and F. J. Whitehead, ‘A History of the Up-Country Tamil People in Sri Lanka’ by S. Nadesan etc.

In around 1769 the Dutch took to commercial cultivation of cinnamon when supplies from wild plants in the territory of the Kandyan kings dwindled. Organized plantations were therefore set up by Governor Iman Willem Falck in Maradana, Cinnamon Gardens and Borella areas. Villagers in various parts of the Southern region of the country, reasonably close to the Western coast, were also encouraged to take to the cultivation. The quills were in great demand in Europe as a spice and also, particularly among the wealthy, to stir their tea from China in the cold of winter evenings to give it a ‘lift’. The industry diminished in importance during the period of the British Governor, The Hon. Frederick North (1798-1805) on account of severe competition from Java and low-grade produce from South India and the Philippines. This was about 25 years before Buckingham Palace itself was built by George IV and at the time when Britain ruled the waves and governed vast territories in Asia including parts of Ceylon, except its Kandyan Kingdom.

The next commercial crop, with a short overlapping period, was coffee introduced by the Arabs and which had its beginnings in the Wet Zone peasants’ home gardens. This was even before the arrival in Ceylon of the Portuguese, the first European invaders. It was first grown on a commercial scale at elevations of about 1600ft around Kandy and Gampola commencing about the middle of the 1820s. The prime movers were Governor Lt. Gen Sir Edward Barnes (1824-1831) and the Commander of the Army in Kandy Lt. Col Henry Bird. While the latter established his plantation at Sinhapitiya near Gampola, Barnes’ plantation was at Gannoruwa, Peradeniya which is today the foremost Government Agricultural Research Station. Other Englishmen followed suit in rapid succession so that sales of land soared from about 350 acres in 1834 to around 79,000 acres in 1841 alone. These buyers were favoured with loans and from the Ceylon Bank (opened in 1841) together with Government land on a grant system upto 1832 and thereafter by auction at a minimum upset price of 5sh. an acre. Several other laws related to land were enacted over the next few years favouring the English prospectors until the infamous Waste Lands Ordinance came into force in 1897 depriving the Sinhalese of all inherited or uncultivated land leaving no room, in some areas for even a burial ground of their own.

Who were the main buyers? Government Agents, Judges, other high Government Officials, Army personnel, and even Archdeacons and Colonial Chaplains! While these gentlemen were the owners the lands were opened mostly by a rough and ready lot of adventures and soldiers of various ranks discharged from the Army. They had no proper education or knowledge of agriculture but without hesitation they assumed the ranks of Captain, Major etc. according to their ability to get away with it!

Nearly seventy years after the commercial planting of cinnamon, tea came into the scene as seed and seedlings for experimental purposes in 1839 to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya, once the home of an early Kandyan Chieftain, from the Calcutta Botanic Gardens. About 30 of the seedlings found their way to the property in Nuwara Eliya owned by Sir Anthony Oliphant, Chief Justice and were tended by the Rev E F Gepp, tutor of the Chief Justice’s son. Oliphant Estate at the entrance to Nuwara Eliya from the direction of Kandy would very likely have been the location of the Chief Justices house and garden.

The coffee blight, Hemileia vastatrix was first seen around 1869 but was not considered a serious threat to plantations which in that year totalled some 176,000 acres and continued to be opened increasing in extent to 275,000 acres by 1880. Though yields declined gradually due to the disease prices increased with improved demand. Hence, plantation owners were not unduly bothered about the blight as their coffers kept filling. Further, rumours of labour shortages, financial difficulties and political problems in Brazil and Java and the consequent decline in crops contributed to the complacent attitude of the Ceylon planters.

With the industry thriving there was a demand for improved transport facilities and Governor Sir Henry Ward spent one million pounds sterling for the construction of over 3000 miles of roadway during his five year period here from 1855. To his credit he also made plans for a railway to the coffee growing areas resulting in the completion of the line from Colombo to Kandy in 1867 and thereafter in stages to Nawalapitiya and beyond upto Nuwara Eliya and Badulla.

During a period of about twenty years with the gradual decline in coffee yields concern about the situation emerged at last and as a replacement crop cinchona, now known as quinine, became popular. It was known as Jesuit bark, in honour of that Order whose members knew of its curative powers for Malaria. In 1861 the Hakgalla Botanic Garden was established by Government for test planting and propagation of cinchona from seeds originally collected in South America.

Loolecondra Estate, Deltota of James Taylor fame was one of the first estates in 1867 to plant cinchona on a commercial scale mostly as an intercrop with coffee and very much later with tea. Its quality was considered superior to produce from Java and India and Canavaralla Estate in Namunukula was another estate which pioneered in growing the crop. The extent under cultivation rapidly increased from 6000 acres in 1878 to 64,000 acres by 1883. Similar expansion in other countries resulted in a decline in prices so that by 1890 trees were being uprooted in Ceylon or planted areas were abandoned to the jungle tide.

George Henry Thwaites was appointed Superintendent, later designated Director, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya in 1849. He devoted 30 years of his life in the fight against the coffee disease and with equal enthusiasm the development of cinchona, nutmeg, cloves, cocoa and cardamom. His name in the development of tea as a commercial crop has a special place as he nurtured and took a serious interest in the first seedlings received at Peradeniya about ten years before his appointment, and for experimental planting in several estates with planting material which arrived from India time to time from thereafter. The modest man although with a Ph.D insisted on being addressed as Mr. Thwaites as there was at the time a Dr. Thwaites M.D in Gampola practicing medicine!

About the time of his retirement from service, to settle down in Kandy, the Planters’ Association of Ceylon nominated Mr. Thwaites a Life Member of the Association; the first of a long list of other distinguished persons connected with the industry.

It was from this Thwaites that James Taylor received his first lot of tea seed in about 1860. From around 1866 large quantities of seeds and plants from the Botanic Gardens both at Peradeniya and Hakgalla were distributed widely. Interest in the cultivation became greater almost by the day as a result of a successful study of the industry in India initiated by the Planters’ Association, with Government’s support and lead by Arthur Morice, Superintendent of Mooloya Estate, Hewaheta; a close associate of Taylor. The study revealed that tea planting on a commercial scale was certainly a profitable venture in Ceylon if the seed of the best Assam hybrid variety is introduced and confined to plantations situated at high elevations. These conditions were not difficult to satisfy as expensive and time consuming operations such as jungle clearing and land preparation had already been carried out for coffee and cinchona planting of greater importance was the urgent need to find a feasible alternative to the declining viability of coffee.

The next event of great significance to the tea industry was when Taylor opened a clearing of 19 acres with Assam seed in Loolecondra Estate in 1866. Some documents indicate the year as 1867 which could perhaps be correctly taken as 1866/67 as planting may have commenced late in ’66 and ended in early ’67 coinciding with the North East Monsoon rains. Even if this was not the case the fact remains that it was the first planting on a commercial scale after several experimental plots had been raised for about twenty eight years from 1839 onwards at Peradeniya, Hakgalla Gardens, the Chief Justice’s garden in Nuwara Ehya and somewhat later in Rothschild Estate, Pussellawa, Condagalla Division of Labukelle Estate, Ramboda, Kotegoda Division of Glen Alpin Estate, Badulla, and several other plantations.

Tea leaf manufacture is the other aspect which had to be developed along with cultivation. W. J. Jenkins, of Condagalla, claimed to have carried out the first experiments although Taylor also made a similar claim. Perhaps Taylor was right as he would have had sufficient leaf from his 19 acre field to carry out experiments closer in volume to that required for processing on a commercial scale.

Jenkins teamed up with Taylor and carried out joint experiments in Taylor’s bungalow verandah until 1872 when Taylor set up a ‘Tea House’ conforming to his own design and plans. Water wheels were used for motive power to roll the leaf before the fermentation period which was a definite improvement on Jenkins’ practice of rolling by hand which failed to give the much desired ‘twist’ to the fired leaf. This was an inefficient and slow process and therefore expensive even in those times.

As early as 1878 and 1880 Ceylon teas appeared in the London and Melbourne markets respectively and a record in 1881 indicates a valuation of 231bs of Loolecondra tea at 3sh per pound by a valuer in Mincing Lane. As the valuation was made in London it was naturally in sterling currency although Ceylon had its own currency in rupees and cents beginning January 1872.

To Taylor’s credit he found that fine plucking (two leaves and a bud) as a result of close plucking intervals made better quality teas which naturally received higher prices than those from more mature leaf plucked at longer intervals. This requirement, clearly established over a century ago as a basic need to produce quality teas is to this day sometimes unwittingly ignored by planters; main reasons being their inability to organise close plucking rounds due to shortage of labour or lack of planning or both.

The undisputed pioneer known as the Father of Ceylon’s Tea Industry’ James Taylor was born in March 1835 in Kincandineshire near Aberdeen to Michael, a wheelwright and Margret Taylor who had five other children. At the age of 14 he became a pupil teacher but having met Peter Moir, a cousin on home leave from planting in Ceylon, James set his mind on following his cousin’s footsteps and arrived in Colombo in February 1852 just one month before he was 17 years. After a short stay in Colombo and Naranhena (later a division of Loolecondra) he settled down in Loolecondra in his rough, thatched roofed bungalow enduring for many years the hardships of living under almost primitive conditions. However, he appears to have enjoyed himself in total dedication to his job as Assistant Superintendent on an annual salary of-$100 a year, less installments on cost of passage and gear advanced to him by Ms. G & JA Halden of London. His only interests appear to have been on improving the profitability of the estate, experimenting with crops, manufacture of tea and being a good employer to his labour force. He subsequently built himself a comfortable bungalow on being appointed Superintendent but never once went back to England. The one holiday he took out of the country was in Assam to study tea planting and manufacture. Taylor remained single and the Sinhalese woman who kept house for him is said to have cried her heart out when he died of dysentry at 57 years. He was buried in the Mahaiyawa cemetery in Kandy.

Taylor was recognised by both Government and his fellow planters for his various achievements and contribution to the industry. The Planters’ Association as a token of its appreciation gifted Taylor with a silver tea set made in London and a cheque for Rs. 2,871.11 being the balance of the amount collected. Governor, The Right Hon. Sir William Henry Gregory (1872-1877) who visited Lookcondra to congratulate Taylor on his achievements said that "many men have had monuments raised to them with less desert than Mr. Taylor".

Up to about the 1870’s proprietors of estates were only Europeans but soon thereafter Indian names such as Eduljee who owned Wewessa in Passara and Benerajee Jeejeebouy owner of Nahawilla in Demodara appeared in land transfer records. In the Mid Country Sinhala names such as Amarasuriya, Pieris, de Mel, de Soysa etc. were known as prominent plantation owners.

It was only in about the 1860s that young Assistants from so called good and well to do families in England were recruited in preference to cashiered soldiers etc. who were engaged earlier. It was in these times that some senior planters and proprietors who considered themselves as superiors in society even wore black tailcoat and white tie at dinner! In society they considered themselves the ‘cream’ along with only the top Government administrators; others in business and lower grades in Government service were considered inferiors with little effort being made to conceal the attitude.

This account of the industry is in no way complete without mention of the Tea Research Institute of Ceylon, which was established in October 1925 from when crop research activities ceased at the Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya. It was funded by a cess of cts. 10 per 100 lbs of tea exported. In 1928 St. Coombs Estate at Talawakelle with a planted acreage of 291 acres out of 424 acres was bought for Rs. 600,000/- out of a loan of rupees one million granted by Government to the Board of Control. Laboratories and quarters for staff were built and for long years the Institute held a unique and prestigious position as a specialised organisation and ideal employer. In much later years Sub Stations were set up at Passara and Bombuwela and still later at Kandy and Ratnapura.

The contribution made by the Institute to the advancement of the industry was immense. In the early days it successfully controlled the Tea Tortrix pest by biological means and in about 1949 means for the control of the parasitic fungus Blister Blight were found expeditiously. The expansion of the area under cultivation and replanting of poor yielding seedling tea by vegetatively propagated means commenced in about 1947, although the technique was known in Japan in the nineteenth century and had been adopted in Assam in the 1930s. In Ceylon the results of the search was for high yielding, drought, and Blister resistant clones with desirable manufacturing qualities was an outstanding success.

In 1930 the Institute commenced an Advisory Service to assist tea small holders as the AF_e extent under this category was then in the region of 60,000 acres. Three years later the Tea Control Department was set up to implement several Acts connected with the industry which were passed by the Government

The Tea Propaganda Board was established in 1932 with participation by Government to plan and market teas rather than purely effect sales. All interested parties such as producers, traders, brokers etc. contributed generously in cash and with their expertise to assist the Board to achieve its objectives.

Mention has been made above of the Planters Association of Ceylon (PA) but a few significant stages of its development over the years must necessarily be mentioned. The inaugural meeting of the Association was held on 13th March 1854 (also recorded as 17th February 1854) at which Captain Keith Jolly (ex Merchant Navy) was elected Chairman with headquarters in Kandy. Some of the early problems, which received the Association’s attention, were recruitment of South Indian labour, transport of produce (estimated at about 79,000 cart loads in one year from Kandy to Colombo) marketing, determination of Planting Districts etc. Due to long distances planters had to travel, especially from Uva, Dimbulla and Sabaragamuwa attendance at meetings was poor even though some meetings were later held in Nuwara Eliya to correct this situation. Even so at times the Association was nearly folding up. However, in gradual stages it stabilised itself with improved participation of its members in its deliberations and a permanent headquarters in Kandy was opened in 1900. After about 40 years from then major structural defects surfaced, the building was demolished and its business was carried out from a temporary office in Kandy. The Association then moved to Colombo in 1947 and into its own building, in Galle Road, Kollupitiya in 1948. Following the nationalisation of estates this building was taken over by Government and the Association moved to its present location at Vajira Road, Bambalapitiya.

With London being the predominant market and most owning companies based there the PA decided to have its own Agent in London and in 1861 E R Power was appointed to the post on a fee of £ 50 a year and expenses. About 1888 this position developed into the powerful Ceylon Association in London and around that time a member of the local Association gained a seat in Ceylon’s Legislative Council.

Continued tomorrow