Wire services report that 15% (40,000) of the Tamil people held by the State in Vanni camps were released in the days following the tabling of the State Department Report on Sri Lanka in the US Senate and the passage of a resolution in the EU Parliament. Both condemned the Government and the Tigers for human rights violations over an extended period and decried war crimes in the closing stages of the civil war. Unless you live in cloud cuckoo land the connection is obvious; GoSL is buckling under international pressure. Good! How come tens of thousands, held in detention for five months, suddenly turn innocent on October 23rd? Did the sun inexplicably rise in the west that morning? No, it simply proves that there was no justification for depriving them of their freedom in the first place.

And what’s the difference between the 40,000 who were released en masse and the 220,000 who still languish? I’ll tell you; the need to sustain pressure, relentlessly, till everyone is released. Could the government’s ploy be a feint, just eyewash till the pressure eases? It is possible; so we in Lanka and the world outside must not relax until everyone is set free. This regime is astute in taking suckers for a ride; vide India’s callow politicos, and the gullible bureaucrats and diplomats in Delhi.

A win-win scenario

Instead, a win-win scenario is entirely possible. For example, we can win GSP+ and restore democracy at one fell swoop. As I have said before: "There is a direct, straightforward and reliable way to secure GSP+: release those in the Vanni camps, lift the Emergency now prolonged using concocted excuses, and bring to book the murderers of Lasantha, the Trinco students, and the 17 aid workers. The government can do this if it is so minded and has the political resolve. There is no way the EU can refuse after these steps though this will not immediately bring us formally in line with the ICCPR text. Irreversible and convincing actions are essential". This formula can save hundreds of thousands of jobs that young workers desperately need and at the same time buttress democracy.

It is a win-win approach that can rally public support. It is a familiar experience that international sanctions, thoughtlessly applied, may lead to hardening attitudes, the public rallying behind even repressive and corrupt states; it is knee-jerk nationalism predicated on a deficit of political consciousness – "patriotism, the last refuge of the scoundrel" etc. But if deftly applied, international pressure can force a state to curtail abuses and at the same time tender some material benefits to the populace. Unfortunately, experience (Lanka, Burma, Sudan, Israel) has been that accommodation usually turns into appeasement, and eventually nothing is achieved. Conversely, sustained sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s and Serbia more recently, did produce results. Frightening the Sri Lankan government into releasing some detainees is a good first step, but it is too early to take the foot off the pedal, and the agenda must expand to include broader democratic issues as well.

Outside only supplements the inside

The high point of the Rajapakse regime was May 2009, since then it has been all downhill. The outcome of the Southern Provincial Council election was not a good omen; 68% in the SP in the prevailing circumstances, and factoring in widespread intimidation and malpractices, translates to at most 60% of the Sinhala vote nationally. With N&E Tamils hostile and Muslims mostly on the other side, the Thondaman-Chandrasekaran duo holds the trump. But now there’s a bigger fly in the ointment, with various moves on the political chessboard. Trumps, what trumps! Aces are stacking up in hostile droves. Two elections are due soon and Mahinda Rajapakse seems assured of a second presidential term and the UPFA a fair chance of a parliamentary majority. But there are worries; triumphalism embracing repression, economic uncertainty, and a sharp deterioration in relations with the West (China doesn’t count enough, Iran even less, Pakistan can’t even stand up), none of this is a ritzy formula for success.

After sleaze and abuse on the scale we have witnessed in recent years, the government is desperate not to lose power; heads roll and prisons fill when good-for-nothings are forced from office. Villainy on this scale breathes terror not into you and me, but into the souls of incumbent hobgoblins when ousted from power. Looking further down the road, one day will war crimes tribunals beckon? Arrogance becomes its nemesis when audit time arrives; the mills of god grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

It is this changing scene that invigorates Lanka’s growing democratic opposition. I have no idea of timescales, nor will I make statements about personalities, but hostility to repression, corruption and abuse of power will grow stronger month by month. Trend will accelerates and unforeseen events will trigger flares. The point of all this is to emphasise that internal dynamics is the key.

The Platform for Freedom has mobilised a large constituency and hurled hellfire and brimstone on the detainee issue. A short and sharply worded press release on 1 October by five Tamil and a Muslim political party was widely reproduced on international electronic sites despite the local media denying it the publicity it deserved. Statements issued by the Concerned Tamils (a group of Tamil intellectuals) have had their effect. Perhaps most significant, ninety percent of Sinhalese people are ashamed of the displaced in the camps. These internal factors all mattered as much as international ones in beating the government into retreat.

What about China?

Is the emerging superpower going to haul our drowning regime out of the water? Can economic and diplomatic support from Beijing help GoSL overcome ostracism by the West? (I will touch on India, the elephant in the room, some other time). It is necessary to first reflect on the nature of the state and the economy in China to understand the possibilities. For many years I have devoted much effort to researching the nature of the state and economy in China, but this digression will be brief and confined to what we need here.

China’s economy is neither capitalist nor socialist; it is a go-between economy dominated by the state sector. State power is monopolised by the CCP and, in the final analysis, rests on a compromise between classes; the world’s largest working class and largest a rural populace, a ‘caste’ of party and state functionaries appropriating state power and numbering a few million, an affluent and self-assured new educated middle class numbering in the tens of million, and of course Chinese capitalists. The richest Chinese are plain filthy rich; many names dot the Forbes index of the filthiest and China’s captains of industry are numerous, rich and run the most dynamic sector of the economy – the export oriented sector. But they are politically weak, they do not make the running in the Communist Party, and their political power is nowhere near comparable to their American, West European, Japanese, or for that matter even Indian counterparts. There is no paradox in this; the Peoples Republic is still the child of the Chinese Revolution.

In particular, it is vital for countries looking for foreign investment to appreciate the nature of Chinese private-capitalist enterprises. Chinese private companies are not as numerous or similar in their overseas investment aptitudes and appetites to American, European or Japanese private investors. I need to drive this point home again, so let me say it as a hypothesis: If Western and Japanese private entrepreneurs and investors abdicate interest and terminate involvement in Sri Lanka there exists no Chinese capitalist class which can come flooding in to take their place. Lanka’s semi-educated nationalists who bluff: "Who wants Western markets and investments, China, Iran and Pakistan will come riding in, knights on white stallions, to rescue us", have not the foggiest a-b-c of economic systems.

What the Chinese undertake is large state-led projects; Hambantota, Norochcholi, and there will be more. In Sudan and all over Africa, in many parts of Latin America and in Australia the government of the Peoples Republic itself, or its state-led companies are opening up great oil, energy, mining and infrastructure projects; often multi billion dollar investments. The Chinese state owns almost 70% of national assets and controls the biggest industries, high-tech joint ventures, power companies, telecommunications and real-estate. Chinese foreign investment is a reflection of the character of the domestic economy.

Sure, sure this is fine for Sri Lanka as it complements, at the large infrastructure level, Western private investment at the enterprise level. They are not alternatives, missing out on either will scupper development. Dotty nationalists understand none of this; they confuse ineluctable transformations in global economics and balances of power, with contemporary options on our table. Desperate, they turn to Vietnam and the grave diggers of democracy, the Burmese junta. It is ominous; foreboding Gotterdammerung, the terrible twilight of the Gods.

The cultural ethos

Oh yes, colonialism is bad, but it’s a bit difficult to wash away history. Let me ask you to guess; where do Mr Gotabhaya and General Fonseka have their alternative resident status and, I hope, nice homes and education for their lovely children? If you said Zhejiang, China, Isfahan, Iran, or the beautiful Vale of Azad Kashmir, you would be wrong. There is nothing special about these two gentlemen; thousands of Lankans are similarly distributed. Guess again, in what language is this newspaper you are holding in your hands printed? If you answer Potunghua, Persian or Pushtun, you will be wrong again.

Now I will let you into a big secret, but don’t tell that loopy ultras about it. Our cultural ethos is permeated with Anglo-Saxon associations and like India we are part of a durable historical nexus linked into that world. How many of our bright young fellows study in the best and not-so-best universities of North America, UK, Australia and NZ? How many ask me (I still have a few connections) for testimonials in that direction, and how many to the Middle Kingdom or the Islamic Republic? Isn’t Melbourne, Australia, not Peshawar, Pakistan, the home from home of Sinhala chauvinism?

Our farcical ultras are a replay, on a Lilliputian scale, of the Sinhala Only nationalists of the 1950s. Remember how they blinkered our youth to the outside world and turned them into English language illiterates, while all the time sending their own brats to schools in England and to night schools on the South Bank?