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Why this unkindest cut of all? "That," said Marc Anthony, pointing to Brutus‘ dagger thrust in the body of Julius Caesar, "was the unkindest cut of all!" Troubled times, indeed, for Rome... In Sri Lanka today, if the evidence is anything to go on, we are also cutting most unkindly. So unkind are these cuts that we are, for one, losing much valuable forest cover in the illicit felling of forest trees; and are also losing much foreign exchange because of our unkind, under-equipped, unscientific, and grossly unfair methods of cutting what is legally permissible. Phew! What that mouthful, let me say more. We simply have to look at this whole business of timber, of the wood we need, at the way we deplete and destroy soil cover, of the way we are going about things, and ask ourselves what we are doing. The thinking is so sparse, so unreasoned, that what we have today is an approach that thumbs a nose at Forestry and gives opportunity for much illicit and wasteful use of timber, with no thought of the ills of erosion or destruction of soil cover; no thought, really, for anything sensible or sustainable save the needs of the moment. With this, we have a host of social evils too: the most acute being the denudation of natural forest tracts, the going up in smoke of plantation forests, bribery and corruption, illicit transport of timber, as well as a monstrous discard of how valuable or important trees, so unkindly cut, are. At the Kandy-based Estate Forest & Water Resources Project, the German Team Leader is most specific. "We cannot do without wood," he emphasises, "and wood means trees... and trees are a resource that is naturally regenerative. But there has to be a system — because nothing really works without system and order." So what do we do? Do we keep losing our trees in the same slap-dash manner we cheerfully condone; do we keep importing wood; do we continue our wastrel way... or do we stop a while, listen to reason, take stock, and get our act together? Kempas imports Reasons for such annual imports may sound ludicrous, but they are most convincing: (a) Contractors avoid long logs because cutting and hauling poses too many problems. (b) There are difficulties moving large trees from forests to roads to saw mills. (c) All such operations are manual, hence there are physical limitations. (d) Saw mills are usually equipped with circular bench saws and it is difficult to hold larger and longer logs in place for cutting. So there are limiting factors. As such trees are cut too short, there is a great deal of incorrect harvesting, and, for ease of transportation, handling and cutting, the logs are cut into small sections, much less than 10-ft lengths. Another reason trotted out most convincingly is that the imported Kempas timber is of good quality and termite-resistant. Are we then saying that that our own timber is of poor quality and a dainty termite dish? Let us look at the 23 privatised plantation companies. The plantation sector has 14,600 hectares of forest plantation, 90% of the trees being Eucalyptus. Mind, this Eucalyptus is just as good and just as termite-resistant as the Kemaps we import! Originally, the plantation sector put in the Eucalyptus to be used as firewood. On this 14,600 hectares, the average yield of Eucalyptus wood can amount from 210,000 to 280,000 cu.m. per year — and that is on only harvesting the incremental yield, leaving the standing stock intact! The problem is that a lot of the Eucalyptus is overgrown and too old. There have been no attempts at thinning or regular harvesting, and the trees have grown very large. If cut, they are chopped into small lengths on the spot and then dragged away to be further chopped into firewood. They are all destined, big or small, to go up in smoke, to feed the furnaces the estates operate for their drying ovens, etc. Even a fraction of such timber, if correctly processed, can largely subsidise our present timber imports up to an annual saving of Rs. 2 to 300 million a year. The operation of an estate furnace with firewood costs an average of Rs. 0.11 to produce one gigajule of heat energy. If the estates switch to oil, the running cost will be Rs. 0.22 per gigajule, but the plantations can still make a tremendous profit margin of approximately Rs. 7000 per cu. m. over the value of firewood which is a mere Rs. 750 per cu. m. solid corresponding to Rs. 450 per cu. m. stacked. Also, the roots and base of the trees so cut can still be used for firewood, so that there will be no real need to depend solely on oil. As the Team Leader of the EFWRDP points out, timber is a most important natural resource. Countries like Canada, Sweden and Finland base their economies on proper forestry. Timber remains a base for industry and, above all, it means money. "The idea of our Project is to promote trees and save the forests, keep the cover and yet utilise the tremendous potential that our timber resources offer. We are opposed to clear felling. Tress must be harvested with no damage to the surface. Ideally (and this is done in some countries) a tree is cut at the base, then lifted clear by winches. There is no damage to the mulch layer, no cause for soil erosion. Nature, we must understand, is a delicate organism that we must treat with care." Economic value Apparently, to gain the maximum benefit form our timber resources, suitable technical equipment is necessary for harvesting and extracting the timber. Obviously, the 23 privatised plantation companies are ideally in situ (with the 14,600 hectares of forest plantations they own) to make the necessary technological investment. What are needed are tractor-mounted cable winches, cable logging systems for steep terrain or re-inforced plastic chute systems assembled in sections to a maximum length of 300 meters. In all, among the Eucalyptus forests of the 23 plantation companies, about 20 to 25 such units would be needed. As such, each plantation company may be looking at a timber harvesting and extraction investment as follows:
Of course, loading cranes are also needed and these are available, One tractor winch can handle up to 50 cu. m. timber per day, or annually, 12 to 13,000 cu. m. This is for the harvesting and extraction of Eucalyptus only. Rubber I am reminded that rubber, if uprooted in time and given the necessary boron treatment, then kiln-dried after pressure impregnation, can be an excellent wood for furniture, construction, etc. As far as we know, a few companies have set up their own rubber-wood saw mills and account for about 5000 cu. m. per year, but this is nothing close to the full potential of rubber wood which is estimated to be between 100 to 140,000 cu. m. of sawable timber. There is even a export potential in semi-finished products such as handles of utility items, toys, etc. Also, as the Team Leader of the EFWRDP points out, rubber wood can be peeled into plywood. "The uprooting process can also be speeded up with the use of cable winches," he says, "because the trick is to keep the quality of the wood by timely uprooting." So what do we have? One: We import wood which is readily grown here. Two: We burn up what we have because we don't see the trees for the wood. Three: We need to invest in the appropriate technology to make efficient use of our tree resources. Four: We must sustain our tree resources and ensure that we only take the incremental yield, thereby following the principle of sustainability. Five: We must admit that we are doing no good to our economy by continuing in the manner we now do, while other countries continue to profit by our ineptitude. Most important of all, we have in one way displayed our willingness to expand our tree cover, put more land under forest cover. This is a good sign; a healthy sign. In 1993, under an ADB loan/grant package, the 23 plantation companies launched a reforestation campaign: 4,500 hectares are planted of a proposed 11,000. This must go on and let there be no vested land grabs by government agencies under the pretext of village expansion ansd other such feeble excuses. As it is, these plantation companies have known this sort of victimisation which puts them into a corner of moral defeat. The trouble is, as I said, nobody is looking at the whole canvas. And that, I maintain, is the unkindest cut of all! Further reflections Mahatma Gandhi, writing in the issue of ''Young India'' of February 21, 1929, made the following observations:- ''Put all your knowledge, learning and scholarship in one scale and truth and purity in the other and the latter will by far outweigh the other — knowledge without character is a power for evil only, as seen in the instances of so many ''talented thieves' and 'gentlemen rascals' in the world''. I keep wondering whether in making this statement the great man had psychic insight, seventy years ago, into the utter mess our politicians would make of the affairs of the Bribery Commission of this country, fifty years after his death. The S.L.F.P. policy statement on Bribery and Corruption (vide ''The Island'' of July 6, 1994) asserted boldly that ''the mechanism which comments itself to the S.L.F.P. for the restoration of public confidence in our political and administrative system is the establishment of a Permanent Commission on Bribery and Corruption''. Can anyone tell me what confidence the public can have in a political system under which the very government that sets up the Bribery Commission prevents it from functioning effectively eg., by the non-appointment, despite repeated requests, of a Commission, to fill the vacancy created by the death of one of its members; withdrawal of the Commission's investigating staff and the attorneys-at-law attached to it? Statement Elsewhere in the statement it is said that ''the government will not be able to rescind the Commission's mandate (as UNP governments have shamelessly done) when investigations being carried out by the Commission prove irksome or embarrassing to powerful politicians''. Haste The policy statement also made it very clear that the Commission will report directly to parliament and cannot be removed from office except by a substantive resolution which is passed by a two-thirds majority in each House of Parliament. How come there was a change of mind and the requirement now is only a simple majority of course, including those members not present. Is the reason that this way it is easier to get rid of a member or members who can cause embarrassment to the government by their independence? Also, how many reports of the Commission have been sent directly to parliament? When Sukumar Rockwood, then on the staff of "The Observer'' asked Dr. Peiris, ''So you think enactment of laws alone will be sufficient to tackle the problem of bribery and corruption?'' the reply of the minister was: ''The expertise of the relevant officers is of crucial consideration... We have therefore, given very considerable thought to practical ways and means of exposing the investigative officers of the Commission to the kind of training they will need in order to discharge their functions adequately. ''I have had extensive consultations in this regard with the Director of the United Nations Development Programme (U.N.D.P.), Mr. Robert England, and the High Commissions of U.K. and Canada. We are planning to make arrangements for the investigative officers of the Commission to have the benefit of training facilities in Hong Kong and Singapore''. (Vide ''The Sunday Observer" of January 15th, 1995). Training? In the interview with Sukumar Rockwood, Dr. Peiris asserted boldly that at the end of two months in office, the P.A. government had done ten times as much as the Aquino Government in the Philippines did during the comparable period in respect of investigations into the frauds and corruption of the Marcos government. If the tempo slowed down after that there must be a valid reason. Avadhi Lanka hopes that, in the interest of clean and honest governance more so of the moral underpinnings of society which the S.L.F.P. policy statement speaks of the Select Committee appointed to go into the whole question will succeed in unravelling the mystery behind the President's call to the Chairman and the other member of the Commission to resign before the expiry of their legitimate term. In this exercise one hopes that the Chairman and the single member of the Commission will hold up to public gaze what has gone on from the time they were appointed. The people of this country who are interested in ensuring that the highest standards of morality govern public life, will not be satisfied with anything less. One word more. If the member who resigned from the Commission in the early stages i.e., the former Auditor-General will also voluntarily go before the Select Committee, and say his piece, all of us will be grateful. The vast mass of simple but sensitive people are sick to death with the doings of 'educated' frauds in public life. Countdown
in the Vanni Continued from yesterday. (Midweek Review) Aerial Bombing in the Vanni What one finds most disturbing about these bombing attacks is that they come usually in the wake of the advance column on the Jaffna Road encountering casualties, or immediately after the Sea Tigers hit the Navy. Having launched the bombing attacks the Defence Ministry consistently makes exorbitant claims. This does not give one the confidence that the targets are chosen with any precision or under any demonstrable military necessity. One is further disturbed when such performances come in conjunction with top brass in the defence establishment facing accusations in the press pointing to corruption and misappropriation. Sources on the ground further confirm that bombs are dropped from very high altitudes and even where an LTTE target is correctly identified, the bombs missing the target by about one hundred yards is fairly normal and hence the regular civilian casualties. Political Opportunism vs Representing the
People's Interests The salient points is usually missed when individuals and groups taking ‘politically correct’ position attack the Government for the wrong reasons. When a war is forced on the Government (see for example the chronology of events which led to the recommencement of hostilities in April 1995 compiled by INFORM), it is mostly superficial to attack particular military decisions as being politically motivated, egocentred or unduly provocative. For example all these accusations were made about the decision to military take the Jaffna peninsula. But one could, on the other hand, cite the Mullaitivu debacle or the earlier Jaffna Fort fiasco and point to what otherwise may have become the fate of the army's isolated garrisons in Jaffna. The salient point is that the Government is being cornered into not reflecting the people's interests in moving away from dependence on the war, but rather to rely heavily on the war itself. We say cornered, because at a conceptual level at least the present Government took some unprecedentedly both steps to break the status quo on the ethnic question. Among these were the political package and the media campaign to infuse fresh thinking and encourage healthier perspectives on the issue. In this respect the attitudes of the UNP opposition and large sections of the press and intelligentsia in the South have been very harmful. The UNP has been playing a studied double game, by on the one hand being ambivalent about the Government's moves towards accommodation, but on the other criticising it for not talking to the LTTE and for fighting a war inflamed, complicated and passed on to it by themselves. The upshot to all this is a drift where confusion about the LTTE is compounded by the absence of a coherent policy towards the Tamil people. The Tamil people have been relegated to mere security liabilities left to the whims and fancies of a corrupt security apparatus. For their part the Tamils are being confirmed in the view that their unenviable position in not going to change. The Tamil elite in turn are given an alibi for blaming everything on the Government and avoiding facing up to the LTTE squarely. Finally everything plays into the hands of the LTTE. As we had already stated, the LTTE which thrives on dehumanising the community and blocking any humanisation on the part of the Sri Lankan state as well as Sinhalese civil society, will continue its destructive course. This also entails the continuation of self-imposed censorship particularly by the Tamil intellectuals and media in evaluating our political reality in a responsible manner. Both these in consequence prevent the ordinary Tamils from seeing any healthy developments in the South. The LTTE has further recently shown its utter contempt for the people by using a suicide bomber to assassinate Brigadier Larry Wijeratne, a much-valued friend of the people of Vadamaratchy. Wijeratne at the time of his death was in Pt. Pedro as a guest of the people who were spontaneously expressing their appreciation in a series of farewell functions. By this act the LTTE grossly offended the most basic and strongly felt cultural sensibility among all peoples — that of the obligations of hospitality. The late Brigadier Larry Wijeratne is unique in many ways and by example has given hope that it is possible to restrain the security forces from unleashing terror and keep the civilian concerns in the forefront during military operations. His approach was not merely the strategical or tactical one of a clever military officer. When we consider the total blindness shown by many politicians and even intellectuals in the South regarding the critical nature of the ethnic problem, Larry Wijeratne showed clarity and humility in understanding the plight of a people who had previously known only terror from state forces as well as their self-acclaimed liberators. When large sections of the military are still shrouded in corruption, brutality and contempt for the civilians, it is a few officers of the calibre of Wijeratne who have brought hope of a better future. It is a frightening thought that by targeting a few individuals like Larry Wijeratne, the LTTE could create such a vacuum as to push things back all the way to the 1980s. If the South and the North are unable to come out of the present state of opportunism they would deserve the LTTE for some time to come. Looking Beyond While the course of events is determined by the unwritten policy of ‘Do not trust Tamils’, we will inevitably move towards separation. The only alternative is to rebuild trust and in the first instance to treat the Tamils as people who have dignity and rights and to be conscious of the state to give them confidence. Every effort made by concerned people in Colombo to organise themselves as citizens’ committees and represent the interests of the community could not make any headway or curtail alienation in the day to day life of ordinary Tamils. There were of course ritual acceptances of the problems faced by ordinary Tamils and promises of possible remedies at various levels. But nothing ever materialised. The recent round up and indiscriminate detention of up to 200 Tamil labourers from Paduwankarai who went to Polonnaruwa District for seasonal harvesting is another example of the Government’s ineptitude. The growth of this culture, which helped to brand a particular community, can be traced to the impunity conferred by a series of repressive legislation beginning with the PTA of 1979. It is pertinent to ask today whether these developments have aided security in any way? On reflection, as many argued at that time, the whole thing has been a big mistake. The problem has now reached such proportions that even this Government once pledged to cleaning up this country’s human rights record seems to have given up. Having fattened on the arrogance of impunity, several sections of the security apparatus treat the Government’s occasional weak interventions on behalf of human rights with complete contempt. All units, which acquired notoriety, such as the CSU and the gangs of the Munases, remain at large. Several police and military officials who were featured adversely in testimony given before commissions set up by the present Government have been promoted and hold some of the senior-most positions. There is a strong suspicion, particularly in Batticaloa and Vavuniya, that the State maintains armed Tamils groups on a long leash only so that the several uninvestigated murders that are done at the behest of shady state agencies can be blamed on these Tamil groups. This corrupt self-serving state apparatus is going to be a long-term problem for this country and has already rendered the Tamil problem diabolically complicated. To many Tamils living outside the war zone these shortcomings on the part of the State are much more a part of their day to day experience than the war itself. From stories of extortion and harassment at the Colombo International Airport, to Tamil homes being raided by security men in the nights and women being photographed in their nighties, many of which are true, with a number of other exaggerations and fictitious episodes are regularly fed into Tamil news networks overseas to help fill LTTE coffers. Many of those who support the LTTE do not want to hear anything else. They are determined not to see for example that life in Jaffna is not as bad as it is often made out to be. They would indeed least like to hear about the true disposition of civilians in the Vanni. This kind of blindness is helped primarily by the Government continuing to perpetuate the already discredited bureacratic approaches in tackling security concerns and failing to deal with corruption and human rights abuses more convincingly. The Government needs to show a will to tackle this problem not by just giving token punishments to some low ranking functionaries, but rather to deal with it beginning at the highest level. There are enough indications that it is here that the problem begins — one could hardly otherwise explain for example the vicissitudes of the drama surrounding the former Air Force chief. One sees little hope as long as the suspicion remains that Tamil civilians are being bombed to cover up charges of maladministration in the defence establishment, or that the war is being prolonged with young men and women sacrificing their lives mainly to serve the interests of those who benefit from corruption. The LTTE has manifested its destructive intentions and contempt for the people by the recent killings in Jaffna that have resulted in fear and despair. What is most needed now is a clear policy of giving hope to the Tamil people. Next publication: The Murder of Mrs. Yogeswaran, Mayoress of Jaffna and the Anatomy of Fascist Control. Addendum Recruitment in the
Eastern Province Conditions of poverty are more extreme in the LTTE controlled Paduwankarai area. Even where students had struggled and secured university entrance, a number of them are daunted from continuing through difficulty in clothing and feeding themselves. The people themselves have become marked as allegedly LTTE supporters, thus adding to their problems. Traditionally a large number of them who are agricultural labourers travel to Amparai and Polonnaruwa districts to earn a substantial package by helping in the harvesting. In Polonnaruwa recently up to about 200 of these labourers were picked up willy-nilly by the security forces and sent to Anuradhapura prison as LTTE suspects, leaving their families in a quandary. Sources in Batticaloa have commended the Muslim employers for having been very helpful and understanding towards the labourers and their families. Such measures by the State have tended to make a bad situation worse. The LTTE’s recruits are again young. Among the boys several are said to be about 13 years of age, but who are strong for their age owing to having worked as labourers. Also smartly dressed LTTE cadre with their gadgetry and modern conveyances strike a fashionable posture in this area where the war has drastically limited the horizons of the people. Observers have particularly noted the effect of the sight of the women cadre on young girls of the area surrounded by drabness. Yet the numbers joining the LTTE are said to be small in comparison with the 80s and early 90s. concluded |
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