on 07/11/2016
Sinhalese tourists visit the underground bunker of LTTE leader
Velupillai Prabhakaran in Mullaitivu district. The completion of the northbound
A9 road and the opening up of the north of Sri Lanka has bought with it a
booming domestic ‘war tourism’ industry. Sinhalese people from Colombo are
coming in their hundreds to see memorials to their fallen soldiers and to visit
sites of the major battles. March 2012. Text and photo courtesy James Morgan.
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This week, there is a major international conference on tourism, in
Pasikudah, in the Batticaloa district, Eastern province of Sri Lanka. The theme
is “Tourism: a Catalyst for Development, Peace and Reconciliation”. It’s
organized by the UN’s World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), “the UN agency
responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally
accessible tourism”, along with the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority
(SLTDA) and the Ministry of Tourism Development and Christian Religious
Affairs. The Sri Lankan President is due to attend.
Local community’s involvement in the conference
Pasikudah is a fishing village. It’s an area severely affected
by the war and tsunami, with many having been killed, disappeared, injured,
tortured, detained, displaced and with large number of war widows and women headed
households. It had also been a popular beach for local and foreign tourists.
Before the advent of large hotels owned and staffed primarily by outsiders,
many local people had tried to develop their economy through small scale guest
houses.
When we met fisherfolk and local guest house owners and staff
last month, they didn’t know about this event, had not been consulted or
invited. Organizers have opted to recommend high-end hotels owned and managed
by outsiders for conference participants to stay, instead of local guest
houses. Local civil society groups that we met in Batticaloa, the district
capital and the closest major city to Pasikudah also didn’t know about the
conference.
Those seriously affected by the three decade old war have been
totally left out at a conference claiming to discuss peace, reconciliation and
development. There doesn’t appear to be any opportunity for participants to
listen to them and how they may view tourism and their expectations. There is
also no space or focus in the agenda on gender issues.
Misleading participants
The material provided for participants by organizers, is
misleading as it withholds key information about the context and background of
peace and development in Sri Lanka and Pasikudah. Language has been a key issue
that led to war and the organizers are incorrectly portraying that the language
of the majority, Sinhalese, as the official language, at a conference held in a
pre-dominantly Tamil area ravaged by the war. Numerous reports by local
and international groups and the UN about the human rights situation in the
past and present finds no reference in extensive pre-conference materials
featuring images of sunny beaches.
Proposed pre & post conference destinations include Kandy
and Nuwara Eliya, districts which grow much of Sri Lanka’s famous tea. The
visit itinerary includes visits to tea factories and plantations. But it
doesn’t include a visit to “line rooms”, the cramped and basic shelters where
workers live. The visitors are not likely to be given opportunities to learn
about the historical and ongoing socio-economic-political marginalization of
tea workers, many of whom are women, on whose sweat and blood the tea industry
is built on, with very little benefits to themselves.
Some major concerns about tourism and local communities
In major tourism development areas such as Pasikudah, Kalpitiya
(Puttlam district, North Western Province) and Kuchaveli (Trincomalee district,
Eastern Province), local communities have not been consulted and inadequate
information had been provided to them about large scale tourism projects that
affects their lives. Some had learnt of proposed tourist projects through
prohibition notices restricting their freedom of movement. Sinhalese, Tamil and
Muslim communities, men, women and children, have all been negatively affected.
Historical landscapes have been changed and mangroves destroyed
due to large scale tourism projects in different parts of the country.
Environmentalists had reported that the Colombo “Port City” project, which aims
at high end tourists, will cause serious damage to the environment. In
Kuchaveli, community playgrounds, community centres, wells close to the sea and
a Hindu temple had been occupied due to tourism projects. In Kalpitiya, access
to a Catholic Church had been blocked and, local communities have complained
about water shortages for drinking and everyday use, due to high water
consumption in hotels.
Tourism initiatives, by the military and private companies, had
resulted in local populations losing their traditional lands, seriously
affecting community life and cultures. Individuals and whole communities in
Kuchaveli, Kalpitiya, Jaffna (Northern Province) and Panama (Ampara district,
Eastern Province) have lost their traditional lands and villages due to tourism
projects.
Fisherfolk in Pasikudah told us that their fisheries centres and
moorings have been displaced multiple times due to building up of large hotels.
The hotel hosting the conference, Amaya Beach Resort, is situated where their
fisheries centre was located. The Pasikudah fisherfolk have been compelled to
walk several kilometers to the present day mooring. Over 300 fisherfolk have to
share a very small 300m section of the 5km long beach. In Kuchaveli nine access
points to the sea has been blocked and fisherfolk have to walk about 3km to the
sea. Most permanent employees in hotels appear to come from outside. Fisherfolk
in Pasikudah also told us that large hotels in Pasikudah don’t purchase fish
from them, but do their purchases through intermediaries. There are also
questions about adequate compensation, social benefits and rights to unionize
of workers employed in major hotels.
Militarization of tourism
There is a strong military presence and involvement in Northern
Sri Lanka and this also extends to tourism. It’s a military which stands
accused of serious and systemic human rights violations, by the local
population, domestic and international human rights groups and the UN. Despite
some releases in last 18 months, it continues to illegally occupy large swathes
of lands belonging to Tamils. Some lands of Muslim and Sinhalese are also
occupied by the military.
The military runs farms, pre-schools, shops, tourist centres,
tourist resorts, restaurants, boat tours and airlines. According to organizers,
conference participants will also travel by a “passenger vessel of the Navy”.
In Panama and Jaffna peninsula, people were deceived into believing the Navy
and Army had occupied their lands to build military bases, but subsequently
discovered that these lands were used to build military run resorts.
The military has also built many monuments glorifying itself,
despite many local Tamils considering them as being responsible for mass
atrocities in the past. The military had bulldozed cemeteries and destroyed
memorials of Tamil militants. Efforts of civilians to remember those killed and
disappeared, led by Tamil political and religious leaders had been met with
threats, intimidations, restrictions, surveillance and court orders banning
them. Despite some improvements in last 18 months, there is no positive
environment for civilian initiatives for monuments and remembrance events.
Government initiatives for remembrance remains focused also on the military.
Tourism and international experiences of memorialization
Across the world, monuments of past tragedies had become major
tourist attractions.Holocaust
memorial in Auschwitz and across the world, Constitutional
Hill (former prison) andApartheid
Museum in South Africa, Tuol
Sleng Genocide museum in Cambodia and thememorial at the massacre site in Gwanju, South
Korea are just very few examples. They play a very important role in retaining
memory, educating visitors (domestic and international) and conveying stories
of experiences of survivors and victims of human rights violations and war.
One of the most striking of such memorials is in Derry, in
Northern Ireland, which was badly affected by the “troubles”. A walking tour of
“Derry
Bogside” retraces parts of the original march and visits places
where the dead and wounded fell on “Bloody Sunday”, examining its’s political
and social repercussions and offering onsite experience and insights. It’s
curated by the son of one of the victims and offers a unique perspective to
tourists. The Museum of Free Derry tries to tell the
city’s history from the point of view of the people who lived through,
and were most affected, instead of “distorted version parroted by the
government and most of the media”, as a step towards understanding of elements
that led to the conflict.
Tourism in Sri Lanka is far from such initiatives. Less than an
hour away from Pasikudah, Satharakondan and Kathankudi, there are monuments to
remember massacres by the government forces and LTTE, which local Tamil and
Muslim communities have built and maintain. No visits to such sites are planned
in this conference to discuss “peace and reconciliation tourism”, to learn from
war-affected people and express solidarity and offer encouragement and support.
Instead, organizers are offering “technical tours” of several hours, to war
affected Trincomalee and Jaffna. The itineraries indicate that the aim is to
highlight the beauty of the place and sweep under the carpet serious human
rights violations and social, economic issues affecting local people, such as
unemployment, caste and gender based discrimination and violence.
Towards a more meaningful tourism
Tourism must be centered on local populations and war affected
peoples. Consultations with them is crucial if tourism is to act as catalyst
for peace, reconciliation and development. Tourism projects should take into
account their sufferings, aspirations and support their struggles for truth,
justice and economic development in a sensitive way.
Tourism must not destroy or damage socio-economic-cultural
practices of local communities and uproot them from their traditional lands and
livelihoods. They should not be marginalized and denied economic opportunities
presented. Environmental protection is linked to community life and livelihoods
and thus this is a crucial factor in any tourist projects.
Only very few individuals have obtained redress for lands they
lost due to tourism projects, by going to courts. It would be important to have
accessible, effective and independent grievances mechanisms, which could
prevent abuses in context of tourism projects by the state or private
companies, or provide redress to victims.
Government and military must not use tourism as means to promote
their political agendas and propaganda. Memorials and other remembrance
initiatives by local communities must be promoted and government must also
initiate official monuments and remembrances focusing on civilians and all
those affected.
Post-war tourism in Sri Lanka has been dominated by large scale
hotel chains, investors and a powerful military machine. It’s driven by
neo-liberal, capitalist economic and development policies and majoritarian
Sinhalese – Buddhist ideology. It has exploited and left behind local
populations in tourist sites and war affected survivors and victim’s families,
in dark shadows of dispossession, displacement and marginalization. Will this
conference rubber stamp and encourage this stampeding tourism train running
over all before it, or will it genuinely attempt to promote peace,
reconciliation and development in Sri Lanka through tourism?
Sources:
Visits and meetings with local communities by authors and
colleagues
Authors visits to sites of “peace tourism” overseas
“Dark Clouds over the Sunshine Paradise – Human Rights
& Tourism in Sri Lanka”, Society for Threatened Peoples
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