Rajapakse government endorsed nationalist ideology and resisted power devolution

Evidence

The present government of President Mahinda Rajapakse is the first to embrace eagerly this insidious mindset, which is partly responsible for the 5,000-plus (mostly Tamils) killed and more than 215,000 newly displaced persons in the last twelve months alone. The government has manipulated the global war on terror to mask its human rights abuses and has targeted innocent Tamil civilians in its military campaigns. The international community has castigated the government for widespread human rights violations, yet not a single member of the military or paramilitaries (including Tamil paramilitaries) has been charged for the numerous kidnappings, rapes, torture, and murders that have accompanied military operations. Most troubling, the Rajapakse government believes in a military solution to the civil war and, consequently, has frowned on devolution of power along provincial lines, which is widely advocated by moderate Tamils, civil society, and the international community. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 40

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did the global war-on-terror framing let the government externalize its own violence as anti-terror? Relevant to whether professed anti-terror conviction masks measured group bias.
• XREF: Impunity + refusal of power-sharing parallels the manufactured-enemy research thread: the unitary-state stance hardens against the very devolution compromise that could dissolve the conflict.

Related

• Adopting nationalist ideology produced mass civilian killing and displacement without prosecution (similarity 0.84)
• Sinhalese politicians frame both protection and violence toward Tamils as majority prerogative (similarity 0.81)
• A pacifist religion has been harnessed to an ethnocentric state ideology. (similarity 0.80)
• A majoritarian Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ethos is now broadly accepted across Sri Lankan society (similarity 0.80)
• Extremist Sinhalese parties weaponized Buddhism against Tamil devolution (similarity 0.80)
• The nationalist ideology is broadly accepted even by non-nationalist Buddhists (similarity 0.80)
• Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology commands broad popular support in Sri Lanka (similarity 0.80)
• Entrenched Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism forecloses federal solutions and portends broader attacks on minorities (similarity 0.80)
• Some Sinhalese nationalist writers publicly endorse genocide against Tamils (similarity 0.79)
• A territorial-integrity fear drives Sinhalese opposition to any Tamil autonomy. (similarity 0.79)
• Sinhalese governments invented Tamil separateness for political self-preservation (similarity 0.78)
• A nationalist Sinhalese party has infiltrated the armed forces and may stage a coup (similarity 0.78)
• Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism will persist and could expand to other minorities (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology commands broad popular support in Sri Lanka #corroborates (0.72) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 39