Sri Lanka Anti-Corruption Program

by Lincoln Wijeyesinghe (taken from the Island “Opinion” on 12/20/2006)

Recent media reports disclosed that Sri Lanka had the dubious honour of being near the top for Corruption in Asia.

There was another report about steps contemplated to control Corruption.

When brazen bribery is practised at the highest level by offering Ministerial Portfolios to attract crossovers from Opposition Parties, as publicly admitted by a prominent Minister of the Government (even after signing a MoU to Co-operate on National Issues! while another Prominent Minister stated that elections cannot be won without telling lies!) what can you expect from lesser mortals?

It is unfortunate that people with a sense of honour and self respect have become a rare breed in our Political System.

God help our country if our ignorant, easily fooled people do not open their eyes and elect better quality people into the legislature!

“What right do we have,” muses Dhruv Dhawan as he walks through New Delhi to shoot a film, “to go to other people’s countries and say: ‘this isn’t right, you can’t do this’? Every country has its own system.”

It seems an incongruous view of corruption from a director whose first feature film focusses on governmental abuse of land rights. From Dust, an observational documentary filmed in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of 2004’s devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, implies that displaced people were robbed of their land and frightened into relocating so that foreign business could build hotels on the coast.

Following two survivors and an Australian aid worker, Dhawan describes scenes in which the government forces coastal dwellers to move to the hills, on the pretext that it is too dangerous for them to remain by the ocean. Interspersed with painfully beautiful footage are interviews with local officials, eagerly admitting that the sites of the victims’ destroyed homes have been sold to hotel chains such as Sheraton.

Yet director Dhruv Dhawan is circumspect. Part of the reason he was able to get such admissions, he believes, is that corruption was not viewed as a problem: “You know why it was so easy? Because they don’t think it’s wrong. They just think: ‘those are poor people, and they should not be occupying prime coastal property. Other people should get that land, so that my son and his son can go to hospitality school, and manage a small hotel, and make this country richer.’ And you know what? That’s actually a strong argument to build up an economy and create jobs. But at what cost? How does it help the 700,000 homeless tsunami survivors?”

Dhawan went to Sri Lanka with a small film crew as soon as the tsunami hit on 26 December 2004. The crew left a few days later, unable to cope with the scenes of devastation. Dhawan remained, however, searching for inspiration. One month later he met Ravi, a young entrepreneur who had lost his father and sister in the tsunami but saved his mother using skills he learnt watching the US television series Baywatch. “Ravi started asking me questions,” says Dhawan, “and I thought, I could really learn something from him.” Thanks to this early friendship, a powerful documentary emerged that addresses complex issues.

Dhruv did not go to Sri Lanka looking for corruption, but there is political trickery at the heart of the film. Humanitarian assistance and relief projects present plenty of opportunities for corruption (see this month’s article on the Corruption Risk Map), but From Dust focuses on just one – the land claims of tsunami survivors and the government’s selective imposition of the “100 metre rule”.

Following the tsunami, the government implemented what is widely known as the “100 metre rule” ostensibly as a buffer zone to protect against a new tsunami. In essence, this meant that no one was allowed to rebuild their homes within one hundred metres of the sea. Displaced residents were therefore unable to rebuild on land they already owned. While the rule had some legal precedent - the Coast Conservation Act of 1981 - it had never been enforced.

At the time of the tsunami, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans were living on the coastline. Due to this dense population, it was not just a matter of moving back 100 metres. Inhabitants were forced to relocate further inland to undeveloped areas, or “flats”, some 10-14 kilometres from the coast. According to Dhawan, anyone who complained about being relocated would go out of favour with the local politicians. On good behaviour to receive government rations and funds to rebuild once they were relocated, these people rarely protested the 100 meter rule.

Dhawan followed the lives of Ravi and Cyril, tsunami survivors living in temporary tent villages, and Cameron, an Australian aid worker trying to help in the reconstruction. Ravi and Cyril are on a list of people waiting to be allocated land in the hills; Cameron questions why, given the terrifying force of the tsunami, the rule sets dwellings back only a hundred metres.

The film brilliantly intersperses the survivors’ struggles as they await information on rebuilding their homes with newspaper headlines that highlight the role of the media in creating fear of a second tsunami. This fear is reflected in Cyril’s family, who simply do not wish to remain by the ocean. They are not alone; many survivors genuinely want to move away. But the film makes clear that, contrary to the espoused ‘public safety’ justification of the 100 metre rule, the real motivation is selling the land to foreign business interests.

What seems like blatant corruption to the viewer is met by subdued acquiescence on camera. Although the film portrays the situation as grossly unfair, it is not a diatribe against the government; it does not preach against the system. It is a story of acceptance, of survival, of starting again, told through those living that reality. Ravi and Cyril are acutely aware of their plight, but they do not appear outraged. Indeed, they are portrayed not as victims, but as survivors. Their resilience to adversity and commitment to life provides another degree of depth to the film.

Another intriguing representation of human nature is provided by Dhawan’s interviews with officials from the Sri Lankan Tourist Board, who proudly boast of stimulating economic growth through tourism. The Chairman explains that if one million tourists visit Sri Lanka annually and each spends an average US $155 per day, tourism will become the country’s top foreign exchange earner by 2010. For this, the country will need 11,000 high class hotel rooms. Luxury hotels will not want to build away from the beach, he explains, so there must be exceptions to the 100 metre rule.

These officials make no attempt to cover up the land sale. Maps are victoriously thrust at the camera, proudly showing how much coastline had been “acquired”. According to Dhawan, it was not difficult to get officials to appear on film: “The two officials I met were just dying to get their faces in the media,” he says.

One year after the tsunami, US $300 million had been invested in rebuilding the Sri Lankan coastline and yet Ravi and his neighbours were still living in their ‘temporary’ tent villages. The absurdity of the situation hit Dhawan. He notes: “Eighty metres back from these luxury hotels are refugee camps”.

Absurdity aside, the film’s humanity stands out, largely due to the stunning cinematography. Dhawan was astonished to find that amongst the devastation, the slim fishing stilts used by local fisherman for decades had withstood the disaster. Among the film’s most poignant moments are shots of fishermen, pushed back to live in the flats, returning each day to these stilts to fish. “I used to go down there every day and film those stilts,” said Dhawan. You see a man with one disabled arm, climbing a stilt which is 120 years old, which had survived the flood. I can’t tell you how it feels to see these stilts still standing when iron has melted”.

It is Dhawan’s eye for the humanity of his subject that informs the film. While it reveals the injustice and potentially corrupt nature of post-tsunami life, Dhawan also tapped into something more abstract. “There is no absolute representation of a politic in such a large scenario. To me, Ravi, Cyril and Cameron were representative of the human spirit, which I was always chasing through the film.”

Dhruv Dhawan’s attention to the human spirit brings a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions down to the personal. Filmed from this perspective, and with an awareness of the complexities surrounding an opaque system of governance in a humanitarian crisis, From Dust does not feel like an anti-corruption tirade. It is primarily about human suffering, but avoids explicit outrage at the system that prolongs that suffering.

The system does have problems. The government’s failure to involve survivors in discussions on reconstruction and relocation represents a top-down approach that contradicts best anti-corruption practice. It also violates specific recommendations, such as the need to strengthen access to information regimes, in the 2005 framework for preventing corruption in tsunami aid compiled by Transparency International, the Asian Development Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

That Dhawan did not focus more on the systemic level can, at times, make the film seem diluted, as though the director did not really pursue his targets. But as a film maker trained in cultural anthropology, he recognises this is not his role. He can show the plight of the survivors, but does not pretend to speak for them. So why he didn’t pursue the corruption angle more strongly? “I have often thought that you could say, ‘ok, revoke the 100 metre rule, let the people live there’. I think that a lot of people would still want to take the option of getting land inland. Ravi does, Cyril does. They all just want to wait [for their land] now. Let’s say my film managed to revoke the hundred metre rule. Great, I’m a major activist. I get my name in the papers, but what happens is these guys have to live there again. And what if another tsunami does hit again one day?”

As not all Sri Lankans are unhappy with their relocation or bothered by how the system operates, Dhawan thinks the solution is clear. Survivors should not be made to pay for their own land, and should have a choice as to whether they are relocated. A simple solution to a complex humanitarian problem.

Dhruv Dhawan was born in Bombay and studied in Dubai and the United States. He freelances as a director and writer in the United Arab Emirates, where he creates work for the emerging commercial sector and broadcast industry in the Middle East. From Dust is his first feature length documentary. It premiered at the Tribecca Film Festival 2005 and has since been screened at the United Nations headquarters and the Dubai International Film Festival, and has been shortlisted for the Hot Docs Film Festival. It opens to festivals in Europe in autumn 2006. To view the trailer or order a copy, log on to www.film-real.com

Have you seen the public service announcement titled “Lets break the chain of corruption” on MTV, Sirasa and Shakthi? It’s the one that starts off with a little girl bringing cigarettes to her father in return for spare change, grows up and gives a bribe to get her son into school, etc. etc. If you have seen it, let us know what you think. PS: The Maharaja Organization aired this PSA FREE OF CHARGE in the public interest and we at the Sri Lanka Anti-Corruption Program are very grateful to them for this.