Australian socialist conference highlights Tamil rights

Tamil youth activists addressed a packed audience, who attended 'Resistance 2008', an annual conference of Australia's largest socialist youth organisation, held at the University of Technology in Sydney this weekend. At a workshop on Saturday the Tamil presenters urged the socialist activists in Australia to voice support for the right to self determination of the Eelam Tamils.

"Demonised as terrorists across the globe, the plight of a people remains hidden from view through state propaganda," said the presenters, adding that the Tamil resistance movement was entirely based on an overwhelming public mandate obtained in a free and fair election held in 1977, in which the people of Tamil homeland voted for their right to secession based on the right to self determination.

The International actors who interact with the Sri Lankan state, should demand Colombo to allow for a referendum on the question of Tamils Right to Self Determination among the Tamil people in the traditional Tamil homeland under international supervision, the presenters who talked to media after their presentation said.

The Sri Lankan government, in 1983, outlawed and criminalised the Tamil demand for Right to Self Determination, by introducing the Sixth Amendment to its unitary constitution, forcing the elected members of the Tamil United Liberation Front to forfeit their seats in October 1983.

The theme of the Resistance 2008 conference in Australia this year was “war, racism, environmental destruction, homophobia, and sexism."

The conference also focuses on the land rights of Aboriginal communities, on the forthcoming elections in El-Salvador, social movements in Bolivia, the Palestinian issue, Nepal the newest republic, the global food crisis, homophobia, sexism and the struggle for women's liberation.

The 'Resistance' movement in Australia, established in 1967 by two organisations the Sydney University Socialist Club and the Vietnam Action Campaign, is a member of World Federation of Democratic Youth, and is head-quatered in Sydney with branches throughout Australia.