Sri Lanka

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  • Sri Lanka cancels weapons purchase

    Sri Lanka has cancelled a $200 million purchase of ammunition from Pakistan and China after the end of its war with the Tamil Tigers, the island nation's new top military commander said on Wednesday, July 15.

     

    "We stopped the orders of $200 million worth of ammunition from China and Pakistan with the war's end," Fonseka said after assuming his new post.

     

    The main component of the orders was for replenishment of large quantities of expendables like artillery shells, mortars, bombs and assorted varieties of ammunition. The order would have been enough ammunition to fire guns and heavy weapons at the rate seen during the climax of the war, which ended in mid May, according to Fonseka.

     

    Fonseka said the Chinese order was cancelled because there was no need to stock ammunition for heavy guns after the victory over the LTTE.

     

    Defence spending in 2009 was estimated at Sri Lanka Rs. 200 billion ($1.74 billion), accounting for 17 per cent of the country’s total expenditure.

     

    The Sunday Times, a Colombo based newspaper commenting on the cancellation said t is clear that the Government did not expect the military defeat of the LTTE so early, certainly not just two months ago.

     

    “Both defence and security officials had earlier set time frames of two and three years to defeat the LTTE. More proof came this week when the Government decided to cancel orders worth US$ 200 million for defence supplies both from China and Pakistan, which have been two of the largest suppliers.”

     

    Sri Lanka's military and police, with a combined strength of 350,000, won one of the Asia's longest modern wars and declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in mid May. 

  • ‘Best camps in the world’

    Even as concerns are being raised by aid workers about the conditions in the internment camps the Sri Lankan government is running in the NorthEast, President Mahinda Rejapaksa spoke of how good life was in the camps.

     

    "I would say the condition in our camps is the best any country has," President Rajapaksa told The Hindu newspaper in an interview.

     

    "We supply water. There is a problem with lavatories. That is not because of our fault. The money that comes from the EU and others, it goes to the NGOs and the U.N. They are very slow; disbursing money is very slow.

     

    "We supply the water tanks. We have spent over 2 billion rupees. Giving electricity, giving water, now we are giving televisions to them. They have telephone facilities. Schools have been established. Some of the leaders are using mobile phones. I had a special meeting on the disposal of waste. I sent a team of specialists to see how mosquitoes can be eradicated.

     

    "We know there are shortcomings. Slowly, we have to overcome them. In some camps there are no problems. What these people I sent told me: they are satisfied with the housing, shelter. They have undergone much worse conditions earlier [when they were under the LTTE's control]. Their problem is movement, freedom of movement. Since there are security concerns, I don't know how to do that immediately.

     

    "I said on 20th of May that as soon as possible, we must send them to places where they can stay. My problem is that we have to get the certificate of de-mining from the U.N. We have already sent people back to several places. As soon as we get the clearance, I'm ready to do that. But before that I must get the clearance from the U.N. about the de-mining. We can't send them back to a place where there are just jungles. Every square centimetre has been mined by the LTTE. If something happens, I am responsible.

     

    "My personal feeling is that as soon as possible, we have to resettle these people. We have to send them to the villages. But my problem is that to provide security for them, I will have to recruit another 200,000 (soldiers)! I don't want to do that."

  • India to send 500 soldiers to Sri Lanka

    After providing medical services to thousands displaced by war, Indian soldiers will now go to Sri Lanka to help de-mine areas once held by the Tamil Tigers, it was announced Monday.


    The military personnel will be part of Indian experts who will assist authorities in Sri Lanka to detect and defuse thousands of mines laid by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told the media here.

     

    “We will send experts and equipment to Sri Lanka. Yes, this will possibly include army experts,” Menon said.

     

    India deployed troops in Sri Lanka’s northeast in 1987. The soldiers returned home in 1990 after suffering nearly 1,200 dead in a dragging war against the LTTE.

     

    As the Sri Lankan military battled the Tamil Tigers this year, India sent military doctors to take care of the thousands escaping from LTTE territory. The medical personnel were first based in Sri Lanka’s east and are now located in the north.

     

    Menon’s comments came shortly after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in his budget speech that India would grant US $100 million for the relief and rehabilitation of Tamils displaced by the fighting in the island’s northeast.

     

  • ACF seeks wide probe of staff massacre

    A French charity accused the Sri Lankan government of "lacking the will to establish the truth" about the massacre of 17 aid workers in 2006 and called for an international inquiry.

     

    Seventeen mostly Tamil staff members of the charity, Action Contre la Faim (ACF), were shot dead in the ACF compound on August 4 2006 in the northeastern town of Muttur, near where fighting was taking place between the government and Tamil Tigers.

     

    "Today, nearly 3 years after the crime, one has to recognize that these procedures have failed, and that the Sri Lankan government obviously lacks the will to establish the truth," the French charity said in an emailed statement on the report on Saturday July 18.

     

    "In light of this, Action Contre la Faim (ACF) reiterates its call, notably to the European Union, to constitute an international inquiry into this massacre."

     

    “ACF has closely followed three separate judicial proceedings. Two years into these investigations, the search for truth has been a casualty of obstructionism, the intrusion of politics into the judicial process, a lack of transparency, and even errors,” the statement said.

     

    “The massacre is the gravest crime carried out against a non-governmental organization and is comparable to a war crime under international law,” it added.

     

    The head of a presidential probe into rights abuses, including that massacre, said in a report early this month that his work was hampered by the lack of witness protection and the abrupt winding-up of his investigation.

     

    Thirteen men and four women who worked on water sanitation and farm projects for ACF were found shot dead in an area where government troops and Tamil Tigers were locked in combat.

     

    Nordic peace monitors at the time blamed the killings - the worst attack on aid workers since the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003 - on government forces.

     

    The government has denied any role.

     

    The report by the commission of inquiry appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to investigate serious human rights abuses is inconclusive about who killed the aid workers.

     

    The Island and the Daily Mirror newspapers quoted from the commission report, which had not been made public by the authorities yet.

     

    The Island newspaper said the inquiry accused the ACF of "gross negligence" and recommended that the charity pay 10 years' salary to the families of the victims.

     

    The commission, headed by retired judge Nissanka Udalagama, has been dismissed by rights activists as a government cover-up.

     

    Foreign observers to the panel two years ago predicted the commission would fail to find anything substantive and quit last year, saying it did not meet international standards and had been interfered with politically. The government denies that.

     

    The commission's mandate was not extended when it expired in June, making it the latest in Sri Lanka's long history of probes into rights abuses that were incomplete or inconclusive.

     

    "We have not been able to complete the whole thing because we didn't have the video conferencing facility and a witness protection bill...is still in parliament," retired Supreme Court Judge Nissanka Udalagama told Reuters.

     

    A number of witnesses have fled the country in fear for their lives, and video-conferencing was needed to contact witnesses who live abroad, he said.

     

    Udalagama, head of the eight-member commission, said they could have called other witnesses but the president wanted a report based on what had been done so far.

     

    The report exonerates the army and navy, but says auxiliary police known as home guards could have carried out the killings. "There was other evidence like the presence of Muslim home guards. They had access to the weapons. And it could have been LTTE," Udalagama said.

     

    It was the latest of many Sri Lankan investigations of rights abuses that were incomplete or inconclusive.

     

    Rights watchdogs have reported hundreds of abductions, disappearances and killings, blamed on both the government and the LTTE, throughout the course of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war, which ended in May.

     

    The country has a long history of failing to prosecute rights abuses, particularly when members of the security forces are involved, going back to the early 1970s when the government violently suppressed a Marxist insurrection.

  • Dissuade India from backing Rights violator Sri Lanka, Boston Globe tells Clinton

    "When it comes to regional issues, Clinton should make the case that the expanding US-Indian relationship gives Indian leaders more strategic flexibility.
    They can stop trying to match their Chinese counterparts in backing regimes, such as those in Burma and Sri Lanka, that have committed gross human-rights abuses against their own people. If a shared respect for democratic values forms the foundation for the burgeoning US-India partnership, Indian leaders should be able to heed any such counsel from Clinton," the Saturday July 18, editorial in Boston Globe said.

    Full text of the editorial follows:

    Clinton’s architectural plan

    IF THERE is any part of the developing world that has bright prospects for stability and prosperity, it is southern and eastern Asia. Yet Asia also has the potential to become the battleground for a destructive confrontation between rising powers India and China. So Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to India this weekend should allow her to gauge the chances for what she recently called a new “architecture of cooperation.’’

    India presents both the most promising and the most challenging test case for cooperative relations with the emerging powers of the 21st century. The US-India nuclear deal negotiated by the Bush administration has provoked anxieties in some quarters about a dangerous precedent for nuclear proliferation, but the deal has indisputably cleared the way for a closer relationship between Washington and New Delhi.

    Under the agreement, India can now buy nuclear fuel and technology from the United States for its 14 civilian reactors. Opponents have warned that the deal could enable India to divert domestically produced nuclear fuel to its eight military reactors. On the plus side, however, India must now allow intrusive IAEA inspections of its civilian nuclear facilities, continue observing its moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons, enhance the security of its nuclear stockpile, and work with Washington to negotiate a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty that would prohibit the production of fuel for nuclear weapons.

    Now that the nuclear accord is a done deal and the Congress Party of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has won a smashing victory in recent parliamentary elections, Clinton can address other outstanding issues in US-Indian relations. These include pending defense agreements between the two nations’ militaries, cooperation in the fight against terrorism, more educational exchanges, more US visas for Indians with advanced skills, and, perhaps most important of all, a meeting of minds on the need for coordinated actions to reduce the danger of catastrophic climate change.

    When it comes to regional issues, Clinton should make the case that the expanding US-Indian relationship gives Indian leaders more strategic flexibility. They can stop trying to match their Chinese counterparts in backing regimes, such as those in Burma and Sri Lanka, that have committed gross human-rights abuses against their own people. If a shared respect for democratic values forms the foundation for the burgeoning US-India partnership, Indian leaders should be able to heed any such counsel from Clinton.

    She could tell her Indian interlocutors that friends don’t let friends become the enablers of abusive neighbors.

  • Sri Lanka close to a deal on IMF loan

    The International Monetary Fund has announced it has reached a $2.5 billion loan accord with Sri Lanka, which will be presented to the IMF board for approval on Friday, July 24.

     

    The IMF announcement follows the submission of a Letter of Intent (LoI) on Monday July 20 by Sri Lanka, listing the conditions it will adhere to in return for the money.

     

    “We have set out our intentions, which do not differ from the macroeconomic policy thrust that we have been following,” Central Bank of Sri Lanka Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal told Bloomberg.

     

    Cabraal declined to elaborate on the contents of the LoI but said Sri Lanka and the IMF would soon make a joint statement on a financial aid package.

     

    Sri Lanka’s submission LoI comes just two weeks after the central bank chief declared that the country was in a ‘comfortable position right now’ and can go on without a major IMF bailout.

     

    "If the IMF funds come, it will give us a comfortable buffer stock. I hope we get it. But we are otherwise in a comfortable position right now," Cabraal said in early July.

     

    According to the IMF, a disbursement of $313 million will immediately be available to Sri Lanka once the loan is approved.

     

    "The government has formulated an ambitious program aimed at restoring fiscal and external viability and addressing the significant reconstruction needs of the conflict-affected areas," the IMF said in its statement.

     

    The end of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war posed a unique opportunity to undertake economic reforms and rebuild areas damaged by the conflict, the IMF statement further added.

     

    Rebuilding the country will require significant spending the IMF said, adding that the program will provide a framework for donors to help fund reconstruction.

     

    "The IMF staff supports this program, specifically the government's goals of rebuilding reserves, reducing the fiscal deficit to a sustainable level, and strengthening the financial sector," the IMF added.

     

    The announcement comes despite calls from western law makers to link the loan package to Sri Lanka adhering to human right norms.

     

    Both the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, have previously stated that the loan should only be made available in an appropriate and responsible manner.


    Despite, Sri Lanka continuing to hold hundreds of thousands of Tamils in illegal internment camps and with increasingly frequent calls for international war crime probe over the country’s conduct during the last phase of the brutal civil war in which over 20,000 Tamils were killed, IMF has announced that a staff level agreement has been reached. 

     

    This latest announcement by IMF contradicts its previous statement,

    a week ago, in which the IMF said the views of the international community would be considered at an Executive Board meeting before considering Sri Lanka’s loan application loan.

     

    Caroline Atkinson, Director of External Relations at IMF in a press briefing said a mission to Sri Lanka which returned recently had discussions with the authorities and the first thing that will happen is reaching a staff-level agreement on the loan.

     

    The spokesperson said the "first thing that happens is a staff-level agreement, then an Executive Board meeting would be where all of the international community's views would be considered."

  • Policy on Tamils haunts India

    SETTING the parameters based on 13th amendment and ruling out a federal solution, the Colombo – Chennai – New Delhi axis is learnt to be pressurising Tamil political circles to come out with a political formula, as early as possible, to hastily close the file on Tamil nationalism and to hide all skeletons under the cupboard.

     

    The haste in the Indian Establishment is said to be arising from the fear of China’s growing influence in the island resulted from India’s folly of not maintaining balance in the ethnic war. “Grasping geopolitics and aspirations of people, the Tamil political circles need to play the cards with dexterity,” said TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.

    What is privately said in the Indian circles about the Eelam War is that they had not expected the 'military defeat' of the LTTE so soon. The LTTE has opted to make a vital point by not surrendering the war and to leave it abstract. Obviously, India was not expecting the peril of China to press its boundaries so soon.

    Close to the heel of securing its hold on Sri Lanka through the Eelam War, China is now knocking the doors of the northeast frontier of India.

    Indian analysts are not ruling out the possibility of China carrying out a limited military operation in the eastern sector of Arunachal Predesh, one that will deal a short and stunning blow, depriving India of Tawang and leaving it with a bloody nose, writes Indian journalist Sudha Ramachandran from Bangalore.

    Arunachal Predesh is a northeast frontier state of India, which China claims as its territory. Tawang in Arunachal is a seat of spiritual importance to Tibetans and hence of political importance to the Chinese.

    Sudha Ramachandran cited General J J Singh, governor of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and former chief of army staff, announcing in June that India would be deploying two army divisions of around 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers each along its boundary with China in Arunachal Predesh. The journalist also quoted Indian officials saying that there has been a four-fold increase in Chinese intrusions into India’s territory over the past year, most of them along the border in Arunachal.

    China won’t make any compromises in its border disputes with India,” the Chinese media Global Times was reported commenting on the situation.

    India can’t actually compete with China in a number of areas, like international influence, overall national power and economic scale. India apparently has not yet realized this," the Chinese media has further said.

    China is now blocking 2.9 billion Dollar Asian Development Bank loan to India on grounds that India will be spending that money on its northeast frontier, which China claims a ‘disputed’ territory. China’s stand “has left bank officials aghast at the treatment of India, its largest borrower,” says Financial Times.

    For years now the Eelam Tamil circles have been repeatedly telling the blunder being made by the Congress Establishment and the Krishna Menon legacy, pointing out that a policy against Eelam Tamil liberation is a policy against India’s national interests.

    The Indian media, diplomats and intelligence blogs are wailing through their nose now, about what China hijacked in Sri Lanka, put all blame on China, but still don’t want to admit how their own sin to Tamils caused the misery.

    “On both counts – diplomacy and arms supply – China has rendered invaluable help to Sri Lanka in its war effort against the Tamil Tigers,” Financial Times quoted R. Hariharan saying. The retired colonel of Indian intelligence, who was for long regularly writing against Tamil struggle, supporting Colombo, now sees Sri Lanka emerging “a friendly cockpit” for China.

    While Naresh Chandra, India’s former ambassador to the US and former cabinet secretary, says China fails to recognise its own power to do good in Asia and its entire thinking is based on the People’s Liberation Army, Arundhati Ghose, India’s former ambassador to the UN has said, China, flexing its muscles, wanted to say ‘We are the big boys here and Asia can only afford one power’, reported Financial Times.

    India can do little about what it sees as regional encroachment in newly triumphant Sri Lanka, military-ruled Burma and arch rival Pakistan, and even the former mountain kingdom of Nepal, Financial Times said

    Arundhati Ghosh was cited saying, “We are not in a position to take them on militarily, economically and now not even politically,” adding, “The only option we’ve got is diplomatic. At the moment, the US is of no help. ”

    Some observers feel whether US will leave India to learn the lesson as it left her in 1962.

    Colombo continues to play the China card in making the Indian Establishment to work with it in its structural genocide of Tamils and in hoodwinking a political package. The fear in Tamil circles is that India may do this just to see that it is not totally out of Sri Lanka at this precarious time.

    The policy of the West on Sri Lanka is usually not to rule out the prerogative of India. If India comes out with a favourable policy on Eelam Tamils the West will not say no. But India has to boldly come out with it and if not, the West for the sake of its own credibility should convince India of the need of it.

    This is where the Tamil political circles and the diaspora have to play their cards with dexterity, says TamilNet political commentator.

    “Tamil political circles have to make a clear distinction. While all the understanding and sympathetic sentiments of Eelam Tamils are there for India, its people and its security, the Tamil political circles don’t need to extend those sentiments to the Indian Establishment if it is not deserving and plays further folly in imposing any politics of subjugation, treating Tamils as pawns.

    “Tamil politicians have to firmly say no to anything that doesn’t recognise Eelam Tamils as a nation, integrity of their land and their self-determination, and expose the folly of the biased policy makers and some media empires to the people of India, how it goes against the national interests of India.

    “The people of Tamil Nadu have a great role in not only enlightening the people of the rest of India but also in giving a jolt to the Establishment in Chennai to make history in the right way.

    “As everybody is caring for the diaspora now, any package proposal designed for the ‘defeated colony’ also will come to the diaspora, seeking supporters. Let the diaspora be prepared how to respond to it,” the commentator said.
     

  • Time for India to start saying yes

    India has long aspired to a role in redefining the global order. Ask why they deserve it, and most Indians will point to their nation's size, its rich culture and tradition, and its special legitimacy—the product of the nonviolent freedom struggle against British rule and India's triumph as a secular democracy.

    Ask for more detail on exactly how India should redefine the global system, however, and things get murkier. That's because, for much of its life, India's foreign policy has been about saying no—playing out a Gandhian boycott on the international stage. Throughout the Cold War, New Delhi refused to take sides, avoiding international pacts and steering clear of markets and trade, all of which it saw as skewed in favor of the powerful.

    This approach was initially a product of India's economic and military weakness. Today, however, India is an economic powerhouse and, increasingly, a diplomatic one as well. The country's economic boom seems likely to continue, thanks to a high savings rate, strong investment, and a young population. The global crisis will temporarily slow India's rapid growth, but its economy is less export-dependent, and its financial system is more regulated than many, ensuring a quicker recovery. The country may not be poised to become a superpower, as some of its citizens like to imagine. But as its might expands—including military muscle (defense spending is up by a third this year)—New Delhi needs a clearer sense of how to use it.

    Analysts like to lament the fact that India lacks a grand vision on the scale of Beijing's "peaceful rise" doctrine. But formulating a decisive strategy is much more difficult in an open democracy with many different definitions of the national interest. This lack of cohesion is not necessarily a disadvantage. It ensures that when India does finally get around to defining its world view, that will be after intense debate among its diverse social and economic groups, which should ensure that the new policy reflects something like the true will of the people—not just that of policy wonks in New Delhi. For a sense of how this process works, consider the bruising battle over confirmation of the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement: what may have sounded like cacophony actually helped to refine the terms, ensuring that the final deal better reflected India's interests—for instance, by keeping several plants off-limits to inspectors.

    Given the complex nature of Indian politics, it's too soon to say what any grand strategy will eventually look like. But one can get at least a sense of it from looking at the various external pressures it will have to account for. Here several facts are key. First, India is still home to the world's largest concentration of poor people. New Delhi is going to have to use its growing global clout to inject their interests into international debates. As India negotiates on agricultural terms of trade, access to energy, or climate change, this or any future government must push for greater equity—not by rejecting globalization, but by making it more inclusive.

    Second, India finds itself in the world's most threatening regional environment, surrounded by unstable or authoritarian states: Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, and, above all, Pakistan. To manage, New Delhi will need to balance toughness with magnanimity; unilaterally offering trade liberalization, for example, could help integrate the fractured region.

    Finally, whatever policy India adopts will have to take into account Asia's two other great players: China and the United States. New Delhi is currently building strong ties with both Beijing and Washington by following the "Manmohan Singh doctrine," which stresses economic diplomacy and engagement. But this doesn't guarantee that relations with either country will be easy. India's bond with the U.S., though strong, will be seriously tested if India suffers another terrorist attack originating in Pakistan. As for China, Asia's other most dynamic economy and dominant civilization, the potential for conflict is greater. The two countries may share many interests on economics and trade, but experience shows how easily nationalism can trump such rational concerns.

    India's emerging strategy should not try to balance these or other great powers. Instead, Delhi should use its diplomatic skills to strengthen its voice—in order to win permanent membership to the U.N. Security Council, for example. But India must also show the courage to venture into zones of conflict and meet threats with vigor. It is as a bridging power—between rich and poor, between the world's most powerful state (the U.S.) and its most populous one (China), and between the various religions that make up its own rich mosaic—that India can best define its new global identity.

     

    Professor Sunil Khilnani is the author of The Idea Of India and is The Starr Foundation Professor at Johns Hopkins’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

  • Justifying a costly war in Sri Lanka

    More than 2,000 years ago, a Sinhalese king named Dutugemunu saddled up his elephant and headed north to fight and kill Elara, an invading Tamil king from India.

     

    The battle between the men is one of the most celebrated moments in Sri Lankan history, and the last time, until two months ago, that a Sri Lankan ruler won such a decisive victory over a mortal threat.

     

    Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that fans of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president of Sri Lanka, have taken to calling him a modern-day incarnation of King Dutugemunu.

     

    After all, he presided over the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, among the world’s most enduring and vicious guerrilla separatists, hardened fighters who have humiliated four presidents over nearly three decades.

     

    Asked about this comparison earlier this month, Mr. Rajapaksa laughed it off, insisting that the legend was misunderstood as a triumph of one ethnicity over another.

     

    After his victory, the story goes, Dutugemunu made peace with the Tamils and honored the memory of Elara, who was beloved by his people.

     

    History will decide whether Mr. Rajapaksa will be remembered as a nationalist avenger or a unifying peacemaker.

     

    But in a wide-ranging interview this month at Temple Trees, the former prime minister’s residence that now serves as the president’s office, Mr. Rajapaksa emerged as a man bent on total victory, no matter the cost, who was convinced that his government’s actions in crushing the Tamil Tiger insurgency after 26 years were not only justified but humane.

     

    “All governments tried to discuss with them,” Mr. Rajapaksa said of the Tigers.

     

    “All failed. Because when they are weak they came to talks. Within a few weeks they walk out of the talks, but better equipped and strengthened.”

     

    Mr. Rajapaksa’s determination to vanquish the insurgency once and for all lifted him to the presidency in 2005, in the midst of an informal election boycott enforced by the Tigers.

     

    Now, the stunning and total defeat of the Tamil Tigers in May, accomplished with an enormous loss of lives — tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians through the years — has made him a hero to many Sri Lankans.

     

    His fleshy, mustachioed face beams down from billboards across the country.

     

    Often his brothers, who control key portfolios in the government, flank him in these portraits.

     

    One, Basil Rajapaksa, is a senior adviser who was the prime architect of the war strategy against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

     

    His other brother, Gotabaya, is the powerful secretary of defense.

     

    President Rajapaksa is careful to use conciliatory language and speak about the importance of winning the peace, not just the war.

     

    In his speech to the nation after the Tigers’ fearsome leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, was killed, he pointedly spoke in Tamil.

     

    He has repeatedly invoked the maxim that the war was against the Tigers, not the Tamil people.

     

    But so far talk of reconciliation has been just that, according to politicians, analysts and diplomats here, and there have been no concrete steps toward a lasting political solution to Sri Lanka’s thorny ethnic problem.

     

    The Tamil minority has suffered discrimination and violence at the hands of various Sinhalese-dominated governments through the decades.

     

    Tamils have sought, first peacefully, then violently, the right to a measure of self-rule in Tamil-dominated areas.

     

    While publicly pledging to seek a political solution, Mr. Rajapaksa has put off for the moment the question of how to share power with the Tamil minority, saying that any agreement would have to wait until after the next presidential election, scheduled for November.

     

    “I was given a mandate to defeat terrorism; I have defeated them,” he said.

     

    “Now I must go and tell them now I want a mandate to settle this problem forever, a political solution.”

     

    Mr. Rajapaksa is all but certain to win a second term.

     

    The opposition is fragmented.

     

    Journalists and analysts have to choose their words carefully or risk arrest.

     

    One popular astrologer was recently arrested after predicting that the president would be ejected from office.

     

    Mr. Rajapaksa made it clear that he would tolerate only a limited amount of devolution, something that may poison negotiations right from the start.

     

    “Federalism is out of the question,” he said. “It must be a homegrown solution.”

     

    Most Tamil political leaders want a single, Tamil-speaking majority state in the north and east of the country that would have authority over most matters except foreign policy, trade and the military.

     

    But this is a nonstarter for many of the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist politicians who make up the core of Mr. Rajapaksa’s coalition government.

     

    The most hard-line nationalist party has threatened to leave the coalition if even a watered-down law to share power is passed.

     

    “Peace will require a more federal power-sharing arrangement,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Center for Policy Alternatives, a nonpartisan research and advocacy institution in Colombo, the capital.

     

    “But there has been this primordial fear that federalism is a precursor to seccession.”

     

    But the opposite is true, he argued.

     

    “It is the refusal to share power that has led to the armed conflict to begin with,” he said.

     

    Understanding this refusal requires a reach back to the time of Dutugemunu and Elara, the Tamil king who came from India.

     

    Just 20 miles off Sri Lanka’s coast, India looms large over the island.

     

    The great size of India’s Tamil population — more than 50 million people — helps explain why the Sinhalese majority here may feel threatened, thinking and acting more like an endangered minority even though it makes up more than 70 percent of the Sri Lankan population.

     

    India has been pressing Sri Lanka to move quickly to resettle the Tamil civilians displaced by the war and reach a deal to share central power with the country’s minorities.

     

    Mr. Rajapaksa has pledged to get most of the displaced, who are living in closed, military-run camps in the north, back to their homes within six months.

     

    Mr. Rajapaksa said he had taken a number of steps aimed at forging a sense of national unity and bringing minorities more fully into the fold.

     

    The government is offering a one-time payment of about $250 to any civil servant who learns another Sri Lankan language, part of an effort to start requiring that officials and bureaucrats speak Tamil as well as Sinhala.

     

    The president said he was also seeking ways to recruit more Tamils into the Sri Lankan military and the police force.

     

    But the government’s mood since the end of the fighting in May has been one of triumphant victory.

     

    Alongside the billboards of Mr. Rajapaksa and his brothers are huge, Rambo-style photographs of the bandolier-draped commandos who penetrated deep behind the Tamil Tigers’ lines to whittle at the rebel fighting force and weaken its resolve.

     

    Many Sri Lankans see these soldiers as heroes, but given the controversy that remains over how many Tamil civilians were killed in the last weeks of the fighting, some people find the air of martial triumph unseemly.

     

    “They are trying to get a great deal of political mileage from the fact that they militarily defeated” the Tamil Tigers, said Rajavarothiam Sampanthan, a member of Parliament for the Tamil National Alliance.

     

    “We don’t see any movement toward ending the political conflict.”

     

    Riding high on his big victory, Mr. Rajapaksa said he needed only one verdict on his leadership: that of the Sri Lankan people.

     

    “I am not fool enough to call myself a king,” he said with a laugh.

     

    Churchill, he mused, was thrown out of office after victory in World War II.

     

    “If anyone doesn’t want me, I must not be the president of this country,” he said. “It is democracy.”

  • US and Canadian Law Makers want IMF loan linked to human rights

    US and Canadian law makers have called for Sri Lanka’s request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan to be linked to unimpeded access to refugee camps and adherence international human rights rules.

     

    The north American politicians calls comes amidst an announcement by IMF that a loan accord has been agreed with Sri Lanka and the Executive Board of the organisation will meet on Friday July 24 to approve it.

     

    US democratic senator Patrick Leahy, from Vermont, has introduced language into the soon to be passed Appropriations bill requiring the US Treasury Secretary to instruct the US Executive Directors of international financial institutions to vote against any loan, agreement, or other financial support for Sri Lanka except to meet basic human needs, unless the Secretary of State certifies to the Committees on Appropriations that the Sri Lankan government is meeting the requirements of humanitarian conditions demanded by the US.

     

    The language inserted in the Department of State Appropriations bill S.1434, has virtually blocked U.S. Treasury Secretary from authorizing the projected $1.9B IMF loan to Sri Lanka, unless Hilary Clinton certifies that Sri Lanka "is treating internally displaced persons in accordance with international standards, including by guaranteeing their freedom of movement, providing access to conflict-affected areas and populations by humanitarian organizations and journalists, and accounting for persons detained in the conflict," and Sri Lanka is promoting "reconciliation and justice including devolution of power to provincial councils in the north and east as provided for in the Constitution of Sri Lanka."

     

    Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, reported the original bill which was read twice and placed on the calendar.

    The bill makes appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.

     

    Meanwhile, the Liberal Party in Canada has said that conditions need to be strictly applied to any potential loan to Sri Lanka from the International Monetary Fund, based on humanitarian concerns, the proper treatment of internally displaced persons and a restoration of peace and security to the country.

     

    “We must be responsible in our economic assistance to Sri Lanka,” said Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae.

     

    “The government of Sri Lanka cannot expect massive economic assistance without paying full attention to their humanitarian obligations.

     

    “The situation in Sri Lanka remains dire and requires international attention. Our efforts must be focused on helping those in need,” he said.

     

    British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has stated a similar position, saying that any use of IMF money must be in an appropriate and responsible manner.

     

    “The international community is in full agreement on this point,” said Mr. Rae.

     

    Canada should be a leader in calling for the responsible use of international financial loans and be a vital partner in ensuring that these conditions are met.”

     

    It is also learnt that the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations has asked US State Department to submit a report on possible war crimes committed in Sri Lanka between January and May this year.

    The model indictment document produced by Washington Attorney Bruce Fein, and the submittals to the District of Columbia District Court on Tamils Against Genocide (TAG's) legal action against IMF loan have also been forwarded to the Leahy committee, according to TAG officials.

     

  • Defeated, friendless Tamils face annihilation

    The victory was won with overwhelming firepower that fell indiscriminately on the Tamil Tigers and civilians and included such banned weapons as cluster bombs. Some 20,000 civilians are believed to have died, with Colombo's military victory assured by the support of China.

     

    The real victory, however, was inevitable, thanks to Western governments which, during the "war on terror", proscribed the Tigers as terrorists and categorised them with the likes of al Qaeda.

     

    This gave Colombo an apparently higher moral ground to do what it wanted.

     

    It also invited the Western audience to imagine the Tigers to be like Islamic terrorists - presumably unrepresentative of peoples under their control and committed to the destruction of Western democracy and culture.

     

    The war in Sri Lanka turned on the word "terrorist".

     

    But were they terrorists? Certainly, they employed terror, but so had the Colombo state.

     

    However, the Tamil Tigers were not like the Vietcong or al Qaeda which emerged from hiding simply to destroy.

     

    During the 2002-06 ceasefire they were a de facto government administering land traditionally belonging to the Tamils.

     

    They ran their affairs through ministries of health, education, welfare, agriculture and sports, as well as police and security.

     

    They were certainly an autocratic if not a military dictatorship, but they perceived the Tamils as facing genocide at the hands of the majority Sinhalese.

     

    In my three months' stay in their de facto capital, Kilinochchi, teaching Tamil medical students, I used repeatedly to ask people, "Why did you join the LTTE?"

     

    Their consistent answer was: "To fight for Tamil survival".

     

    They knew of the history of racial oppression against them by the Sinhalese majority; they simply wanted freedom to rebuild their civilisation.

     

    Unlike al Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers had no international goals, nor even the ambition to conquer all of Sri Lanka; they merely sought to secure what they believed was historically theirs.

     

    As for the Tamil people themselves, they deserve better than to be stereotyped as potential terrorists, especially after they have fled to Australia.

     

    Given access to the Sydney Opera House, they would rather sing in it than blow it up.

     

    In my opinion, the Tamil Tigers were best understood as a movement for national liberation.

     

    The term terrorist implied the Tigers were a tiny minority in the Tamil population; but I began to question that when I visited some of the military cemeteries in which some 20,000 had been buried. Can a minority force that huge commitment?

     

    I attended the Tamil equivalent of ANZAC Day and mingled with thousands of family members of the dead who were placing flowers and food on the graves.

     

    There was overwhelming sadness but a commitment to the concept that the dead had died worthily for Tamil Eelam - the Motherland.

     

    They did not die for, or because of, the Tigers as an organisation, but for the ideals they pursued.

     

    It appears Western governments swallowed the impression that the Tigers were unrepresentative of the Tamil population; but the actions of Colombo since victory reveal that the Sri Lankan Government understood differently.

     

    Since victory, Colombo has incarcerated the entire population of the north-east, some 300,000 people, not the handful of terrorists they claimed they were fighting.

     

    And, despite Colombo's earlier propaganda that the Tigers were a tiny force, no fewer than 10,000 combatants have also been incarcerated.

     

    Colombo has promoted another deception that the Tamils are merely internally displaced people (IDPs).

     

    However, it has kept Tamil civilians under military guard, without any publication of their names, without any access to aid organisations or to journalists, and in physical conditions described by independent observers as "terrible".

     

    Deaths from hunger have resulted from this collective punishment, which is proscribed by the Geneva Conventions. Furthermore,

     

    Tamil combatants are being held in secret camps and denied the rights of the Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war.

     

    According to Colombo, the Tamil population of the north-east is being kept for "rehabilitation from LTTE propaganda".

     

    In other words, an entire population, including mothers and children, is being incarcerated until it learns to think differently.

     

    But how can it possibly lose its fear of racial annihilation? Its current treatment will merely reinforce its conviction that it faces genocide.

     

    On a more practical level, Colombo is also claiming it is too unsafe for the Tamils to return to their homes because of land mines.

     

    However, it is currently taking the opportunity to further its established practice of settling Sinhala residents in vacant Tamil regions (a breach of Geneva Conventions against genocide).

     

    And what of our proponents for freedom in the United Nations?

     

    On May 26, a special session of the Human Rights Council was held to consider Sri Lanka after the High Commissioner, Madame Navi Pillay, declared the need to "address the tragic human rights and humanitarian consequences of the conflict in that country ... [and the existence of] strong reasons to believe both sides have grossly disregarded the fundamental principle of the inviolability of civilians".

     

    She thereupon called for "an independent and credible international investigation into recent events ... to ascertain the occurrence, nature and scale of violations".

     

    The UN council, however, rejected the call for investigation and instead congratulated the Sri Lankan Government for its victory over the terrorist LTTE.

     

    The council affirmed the Sri Lankan commitment to "sovereignty" and was "encouraged" by its handling of displaced persons.

     

    The resolution was adopted by 29 votes to 12 with six abstentions. Those in favour included Russia, China, Cuba and the African and Islamic blocs.

     

    The conclusion by the UN Human Rights Council utterly ignores the legitimate rights of the Tamil population and is a disgrace.

     

    Under the concept of "sovereignty" and the need to overcome "terrorism", this UN council has not only ratified the destruction of the helpless Tamils, but has thereby endangered members of government-persecuted minorities everywhere. 

  • ‘Confessions’ by doctors raise doubts over lasting peace

    Five Sri Lankan doctors who witnessed the bloody climax of the country’s civil war in May and made claims of mass civilian deaths as a result of government shelling of Tamil Tiger positions recanted much of their testimony.

     

    Their U-turn raises fresh fears that Sri Lanka, known as a holiday paradise to millions of Western tourists, has quietly become a quasi-Stalinist state.

     

    The doctors, who appeared physically well but extremely nervous at a press conference on Wednesday, July 9, claimed that they had deliberately overestimated the civilian casualties suffered as the war reached its bloody endgame.

     

    The Tigers had forced them to lie, they said as government officials looked on from the sidelines, adding that only up to 750 civilians were killed between January and mid-May in the final battles of the war.

     

    The five men were taken back to prison, where they have been held for the past two months for allegedly spreading Tiger propaganda. The doctors added that they now hoped they would be released.

     

    The number was far below the 7,000 fatalities estimated by the United Nations. An investigation by The Times uncovered evidence that more than 20,000 civilians were killed, mostly by the Army, which has claimed, incredibly, that it did not harm a single civilian.

     

    As occupants of the tragically misnamed “no-fire zone” — a strip of coconut grove and beach in the northeast which was the last redoubt of the Tigers and where government guns directed a vast amount of ordinance — the doctors would have come under the control of the rebels.

     

    It would be surprising if the Tigers, who were no slouches when it came to the manipulation of the media, had not attempted to modify the doctors’ testimonies.

     

    The tragic thing is that having been picked up by the Sri Lankan Army and kept in custody for the past two months, the doctors find themselves in a terrible mirror image of their previous predicament — under pressure from the Government to deliver a story that fits its own agenda.

     

    The doctors now deny former testimony — such as the government shelling of a hospital in the conflict zone on February 2 — for which there are also witnesses from the UN and the Red Cross.

     

    “I have serious doubts over the latest statements,” one senior Sri Lankan journalist said. “What we’re seeing is that the LTTE (the Tigers) and the Government are in some respects mirror images of each other.”

     

    There is little to surprise those familiar with Sri Lankan politics. Dissent is not tolerated by President Rajapaksa, who enjoys a massive amount of support from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

     

    Journalists who have disagreed with his policies have regularly been abducted or killed. “The discourse used by the Government is of traitors and patriots,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuthu, of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Sri Lankan analyst who himself has received threats. “There is no indication yet that this mode of thinking is slipping.”

     

    Sam Zarifi, the Asia-pacific director for Amnesty International, said that the statements from the doctors were “expected and predicted”.

     

    “There are very significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary, and they raise serious concerns whether the doctors were subjected to ill-treatment during weeks of detention,” he said. “From the time the doctors were detained, the fear was that they would be used exactly this way.”

     

    The methods used by the President’s regime have raised doubts over the sincerity of his pledge to forge a lasting peace by reaching out to Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils.

     

    A slew of poisonous proposals from prominent Sinhalese figures — such as the suggestion that Tamil villages could be renamed after Sinhalese generals — have done little to soothe those fears.

     

    Suggestions that the internment camps set up in recent months to house an estimated 300,000 displaced Tamils will be made permanent have also stoked concerns.

     

    The International Committee of the Red Cross revealed that it had been ordered to scale down its operations in Sri Lanka — more worrying news for those who feel that there should be more, not less, neutral witnesses to conditions inside the country.

     

    Provincial elections due to be held in Tamil areas in the north early next month may give an indication of the community’s mood. It is not guaranteed, however, that these will be free and fair.

     

    Meanwhile, in between the two distortions generated by the Tigers and the Government lies the truth. If ever there was a demonstration of why an independent enquiry is needed into the end of the war, the oscillating doctors’ testimonies is it.

  • Deadly diseases erupt in internment camps

    Meningitis and encephalitis have erupted in Sri Lanka's northern Vavuniya district where over 300,000 Tamil civilians forcibly held in temporary shelters behind barbed wires, a local newspaper has reported.

     

    Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain. Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. Also, encephalitis with meningitis is known as meningoencephalitis.


    Encephalitis has been on the increase among Vanni Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) held in internment centres located in Vavuniyaa, according to medical sources in the district hospital. Thirty-four Vanni IDPs of the sixty-four afflicted by encephalitis have died in three months. Majority of them who succumbed to brain fever were less than 24 years of age, medical sources said.

    Over the past week 14 new encephalitis cases were detected in the hospital.

    Vavuniya-based United Nations staff providing relief services to the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) have been advised to keep away from the Vavuniya General Hospital due to the outbreak of meningitis and encephalitis, health officials in Vavuniyaa said.

     

    The UN warning to staff came amidst reports that hospital employees at Vavuniya had failed to inform authorities of the outbreak, the Sunday Times reported.

     

    Dr. Hemantha Herath, Health Coordinator of the IDP camps, told the newspaper, “It is only now that we are getting a regular feedback from the hospital. They have not done in-depth investigations into these cases.”

    A team sent by the Health Ministry is studying the causes for the outbreak of these diseases.

    Meanwhile, according to a World Health Organization report, diarrhoea and hepatitis A are still prevalent in some of the IDP camps.

    Dr. Herath said the number of cases of diarrhoea and hepatitis A was not going down and they were closely monitoring the situation.

    According to the report, health care, water distribution and supply of food items still need more attention. The report has warned of the effect the approaching rainy season might have on the camps, especially in low-lying areas. It has called for an improved drainage system and shelters before the rainy season begins.


    The paper also reported that there is a shortage of complementary food items in the camps as NGOs which were supplying such items are pulling out.

    The report said there is not enough suitable land to build more toilets. The camps currently have only about 9,215 toilets while 15,000 are needed.

     

    In June, chicken pox was rampant and cases of typhoid, tuberculosis, skin and respiratory infections, hepatitis A, scabies and diarrhoea have begun cropping up, according to U.N. reports.  

  • Anger brews among Tamil civilians held 'like animals' in Sri Lanka

    Hundreds of thousands of Tamils remain locked in camps almost entirely off-limits to journalists, human-rights investigators and political leaders. The Sri Lankan government says the civilians are a security risk because Tamil Tiger fighters are hiding among them.

     

    But diplomats, analysts, aid workers and many Sri Lankans worry the chance to finally bring to a close one of the world's most enduring ethnic conflicts is slipping away, as the government curtails civil rights in its efforts to stamp out the last remnants of the Tigers.

     

    "The government told these people it would look after them," said Veerasingham Anandasangaree, a prominent Tamil politician who has been a staunch supporter of the government's fight against the Tamil Tigers. "But instead they have locked them up like animals with no date certain of when they will be released. This is simply asking for another conflict later on down the road."

     

    The Sri Lankan government has portrayed its final battle against the 26-year insurgency by the Tamil Tigers, which ended in late May with the killing of the group's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, as a rescue mission to liberate civilians held hostage by one of the world's richest and most ruthless armed groups, branded terrorists by governments around the globe.

     

    "We can't say this was a war; it was a humanitarian operation to safeguard the people of the area," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in an interview last week. "They knew we were not against the Tamil people, against the civilians. This was only against the terrorists."

     

    Although many of the camps' residents are grateful to the government for freeing them from the rebels, frustration and anger are building as it becomes clear that reconciliation and finding a political solution to the grievances of the Tamils and other minority groups in Sri Lanka will have to wait.

     

    Rajapaksa said the residents of the camps, which the government refers to as "welfare villages," must be confined because anyone could be a hidden rebel. The government says about 10,000 fighters have been identified so far, most because they turned themselves in.

  • Holding grounds is fundamental to everything

    The Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu N. Ram's questions or rather ‘leads’ and Rajapaksa’s elucidations that appeared in The Hindu for three consecutive days are not an ordinary media interview. Timed with the interview came the statements of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and External Affairs Minister of India S M Krishna.

     

    The whole exercise orchestrated by the Colombo-Chennai-New Delhi axis was primarily meant for nullifying the liberation struggle of Eelam Tamil nationalism.

     

    Shielding the guilty party and victimising the victimised for the war crimes, imposing post-war subjugation on the ‘defeated’ people, waving aside the seriousness of the crime of keeping people perishing in the concentration camps and pretending no solutions as fantastic solutions, echoed in the orchestrations are the workings of fascist and Stalinist minds in collaboration.

     

    Mahinda Rajapaksa, the most explicit among the lot, rules out federalism, even rejects the existence of minorities and envisages ‘ethnic mix’ for what he thinks reconciliation.

     

    He wants the UN, which he was keeping out during the war, to certify de-mining for resettlement, talks of the need of increasing the number of military and wants his re-election to implement what he is having in his mind – a ‘home-gown solution’.

     

    Karunanidhi rules out Tamil Eelam, envisages struggling for regional autonomy and advocates appeasement with the Sinhala state.

     

    In a statement in the Indian parliament last Thursday, Krishna is convinced of the ‘closure to the cycle of violence and terrorism’ in the island, viewed the crisis in the island not as a national question but ‘aspirations of the minorities’ and wanted the full implementation of the 13th amendment and go beyond.

     

    It is clear Colombo and New Delhi have nothing new to offer, after what they see as ‘end of terrorism’, but are at a dangerous track of proclaiming a new phase of war against Eelam Tamil nationalism, covertly conducted through structural genocide and annihilation of the Tamil homeland in the island.

     

    As privately revealed by certain diplomatic circles, India has no positive or innovative programme of its own for Eelam Tamils beyond allowing Colombo’s agenda with superficial restrains and gaining its interests in the island.

     

    Whatever the feelings of the Eelam Tamils to look upon India as the ultimate ‘deliverer’ of their legitimate aspirations, the Indian Establishment is consistently not convinced of the need to identify any overlapping interests with Eelam Tamils, thanks to the docility of the leadership in Tamil Nadu.

     

    Hitherto, in waging the war against Eelam Tamils, neither Colombo nor any of the powers abetting Colombo had the guts to say that they do it against a national liberation struggle. They had to go for the smokescreen ‘terrorism’.

     

    As they now claim ‘terrorism’ is over, nothing should actually prevent them from recognizing the legitimacy of the concerned people upholding their national liberation struggle.

     

    What the Eelam Tamils have to understand is that the war was not against the LTTE or terrorism, but against the national liberation struggle of Eelam Tamils. The Tamil struggle was found conducive neither to the geopolitical interests of powers eying on the strategic island in order to have a hold on South Asia and the Indian Ocean, nor to the interests of India in defending its surroundings.

     

    While time will tell whether India was right or wrong in its modus operandi, the reality for Eelam Tamils today is that both Colombo and New Delhi have come open in waging a war on the nationalism of Eelam Tamils and they have found a suitable person in Karunanidhi to inaugurate it.

     

    What is at stake is even the democratic right of Eelam Tamils to open their mouth and tell what they want.

     

    Tamils have to carefully note that even the West, which in contrast to India, belatedly show hostility to Colombo, talk about war crimes and human rights, once again for its own interests, has not come forward after the war at least to recognize Eelam Tamils as a nation – leave apart the national liberation struggle.

     

    Tamils don’t have the folly of expecting political solution from the rogue imperialism of China, but are concerned of Japan reassuring faith on the ‘vision’ of Rajapaksa.

     

    All make mistake in looking at the issue something like post-war Germany or Japan for everyone to poke nose to make ‘economic miracles’. Neither the Tamils were fighting for aggressive empires nor the war ended like the Mikado surrendering after the two atom bombs.

     

    It was a humble liberation struggle of people oppressed for ages who are now hardened than ever in the consciousness of their identity, thanks to the collective oppression of all the powers.

     

    The important point is that the war didn’t end in surrender.

     

    Perhaps the most memorable act of the LTTE under Pirapaharan that will be remembered forever is that other than running a de-facto independent state, it didn’t surrender the liberation struggle of the Eelam Tamils to anybody at anytime.

     

    The struggle needs to continue from that point, as it has become clear that ‘reconciliation’ is only an honourable term used by Colombo and abetters to mean a suicidal course set for the Eelam Tamil nation.

     

    But continuing the struggle in ways anew, now perhaps through democratic means, could neither begin nor could sustain itself with the masses, by professing defeatism or by surrendering the basic grounds.

     

    Talking on the need to continue the struggle is not to rule out the need to negotiate.

     

    But negotiation is not collaboration.

     

    Negotiators need a firm platform supported by the hearts of the masses on behalf of whom they negotiate. Negotiation cannot take place when the platform is surrendered.

     

    We don’t live in feudal times when a group of Muthaliyars of Jaffna signed a document with the Portuguese or the chieftains of Kandy signed the convention with the British, in renouncing sovereignty and confirming the setting in of colonialism.

     

    It is to safeguard the platform for struggle and negotiation the Tamil circles are now keen in re-affirming the democratically mandated Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976 that upholds independence, sovereignty and self-determination of Eelam Tamils, at least in places where there is freedom of expression. They have already demonstrated that in Norway and France and it is set to take place in the rest of the diaspora. But it is with sadness the Tamil circles note that exercising such a basic freedom is not possible today for Eelam Tamils in India, the greatest democracy in the world.

     

    It is again impelled by the same need the Eelam Tamils think of a transnational government of them. The diaspora need not be apologetic of it as their issue is actually international but refused to be addressed as international even by the apex international body, the UN.

     

    However, transnational governance is a novel democratic exercise. It needs firm theoretical basis to function as a transnational body, needs firm adherence to principles such as independence and sovereignty found in the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution to achieve the goal at home, needs a popular participatory structure beginning from grass-root democracy in the diaspora and the initiation of it needs to be above controversy for convincing the participation of people.

     

    There are some efforts in the diaspora to begin this exercise country wise.

     

    Transnational government is not merely for the immediate need of international negotiation, but to sustain the struggle that may take years and to look after the well-being of the people in the diaspora and at home for long times to come, in the context of unfolding global scenario.

     

    The West should think of regaining its international credibility by recognising nations such as the Eelam Tamils and promoting their democratic moves struggling against genocide and oppression. This will bring in more durable acceptance of it and its civilization than what petty geopolitics could bring in.

     

    A Tamil housewife in New Zealand was recently heard saying that she stopped buying Sri Lankan tea as a protest possible within her means for what the Sri Lankan state did to her people. Another person in the diaspora said that he will never claim himself a Sri Lankan hereafter and will stick only to his Eelam Tamil identity.

     

    Such individual sentiments and protests may look insignificant but when organized they can become something like Mahatma Gandhi’s Khadar movement. Imagine global Tamils deciding not to buy Chinese goods and they joining hands with Tibetans and others affected, in campaigning against Chinese economic interests!

     

    The diaspora, especially the younger generation, is sure going to tell the West to stop hoodwinking and to come out with substantial solutions, beginning from the recognition of Eelam Tamils as a nation and their struggle a national liberation struggle.

     

    India is a unique issue for Eelam Tamils. They always look upon the country and its people. Its Establishment wouldn’t have dared to embark upon betrayal, had there been an intelligent show of strength and solidarity in Tamil Nadu. But forces of deception were at work from media to political parties. India has to be addressed internally by Eelam Tamils. Much anger is simmering in Tamil Nadu but it expects the Eelam Tamils to come out with their position on the national question.

     

    The Eelam Tamils, especially the diaspora need to play the cards carefully.

     

    Let there be negotiation on all fronts. But the national grounds for negotiation should not be lost, just because some ask for it. If it is lost it can’t be regained even if there are going to be favourable geopolitics.

     

    Even after 2000 years the Jews were able to regain their land because they never lost their nationalism or the thought of Israel. 

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