Tamils were still shut out

Prof. Hoole's response that appeared today (Sunday Feb. 24, 2008) in The Washington Times in response to the article by Bernard Goonetilleke (Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Washington DC) in The Washington Times dated Feb. 17, 2008:

by S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole

(February 24,Philadelphia, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lankan Ambassador Bernard Goonetilleke has put a good but inaccurate face on the Sri Lankan Sinhalese majority's conflict with the Tamil minority ("Tamil homeland fantasy," Commentary, Sunday).

First, he says weighting examinations was never intended to discriminate against us Tamils. I took the common Advanced Level exam in 1969 and was admitted to the engineering faculty.

The government then redid the admissions after adding some 28 marks to the four-subject aggregate of Sinhalese students.

I lost my seat. They effectively claimed that the son of a Sinhalese minister in an elite Colombo school was disadvantaged vis-a-vis a Tamil tea-plucker's son. Unable to defend this, in 1973 they created the statistical scheme equating Tamil and Sinhalese averages with regional preferences to which the ambassador refers.

Tamils were still shut out.

Second, Sri Lankan democracy: The ambassador is justly proud of Sinhalese democracy with universal adult franchise since 1931. However, promptly upon independence, half the Tamils those in the tea plantations were denied citizenship.

The rest of us Tamils began losing our franchise in 1981, when the government rigged the District Council elections, ironically meant to devolve power to us.

By 1983, our parliamentarians, set upon by government hoodlums, fled to India. The vacuum was filled by the virulent Tamil Tigers. They claim to be our sole representative, forcibly recruit our children and murder those standing for election without their blessings.

They have massacred innocent Muslim and Sinhalese villagers. Cornered by the Indian peacekeeping force from 1987 to 1990, they got a new lease on life when the Sri Lankan government accommodated them in five-star hotels and armed them.

His excellency laments the loss of our rights without acknowledging his government's hand.

Zeal for denying democracy for Tamils is evident as it promotes a breakaway faction of the Tigers fielding candidates for elections while recruiting children, bearing arms and terrorizing Tamils the very methods of the Tigers that the government excoriates.

Finally, there is the suggestion that Tamils prefer living under the government to living in Tiger territory: I for one loved living in the Tamil neighborhoods where I grew up. But my ancestral house was destroyed, and innocent locals disappeared.

Tamil shopkeepers visited by soldiers for cigarettes and public servants have been murdered by the Tigers. Few dare live there in these circumstances.

Sri Lanka's real story is the more complex oedipal unfolding of inexorable Sinhalese nationalist communalism meeting its ugly little baby, Tamil fascism. We ordinary Tamils struggle under the two.
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[The author was appointed Vice Chancellor of University of Jaffna Sri Lanka and fled after receiving death threats from the TamilTigers. He has also been assaulted by the Sri Lankan Police.]