“Intelligence is poor because corruption is high and our citizenship has not inspired in us the spirit of pride. Forcing the Colombo Tamils to register their presence in the metropolis is offensive to the community and in racial relations, counterproductive. This will not in any way solve the violence that has become endemic in the capital, and elsewhere too.”
by Victor Karunairajan
(September 27, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Granted, the Government of Sri Lanka has a major security problem in Colombo. It began fifty years ago with a Buddhist monk assasinating a prime minister of the country in consequence to a conspiracy headed by another Buddhist monk, a chief priest. In that a Sinhala minister of state was also involved. Since then this kind of dreadful violence has been on the increase including those carried out by the JVP.
But during all these, no one was asked to be registered by way of their ethnic, religious, political or any other specific identity. Why now with the Tamils who live in Colombo? What are they being categorized as a result of this; as possible agents of violence and sabotage? There is something terribly wrong here.
Any kind of action, especially registering people because they belong to an ethnic community brings in the slur, slight and stain of apartheid on them and condemning it as lesser beings to others. By now the Government of Sri Lanka should have come to understand that the Tamils are victims of both, the racist Colombo governments and the LTTE. The LTTE grew because successive government failed to solve the ethnic issue.
This failure not only denied the fundamental rights of the Tamils to be citizens on par with the majority community but horrendously affected the economic development of the entire country.
Among the chief consequences to the country have been incredible corruption at all levels of the society, hundreds of young Sinhalese and Muslim women slaving in the Middle East under atrocious conditions and many families in dire straits especially with husbands going astray as a result, hundreds of children in slave labour in the country, a tourism industry that harms young people ensnared in the sex trade, and the terrible loss of young people on the war front.
It is as if several devils of violence have overtaken Sri Lanka and the governments have all failed to exorcise them. Today, it could be safely contented that Sri Lanka is the foremost supplier of slaves in the world. There are countries that supply nannies and factory workers, but it is Sri Lanka that supplies slaves.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa saying a few words in faulty Tamil at the United Nations is all a lot of farce when the country he heads is caught in communal chaos. Tamils want to be treated as full-fledged citizens of Sri Lanka, nothing less for it is their right.
Just because they are Tamils – and that in their own country – they cannot be asked to queue and have them registered. This is an insult, even more, an admission that the Government of Sri Lanka is unable to solve the ethnic crisis or wish not to bring the right kind of resolution to it.
If the government really wants peaceful coexistence of all communities in Sri Lanka, no measures should be taken that will make one community feel threatened by the presence of the other. Such actions are also grist for the terrorists to exploit.
Furthermore, security is not ensured by registering civilians in a particular location. Those determined to terrorize a particular location will not do the obvious and seek the help of the community identified with it. Colombo has hundreds of lodges and terrorists will even patronize the hotels, 5-Stars not exempted.
The decision to have Tamil civilians registered in Colombo only indicates poor intelligence. No Tamil or Tamil family in Colombo will ever be a part of terror plans because their ideals are counter to that of the terrorists, whoever they are or whatever community that nurtures and supports them.
Intelligence is poor because corruption is high and our citizenship has not inspired in us the spirit of pride. Forcing the Colombo Tamils to register their presence in the metropolis is offensive to the community and in racial relations, counterproductive. This will not in any way solve the violence that has become endemic in the capital, and elsewhere too.
May be, the government has an ulterior motive here, something entertained by the racial and religious bigots of the country and that is to make Sri Lanka the country of the Sinhalese people only. - Sri Lanka Guardian
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