Image: Mohammad Razeena, left, and Mohammad Sultan Nafeek, parents of Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan housemaid sentenced to be beheaded after a baby died in her care in Saudi Arabia, look on in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in this July 16, 2007, file photo. (Agencies)by Victor Karunairajan
(December 04, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) A half a century ago a visionless racially-obsessed government embarked on a racist and religious belligerence to make Sinhala as the sole official language of the country and enshrine Buddhism as the primary faith of the people. The government totally ignored the rights, feelings and aspirations of the minority communities especially the Tamils whose traditional homeland was the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
One of the great errors of the Tamil leaders at the time of independence was not to have canvassed for a federal state based on what was Sri Lanka before the European colonialists commandeered the country. At that time there were three kingdoms, Kotte, Kandy and Jaffna and this would have been an ideal base for independent Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, the opportunist Tamil leader he turned out to be, that is G G Ponnambalam mesmerized the Tamil masses with an impossible 50-50 slogan and blasted the porridge pot altogether.
Without understanding the crazy call of this wily politician, the Tamils stormed into a glorious brouhaha about GG, a trick he played on the community when he changed his name from Kankesar Kanapathipillai Ponnambalam to Gangesar Ganapathipillai Ponnambalam to make it slogan perfect to seek his political fortune.
Thereafter he joined the Government of D S Senanayake and helped to disfranchise the Tamils of the plantation districts. By this act, the man who asked for 50-50 destroyed the 65-35 that existed at that time to 80-20. Today, even that 20 is under threat following mass scale migration over successive racial riots, loss of lives and the current continuous civil war.
Despite the growing global awareness of human rights and recognition of fundamental rights and equally the collapse of apartheid in South Africa, Sri Lanka still holds on to the unacceptable theory that the country rightfully belongs to the Sinhalese and Tamils are there by the grace of the majority, a kind of grace that constantly reminds the Tamils with racial riots and aerial bombings that they should behave as minorities with minor rights only and not demand equal rights.
Successive governments have been so insensitive to the rights of the Tamils that they have in the process begat in the country a kind of pestilence unique to Sri Lanka because this plagues the majority community more than the minorities. So obsessed have been the various governments, they would rather contain the Tamils than develop infrastructures in the country that will make racial repression unnecessary.
So pathetic is the state of affairs in the country, thousands of young ladies from the majority community are working as slaves under atrocious circumstances in a number of countries in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Their families back home have serious social problems and children also have to put up with estranged and wayward single male parents. These unfortunate people along with the sweat-shop workers of the garment industries are the leading foreign exchange earners for Sri Lanka. Billions of dollars of their earnings go towards arms imports to keep the civil war against the Tamils alive.
What is this war doing to the majority Sinhala community apart from the utter devastation to the Tamils and their traditional lands?
According to the figures made available by the UNP Member of Parliament Palitha Range Bandara, 12, 000 young men as soldiers have perished on the war front during the last three years. A similar number has been maimed during the same period and 8,000 young women between the ages of 19 and 27 have been widowed.
What a colossal loss of personnel and can Sri Lanka really afford this kind of military action when the solution is what is fundamentally right in respect of the Tamil community.
Hardly any country bombs its own people and the bombing of civilian areas of the Tamil people have been going on for years. In recent months this has been accelerated to a great degree with the forces led by a man and US Green Card holder who believes Sri Lanka is the land of the Sinhalese only, a newer and ominously menacing version of the 1958 Sinhala Only.
The strange phenomena, incredible indeed is that as the UNP Member of Parliament stated even during this time, the LTTE has already staged 13 Heroes Day ceremonies in Batticaloa and Amparai districts apart from six in other areas. Such ceremonies have been held in the new homelands of the Tamils in Europe and North America.
Today, the majority Sinhala people have to demand from the Government of President Mahinda Rajapakse that Sri Lanka be liberated once and for all from the raging curse of Sinhala Only and let the people – Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and others – live harmoniously in peace. In search of goodwill towards such a solution, the powerful Tamil Diaspora could be canvassed to help develop the country.
Let us hope for the day when not one Sinhala or Muslim young woman has to leave Sri Lanka to slave in a foreign home, or for that matter in any home even in Sri Lanka.
ENDS - Sri Lanka Guardian
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