An incredible monocular view of a professor!

By Satchi Sithanandan

(February 25, Frankfurt, Sri Lanka Guardian) University of Ceylon’s Professor M Sornarajah’s treatise “The responsibility to protect Tamil civilians” is a brilliant focus on Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem. He has very effectively garnered all the negative factors that have contributed to the current nightmare into a feature that gives a deadly verdict against successive Colombo governments which he has opportunely labeled as Sinhala governments. He has, however, conveniently ignored the fact that when the first series of discriminatory legislations were brought in soon after independence, the Tamil representatives, headed by criminal lawyer G G Ponnambalam who was called the “Uncrowned King” of the Tamils, were part of the D S Senanayake government.

These disfranchised thousands of Tamil plantation workers. Without the support of the Tamil Congress, Prime Minister Senanayake would not have even headed the government at that time. Even after Ponnambalam’s betrayal, the Tamils endorsed his stand in the 1952 General Elections.

It appears Professor Sornarajah is unhappy that the Sri Lankan government rejected the unilateral appointment of Mr. Des Brown by the British Government as an envoy to deal with issues, as he says, arising from the persecution by the state of the Tamil population in the country. If that was explicitly why a foreign government appointed a representative, the good professor of law believed to be a specialist in international law should know that Sri Lanka was right in saying “thank you and no thanks” to the British Prime Minister. In law you do not have a convinced view and then pursue to justify it; simple as “A” for apple, “B” for ball and “C” for cat.

Not so long ago we had a guy called Erik Solheim from Norway who saw in the murky waters of terror politics in Sri Lanka reasons to contend that terrorism can also be a liberation struggle even if that has the Pol Pot strains. The current Wanni debacle has roots in the Solheim-Wickremasinghe conspiracy to sign off a part of sovereign territory to terrorism exposing the people to such horrors they have experienced and still unfinished.

Many of Professor Sornarajah’s contentions are valid in respect of how Tamils have been discriminated and successive Colombo governments have not had the will and courage to fight racial and religious chauvinism in the country. He has drawn on examples from various countries as well to support his theories.

But what destroys his credibility is his total blindness to another horrendous reality and that is how the LTTE has chosen to force-represent the Tamils by totally subjugating them at the point of the gun. It will not be wrong to contend that many Tamils will be confident to seek the help of Sinhala Members of Parliament and even be at ease with them than the clowns from the Tamil National Alliance who only perform the LTTE numbers.

The genocide argument that the Colombo government is claimed as guilty has worn thin long ago and evidently Professor Sornarajah has not awoken to that realism. It took some time for people to realize as to who posed the greatest danger to the Tamils. This question is no more in doubt. The Colombo governments have failed the Tamils with respect to their fundamental rights but the Tigers are the biggest threat to their very existence and their future in Sri Lanka.

The genocide against the Tamils was a brainchild of Junius Jayawardene but India under Rajiv Gandhi checked it effectively. Prabhakaran knew that if Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister again of India, his mission to set up a mafia state would be ended. It was therefore necessary for him to have him assassinated, the only tool and solution he ever had against any one whom he recognized as a threat to his designs.

The real genocide that took roots in Sri Lanka was the means employed by Prabhakaran and this is also what is happening in Wanni today with the hundreds he holds as hostage there. Terrorism has to be rooted out in the country and as his inevitable demise draws close, he is demanding a terrible price of innocent lives in his grip, a Tamil from the Tamils.

One would have appreciated if Professor Sornarajah’s feature was just and fair. Such observations, sadly neutralizes the just cause of the Tamils, something the Colombo governments have chosen to ignore too long.

-Sri Lanka Guardian