Tamils to endure three years of barbed-wire incarceration

By Satheesan Kumaaran

(August 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Tamils and human rights activists are panicked and shocked at Colombo’s decision to keep the Tamils in internment camps in Vavuniya and even more so with New Delhi’s direct support to keep the Tamils in the camps for the next three years. Sri Lanka once again hoodwinks the international community, including the UN, with the false promise to resettle the Tamils, who are now held in camps behind barbed-wires with tight security provided by the Sri Lankan army, from Vanni. Sri Lanka’s original agenda before the Tamils reached Vavuniya from the LTTE’s former held areas was to keep them in the camps for at least three years. However, when the plight of the civilians in the camps reached a high peak in the international community, Sri Lanka played teeter-totter and changed its tune saying that it will resettle up to 90% of the people, at least 80% within 180 days. This promise was given to the UN Secretary General in May 2009, but now things are changing. Colombo is going back to its original agenda and India is echoing Colombo’s agenda to keep the Tamils in the camps for the next three years.

Political analysts argue that Colombo and New Delhi plan to keep the Tamils in the camps for the next three years so that the deep wound caused to the Tamils will be healed by then. Further, Colombo could bring a permanent solution to the Tamil national question with minimal powers, possibly something closer to the powers granted to urban council in the North using the Tamils as human shields to get their plan executed.

The Three Year Agenda Benefits New Delhi and Colombo

New Delhi wants to calm the sentiments of people in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and union territory of Puducherry because people are sick and tired of New Delhi’s inability to protect Eelam Tamils when they were dying at the hands of the Sri Lankan armed forces at the end of Eelam War - IV. So, keeping the Eelam issue silent for three years will bring calm in India. By then, Indian Congress Party gets its work done and then starts playing again in the guise of helping Tamils in Sri Lanka, which they think that will bring a positive political outcome and will help the Congress sweep the next parliamentary elections in India. Then they could go to the people in the south saying that New Delhi, under United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by Congress, did everything good for the betterment of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Further, New Delhi does not want the LTTE to emerge once again as a strong military force because the LTTE would then create political problems for New Delhi. So, New Delhi calculates that keeping the Tamils in the camps for the next three years under heavy security will prevent the LTTE reorganization because they think that many LTTE’s hardcore cadres are in the camps already and they will forget everything by three years and return to a normal life abandoning their associations with LTTE. They assume the LTTE would not be able to rise up again if they do not receive support from the people within the next three years. So, keeping the Tamils under tight security whether it is in Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya, Batticaloa, Trincomalee, or Amparai under army occupation will not provide another chance for the LTTE re-emerge.

Colombo calculates that Mahinda can win the next presidential elections to be held early next year with the slogan that they conquered the LTTE. Also, Colombo realizes that it could get monetary aid from foreign governments claiming that they need funds to feed the displaced civilians in Vavuniya. Further, it could seek more aid to develop the Tamil areas, but in fact after receiving the funds they would not do so. A classic example is the misappropriated funding provided by the global governments when the tsunami hit Sri Lanka’s North-East in 2004. Politicians in Colombo did not even allow NGOs to help the tsunami-damaged people in the North. Also, medicine meant for the North-Eastern people donated by foreign governments and INGOs were stored in the South and never sent the affected people on time. However, reliable sources revealed that after the validity of the medications expired, they were sold privately at higher prices to dealers and sold them in the market in the Northeast.

Despite all the misappropriations, Colombo, with the support of New Delhi, has been acting vigorously to keep the Tamils in the camps for the next three years, and New Delhi has offered manoeuvres to the Tamils in the camps. India also has the power to bring the global community on its knee because India is emerging as an economic powerhouse and it is closely working with its old enemies like China and Pakistan. So the political, economic, and military pyramid has made the old enemies as new allies with India. As a result, India has influence in the world arena now as never before.

Keeping the global community in the interest of New Delhi would not be a problem. But, New Delhi is an opportunistic and hypocritical player because if the Tamils, numbering around 75 million, come out strongly against New Delhi and if they demand New Delhi not support Colombo forever, and especially if Tamil Nadu does not agree with the home grown solution to be offered by Colombo in the future to end the conflict, New Delhi will have no choice but to withdraw support from Colombo.

New Delhi will support Colombo unless Tamil Nadu boils over. Also, the Diaspora Tamils have the greater role in educating the global governments about Tamils’ grievances. Tamils’ activities in India and elsewhere should parallel and the rights of Eelam Tamils who are in the hands of Indian and the Diaspora Tamils.

Dropping dhal in 80s and now demining intervention

Unless Tamils do not rise up, New Delhi will support Colombo on various sinister forms. Since 2003, India has deployed thousands of India’s former military officials in the guise of de-mining. But, New Delhi and Colombo remain mum about the exact number of Indian soldiers in Tamil homeland.

Before intervening in 1987, India dropped dhal (paruppu) to the Tamils from the air without the consent of the Sri Lankan government to show Colombo that India would not be a silent spectator in the affairs of Tamils because Tamils were starving as the military operations between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan armed forces intensified. And when the Sri Lankan military was becoming defeated military, President J. R. Jayawardana sought India’s intervention.

Already India showed its intention by dropping dhal to the Tamils from the air without Sri Lankan government permission. The cunning President Jayawardana managed to manipulate the young and inexperienced politician Rajiv to fall on his knee in order to save Sri Lanka’s military defeat. So, J. R. Jayawardana and then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed an accord and sent the military as ‘Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF)’ to the Tamil homeland.

Eventually, the Tamils realized the real Indian motives. India’s ploy was not to save the Tamils. Rather, the IPKF was sent to save Colombo and to weaken the Eelam demand. So, they demanded the LTTE lay down their arms and eventually they did, successfully with conditions, including full protection to the LTTE cadres and Tamil civilians. However, IPKF failed to provide protection to the defenceless Tamils and the LTTE. As a result, the LTTE leader ordered the LTTE cadres to continue fighting the IPKF.

Things changed after the withdrawal of IPKF from Eelam in 1990. India lost its former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was the man sent by the IPKF to Sri Lanka.

Now, the LTTE is a banned organization in India and LTTE leader V. Pirapaharan and LTTE’s intelligence wing leader Pottu Amman are wanted by Indian judicial courts as they are the first and second accused in the Rajiv assassination. So, India was not able to intervene directly as they did in 1990s, but like dropping dhal in 1987, they sent hundreds or even thousands of their military to the Tamil areas after the LTTE and Sri Lankan government entered into ceasefire agreement in 2002. The Indian ex-soldiers, under the guise of removing landmines, were sent to Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Amparai. But, India maintains that the de-miners were privately owned and they were deployed by invitation from Colombo. Now, they have deployed many more to Vanni. India never revealed its de-mining intervention earlier, but now they openly declared that they sent de-mining experts along with mobile hospitals consisting of military doctors and other healthcare workers.

So, India has already intervened in Sri Lanka. The question is whether India will change sides helping the Tamils obtain their freedom by embracing the LTTE now that the LTTE has changed its strategy towards obtaining Tamil Eelam through political and diplomatic means as per LTTE leader Pirapaharan who asked his cadres to silence their guns in May 2009. So, if India does not want to endure the Tamil conflict, it should lift the ban on the LTTE and invite the LTTE for dialogue in India. Or the question is whether India will not change sides helping Colombo in its agenda of restraining the Tamils for more than three years in the camps and thereby weakening the Eelam struggle.

In any event, India will have no choice but to make wise decisions and India must choose whether to support the Tamils or Colombo. And the Tamils will know soon. The wheel is in the hands of Tamils and the Tamils in India will have to keep India in favour of Eelam Tamils while the Diaspora Tamils have the responsibility to keep the global community in support of Eelam Tamils. So, the global support through Tamils’ marches will liberate Eelam Tamils making Colombo and New Delhi’s agenda of restraining the Tamils for the next three years impossible and will liberate the 285,000 Tamils from the camps. Free Tamil Eelam will have to be done simultaneously with the support of global governments, which would only end the conflict in the Indian Ocean island, which has existed for decades and will continue to exist unless the Tamils’ grievances are fulfilled.

(The author can be reached at e-mail: satheesan_kumaaran@yahoo.com)

-Sri Lanka Guardian