Did any of the Tamil political parties or their members file a single Habeas-corpus application in the Court so far to trace the whereabouts of a missing Tamil from the thousands? How many of them have visited the prisons since May 2009 and spoken to the Tamils serving indeterminate detention and presented justifiable evidence that Tamils are being persecuted in the prisons.
by Rajasingham Jayadevan
(November 01, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The state of affairs of the Tamils in Sri Lanka has been reduced to pathetic slavery by the state and the visionless, incompetent and disastrously failing Tamil political leadership too is contributing to this painful tragedy.
Tamil parliamentarians or politicians politicking from the fringes are adequately contributing to the never ending marginalisation programme of the government against the Tamils.
Even their public utterances are so credulous that no one takes any interest in them any more. Lack of vision, personality clashes and underhand dealings are thwarting any one of the parties or groups to stand on moral high grounds and honestly speak for those whom they claim to represent.
There is more than enough accusations made against the government over its decades old degrading and devious conduct against the minorities and if these selfish and inward looking Tamil leadership wrap their sleeves and do their role honestly and sincerely to respond to the call of the day, the government will not have its easy ride.
Take for instance, the Tamil National Alliance. They are directionless. No one knows what they are arguing for the Tamils. It is over seventeen months since the defeat of the LTTE, this party claiming to be representative of the Tamils in the parliament has not done anything meaningful, except for shedding crocodile tears now and then. When the international cry for justice for the war ravaged Tamils are strengthening, this party has not moved a miniscule even to help the process, leaving aside its still unknown political agenda for the Tamils.
TNA claiming to be the political main force, has not reached the fields of the suffering Tamils and gathered information of colossal carnage inflicted on the people and documented them to confirm the horrendous crimes the government forces has committed against the people they claim to represent.
Lack of political will and vision to respond to the socio-political needs of the Tamils who are been treated like headless stock by the government is a damning indictment on the TNA and the other fringes.
The TNA is not clean. There are elements within who are benefiting from the aftermath of the war. It was reported elsewhere, the TNA parliamentarian Premachandran whilst making political foul cry in the Tamil media, is indulging in corrupt and illegal transactions in the north to fill his purse. Neither Premachandran nor the TNA has disowned these comments so far.
If one travels on the A9 road to Jaffna and stop over and talk to people, gruesome accounts of the war are told by the people. In addition, their pathetic circumstances post war should have been the agenda that should have been politically taken forward by the TNA or any other groups claiming to represent the Tamil people.
When President Mahinda Rajapakse’s puppy boy Namal Rajapakse went on the overbearing mission with few other MP’s from the south to forcefully grab some forty odd handheld tractors brought by the ICRC for the IDP’s in Vavuniya and Vanni, the Tamil leadership should have taken the matter further. Utter silence was maintained by these Tamil politicians who are being paid by the state for representing the Tamils.
Did any of the Tamil political parties or their members file a single Habeas-corpus application in the Court so far to trace the whereabouts of a missing Tamil from the thousands? How many of them have visited the prisons since May 2009 and spoken to the Tamils serving indeterminate detention and presented justifiable evidence that Tamils are being persecuted in the prisons.
The Tamil politicians in the fringes like V Anandasangaree, Sivagilingam, Kumar Ponnambalam and the heads of the paramilitary and the former LTTE cadres who are the bedfellows of the government are also culpable of the eroding political mission of the Tamils.
Even the arrival EPRLF’s Varatharajaperumal and Tamil leader Late S J V Chelvanayagam’s son Chandrahasan from India post defeat of the LTTE has not helped to reinvigorate the real political needs of the Tamils. They too are enslaved by the circumstances of fear that removed them from the country and is now preventing them to take an absolute stand on issues.
In the Pied Piper story: ‘Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats and bit the babies. They ate the cheese out of the vats and the soup out of the cooks’ ladles, and made every one very unhappy’. Likewise the Tamil leadership too is doing its part towards their own people.
The time will not be too long for the Tamil people to act like the pied piper to get rid of the rats who survive on the goodwill for far too long.
Gone are the days when the Tamil leadership stood assertive and campaigned publicly for justice when they were beaten and jailed for responding to the democratic needs of the people.
When one Poosari (Hindu priest) was killed in the 1958, it was an issue. Today, thousands have been killed, maimed, missing and made homeless and are living in appalling living conditions and their lands have been forcefully taken over by the state to extend its age old agenda.
The TNA is still in a quagmire to give evidence before the Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). Its argument so far is limited to giving evidence to place on record its knowledge of facts. It has still not decided on the submissions requested by the United Nations. Its political bankruptcy is such, it is unable to reach the people and gather the much needed personal accounts of the people to submit to the UN.
Then the question of bringing fusion between the Tamil Diaspora and political leadership in Sri Lanka! TNA as the leading parliamentary party is failing to reach the Diaspora with a visionary political approach to the crisis facing the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
It is tragedy that Tamils have to be dictated by these sycophantic political leadership that masquerade under the never ending inward agenda that is showing all the signs of failure.
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