The Tamil people purely on account of their accident of birth have been tainted with the brush of terrorism. All Sri Lankan Tamil speaking peoples bear the burden to prove that they are not terrorists being associated with the LTTE in any shape or form.
(April 23, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan Tamils scattered the world over comprise the Sri Lankan Diasporas in the true sense of the word. They had been forced to leave their homeland on account of discrimination, repression, use of unprovoked violence against them by the State apparatus in response to democratic dissent in 1956, 1958, 1977,1979, 1981 and 1983 , the gross inequality in the manner Tamil students had to qualify to gain admission to universities, the barbaric destruction of Tamil learning and culture evinced in the burning of the library in their cultural capital in Jaffna with nearly 90,000 books including ancient documents, manuscripts and other evidences of Tamil literature, history and culture lost forever, comparable only to the destruction of the Mayan and the Incan civilizations, their culture and learning by the Spanish conquerors, a treasure lost to the world for ever.
Tamil Diasporas were also being constantly augmented by the consistent acts of humanitarian crimes against them perpetrated by the Sri Lankan State motivated by racism, with impunity. The outmoded imperialist concept of sovereignty was used out of context as an escape route often clung on to by ruthless dictatorships as done recently by Col. Quaddafi of Libya, a greater joke. In any civilised society, an ordinary citizen has a responsibility to be concerned about any heinous abuse or crime committed on a member of even another family by a parent or any to be reported on. This applies to even to the cruelty to an animal or a pet practised by its owner even while under their ownership.
Likewise the Tamil Diasporas have not only a responsibility but even a moral right to take up cases of their unfortunate relatives, friends and compatriots and as members of the human race being constantly abused in Sri Lanka in manifold ways. This has been amply illustrated and adequately demonstrated by the provisions of the report by the panel of experts of the United Nations Secretary General on accountability in Sri Lanka released most recently. Further, the Diasporas have had a close cultural affinity towards those who were wantonly massacred by the Sri Lankan racist State and those surviving under adverse conditions. We salute the panel for their integrity and their forthrightness having worked under sometimes oppressive and a hostile environment.
The Tamil Diasporas contemptuously referred to as the “LTTE rump” have a genuine concern for their more unfortunate brethren left behind in Sri Lanka especially in the northern and eastern provinces. The instances of torture, disappearances, murders, abductions with impunity are a daily occurrence. The condition of the 350,000 internally displaced people remains the same despite the claims by the government that their position has improved. In actual fact these persons made refugees and outcasts in their own homeland are to look after themselves with many having only the 6 poles and the tin over their heads as their only worldly possession with the promise by India providing 50,000 houses and the ever elusive de mining of the residential areas, a gold mine for contractors and ministers concerned. Demonising the Tamil Diasporas is to criminalise the tens of thousands of innocent Tamils whose close relatives who had absolutely no part in the war against the govrrnment now being subjected to inhuman living conditions and a sub standard living. The raids on the Tamil media are not unusual as in the case of the Uthayan newspaper in Jaffna as are the blatant threats of murder by Buddhist monks in the east.
There is a corterie of a handful of Tamils living abroad masquerading as the true Tamil Diasporas visiting Sri Lanka occasionally for Rajapakse to "do business with". They often keep reassuring us that the Tamils in Sri Lanka are fine and cannot be better.
Besides the indispensable and the admirable role of the human rights organisations, the active, systematic, disciplined and the coordinated role played by the various sectors of the Tamil Diasporas in despite their differences, in the wake of slanders and other methods has had a salutary effect. This is because of the oneness of purpose with which they had acted. This has to be carried to its logical conclusion in bringing the war criminals on both sides of the spectrum to justice. We are not for a moment trying to absolve the crimes of war committed by the LTTE. The surviving war criminals from amongst the LTTE are actually within the ranks of the Sri Lankan government while some others have been summarily executed by the government. We are often told that many LTTE suspects against whom there was no case have been released only to be re arrested. However, the LTTE is not being indicted for genocide.
The Tamil people purely on account of their accident of birth have been tainted with the brush of terrorism. All Sri Lankan Tamil speaking peoples bear the burden to prove that they are not terrorists being associated with the LTTE in any shape or form. This is evidenced in the current exercise of the Tamils in the north and the east of Sri Lanka being forced to register themselves, a process being ruthlessly supervised and pursued by the Sri Lankan military. This process is exclusive only to the Tamil speaking peoples.
It has always been made out that the Sinhalese are superior to the Tamils purely on the basis of the numerical strength thus denying the Tamil speaking peoples of any degree of equality that they deserve.
The Rajapakse dynasty and its chauvinistic sycophants both at home and abroad portray that the greatest threat to the Sri Lankan nation was Tamil militancy that sought to divide the country and rule over parts of it (that was indeed traditional Tamil territory) and now that terrorism per se has been defeated and Tamils freed of their terrorism, they should have no more grievance. This is rubbish. Tamil militancy was borne out of Sri Lankan State terrorism directed against the innocent Tamil people and Tamil culture from the year 1956 onwards, as the last resort for liberation. The Eelam Tamils are an indigenously distinct secular nation identified by their culture which is thousands of years old spawned and nurtured within Sri Lanka, the evidences of which have been destroyed by the historic burning of the Jaffna Library by the Sri Lankan State agents supervised by three senior cabinet ministers of State in 1981.
The “no fire zone” a concept advised on by the Indians complicit in the massacre of the Tamils in the early 2009 was an imaginary enclave designed to lure the unsuspecting Tamils into it so that they could be conveniently destroyed. It would be recalled that at a BBC interview Gothabaya Rajapakse the Defence secretary and brother of the President when asked why a civilian hospital was being bombarded his response was that the hospital had no business to be within the precincts of the No Fire Zone. The question is which came first: the hospital or the no fire zone.
We are now informed that the provisions of the report on the Lessons learnt and the reconciliation commission (LLRC) have to be vetted and approved by the highest echelons of the Buddhist clergy namely the Asgiriya and the Malwatte Chapters in the true Mahavamsa tradition before its release. It is important to remember that these were the very monks that gave the blessings to the Rajapakse establishment for the indiscriminate killings of the innocent Tamils in their tens of thousands as being necessary for winning the war against the LTTE between January and May 2009. Some of the photographs depicting the inconceivable manner in which the bodies of the Tamil militants especially of women being mutilated and morbidly abused in the most barbaric fashion indicate not only the absolute lack of professionalism and discipline within the Sri Lankan army but also the ingrained and abject hatred that the Sinhalese people bear towards the Tamil people representing the feelings of the Sinhala polity and often its civil society in varying degrees. This is very tragic.
The issue is not the crushing of the LTTE, but the war crimes committed both by the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government and more importantly the genocidal massacre of innocent Tamils in their tens of thousands for which the international community has a responsibility.
( The writer is a editor of the Eelam Nation, an online journal )
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