“’This is something similar to what occurred in Gaza or worse, because neither observers nor journalists had access to the war zone,’ stated a UN source who asked for anonymity. The army acknowledges that 6,200 soldiers and 22,000 guerrillas died in the last three years of the longest civil war in Asia. The UN affirms that between 80,000 and 100,000 persons died in the conflict,” wrote Elisa Reche of Prensa Marea Socialista.

“During the war,” Reche continued, “the army had 200,000 troops. Now with peace, 100,000 are being incorporated… A strange peace it is that requires more troops than in actual combat.”

More troops are needed because systematic ethnic cleansing is now the order of the day for the Tamil people. Their Homeland will be obliterated by introducing more Sinhalese settlers. The same strategy, as John Pilger pointed out, that Israel uses against Palestinians.

This is what M.K. Bhadrakumar, an ambassador for India who served in Sri Lanka and other countries, wrote about the day after Sri Lanka declared victory.

See, they have already solved the Tamil problem in the eastern provinces… The Tamils are no more the majority community in these provinces. Similarly, from tomorrow, they will commence a concerted, steady colonization program of the Northern provinces where Prabhakaran reigned supreme for two decades. They will ensure incrementally that the northern regions no more remain as Tamil provinces… Give them a decade at the most. The Tamil problem will become a relic of the bloody history of the Indian sub-continent.

Ethnic cleansing goes hand-in-hand with the policy of imprisoning and mistreating hundreds of thousands of Tamils. For more than a year before its military victory, the Sri Lanka government enticed Tamils, wishing to flee the war zone, into so-called “welfare” centers or villages. Tens of thousands became “Internally Displaced Persons” (IDP), and are thus subject to United Nations regulations concerning decent living conditions, food and water, freedom of movement and the right to leave and rejoin families. All these rights and necessities have been denied them.

“Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy,” President J.R. told the Daily Telegraph, (UK) on July 11, 1983.

A quarter-century later, the current president is striving to fulfill his predecessor’s genocidal intentions. Mahinda Rajapakse has claimed that no IDP is held against his/her will and all are treated well. However, the few United Nations visitors—there are no official investigators into abuses since the Human Rights Council majority blocked such a possibility—who come to observe have quite another picture.

When UN’s political chief, Lynn Pascoe, visited camps in September he said people were not free or well treated… “this kind of closed regime goes directly against the principles under which we work in assisting IDPs all around the world.”

Rajapakse told Pascoe another tale about “free movement”. He said that detention was necessary because the army was clearing the area for mines, and it was still looking for guerrillas hiding among civilians. However, as the UN resident coordinator reported, and Amnesty Internationalquoted: “Under international humanitarian law, captured combatants…may be held pending the cessation of hostilities. Once active hostilities have ceased, prisoners of war must be released ‘without delay.’”

At of July, there were 9,400 individuals with purported links to the LTTE held separately from the rest of the population. They have not been released nearly half-a-year after internment.

Amnesty International also reported that the camps are clearly militarized. The 19-member Presidential Task Force established in mid-May “to plan and coordinate resettlement, rehabilitation and development of the Northern Province” is headed Major General CA Chandrasiri, who was also appointed governor of the province. All inmates are enclosed by barbed-wire fences, guarded and brutalized by well-armed soldiers.

“Arrests have been reported from the camps and Sri Lankan human rights defenders have alleged that enforced disappearances have also occurred,” wrote Amnesty.

“Sri Lanka’s history of large-scale enforced disappearances dating back to the 1980s, and the lack of independent monitoring… raises grave concerns that enforced disappearances and other violations of human rights may be occurring… Previous research [shows] that [persons] suspected by the government of being members or supporters of LTTE are at grave risk of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.”

“Although the government calls these facilities ‘welfare villages,’ they are effectively detention camps…” Amnesty International also reported that not only are people not free to move as they wish, women and girls are raped by soldiers, and people live in sewage, disease-infested conditions, with little food and water and medical attention. They die in droves because of these imposed conditions.

Women and children are especially mistreated, which was the subject that James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, complained about to Sri Lankan authorities, who then expelled him from the country. Elder described the “unimaginable suffering” of children caught in the fighting, including babies he had seen with shrapnel wounds.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had refrained from criticizing Sri Lanka’s government, leveling his critique only at LTTE for carrying out atrocities. But when he briefly visited one camp less than a week after the end of the war, he said:

“I have traveled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far the most appalling scenes I have seen…I sympathize fully with all of the displaced persons,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told CNN after visiting Manik Farm, the most presentable of Sri Lanka’s squalid and dangerous internment camps for Tamils civilians. The UN Chief has also promised international action regarding the heavy shelling of civilian populations during the recent fighting.

Out of the 280,000 IDPs after the end of the war (there were nearly one-half million over a year’s period), only between 15,000 and 40,000 had been released by November 1. Half of them, perhaps, have been ransomed. The Sunday Times wrote about “human trafficking at the internment camps.” Relatives were made to pay camp authorities in order to secure their release.

Future

A week after the end of the war, the LTTE communicated that several of its leaders were killed, but the organization would continue struggling for an independent Tamil Eelam in peaceful ways. July 22, the LTTE announced that its chief of international relations, Selvarsa Pathmanathan—known as KP—was made the new leader, and that a new strategy for a “free Tamil Eelam” would occur. On August 8, England’s The Independent wrote that Pathmanathan was under arrest by Sri Lanka and held incommunicado.

For us solidarity activists, left-wing organizations, and governments considered to be progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe that our task must be to press for the lives and rights of the Tamil people. Australia’s Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance said it well in its October 2009 international situation report:

Now the Tamil struggle has entered a new phase. The immediate campaign must focus on defence of basic human rights, release and resettlement of the Internally Displaced Persons currently held in SL government concentration camps, an end to murders, torture, rapes, and provision of basic housing, food and drinking water to the Tamil people under brutal occupation.

As a solidarity activist, who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to induce oppressive and terrorist governments to engage in a process aimed at peace with justice, I condemn all perpetrators of terrorism and demand they change tactics to ones that are morally in accordance with our ideology for socialism, for justice with equality.

I find that most, if not all, armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case with FARC and PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous struggle. They are up against, as was the more brutal LTTE, much greater military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. Remember the ANC in South Africa’s war for liberation. They committed much the same.

The main reason why I am on their side, why I have been a leftist solidarity activist and writer for nearly half-a-century is a matter of basic ethics. I define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our conscious hand—without being attacked, invaded, oppressed beyond bare. A moral person, organization, political party, government acts in daily life and in the struggle for justice with that ethic in mind. These are my thoughts on morality.

1. We act to so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under another.
2. In combat against oppressors and invaders, we do not kill non-combatant civilians nor forcefully recruit them, or use them as hostages.
3. We struggle to create equality for all.
4. We abolish all profit-making based upon the exploitation of labor or the oppression of any person, group of people or class. Instead, we build an economy based upon principles of justice and equality, one in which no one goes hungry, sharing equitably our resources and production.
5. We struggle to create a political system based upon participation where all have a voice in decision-making of vital matters, in local, national and international policies.
6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in each of us.

After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, which fortunately only lasted two years, it acted in a moral manner. Cuba’s revolutionary armed struggle was exceptional in this way. The Vietnamese struggle against the invaders of France and the USA was so conducted as well. There are a few other examples: the original Sandinistas is, perhaps, one.

I think that the key reason why so many millions of people the world love and respect Che Guevara is because of his moral stance, of his example as a just revolutionary leader. I conclude this all-too-long essay with these oft-quoted words from Che’s Socialism and Man.

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love… Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, the most sacred cause, and make it one and indivisible… one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

State terrorism manifests itself in: 1) police state practices against its own people to dominate through fear by surveillance, disruption of group meetings, control of the news media, beatings, torture, false and mass arrests, false charges and rumors, show trials, killings, summary executions and capital punishments;

The terrorism of modern state power and its high technology weaponry exceeds qualitatively by many orders of magnitude the political violence relied upon by groups aspiring to undo oppression and achieve liberation.

…peoples who are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination have the right to use force to accomplish their objectives within the framework of international humanitarian law.

This document applies to the situation of the Sri Lankan governments since 1983 as well as to the LTTE, and the proportions of the use of violence are as written by the general assembly. The LTTE did, however, after time, go beyond the framework of international humanitarian law.

One voice regarding terrorism and what lies behind these atrocities appears so credible to me, and so tragic in itself, that I quote him extensively to show that all warring parties in Sri Lanka acted as terrorists. Here are some of the last words of Sri Lankan journalist Manilal Wickrematunge Lasantha, a Sinhalese, who predicted his assassination shortly before it occurred, on January 8, 2009. His newspaper, The Sunday Leader, published his own “obituary” three days later.

Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty…

Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy… Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united…

…we have consistently espoused the view that while separatist terrorism must be eradicated, it is more important to address the root causes of terrorism, and urged government to view Sri Lanka’s ethnic strife in the context of history and not through the telescope of terrorism. We have also agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens…

The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have infested the planet. There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated. But to do so by violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim to be custodians of the dhamma [the teachings of Buddha, which lead to enlightenment] is forever called into question by this savagery, much of which is unknown to the public because of censorship…

What is more, a military occupation of the country’s north and east will require the Tamil people of those regions to live eternally as second-class citizens, deprived of all self respect…

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government’s sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.

The irony in this is that, unknown to most of the public, Mahinda [Rajapakse, the president] and I have been friends for more than a quarter century… “Sadly, for all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other President before you…”

When Lasantha’s dramatic editorial appeared, he had already been murdered on his way to work by four men on motorcycles. The probable conspirator behind the execution was Lasantha’s “friend’s” brother, war secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, a naturalized citizen of the USA. In December 2008, he had censored the Sunday Leader from publishing any criticism of his actions. He had earlier threatened the careers and lives of other journalists.

A week before Lasanth’s murder, G. Rajapakse’s army captured the capital of the de facto Eelam state, Kilinochchi. LTTE guerrilla army fled but not all the civilians had evacuated before the government’s troops entered and butchered scores or hundreds. On August 25, 2009, England’s Channel 4 News broadcast footage showing Sri Lankan forces executing nine Tamils stripped naked. One of the military’s soldiers had filmed this atrocity on his mobile telephone. Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (Sinhalese and Tamils) obtained the film and presented it to Channel 4, which showed it after verifying its authenticity.

The United States government praised Sri Lanka for its military offensive. The US embassy in Colombo issued this statement: “The United States does not advocate that the Government of Sri Lanka negotiate with the LTTE…”

Following this crushing defeat, the LTTE was reduced to an area of a few square kilometers. Many thousands of civilians had left their homes to reach so-called No Fire Zones, which the S.L. army began setting up on January 20th. Conditions were sub-human (and they continue to be so for over two-hundred and fifty thousand interned civilians in various camps as of this writing), and they were (are) forced to remain. Amnesty International—more often than not a reliable observer of international conflicts, one of the few NGO’s that does not take money from any government or political party—recently published a report about these camps. Sri Lanka is violating rules established by the United Nations, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, applying to displaced persons.

Here is an excerpt from a civilian inmate.

“Knowing that many civilians were not able to move, the government restarted shelling. They even hit the No Fire Zone so even that small area was not protected…When we heard the supersonic Kfirs [Israel jets] overhead we used to rush to the bunker and hide…That was our life for months just squatting in bunkers.”

Amnesty stated: “The Government of Sri Lanka exacerbated this isolation by restricting access by outsiders to the conflict area. In September 2008, Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaska issued a directive ordering all humanitarian and UN agencies to leave the Vanni and remove all equipment and vehicles.” This order also applied to journalists, opposition politicians and humanitarian organizations.

John Pilger described Sri Lanka’s isolation strategy this way:

The Sri Lankan government has learned an old lesson from, I suspect, a modern master: Israel. In order to conduct a slaughter, you ensure the pornography is unseen, illicit at best. You ban foreigners and their cameras from Tamil towns like Mulliavaikal, which was bombarded recently by the Sri Lankan army, and you lie that the 75 people killed in the hospital were blown up quite willfully by a Tamil suicide bomber.¹

From 2006-7 onward President Rajapakse was spending nearly one-quarter ($1.5 billion) of Sri Lanka’s national budget of $7.5 billion (2008 figures) on war. By January 2009, the Sri Lankan military, refortified especially by Israel, Pakistan and China, had recaptured much of the Tamil Homeland. From the end of 2008 to Sri Lanka’s military victory over LTTE, it had indiscriminately bombed Tamil civilians even in the “safe zones” where the government had told them to flee. Many thousands were killed.

After the fall of Tamil Eelam’s de facto capital, it still took the far superiorly armed and manned army four and one-half months to defeat the guerrilla army. There were few close contact battles. The LTTE fighters and civilians in the remaining Homeland area were subject to shelling from the air and by long-distance artillery. Amnesty International reported:

Eyewitness accounts of the final months of the war painted a grim picture of deprivation of food, water and medical care; fear, injury and loss of life suffered by civilians trapped by the conflict… both the LTTE and Sri Lankan government forces committed violations of international humanitarian law… The LTTE forcibly recruited children as soldiers, used civilians as human shields against the Sri Lankan army’s offensive, and attacked civilians who tried to flee. The Sri Lankan armed forces launched indiscriminate attacks with artillery on areas densely populated by civilians. Hospitals were shelled, resulting in death and injuries among patients and staff.

Sri Lanka’s military achieved victory by murdering any Tamil “in its way”, and because of the extensive military force provided to it by many capitalist and so-called socialist states. Here are the major players:

1. India has provided weaponry, radar and training to Sri Lanka’s military since 1987. It often hides what aid it gives or sells since so many of its citizens are against S.L.’s brutality against Tamils. After a period of providing little military assistance, it increased its aid at the end of 2008 when the government launched its all-out offensive. As late as April 2009, India sent three fast attack boats and a missile corvette (INS Vinash), part of $500 million in total aid. It has also turned over LTTE fugitives to S.L. India sees its traditional role as the dominant nation in South Asia being replaced by China’s fast-growing presence, which is another reason for its support to Sri Lanka’s Buddhist government despite the fact that 80% of India’s 1.2 billion people practice Hinduism with less than 1% Buddhists. On the world plan, India hip hops from one antagonist force to another. There is no clear direction.

2. The United States of America has been arming and financing Sri Lanka for most of the civil war period. The Indian Ocean is a vital waterway in which half of the world’s containerized cargo passes through. Its waters carry heavy traffic of petroleum products. The US signed a ten year Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with Sri Lanka on 5 March 2007 which provides, along with other things, logistics supplies and refueling facilities. The US already has Voice of America installation at Tricomalee, which can be used for surveillance. From at least the 1990s, the US has provided military training, financing and weapons sales averaging $1.5 million annually. During the cease fire, in 2002, this sum went down to $259,999 for military training only. Bush was especially glad for Sri Lanka’s terrorism, and encouraged Colombo to resume the civil war, in 2006, which his government financed with $2.9 million. The Pentagon provided counter-insurgency training, maritime radar, patrols of US warships and aircraft. At the end of Bush’s second term, the US was forced to cut back on aid given that it was bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. That, coupled with critical public opinion, organized by the Diaspora, of state terrorism and systematic discrimination of Tamils, prompted congress to make noises about abuses of human rights by not only LTTE but also about the use of children in “paramilitary forces of the Sri Lankan government.” Nevertheless, in 2008, $1.45 million in military financing and training was granted the government out of a total of $7.4 million in total aid. The US made noises about killing a ‘humanitarian crisis’ when the Sri Lankan army was about to finish the war but it never took affirmative action to bring the war to an end. It’s howling about human rights is only a veiled threat to the Sri Lankan government, that it should not do anything prejudicial to its interests, that is, keep China at bay.

3. Israel was officially re-awarded diplomatic relations, in May 2000, after Sri Lanka had severed them, in 1970, in protest at Israel’s continued illegal expansion into Palestinian territory. Nevertheless, Israel continued to operate inside S.L. out of a special interests office set up in the US embassy. Under the table, however, Sri Lanka’s successive regimes embraced Israel’s military advisors, a special commando unit in the police, and Mossad counter-intelligence agents—who sought to drive a wedge between Muslims and Tamils. After S.L. military defeat at Elephant Pass, it appealed to Israel for military aid. Israel sent 16 of its supersonic Kfir fighter jets, some Dvora fast naval attack craft, and electronic and imagery surveillance equipment, plus advisors and technicians. Israel personnel took part in military attacks on Tamil units, and its pilots flew attack aircraft. Tigers shot down one Kfir. Just before the end of the war, Prime Minister Wickremanayake was in Israel to make bigger deals with Israeli arms supplies.

4. U.K./EU In 2005, British arms export rose by 60%, according to John Pilger (12). In 2008, £1.4 million in arms export was approved. France sent patrol boats, and other EU countries continued but reduced military aid. The EU had never been required to offer much aid given that its major allies were so much engaged.

5. Japan has long been Sri Lanka’s greatest economic donor until China overtook that position in 2008-9. Japan has sold technology and offered generous loans, but it has also outright donated millions more every year. In 1997, for instance, it granted $52 million outright but $26 in technical cooperation. In 2001, aid was at $310 million. It also paid for the government television station, Rupavahini. While Japan’s aid, sales and loans are not directed at defense, these huge sums allow the Sri Lanka governments to use more of its budget for war. This is the case as well with several other Asian countries.

6. Iran “We don’t need your money (with all those strings)”, a Sri Lanka treasury functionary purportedly told World Bank officials last year. “The international community” (US-EU governments) had begun to cut back on aid and even to ask questions about treatment of Tamil civilians, whose cries were being heard from the Diaspora. So, Sri Lanka played one power against another: India-Pakistan/China, US-China, Israel-Iran/Libya—the West-NAM. In 2008-9, Iran provided $1.9 billion in credit to build an oil refinery, in order to process S.L.’s crude oil, and it donated $450 million for a hydropower project. Iran is US’s most important inside ally with the Quisling Iraq government. And Libya has most recently been approached for a $500 million loan by Sri Lanka. Libya is with and against Iran.

7. Pakistan came into the Sri Lanka debacle, in 2008, at the encouragement of China. At the beginning of 2009, it provided $100 million in military assistance loans; it gave Chinese-origin small arms, and offered pilot training for S.L.’s new Chinese aircraft. Pakistan is also an ally of the US in its terror war “against” terror. Its governments are part of the war against Afghanistan, which has spread throughout most of Pakistan and split the population. Here have we a country allied with Cuba and ALBA et al. in NAM at the same time a partner with the world’s greatest terrorist state.

8. China entered the picture in 2005.China is the world’s no 2 oil consumer after the United States. China has stepped up efforts to secure sea lanes and transport routes that are vital for its oil supplies. In April 2007, just one month after the US’s ACSA deal with SL, China’s Poly Technologies supplied $36.5 million arms to Sri Lanka. A $150 million contract was given to China’s Huawei, which has close links with the Chinese intelligence wing MSS, to build a country-wide infrastructure for communications. In 2008, China invested five times over what it did in 2007. Its biggest investment is a vast construction project at Hambantota on the southern coast, which it will use as a re-fuelling and docking station for its navy. “Ever since Sri Lanka agreed to the plan, in March 2007, China has given it all the aid, arms and diplomatic support it needs to defeat the Tigers, without worrying about the West,” wrote The Times (London). China acts without asking questions about the treatment and conditions of workers and minorities. In April 2007, S.L. made a deal to buy Chinese ammunition and ordnance for is military. China gave it six F7 jet fighters after a Sky Tiger raid that destroyed ten military aircraft, in 2007. One Chinese fighter was soon shot down by Tigers. China has also given or sold on credit: an anti-submarine warfare vessel, gunboats and landing craft, battle tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and air surveillance radars. In June 2009, after the conclusion of the civil war, it signed an $891 million agreement for the Norochcholai Coal Power project. Chinese companies were granted an Economic Zone for 33 years. Huichen Investments Holdings Limited is to invest $28 million in next three years in the Mirigama Zone. For the first time a specific area was given to a foreign country. China is making major inroads into Sri Lanka, causing concern in the US-India Axis.

In the last few months of the war, Sri Lanka’s military used China’s weapons to systematically bombard what was left of the Tamil Eelam homeland. British media reported that 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed just in the last five days. Yet President Rajapakse claimed that “not one Tamil civilian was killed by military shelling.”

According to the pro-imperialist The Times (London), “aerial photographs, official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony” tell a story of the Sri Lankan’s “fierce barrage” of three weeks constant shelling in a five-kilometer area where 300,000 Tamil civilians were. The Times’ estimated that about 1,000 civilians were killed each day for three weeks until May 19. With most of the leadership dead, and tens of thousands civilians slaughtered, the LTTE surrendered.

One of The Times’ sources for these figures, and that responsibility lay with SL military, is the Catholic priest Amalraj, who was there until May 16. At the time of article, May 29, 2009, he was interned in the militarized Manik Farm camp along with 200,000 others.

Even the editor of the pro-imperialist Armed Forces of the UK magazine contended that it was not the Tigers who fired upon their own people but that is was the Sri Lankan government, which used imprecise air-burst and ground-impact mortars to annihilate anything alive.

The Times piece ended on this sad note: S.L “was cleared of any wrongdoing by the UN Human Rights Council after winning the backing of countries including China, Egypt, India and Cuba.”

1. John Pilger, “Distant Voices, Desperate Lives,” New Statesman, May 13, 2009.

The Tamil people in Sri Lanka had expectations that they would achieve equal rights and power with the Sinhalese once independence was won from the British colonialists. As the independence movement was winning over colonialization there was no talk of any Tamil separatism.

Even before the defeat of the Axis powers, Britain prepared to decolonize Ceylon. In 1943, the colonial secretary of state stated that a constitution would be drafted will all parties involved. A condition would be that “The Parliament of Ceylon shall not make any law rendering persons of any community or religion liable to disabilities or restrictions to which persons of other communities are not made liable …”²

Britain established the Soulbury Commission in 1944. The leading Sinhalese politician was D.S. Senanayake—a conservative, who founded, in 1946, the rightist pro-independence and pro-capitalist United National Party (UNP). Senanayake became known as the “Father of Sri Lanka.” He convinced a leading Tamil politician, G.G. Ponnamblam—who founded the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), in 1944—to partake in independence negotiations.

Another provision of the Soulbury Commission (Constitution) was that any bill which evoked “serious opposition by any racial or religious community and which, in the opinion of the Governor-General is likely to involve oppression or serious injustice to any community must be reserved by the Governor-General.”

The vote on the third reading of the “Free Lanka” bill was supported by all the Muslim members and by most Tamil and Sinhalese groups. “Some of the other minority members who did not want to openly support the bill took care to be absent or abstain. Finally, the debate and the vote of acceptance on the eighth and ninth of September 1945 was the most significant indication of general reconciliation among the ethnic and regional groups. Far exceeding the 3/4 majority required by the Soulbury Commission, Senanayake had 51 votes in favor, and only three votes against the adoption of the constitution. The vote was ‘in many ways a vote of confidence by all communities…and the minorities were as anxious as the majority for self-government.’”

Senanayake’s speech in proposing the motion of acceptance made reference to the minorities and said … “throughout this period the Ministers had in view one objective only, the attainment of maximum freedom. Accusations of Sinhalese domination have been bandied about. We can afford to ignore them for it must be plain to every one that what we sought was not Sinhalese domination, but Ceylonese domination. We devised a scheme that gave heavy weightage to the minorities; we deliberately protected them against discriminatory legislation. We vested important powers in the Governor-General… We decided upon an Independent Public Service Commission so as to give assurance that there should be no communalism in the Public Service. I do not normally speak as a Sinhalese, and I do not think that the Leader of this Council ought to think of himself as a Sinhalese representative, but for once I should like to speak as a Sinhalese and assert with all the force at my command that the interests of one community are the interests of all. We are one of another, what ever race or creed.”

The first national election was held August 23-September 30, 1947. 1,887, 364 people voted for 95 MP (members of parliament). There were six parties and many independents. The results were:

UNP with 39.8% (42 MPs)

LSSP 10.8% (10)

BLPI 6% (5)

ACTC 4.4% (7)

CIC 3.8% (6)

CPC 3.7% (3)

Labor 1.4% (1)

Independents 29% (16)³

“We are one of another, whatever race or creed,” swore the “Father” of the new independent State. It looked good for all ethnic and religious groups, but then the deceit became evident with the new citizenship act.

On February 4, 1948, the new government introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Bill before Parliament. The outward purpose of the bill was to provide a means of obtaining citizenship, but I think its real purpose was to discriminate against the Indian Tamils by denying them citizenship. The Ceylon Citizenship Act no. 18, August 20, 1948 denied citizenship to 11% of the population.

Although the All Ceylon Tamil Congress opposed the bill, it had joined with the UNP. This provoked half of its members to form the Federal Party, led by SJV Chelvanayakam. Next year, the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act, no.3, disenfranchised nearly all Tamils, who were originally from India. Their seven MPs were kicked out of parliament and there were no Indian Tamils in the 1952 parliament elections. It wasn’t until 1988 that the Sri Lanka government granted citizenship to stateless persons, who hadn’t applied for Indian citizenship. In 2003, 168,141 descendants of Indian Tamils were allowed citizenship.

The new government allowed Sinhalese to appropriate land on the Tamil traditional homeland in the north and east. Entire villages were driven out—ethnic cleansing—which the Sinhalese settled, aiming to break a geographic continuity of the Tamil homeland.⁴ Within time, Sinhalese settlers had taken over 30% of Tamil lands and homes—a la Israel in Palestine.

In 1956, The Sinhala Only Act became law. It mandated Sinhala as “the sole official language”, which, at that time was spoken by 70% of the population.

Supporters of the law saw it as an attempt by a community that had just gained independence to distance themselves from their colonial masters, while its opponents viewed it as an attempt by the linguistic majority to oppress and assert dominance on minorities. The Act symbolizes the post independent majority Sinhalese to assert its Sri Lanka’s identity as a nation state, and for Tamils, it became a symbol of minority oppression and a justification for them to demand a separate nation state, which resulted in decades of civil war.

Tamils protested the discriminatory law by using Gandhian tactics of non-violent sit-ins. Although stated advocates of non-violence, Buddhist monks led Sinhalese mobs against Tamils.

The Gal Oya riots… were the first ethnic riots that targeted the minority Sri Lankan Tamils… The riots took place from June 11, 1956 and occurred over the next five days. Local majority Sinhalese colonists and employees of the Gal Oya settlement board commandeered government vehicles, dynamite and weapons and massacred minority Tamils… It is estimated that over 150 people lost their lives due in the violence. Although initially inactive, the Police and the Army were eventually able to re-take control of the situation and brought the riots under control.

Tamil political leader SJV Chelvanayagam began to organize a massive Satyagraha (non-violent resistance). In order to avoid even more bloodshed, Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranayaka signed an agreement with Chelvanayagam promising to restore Tamil as the (or one of two) official language(s) in its minority areas. This infuriated many Sinhalese, especially monks, and they assaulted and sometimes killed Tamils in many areas. Buddhist monks even besieged the official residence of Bandaranayaka demanding that he abandoned the agreement, which he did. But, in 1958, the Sinhalese-led parliament, pressed by the violence and the pro-Moscow and Trotskyist Sinhalese parties, passed an amendment to the Sinhala Only Act (called “Sinhala Only, Tamil Also”) restoring Tamil as a co-official language in their areas of the North and East. Frustrated at the compromise, Sinhalese mobs murdered 200-300 Tamils, including some Sinhalese who gave Tamils refuge. Many Tamil women were raped and some Tamil boys were stripped, bound, and burned alive. This violent hatred evokes the lynching and burning alive of black people by whites in the southern USA.

Some Buddhists were angry that the Sinhalese Prime Minister Bandaranayaka had tried to compromise with Tamils. In 1959, a Buddhist monk assassinated him.

The language law had its intended effect. In 1955, the civil service had been largely made of Tamils, who had benefited more than Sinhalese from western style education provided by missionaries. This fact was used by populist Sinhalese politicians to come to power—or retain power—on the promise of providing more civil service jobs to Sinhalese by demanding that their language be the only one used in public service. By 1970, the civil service was almost entirely Sinhalese. Thousands of Tamil civil servants were forced to resign due to lack of fluency in Sinhala. In the1960s, government forms and services were virtually unavailable to Tamils.

Confrontation became the modus operandi; Sinhalese were the Zionists and Tamils the Palestinians!

It is important to stress, especially with progressive-revolutionary governments, such as the ALBA alliance in Latin America, and their supporters throughout the world, that the Tamils’ history in Sri Lanka is one of constant and widespread discrimination. They are also subjects to a policy of genocide as defined by the United Nations.⁵

Sri Lanka made world headlines in 1960 when a woman, Sirimavo RD Bandaranaike, was elected prime minister—the world’s first female leader. Being the widow of the martyr and founder of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) was an asset. She immediately brought Sri Lanka into the Non-Alignment Movement, founded in 1961. The originators—India’s Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser, Yugoslavia’s Tito and Ghana’s Nkrumah—sought support for each other’s sovereignty without aligning with either super-power bloc at that time.⁶

Nevertheless, Sri Lankan leaders of both predominantly Sinhala major parties continued to be dependent upon economic and military ties with India, the US, the UK, and Israel. Social welfare programs were carried out within a capitalist economic structure. This was a cause for radical opposition. In 1971, thousands of Sinhalese students, and Indian Tamil plantation workers, under the leadership of a new nationalistic and Marxist-oriented political party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramana (JVP), translated as Peoples Liberation Front, engaged in anti-government clashes. Fifteen thousand protestors were killed in the uprising.

Once in power, Bandaranaike’s widow did not alter the Sinhalese policy of genocide: “…an ingenious device was resorted to deprive the Tamils of the constitutional safeguards and the characteristics of the conditional polity. A coalition of three Sinhalese political parties, led by Mrs. Sirimavo R.D.Bandaranaike, called upon the people to give a mandate [in the 1970 General Elections, during her second term] for a new Constituent Assembly to scrap the 1948 dominion polity and create a new Republic of Sri Lanka. Whilst the voters in the seven Sinhalese provinces gave Mrs.Bandaranaike the mandate that she had requested, the Tamil voters in the Northern and Eastern Provinces summarily rejected her call. In the North and East, a mere 14% of the votes polled supported the call for a new constituent Assembly.”

Laws protecting rights of racial and religious minorities were abandoned and Buddhism was made the constitutional religion of Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese claimed 5000 acres in the Tamil farmland “Nochikulam” as theirs, renaming it “Nochiyagama.” Next year, 10,738 Sinhalese families settled in Trincomalee illegally.

“The sovereignty of the Tamil people (who were ethnically, geographically and linguistically separately identifiable and distinct) revived.”

With this setback, a reinvigorated ACTC joined with the Federal Party, in 1972, to form the Tamil United Front (TUF). Separatism or autonomy now became the cry for nearly all Tamils, who sought an Eelam part of Sri Lanka. Thirty Tamil militant groups emerged.

“The operative part is Thamil Eelam and it means the Tamil part of Eelam. The term Eelam is a synonym for Sri Lanka and has been in use in Tamil literature right from the Cankam Period dating as far back as 200 B.C. to circa 250 A.D.”

The second government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike enacted a discriminatory double standard law for admission grades to universities, requiring Tamil students to achieve higher grades than Sinhalese.

Throughout the 1970s, Sinhalese mobs clashed—with impunity—not only with Tamils but also Muslim Moors. In 1976, Sinhalese burned 271 houses and 44 shops, murdering a score of Muslims.

In 1976, the Tamil United Front Party changed its name to the Tamil United Liberation Front (TUFP) at the Vattukottai Conference, and adopted a demand for an independent sovereign state in traditional Tamil homeland in the north and east to be known as the “secular, socialist state of Tamil Eelam.”⁷

By 1975, Tamil militancy increased with the birth of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, who considered himself a Marxist and follower of Che Guevara. The LTTE engaged in small armed clashes with the military.

The conservative UNP won a landslide victory in the July 1977 elections. But the pro-independence TULF won 6.4% of the popular vote, winning all 14 seats in the Tamil homeland area, and four more seats of the 168-member parliament. In response to Tamil’s peaceful struggle and its parliamentary victory, Sinhalese mobs, led by Buddhist monks, again destroyed many Tamil homes and shops and murdered up to 300 Tamils.

In July 1978, the UNP, led by Prime Minister Junius Richard Jayewardene, changed the constitution and renamed the country the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. An executive presidency was established, allowing the president greater powers than the prime minister, whom the president now appoints. The president is also the commander-in-chief and head of the cabinet. He can dissolve parliament and has judicial impunity.

Jayewardene became the first president and appointed Ramasinghe Premadosa (UNP) prime minister. Despite the new name, “democratic socialist republic,” the capitalist government began deregulating much of what had been government run enterprises. Private enterprise was priority.

On May 31, 1981, the TULF held a rally in Jaffna in the north. Police clashed with Tamils and two policemen were killed. For three days, Sinhalese mobs, policemen, and soldiers went on a rampage. Several Tamils were taken from their homes and killed. The TULF headquarters, a newspaper office, presses, and shops were destroyed. Worst of all was the total destruction of the Jaffna library and its 97,000 volumes of books and irreplaceable historical manuscripts, some made of palm leaves. It is now well known that the fire that destroyed this unique institution of the Tamils in their homeland was masterminded by a handful of ministers of the Sinhala Government in Colombo, who were present in Jaffna the night of the fire.

“The national newspapers did not carry information about the incident and in subsequent parliamentary debates some majority Sinhalese members reminded minority Tamil politicians that if Tamils were unhappy in Sri Lanka, they should leave for their homeland in India. This is a direct quotation from United National Party member MP WJM Lokubandara:

“If there is discrimination in this land which is not their (Tamil) homeland, then why try to stay here? Why not go back home (India) where there would be no discrimination?”

“Twenty years later, the mayor of Jaffna, Nadarajah Raviraj, still grieved at the recollection of the flames he saw as a University student. He was later killed by unknown gunmen in the capital Colombo, in 2006.”

Civil War and LTTE

By summer 1983, the then small guerrilla army of LTTE was well settled in most northern and eastern areas. Their first major assault against the state’s military took place at Jaffna peninsula, July 24. LTTE ambushed a convoy of soldiers passing through land mines and killed 15.

This could have been in response to many random attacks upon Tamils in various areas. One example is in Trincomalee where, on 10 April 1983, a young Tamil died in police custody after having been held without charge for two weeks. At the judicial inquest into his death, on May 31, the Jaffna Magistrate returned a verdict of homicide. Three days later, the government changed the rules permitting the police to bury or cremate bodies without a post mortem or an inquest.

Amnesty International cabled President Jayawardene expressing concern that such a regulation could give rise to grave human rights violations and appealed to him to rescind it. But he did not. On the contrary, on June 3, 1983, the day that the new Emergency Regulation was brought into effect, the attacks on the Tamils in Trincomalee commenced in earnest.

R. Sampanthan, M.P. for Trincomalee, described that mobs of Sinhalese went from village to village setting fire to Tamil houses and shops. A particular modus operandi was observed. Heavily armed service personnel would enter a Tamil area and carry out a search alleging that explosions and dangerous weapons were hidden in that area. Invariably nothing would be recovered other than implements that would normally be available in any house. Sometimes Tamil youths would be arrested on “suspicion” and taken for questioning. After a month of many pogrom raids, the LTTE struck the army convoy.

That night and for weeks Sinhalese rampaged against Tamils, especially in the Colombo area where some Tamils youths were stripped naked and burned alive in petrol. Black July ended with between 2000 and 3000 dead Tamils, among them 53 prisoners, including key political leaders, who were murdered by Sinhalese prisoners at Welikadai. One political prisoner, Kuttimani, had his eyes gouged out and stomped upon under a soldier’s boots.

One hundred thousand Tamils were rendered homeless and that many and more fled to India.

Even non-violent advocates of separatism or independence, such as the TULF, were pushed out of the democratic process. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, enacted in August 1983, classified all separatist movements as unconstitutional. That meant that all its members of parliament—16 then—lost their seats. Thousands of Tamil youth joined militant armed groups, especially the LTTE, which became the most disciplined and well organized.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the LTTE established a de facto state, called Tamil Eelam, and managed a government, which provided a judicial court system, a police force, and social assistance in health and education and for the poorest. LTTE ran a bank, a radio station (Voice of Tigers), even a television station. Guerrilla leaders helped organize small cooperative farming units based on traditional methods. The LTTE dismantled the caste system and officially stopped discrimination against women. The LTTE organized a civilian administration under its command. There was order and peace in these areas, as long as everyone obeyed and when the Sri Lanka army did not bomb.

In the 1980s, there was much discontent in other parts of Sri Lanka. Radical Sinhalese youths, such as the JVP, demanded going further towards socialism. In 1987, JVP engaged in another armed uprising. But after 1989, it entered into parliamentary politics. It participated in the 1994 parliamentary general election and joined conservative and liberal party coalitions in opposing equal rights with Tamils.

Ranasinghe Premadasa was prime minister from February 1978 to January 1, 1989, under President Jayewardene, and then he became president until his assassination on Mayday 1993. Many Sinhalese elitists thought he was too common to be their leader and too compromising with Tamils. Controversial policies under his terms included the matter of language, ethnic cleansing, and the role of India in internal affairs. The first controversy was the constitutional amendment allowing “equality” of languages in the Tamil areas: “National languages shall be Sinhala and Tamil,” although, “The official language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala. Tamil shall also be an official language. English shall be a link language.”

This compromise spoke in double tongues. Why not just make Sinhala and Tamil equally official, as India has done with a score of languages?

Alienated Tamils

Even a U.S. Library of Congress study characterized Tamils as alienated. In 1988, it published, SriLanka: a Country Study. In the chapter entitled, “Tamil Alienation,” the authors wrote:

Moderate as well as militant Sri Lankan Tamils have regarded the policies of successive Sinhalese governments in Colombo with suspicion and resentment since at least the mid-1950s, when the “Sinhala Only” language policy was adopted…

Several issues provided the focus for Sri Lankan Tamil alienation and widespread support, particularly within the younger generation, for extremist movements…Sinhalese still remained the higher-status “official language,” and inductees into the civil service were expected to acquire proficiency in it. Other areas of disagreement concerned preference given to Sinhalese applicants for university admissions and public employment, and allegations of government encouragement of Sinhalese settlement in Tamil-majority areas.

“Government-sponsored settlement of Sinhalese in the northern or eastern parts of the island, traditionally considered to be Tamil regions, has been perhaps the most immediate cause of inter-communal violence. There was, for example, an official plan in the mid-1980s to settle 30,000 Sinhalese in the dry zone of Northern Province, giving each settler land and funds to build a house and each community armed protection in the form of rifles and machine guns. Tamil spokesmen accused the government of promoting a new form of ‘colonialism’,” but the Jayewardene government asserted that no part of the island could legitimately be considered an ethnic homeland and thus closed to settlement from outside. Settlement schemes were popular with the poorer and less fortunate classes of Sinhalese.”

Che Guevara made no bones about the significance of alienation: “…the ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration (is) to see man liberated from his alienation.”⁸

India’s Vacillating Role

The role of India in Sri Lanka’s civil war was a major problem. India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, son of assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, first supported the LTTE. His air force even dropped 25 tons of aid in their territory in Jaffna (Operation Poomalai). A month following this, the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed between Gandhi and the reluctant Prime Minister Ranasinghe Presmadasa, under pressure from his president, JR Jayewardene. The July 29, 1987 accord was expected to resolve the ongoing civil war. Colombo agreed to devolution of power to the Tamil provinces, and its military was to withdraw in exchange for the Tamil rebels’ disarmament. The LTTE had not been made party to the talks but reluctantly agreed to surrender arms to the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Within a few months, however, both sides flared into an active confrontation. Indian soldiers died in far greater numbers than Tamil rebels: 1,500 killed and 4,500 wounded.

In January 1989, Premadasa was elected President on a popular platform promising that the Indian Peace Keeping Force would leave within three months. The police action was unpopular in India as well, especially with some 50 million Tamil Nadu people. Gandhi refused to withdraw India’s troops, however, believing that the only way to end the civil war was to politically force Premadasa and to militarily force the LTTE to accept the accord. But, in December 1989, Vishwanath Pratap Singh was elected India’s Prime Minister and completed the pullout.

On May 21, 1991, in an act of revenge over India’s militarist actions, a female LTTE member blew up Rajiv Gandhi in a suicide bomb attack. In 1992, India became the first government, even before Sri Lanka, to declare the LTTE a terrorist group.

President Premadasa resumed the civil war, which became stalemated. Many forces were angry with him, including a rival Sinhalese leader Lalith Athulathmudali, who sought an impeachment motion against Premadasa, in 1991. Lalith was an adamant supporter of Zionism.

When Athulathmudali, a pro-Israeli power broker, challenged Premadasa two years ago with an impeachment motion in the parliament, Premadasa openly accused Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel, of trying to topple him. In his address to the Sri Lankan parliament, Premadasa said,

“…I had Israeli interests section removed. In such a context there is nothing to be surprised about the Mossad rising up against me. Please remember that there are among us traitors who have gone to Israeli universities and lectured there and earned dirty money…”

cited Sachi Sri Kantha, quoting the prime minister in “The Puzzles in President Premadasa’s Assassination Revisited.”

In April 1993, Athulathmudali was murdered. Eight days later, on Mayday, Premadasa was murdered. The LTTE did not claim responsibility for these assassinations but were so blamed by Sinhalese and the mass media.

“When Athulathmudali was assassinated last April, the members of his party immediately accused Premadasa for ordering the killing. The murder of Premadasa could have been a return hit planned and executed by the Mossad which had lost its major card in Sri Lankan politics.”

The second Eelam war lasted from 1989 until November 1994 when the People’s Alliance (led by SLFP) candidate, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, won the presidency. But peace negotiations broke down and the war continued from 1995 until the end of 2001 when ceasefire negotiations made progress. But not before the LTTE proved to the Sri Lanka government and military, with 230,000 well armed troops, that it was its equal. With somewhere around 5000 guerrillas—along with a small Sea Tigers boat unit, which made some pirate hits for funding, and even a few light civilian aircraft, the Sky Tigers, which sometimes made damaging raids against the Air Force—the LTTE won many military victories.

The Sri Lankan military often bombed civilian Tamils in the LTTE-controlled zones. It claimed that they were legitimate “collateral damage” given that the guerrillas allegedly forced them to remain against their will. The civilian hostage charge was widely reported as truth by the west and its mass media, as was the allegation that the LTTE forces children into armed combat.

On January 31, 1996, the LTTE stunned the nation when it bombed the Central Bank in Colombo, which managed most financial business accounts. One suicide bomber with 200 kilos of explosions drove through the main gate and exploded, wiping out many bank floors and several other buildings. Behind him came a vehicle with two cadres firing rifles and launchers. They escaped but were later captured. Material damage was tremendous but more so was the loss of 53 lives and injuries to 1,400 people, most of them not military targets.

On July 24, 1996, LTTE forces bombed a commuter train killing 70 Sinhalese civilians. By the end of the 1990s, both sides had killed tens of thousands of people. Civilians were targeted by both sides. The Tigers claimed that civilians were targeted only when associated with military installations. But some attacks, such as the train, were unjustifiable. Furthermore, the LTTE has often murdered other Tamils who also seek autonomy but were not part of the LTTE or had made public critiques. It has, for example, killed several leaders of the TULF.

On April 22, 2000 LTTE forces surprisingly overran Sri Lanka’s Elephant Pass military base on Jaffna. Over 1,000 troops were killed and huge quantities of arms and ammunition were taken.

On July 24, 2001, the LTTE again stunned the nation and the world when it attacked the only international airport and the nearby military base.

Around 3:30 am on July 24, 14 members of the LTTE Black Tiger suicide squad infiltrated Katunayake air base… After destroying electricity transformers to plunge the base in darkness they cut through the barbed wire surrounding the base to begin their assault. Using rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank weapons and assault rifles, the militants attacked the air force planes. They were not able to attack the aircraft in the hangars but did destroy eight military aircraft on the tarmac: three Nanchange K-8 trainer aircraft, one Mil Mi-17 helicopter, one Mil Mi-24 helicopter, two LAI Kfir fighter jets, and a Mig-27. Five K-8s and one MiG-27 were also damaged. A total of 26 aircraft were either damaged or destroyed in the attack.

Eight Tigers and three air force officers died in the battle at the air base. The six remaining LTTE members then crossed the runway to nearby Bandaranaike Airport. Using their weapons, they began blowing up any civilian aircraft they could find, which were all empty. One Airbus340 was destroyed by an explosive charge; an A330 was destroyed by a rocket fired from the control tower. In addition, an A320-200 and an A340-300 were damaged in the assault.”

All 14 guerrillas were killed, along with six Sri Lankan air force personnel and one soldier killed by friendly fire; 12 soldiers were injured, along with three Sri Lankan civilians and a Russian engineer… The cost of replacing the civilian aircraft was estimated at $350 million USD. The attack caused a slowdown in the economy of Sri Lanka, to about -1.4%. Tourism also plummeted, dropping 15.5% at the end of the year.

Cease Fire

During two decades of civil war, the LTTE had several times offered a ceasefire on the condition of negotiations to establish peace and ethnic equality. With this military victory, the guerrilla army offered a unilateral ceasefire. Some national voices and many international ones were also pressing for a ceasefire. Norway took concrete steps, but it was this spectacular military victory and the loss to the economy that forced the government to the bargaining table.

The formal Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed on February 22, 2002. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and LTTE leader Velupillai Pirabakaran signed the agreement, alongside mediator Jan Petersen representing Norway’s foreign ministry.

Provisions provided for each side holding their ground positions. Neither side was to engage in any offensive military operation or move munitions into the area controlled by the other side.

The LTTE proposed an Interim Self-Government Authority (ISGA) to administer the Tamil homeland, pending final agreement and elections. The ceasefire was monitored by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. It was staffed by designees from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. The US, UK and other EU countries had observers. Headquarters were established in Colombo, and there were 60 monitors in six district teams and two naval ones. The SLMM monitored violations and mediated between the two parties but could not enforce sanctions. Many Sinhalese considered the Monitoring Mission, especially Norway, of being partial to the Tigers.

During the ceasefire, progress was made in agricultural development and general infrastructure in the Tamil Homeland. Many foreigners were invited to observe and participate in building Tamil Eelam. Impressive first-hand accounts have been written about the progress in many areas: administrative, economic and a social welfare network. While voices friendly to this process praised the advances made, many also questioned the lack of civilian input in the decision-making process.

The LTTE did not emphasize an international political solidarity movement. It did appeal for economic donations, which poured to it, especially from Tamils in the Diaspora. The LTTE stopped speaking of Marxism or building a socialist independent state. It emphasized winning militarily—if Sri Lanka continued preventing an autonomous Tamil homeland—and constructing a social welfare state with cooperative and private enterprises. The Tigers became so respectable they could openly purchase weaponry from some countries not directly under the thumb of US-EU-Israel or their partial antagonists: China, Iran and Pakistan. A May 29, 2009 Times Online piece quotes the editor of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, saying that the LTTE used 11 merchant ships to deliver weapons, many of which they got from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Thailand and Croatia. Even the World Bank recognized the LTTE as an unofficial State, according to its representative in Sri Lanka, Peter Harrold, in 2005.

The LTTE was even building a Tamil University where Tamils in the Diaspora would have taught. I spoke with one of them, a man who had earned a doctorate degree in environmental science and taught in European universities. He frequently visited the homeland he had left three decades previously. He hoped that he would return and teach once the university would be opened.

An activist in independence forces using peaceful methods, he wished to remain anonymous. His impressions were that the Tigers were the dominating factor in civilian administration but that as long as no one objected one felt safe in the Homeland areas whenever Colombo’s armed forces were not bombing. He was critical that the LTTE armed forces had resorted to terrorist methods in their history, such as assassinating political critics. The professor, however, did not think the LTTE forced children into combat or used civilians as human shields, generally.

“Tigers were good people, intelligent and sensitive to people and nature. But contradictions did exist. They were a strange animal.”

Cease Fire Ends

On December 26, 2004, the greatest earthquake-tsunami ever recorded (9.3) hit Southeast Asia. Eleven countries were deeply affected: 230,000 were killed or missing. Sri Lanka was one of the worst disasters. About 40,000 people were killed or missing; 1.5 million were displaced from their homes. International aid poured in but did not arrive in the North and East due to Sinhalese political party opposition. The LTTE organized all the aid it could muster for hundreds of thousands in the Tamil homeland. Foreign volunteers and emergency relief organizations praised the LTTE for its effective and caring work. There are many accounts of this.

Mahinda Rajapakse was appointed prime minister April 6, 2004, and then elected President on November 19, 2005 with just 50.3% of the vote. He was the pro-war candidate of a new coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Tamil political parties and many foreign relief groups accused Rajapakse of diverting Tsunami relief funds designated for their homeland. In this complex reality, those parties most adamant about refusing aid to suffering Tamils and who demanded an end to the ceasefire with the objective of launching an all-out war were those claiming to be either hard-core Marxist-Communist-Trotskyists or self-proclaimed non-violent Buddhists.

“United People’s Freedom Alliance [is] undoubtedly the broadest coalition of progressive forces in the country. This coalition, which came into being in 2004 upon a platform of new liberal socio economic program and a resolve to defeat separatist terrorism, has since mobilized people around a social democratic agenda.”

This coalition is not just made up of alleged “progressives” but of “social” capitalists and self-styled “democratic socialists.” At the start, the coalition parties were: Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya, Muslim National Unity Alliance, Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, Democratic United National Front, and Desha Vimukthi Janatha Party.

The Communist Party of Sri Lanka and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party signed a memorandum of understanding with the SLFP so their candidates would take part in parliamentary elections in the new coalition. They also joined the UPFA. On April 2, 2004, the alliance won 45.6% of the popular vote and took 105 out of 225 seats.

A Buddhist political party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), was founded in February 2004 and participated in the 2004 parliamentary elections, winning 6% of the vote for nine seats. In 2007, it formally joined the hodge-podge UPFA coalition government and was given a ministry post.

On April 3, 2008, JHU’s leader gave his reasons for warring against Tamils to the United States government financed Voice of America radio station.

Athurliye Rathana, a Buddhist monk who heads the Jathika Hela Urumaya party in Sri Lanka’s parliament, wants to end the suffering by putting a quick end to the war. Speaking with VOA at a seaside hotel in this former tourist haven, Rathana says he supports the government’s latest military offensive to quash the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

“Anytime a militant group is harmful to peaceful people, then government should have the right to exercise constitutional law and order,” Rathana said. “And, LTTE is unlawful and so, under our constitutional law, anyone cannot exercise militancy. But [with] the LTTE separatist movement, the government has some duty to control their military activities. I say only one thing, ‘Please do your duty.’”

For comments like that, the Sri Lankan media has branded Rathana the “war monk,”… his sentiments are common in Sri Lanka’s majority ethnic Sinhala community.

Rathana is a celebrated figure in this predominantly Buddhist nation, where monks are cherished for their spiritual guidance. The pro-war activism of Rathana and others has spurred as many as 30,000 Sinhalese young men to join the army in the past few months.

The UPFA alliance of apparently conflicting ideologies and economic policies is so strange that one can easily be confused about who is who and why their politics are such that they are. After a month’s research, having begun as a total novice to this region, I am unclear about why various political forces take the position they do not only about the Tigers but about the entire Tamil ethnic group. For many Sinhalese, an engrained racism is clearly a major motivation. But how can one explain that a Tamil group, Eelam People’s Democratic Party, also takes part in this coalition of Sinhalese racists? The EPDP is a paramilitary group fighting against the LTTE alongside the government. It even has one member in parliament. EPDP also assassinates civilians, including BBC reporter Nimalarajan Mylvaganam.

The Cease Fire Agreement was a thorn in the side of the new ruling coalition. Although the government claimed that the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission favored the Tiger guerrillas, its monitors had lodged 3006 violations committed by the LTTE and only 133 by the government, as of June 30, 2005. From May 2006 onward to its termination in January 2008, the Monitoring Mission was hampered by worsening hostilities, especially following a Sea Tiger boat attack on a navy convoy, May 11, 2006.

The European Union then placed the Tigers on its terrorist list, while appearing to be even-handed by calling upon the Sri Lankan government to end its “culture of impunity” and to “curb violence” in its areas of control.

Sweden, Finland and Denmark, as members of EU, also considered the Tigers to be terrorists, and the LTTE objected to their membership on the Monitoring Mission. They withdrew leaving only Norway and Iceland with 20 monitors. The reduced Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission disbanded in 2008. The path for a full war was clear.

1. John Pilger, “Distant Voices, Desperate Lives,” New Statesman, May 13, 2009.
2. See Article 29 of Soulbury Commission.
3. LSSP=Ceylon Equal Society Party comprised of Sinhalese Trotskyists; BLPI=Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India also Trotskyists; CIC=Ceylon Indian Congress, which soon changed its name to Ceylon Workers Congress, represented the Indian Tamils of the Estates Workers Trade Union; CPC, the Communist Party of Ceylon, with a pro-Moscow line; Labour was fashioned after Clement Attlee-led British Labour party. The Marxist parties later colluded with capitalist Sinhalese parties in opposing equality with Tamils. The CPC is now the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, which is part of the United People’s Freedom Alliance that includes the Sri Lanka Freedom Party-led government of Mahinda Rajapaksa.
4. “The Unspeakable Truth,” British Tamil Forum, 2008, p.8.
5. See part 1, “Justice for Sri Lanka Tamils.”
6. In 1976, Colombo was the summit site. In 1979, the Havana Declaration ensured “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their struggle against “imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism.” In 2006, there were 118 member nations, representing 55% of the world’s population. Many of these nations have been at war with one another, and many have aligned with one or other of the previous super-powers.
7. My reading of Tamil history shows many discrepancies in dates and events. Different writings on the LTTE contend it was created at different times, either in 1972, 1975 or 1976.
8. Che Guevara, Socialism and man, Marcha, Uruguay, March 12, 1965.

Sri Lanka’s first aborigines with continuous lineage are the Tamil people. It is not precisely known when they came to the island, but perhaps as many as 5000 years ago. Archaeologists date the first humans in Sri Lanka to some 34,000 years. Scientists call them Balangoda people, the name of the location where artifacts were found. These hunting-gathering cave dwellers have no current lineage.

Tamils were also known as proto-Elamites or Ela. These people in Sri Lanka call themselves Eelam Tamils, meaning “earthly people”. Tamils speak a Dravidian language, which has no ties to other language families. It was, perhaps, associated with Scythians and Urals. The Dravidian language and Tamils originated, perhaps, from Sumer and Ur: the “cradle of the first civilization”, now Iran. The Sumer and Tamils formed the first language of proto-grams on clay tablets. Tamil inscriptions and literature are at least 2500 years old. Today, 100 to 200 million people speak Tamil.¹

The Christian Bible refers to Elam as “maritime nations in various lands, each with a separate language”. (Genesis 10) In the myth of Noah’s Ark, Elam was thought to be a descendant of one of Noah’s three sons on the ark. (Genesis 5-9) Tamils were the first to use the wheel for transportation. They traveled to India and the island Sri Lanka, which had been connected to India. The first known manuscripts in India were written in Tamil. Other Tamil inscriptions have been found in Egypt and Thailand.

About 2500 years ago, the first Sinhalese came to Sri Lanka from India. This was hundreds of years after Tamils were settled in the kingdom in the north at Jaffna (Yazhpanam). Sinhalese is, perhaps, a term originating from King Vijayan, who was expelled from the kingdom of Sinhapura in India and arrived in Sri Lanka 543 BC. He and his people engaged in combat with the Tamil aborigines. They established the Kandi and Kottai kingdoms in the central and southern areas.

The Sinhalese are among many ethnic groups who speak an Indo-Aryan language, Pali, believed to have developed in Sindh, Gujarat and Bengal areas about 3000 years ago. They early became practitioners of Buddhism, an off-shot of Hinduism, which is the religion that most Tamils adopted. Buddhism was created by the prince, Siddhartha Gautama, in the 6th century BC. Most Sinhalese adopted Buddhism but some were converted to Christianity, which was first introduced by traders from Syria, in the 1st or 2nd century after Christ.

The Sinhalese and Tamils have distinct ethnic backgrounds, languages and religions. The vast majority of both peoples has always lived in separate regions of Sri Lanka and they have often been at war. The Sinhalese adopted the chauvinistic attitude that their language and religion were the only true ones and they must reign throughout Sri Lanka. All other religions were alien. This notion seems to have originated, or been fortified, by the historical poem Mahavamsa (“Great Chronicle”) written in Pali by the Buddhist monk Mahatera Mahanama. It covers nearly one thousand years of Sinhalese kingdom history in Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese maintain that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation because, they claim, it has been so throughout history—although they count the beginning of national history with Mahanama’s account of the first Sinhalese kingdom of Vijaya, in 543 BC. The fact that Tamil Eelams had kingdoms in Sri Lanka for many hundreds of years is ignored.

When the first Europeans, Portuguese traders, landed in Sri Lanka, in 1505, they encountered three native kingdoms: two Sinhalese kingdoms at Kottai and Kandi, and the Tamils in Jaffna peninsula. Although the Portuguese were traders, they brought fire power and eventually seized power militarily from the Kottai kingdom. Despite their superior weaponry, it took them decades to defeat the kingdoms at Jaffna and Kandi, yet resistance remained throughout Portuguese occupation. The Portuguese named the island Ceilão, which the English later transliterated as Ceylon.

In 1658, Dutch invaders arrived. The Dutch United East India Company sided with the Kandi resistance to defeat the Portuguese. But when the natives realized the Dutch sought total control, the Kandians organized guerilla warfare. In 1766, the Dutch took sovereignty over the entire coastline but not the entire island where some Tamils and Sinhalese remained independent.

In 1795, the British landed and kicked out the Dutch within a year. They realized there were two separate nations of natives. In June 1796, the British Colonial Secretary, Sir Hugh Cleghorn wrote to his government:

“Two different nations, from a very ancient period, have divided between them the possession of the Island: the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior in its southern and western parts from the river Wallouwe to Chilaw, and the Malabars (Tamils) who possess the northern and eastern districts. These two nations differ entirely in their religion, language and manners.”

It took the Brits a generation to defeat resisting natives. In 1811, they defeated Bandara Vanniyan and his guerrilla resisters in the Tamil Vanni territory. In 1815, the British finally captured the last of the Kandyan kingdom.

The European invaders were only interested in the riches they could steal. They converted the peasant based agricultural economy into an export one. The island was rich in cinnamon and other spices, coconuts and graphite. English colonialists converted much of the land into tea, coffee and rubber plantations.

Religion was used by the colonialists to dominate and pacify the natives. The Portuguese spread Catholicism in an organized manner. Some Tamils and some Sinhalese converted or were forced to convert. Both the Dutch and English continued the process with their Protestant missionaries, yet most natives held onto their beliefs in either Buddhism or Hinduism. Islamism was also introduced by Arab traders.

“Sri Lanka as British-ruled Ceylon was subjected to a classic divide-and-rule,” wrote John Pilger.

The English had to have their tea so they created tea plantations in the mountainous regions, especially in the center of the country where Sinhalese lived. But Sinhalese would not work them so the Brits “brought Tamils from India as virtual slave labor while building an educated Tamil middle-class to run the colony,” continued Pilger.² Only a few indigenous Tamils, however, ran anything, but some educated ones took the opportunity to sit on top of the bottom castes.

A hierarchy of “races”, classes and castes was perpetrated among native ethnic groups and new arrivals. In the mid-1800s, English and German scholars adopted an ideology of superiority first based on language and then on race. The English viewed Sinhalese as cousins in the large Aryan family. Brits (and Germans) were the “superior” white Aryans; the Sinhalese lesser Indo-Aryans, and Tamils were the colonized proletariat, the “black inferior race.” This fit in nicely with the Sinhalese elite notion of superiority, based on their precious book of mythology, Mahavamsa. In the 1870s, a German scholar, Max Muller, writing about language origins, especially Indo-Aryan, first coined the term “Aryan race”—something he later regretted.³

Europeans took it for granted that Greek and Latin were superior languages, and they saw affinities with Sanskrit, from which Sinhalese is derived. Given this identity, it was easier for the colonialists to drive a wedge deeper between the indigenous peoples, and all the more so by allowing Sinhalese to own land without having to work the British tea and rubber plantations in the center of the country. The Brits left the aboriginal Tamils stay in their homeland in the north and east, but brought between 800,000 and 1.5 million Tamils from India to work the fields; nearly one-fourth died in route. It is estimated that 70,000 Tamil Nadu died on route in the 1840s. Their story parallels that of Africans forced into slavery and brought to the Americas.

Ironically, it was protestant missionaries who contributed greatly to the development of political awareness among Tamils in the north and east, and led to a revival of the Hindu faith as a reaction against Christian domination. We find many examples of this in modern history, such as the increasing interest among Arabs in practicing strict Islamic customs, including separate gender rules, as a reaction to the invasions and occupations of Western imperialism in the Middle-East. Something similar is occurring in Palestine in response to the apartheid enforced by Zionist Jews.

Led by revivalist Arumuga Navalar in the mid-1800s, Tamils in the north and east built their own schools, temples, associations and presses. Literacy was used to spread Hinduism and its principles. Tamils published their own literature and newspapers to counter the ideology-religion of the missionaries. Tamils thought confidently of themselves as a community, thus lending to the legitimacy of their later assertion of the necessity to be treated equally with the Sinhalese or be granted—or take—their own autonomy as Eelam Tamils.

For some of the time that Britain ruled the island different colonial governors recognized equality of the native peoples, yet played one against the other. In 1833, the British mandated the administrative unification of the country while incorporating the different native administrative structures that existed earlier. The new legislative council was composed of three Europeans and one representative from the Sinhalese, the Ceylon Tamils and the Burghers—a Euro-Asian minority, Creole descendants of European colonialists who spoke a mixture of Indo-Portuguese. They had been converted to Protestantism.

Tamil laborers brought from India had no say nor did the few Arab Muslims. Racist Sinhalese massacred many in 1915. In 1930, another hard-working minority, Malayali plantation workers, were attacked by Sinhalese and most fled back to Kerala.

In 1921, the colonialists altered the legislative council so that Sinhalese acquired 13 seats to three for the Tamils. From here on out, Tamils developed a communal consciousness as a minority. In 1931, the Brits changed the rules again by incorporating the notion of universal franchise—one man one vote including for castes. Most Sinhalese opposed this progressive measure, seeking to maintain classes and castes while agreeing to part of the rule allowing them, as the majority, to have a decisive say over the minority Tamils. The issue of representative power-sharing, and not the structure of government, was used by nationalists of both communities to create an escalating inter-ethnic rivalry, which has been the dominant trend since.

Britain’s vacillating ruling strategy throughout their 150 year domination led to sporadic episodes of violence between Sinhalese and Tamils, often expressed as religious conflicts between Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims. More often than not, it was Buddhists who first attacked other ethnic peoples who held other faiths. The Brits often held police on the sidelines.

In the 1930s, and especially during World War II, Sinhalese and Tamils spoke out for independence. Various left-wing parties and coalitions arose, and some conservative groupings as well. Many natives hoped for a German victory over the hated English colonialists.

Tamils struggled to have their language placed on equal terms with Sinhalese, and replace English as the official language. Some Sinhalese leaders agreed but many did not. In 1939, a Tamil leader, G.G. Ponnambalam, spoke against the common Sinhalese notion, taken from the Mahavamsa, that their language should be the only official language and Buddhism the only official religion. Angry at the speech, Sinhalese mobs bashed and killed many Tamils. This time the British stopped the riots, but the roots to the upcoming 26-year long civil war had been laid.

Once WW II ended, the British Empire realized it had to give in to so many native peoples struggling for sovereignty. India won dominion status in 1947, a slight reform until full independence in 1950. The civil disobedience movement led by Mahatma Gandhi had succeeded yet he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist on January 30, 1948. Gandhi sought unity among all Indians, but most Muslims wanted their own State after colonialism. Many Muslims were killed in riots; many lost their homes. Gandhi believed it morally correct for India to compensate them with finances. Many Hindu nationalists opposed this, and it led to his murder.

Great numbers of Hindus in India discriminated against non-Hindus just as Buddhist Sinhalese discriminate against Hindus and Muslims. The percentage of Tamils in Sri Lanka has been reduced from 30% to 12.6%. Tens of thousands have been murdered before and during the recent war, and as many as one million have fled the country, part of a massive Diaspora, like the Jews.⁴

1. This condensed history is gleaned from many sources: author Maravanpulavu K. Sachithananthan; Latin American Friendship Association, Tamilnadu, India; Wikipedia: many articles about Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka and their histories, religions and languages; Tamilnation.org and many other sections in this comprehensive Tamil self-determination website. I am uncertain about the exactitude of origins, who came first, specific dates, or how to determine linguistic lineages. The record is unclear. But what is clear is that Sinhalese have judged and treated Tamils as inferior beings.
2. John Pilger, “Distant Voices, Desperate Lives,” New Statesman, May 13, 2009.
3. See chapter 13. “Understanding the Aryan Theory,” by Marisa Angell, a Usamerican Jew. The chapter is part of Culture and Politics of Identity in Sri Lanka, edited by Mithran Tiruchelvam and Dattathreya C.S., published by International Center for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1998.
4. Current population statistics of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka—so named since 1978—show a population of 21 million people. 74% (15 million) Sinhalese; 12.6% (2.5 million) Tamil; 7.4% (1.5 million) Moors; 5.2% (1 million) Indian Tamil. 93% of Sinhalese are Buddhists, and the remainder Christian. 60% Tamils are Hindus, 28% are Muslim and 12% Christian.

Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are our enemies… Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers.
– President Fidel Castro.¹

The revolutionary [is] the ideological motor force of the revolution…if he forgets his proletarian internationalism, the revolution which he leads will cease to be an inspiring force and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy, which imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize well. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we educate our people.
– Che Guevara²

I think that the governments of Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua let down the entire Tamil population in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as well as “proletarian internationalism” and the “exploited”, by extending unconditional support to Sri Lanka’s racist government.

Cuba did so—along with the Bolivian and Nicaraguan governments and members of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America)—on May 27, 2009 when signing a UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution praising the government of Sri Lanka for “the promotion and protection of human rights”, while only condemning for terrorism the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which fought the government in a civil war since 1983 until their defeat on May 19, 2009.

During the last year of war, the Sri Lankan government illegally and brutally interned nearly half-a-million Tamil civilians; 280,000 of these civilians were entrapped in several “welfare centers” upon the LTTE’s surrender. Half-a-year later, only a few thousand have been released. Their conditions are the opposite of “promotion and protection of human rights”. Hundreds have died and are dying for lack of food, water, basic health care.

Since advocating for and signing the unbalanced HRC resolution, I have found no text or evidence that these progressive-revolutionary-socialist governments of ALBA have criticized Sri Lanka for routinely practicing brutality and neglecting basic life necessities of these illegally interned people. The conduct of Sinhalese-led governments towards Tamils ever since Sri Lanka’s independence from Great Britain, in 1947-8, has always been one of mistreatment and inequality, even genocide.

While ALBA leader Venezuela is not a member of that council, President Hugo Chavez followed suit by applauding Sri Lanka’s victory.³ I hope that these revolutionary leaders will undo that damage by coming to the aid of the interned and all 2.5 million Tamil survivors of this horrible carnage and condemning Sri Lanka for its beastly and racist conduct. Tamils national rights must also be recognized, especially by governments representing other indigenous and once enslaved peoples.

In this first of a five-part series, I begin to lay the case that Sri Lanka’s governments practice genocide. I will also speculate about why the four ALBA countries involved in this matter could have decided to ignore this reality, why they disallowed an investigation into the assertion, and why they support such a cruel, chauvinistic regime. In the forthcoming parts, I will sketch the history of the Sinhalese and Tamils; outline the right and necessity for Tamil nationhood; delineate their struggles for equal rights; and show the geo-political power game being played out between the west and its’ sometimes antagonistic counterpart regimes in China and Iran; and conclude with the present state of affairs for Tamils.

Human Rights Council Resolution S-11/1: Assistance to Sri Lanka in the promotion and protection of human rights

Upon the end of the war, 17 countries on the 47-member Human Rights Council called for an extraordinary session about the Sri Lankan situation. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, spoke for an “independent and credible international investigation” into the reports of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law on both sides of the civil war.

“For its part, the Government reportedly used heavy artillery on the densely populated conflict zone, despite assurances that it would take precautions to protect civilians”… and the “reported shelling of a hospital clinic on several occasions”…”

“These people are in desperate need of food, water, medical help and other forms of basic assistance… there have already been outbreaks of contagious diseases.”

“The images of terrified and emaciated women, men and children fleeing the battle zone… must spur us into action.”

Pillay’s professional, compassionate and balanced proposal was not tabled or even discussed. Instead 17 members—mostly EU countries and Canada, but also Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico and Chile—proposed only that an investigation into these charges of human rights abuse be pursued by the Sri Lankan government itself, that is: the government investigating its brutality, hardly anything radical or effective. This, and the call for “rapid and unhindered access” for humanitarian aid from the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross, was the only significant difference from another resolution proposed by the majority, mostly Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) countries. Chile was the only NAM member to vote against the majority, which wanted no investigation at all. And the “rapid and unhindered access” for humanitarian aid was reduced to: “provide access as may be appropriate”, thereby giving Sri Lanka’s government the power to use food/water/medicine as a weapon against their enemy: the Tamil people and not the now defeated LTTE.

Sri Lanka was present at the HRC sessions as an observer. It had been a member from 2006 to 2008 when it lost reelection as one of the six Asian State members. Poignantly overlooked by most NAM members assembled a year later, it had been severely criticized by Tamils around the world and by internationally respected Nobel Peace Prize winners Desmond Tutu and Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

“The systematic abuses by Sri Lanka government forces are among the most serious imaginable. Torture and extrajudicial killings are widespread [as is] kidnappings of its own people,” said Tutu in May 2008 when opposing its seat on the Human Rights Council.

A year later, the HRC majority unfastidiously praised Sri Lanka for continuing “to uphold its human rights obligations and the norms of international human rights law”. The key promoter of the majority resolution was, to my dismay, Cuba—the homeland of my heart and where I had lived and worked for the government for eight years.

The Cuban ambassador to the Council, Juan Antonio Fernández Palacios—who also spoke on behalf of the NAM—praised Sri Lanka’s governments over the years, and “congratulates” it on “putting an end” to the armed conflict. A key sentence is: “Sri Lanka’s sovereign right to fight terrorism and separatism within its undisputed borders must be respected.” The words “separatism” and “undisputed borders” will be dealt with at length later. But no one familiar with the history of Sinhalese and Tamils for decades since independence and centuries before could have chosen to speak of “undisputed borders”. Tamils had a homeland, two kingdoms, for centuries before the Sinhalese came to the island and for centuries afterwards.

Cuba also acted as a special advocate for Sri Lanka as an “interlocutor”, in addition to Egypt, India and Pakistan. The resolution about Sri Lanka was actually its own draft, which Cuba tabled.⁴

Just before the vote, the Bolivian HRC ambassador, Ms. Angélica Navarro Llames, made it clear she was perturbed by the manner in which many of the 17 countries had presented their resolution and for insisting upon a special meeting just a week before the scheduled one. She objected to “neocolonialist attitudes”. The Bolivian then spoke of LTTE terrorism used against the people and the government and people, and defended its right to fight for its sovereignty.

Resolution S-11/1 adopted by the majority (29 members for, 12 against, 6 abstentions). Here are pertinent excerpts:

Reaffirming the respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and its sovereign rights to protect its citizens and combat terrorism,

Condemning all attacks that the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) launched on the civilian population and its practice of using civilians as human shields…

Welcoming the conclusion of hostilities and the liberation by the Government of Sri Lanka of tens of thousands of its citizens that were kept by the LTTE against their will as hostages, as well as the efforts by the Government to ensure safety and security for all Sri Lankans and bringing permanent peace to the country…

Emphasizing that after the conclusion of hostilities, the priority in terms of human rights remains the provision of the necessary assistance to ensure relief and rehabilitation of persons affected by the conflict, including internally displaced persons, as well as the reconstruction of the country’s economy and infrastructure,

Encouraged by the provision of basic humanitarian assistance, in particular, safe drinking water, sanitation, food, and medical and health care services to the IDPs [Internally Displaced Persons] by the Government of Sri Lanka with the assistance of the United Nations agencies…

1. Commends the measures taken by the Government of Sri Lanka to address the urgent needs of the Internally Displaced Persons;

2. Welcomes the continued commitment of Sri Lanka to the promotion and protection of all human rights and encourages it to continue to uphold its human rights obligations and the norms of international human rights law;…

5. Acknowledges the commitment of the Government of Sri Lanka to provide access as may be appropriate to international humanitarian agencies in order to ensure humanitarian assistance to the population affected by the conflict, in particular IDPs…

In Favour: Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Madagascar, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Uruguay, Zambia;

Against: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;

Abstaining: Argentina, Gabon, Japan, Mauritius, Republic of Korea, Ukraine.”⁴

I will show in upcoming articles how points 1, 2, and 5 cited here have never been the reality; Sri Lanka has not respected Tamils lives or their rights nor provided them their “urgent needs.”

Terrorism and Genocide

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was first dubbed a terrorist organization by India, in 1992. Ironically, it wasn’t until 1998 that Sri Lanka’s government so characterized them, and it did so only after the US did, in 1997. On May 30, 2006, the EU placed LTTE on its terrorist list and banned the organization. It made it a terrorist crime to economically or military aid LTTE, and it froze all LTTE bank and financial assets in Europe. The EU appeared to be even-handed by calling upon the Sri Lankan government to end its “culture of impunity” and to “curb violence” in its areas of control. At the time of LTTE’s defeat, 32 countries had defined them as terrorists.

Never having been in Sri Lanka or South Asia, it is difficult for me to know whether LTTE was a decidedly terrorist organization or not—that is, one which seeks to terrorize civilians. After reading many accounts of atrocities, such as killing hundreds of civilian Sinhalese in their homes, on buses and trains, I conclude that this once Marxist revolutionary organization resorted to terrorism.

At the same time, it must not be forgotten that any liberation movement the world’s greatest state terrorist, the United States of America does not agree with is “terrorist” and therefore illegitimate. Other terrorists, such as the government of the separatist state of Kosovo, are no longer considered terrorist although its drug-smuggling paramilitary organization had been so described, even by the US. Superpowers support or oppose autonomy-independence when it suits their interests. This is also the case with Ireland, the Basques in Spain, and the Palestinians.

Furthermore, the US systematically practices terrorism in its permanent war—invading or “intervening” militarily in 66 countries, a total of 159 times since World War Two.

We must lament the unacceptable methods the LTTE used against many people, and do so without ignoring the history of why and how it was born. Nor must we reject out-of-hand the basic rights and needs of the Tamil people. Their plight must not be abandoned, especially by governments and organizations grounded in anti-imperialism and equality amongst peoples.

Sri Lanka’s history since independence is one of conducting genocide against the Tamils. Genocide is defined by the UN, and Sri Lanka ratified its promise to adhere to it on October 12, 1950.The Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted December 9, 1948 and entered into force, January 12, 1951, states:

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
   (a) Killing members of the group;
   (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
   (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
   (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
   (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.⁵

Destroying “in whole or in part” an ethnic group is certainly what Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese governments, as well as Buddhist monks, have been doing to the Tamils for six decades. Evidence will be forthcoming. There is so much evidence that even a former US deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan Administration filed a 12-count indictment against S.L. defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse and army commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka for “perpetrating genocide against Tamil civilians.”

The suit was filed by Bruce Fein, in February 2009, in the U.S. District Court, Central District of California.

The case can be filed in the US because G. Rajapakse is a naturalized citizen and Fonseka holds a resident green card. They are charged with responsibility for: “3,750 alleged extrajudicial killings, with 10,000 suffering bodily injury and more than 1.3 million displacements,” which, according to Fein, “far exceed displacements in Kosovo which led to genocide counts before the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.”

Fein noted that G. Rajapakse said in a BBC interview that, “if you are not fighting the Tamil Tigers you are a terrorist and we’ll kill you.” The attorney represents Tamils Against Genocide. He believes that G. Rajapakse will be “the best witness of the genocide.”

Why ALBA voted as it did: Some points of contention:

I ask the three ALBA governments, which voted for the above resolution, to take Sri Lanka’s government to account on the serious charge of genocide against the Tamil people. At the very least, ALBA should be able to see that hundreds of thousands of displaced persons are brutally treated, and that routine discrimination and abuse have been the Tamil’s plight at the hands of Sinhalese. This is a dichotomy to ALBA’s ideology of equal rights for all: in language, in religion, in the economy, in all aspects of life. In fact, the very new constitution of Bolivia recognizes itself as a pluri-nation in which all the languages and religions of all the peoples are recognized equally. The same is the case in Venezuela with its new constitution.

How can it be, then, that these peoples’ governments have fallen in the arms of such an oppressive, racist government? Possible reasons are:

1. Separatism! It is ironic and ideologically insupportable that anti-imperialist progressive and revolutionary leaders in Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia—mainly dark-skinned peoples, and many of them, especially in Bolivia, are Original Peoples long abused by many whites and creoles—side with the Sinhalese chauvinist elite in Sri Lanka. Perhaps they have not studied the sordid history of Sri Lanka. But more certainly is it that they do not support separatism or dual nationhood within one land mass. Cuba especially has, from its revolutionary start, argued for unity. What Cuba and the others fail to realize or acknowledge is that the Tamil people had tried for decades to achieve equal rights with the Sinhalese, many of whom assert adherence to Marxism, yet to no avail. Most Sinhalese do not wish to unify equally with the other ethnic group. Once peaceful means are exhausted, armed struggle is the only means to achieve liberation, as was the case with Cuba and other Latin American guerrilla movements.

In the case of Sri Lanka and separatism, ALBA governments could be prompted to side with it because of, in part, the role of China! The threat of separatism, which has been the desire of many Tibetan Buddhists, is an impelling factor for China’s position of one nation in its own region, and may be how it views the situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Here, China sides, ironically, with Buddhists against Hindus-Christians-Muslims.

Bolivia and Venezuela, too, are pressed by separatist demands but they come not from an ethnic group but from a rich class of Whites-Creoles, which has no historic ethnic Homeland.

2. Geo-politics! Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated governments have been supported militarily and economically by many States, some of which are sometimes antagonistic to one another. Some leftist governments and leftist organizations often operate on the notion that the enemy of my enemy is a friend. If that is the way some socialist-communist-revolutionaries view China and Iran, both totalitarian regimes, in regards to US-Europe-Canada-Australia-Japan imperialism when it comes to Sri Lanka they are mistaken. Surely there are economic and geo-political interests on the part of China and Iran in investing and trading with countries in development, including Sri Lanka but also Cuba and all in Latin America. Fortunately most Latin Americans and the majority of their governments have ceased jumping when a US president or general barks, and they are combining in regional alliances and seeking foreign investments and aid from non-traditional partners.

Since China and Iran began extending their interests into Sri Lanka and sided with its brutal treatment of Tamils, many leftists and progressive governments could think in the black-white geo-political manner. The US-EU states, for their own propaganda image, question Sri Lanka for possible abuses of human rights against Tamils. Ah, no one with experience or knowledge about the duplicity of the empire and its allies could side with them so one must back the other side.

But China is no longer socialist, rather its economy is mainly based on government-sponsored private enterprise with exploitation of labor in the extreme: no union protection, long work hours, low wages, child labor, no say on the job or national and international policies. The working class no longer even has access to full education and health care without paying on a capitalist basis. In fact, workers in most capitalist countries in Europe have better access to health care than workers do in China. Millionaire capitalists now sit on leadership bodies of the so-called Communist Party, and make important decisions over the heads of workers and the population. China is interested mainly in accumulating capital in the grand old raw capitalist style, and it owns more of the US economy (8%) than any other government or economic entity. China’s economy is intricately interdependent upon the US’s capitalism and its imperialist wars.

Iran is run by fundamentalist religious fanaticism. Its economy is basically a capitalist one. Its working class, just as the working class in China, is not a decision-maker. Iran is also a warring partner with US imperialism in its illegal war against Iraq, whose troops are a key factor in the violence against millions of Iraqis. Iran supports their co-religious Muslims in the Quisling government under US domination.

Is it possible that the developing countries, which back Sri Lanka against the Tamil population, do so out of economic reasons? China and Iran provide needed investments and technology and thus one must not criticize. Is that possible, and if so is it ethical, is it consistent with our humanitarian principles and socialist ideology? Cannot one be a trading partner without cowing politically?

Another issue is secularism. The ALBA countries and all truly socialist oriented governments are not and cannot be theocracies! How can secular nation states and organizations consider the Sri Lanka state “democratic socialist” when it declares a religion, and only one, as THE national and official religion? Secularism is the only common ground by which all can be united.

Conclusion

I concur with progressive Tamils in the Tamil Nadu state of India, who have for decades supported Cuba and the new ALBA formation. The Latin American Friendship Association there has held many solidarity activities for these countries, and published scores of books by Latin American authors, including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Upon learning of the HRC resolution, they were appalled. The author of the excerpted letter below is Amarantha Visalakshi. For 25 years, she has translated books about Latin America into Tamil and written some herself.

We here in Tamil Nadu celebrated the 80th birthday of Comrade Fidel by releasing eight books on Cuba’s achievements in various fields… and are in the midst of our preparation for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and evaluation of the consolidation of Latin American countries in ALBA…

We are struck dumb and rendered disheartened and disillusioned by this act [the HRC resolution] by those countries of Latin America on which we have pinned our hopes for the future—Socialism of the 21st century.

Why do these countries wish for wiping out the Tamils from the Sri Lankan soil where they rightfully belong? What are the sources of information for these Latin American countries to decide against the Tamils and in favour of the racist Sri Lankan government in the UN Human Rights Council?… more than any other time we feel the absence of Che Guevara, the true internationalist, who laid down his life for the oppressed people of the world.

I also concur with Australia’s largest left-wing organization, the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance, which publishes greenleft.org.au.

We need “to undertake work to help convince the revolutionary governments of Latin America, including Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, to cease support for the Sri Lankan government, and to recognize the national rights of the Tamil people. There is a long-run danger if revolutionary governments, for whatever reason, fail to support genuine movements for national self-determination in Third World countries, and endorse repressive regimes on the basis of a bogus ‘anti-imperialism…’”

1. Fidel told writer-photographer Lee Lockwood: Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel, Macmillan, N.Y. 1967.
2. Socialism and man, Marcha, Uruguay, March 12, 1965.
3. “Hugo Chavez praises President Rajapaksa’s leadership in defeating LTTE”, Sri Lanka Daily News, September 4, 2009. In this piece, published by a pro-government newspaper, there is not one quotation by Hugo Chavez, who spoke with Rajapakse when they were in Libya. The piece paraphrases what the anonymous writer asserts Chavez having said; an example: Chavez apparently said that the defeat of LTTE terrorism “is a glowing example to other countries beset with the same problem,” words of the writer. Chavez allegedly praised Rajapakse for his leadership.
4. 1, 2, 3.
5. Source. Although the US signed the 1948 convention, it did not accede to it until November 1988. As of 2008, 140 nation states have acceded.

It was a relief to hear that the government of Sri Lanka was at last responding to mounting domestic and international criticism, and had begun releasing the Vanni IDPs. Perhaps the shocking report in the Sunday Times on 6 September about human trafficking at the internment camps was partly responsible. An exemplary piece of investigative journalism, it revealed that up to 20,000 IDPs had been ransomed by desperate relatives who were able and willing to pay lakhs of rupees to secure their release, and had left the camps. This exposes so-called ‘screening for Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres’ for what it is: a cover for a lucrative flesh trade, carried out with the collusion of elements in the government and armed forces who get a cut out of it. It also explains why the camp authorities refused to release a one-year-old child to leave with its grandmother, in a case cited by V. Anandasangaree of the Tamil United Liberation Front: since an infant could hardly be suspected of being a dreaded LTTE terrorist, the reason was surely that a ransom had not been paid.

One would have to be naïve indeed to believe that those who have been ransomed are ‘innocent’ while those who remain are more likely to be LTTE cadres. On the contrary, anyone in the camps who had any value for the LTTE diaspora would certainly have escaped by now. Conversely, we can be sure that the unfortunate souls left rotting in these camps are of no interest to whatever remains of the LTTE. They are the victims, not perpetrators, of crimes. The UN too seems to have woken up to the fact that by funding these camps it is colluding, willy-nilly, in a crime against humanity – the denial of liberty and other fundamental human rights to a civilian population – and has made it clear that it cannot continue doing so much longer. UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe reiterated the demand that the Vanni IDPs should be granted freedom of movement during his recent visit.

While we welcome the government’s announcement that it is willing to release IDPs from the camps to relatives willing to house them, it is a matter of concern that even while President Rajapaksa was telling Mr Pascoe that the reason so few Internally displaced persons (IDPs) had been released to live with their relatives was because there were so few applications, the GA of Vavuniya was refusing to release IDPs to their relatives! This suggests that ransoms are still being demanded, and IDPs unable to pay them are not being released. The government’s condition that IDPs should be released only to relatives makes sense for unaccompanied children, but why can’t adults go and live in rented accommodation instead of staying with relatives if they so choose?

Furthermore, the whole farce of ‘screening’, which has been dragged on for more than four months, should be stopped. The best proof that the LTTE is no longer a threat in Sri Lanka is the release of top LTTE cadres Daya Master and George Master, who were with Prabakaran almost to the very end. Would the authorities have released them on bail if there were any danger from the LTTE? Hardly. If they can be released, why are lakhs of innocent civilians being detained? Did the President avoid the UN General Assembly because he was unable to answer this question?

Release should not be confused with resettlement. IDPs who wish to go and live outside the camps should be free to do so. Those who wish to remain in the camps until their original habitats are de-mined and reconstructed should be allowed to remain, but should be free to move in and out of the camps instead of being imprisoned in them as they are now, and free to leave permanently as and when they wish. The only condition attached should be that they inform the international and local agencies which are providing for them whenever they leave for good, to make it clear that there is no need to feed them any longer. The resources freed by their departure could be used to speed up de-mining and reconstruction in the war-devastated areas, and will undoubtedly improve conditions for those who choose to remain in the camps. The release of all the Vanni IDPs would end this shameful chapter in Sri Lanka’s history.

Resettlement

Pressure on the government to ensure speedy resettlement of all IDPs should also be kept up. This should include not only IDPs who fled the recent fighting but also those who were displaced earlier, including Muslims displaced in 1990. Citizens’ committees would need to be set up to deal with problems, such as those which occur where others are living in the homes of displaced people who wish to return. It will not be easy, but with goodwill, these problems can be resolved, and the sooner the better. All those who want to return to their original homes should be accommodated, if not in their original homes, at least in the neighbourhood, or in some other place of their choice. This is the only way to reverse the ethnic cleansing drives carried out by both the state and the LTTE, and rebuild integrated communities.

An unnecessary obstacle to resettlement is created by the government’s designation of some of the areas from which people have been displaced as ‘High Security Zones’ (HSZs), some of which double as ‘Special Economic Zones’(!). Earlier attempts to dismantle these were stalled by the argument that they were necessary so long as the LTTE had not been disarmed. Now that the LTTE has definitively been disarmed, they serve no justifiable purpose. The only way their persistence can be explained is as a form of ethnic cleansing, since in practically every case, the people displaced by them are Tamils and Muslims. A good example is Sampur in the East, where the inhabitants were driven out by shelling and are now being denied the right to return, while India colludes in this ethnic cleansing by undertaking to build a coal-fired power plant on their land. The process of resettlement cannot be regarded as complete until people displaced by HSZs have also been granted the right of return. But, some people argue, the LTTE is still a threat, and therefore we need to retain the HSZs, along with the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and Emergency provisions. Is this true?

Is the War Over? Or Was the President Lying?

Back in May, President Rajapaksa gave a speech in which he claimed that ‘our Motherland has been completely freed from the clutches of separatist terrorism’. He spoke of ‘the proud victory we have achieved today by defeating the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization’ and ‘the defeat of the LTTE and the breakdown of their armed strength’. There was no ambiguity about his words: he told us that the war was over, the LTTE defeated, their armed strength broken down. On this understanding, there were widespread celebrations, and the President gained enormous popularity.

There is no reason to suppose that the President was lying. Yet in August a senior government official was reported as saying that the LTTE was still capable of reorganising in Sri Lanka, and in September IGP Jayantha Wickramaratne reiterated that the threat of the Tamil Tigers is still alive in Sri Lanka, and they have not been completely defeated. On the face of it, these people were implying that the President was a liar when he said that Sri Lanka had been completely freed from separatist terrorism, and a fraud for claiming credit for the defeat of the LTTE. So why does the President tolerate such insults from his underlings?

The reason seems to be that the government is caught in the same trap of war-dependence which was the downfall of the LTTE. A war justifies repressive measures that would never be acceptable in peacetime, and the LTTE would have been unable to function without these. That is why it broke one ceasefire after another, let slip one opportunity after another to negotiate a just peace. But this had a disastrous effect on its support base. With all due respect to the soldiers who risked and lost their lives in the war, their courage alone would not have brought about the defeat of the LTTE. The Israeli armed forces are many times stronger than the Sri Lankan military, and the Palestinians’ arsenal is pathetic by comparison with that of the LTTE, yet the Palestinian resistance has survived for over sixty years. That is because it has the support of the people: precisely what the LTTE lost due to its dependence on war.

The last straw appears to have been the peace process which began in 2002. It ushered in an unprecedentedly long cessation of hostilities, and made it clearer than ever that the LTTE was incapable of handling peace. I was among those who criticised the 2002 CFA for allowing the LTTE a free hand to kill Tamil dissidents, conscript children and prepare for war, but in retrospect, I can see that it also served a positive purpose. Karuna’s defection was only the visible tip of a vast iceberg of discontent, as Tamil people who had hoped the LTTE would deliver them from fear, humiliation and violence realised that it offered them only more of the same. Their disillusionment and consequent withdrawal of support allowed the state to defeat the LTTE.

Now the Rajapaksa regime faces the same dilemma that Prabakaran faced earlier: if the war is over, how can it justify the measures that give absolute and unaccountable power to the state? So it has to invent an ‘LTTE threat’ in order to continue with policies that would be unacceptable in peacetime. But the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka are not fools. They will realise, like the Tamil people before them, that this ‘threat’ is simply being concocted to justify disastrous economic and political choices. With all the fire and brimstone directed against foreign-funded NGOs, it is amusing to note that Sri Lanka now has a government that is dependent on foreign funding. The Ministry of Finance and Planning reported in August 2008 that the national debt stood at over 3 trillion rupees, with 1.39 trillion being foreign debt. The IMF loan eased the immediate problem, but at the cost of getting the country deeper in debt: in other words, it can repay its debts only by expanding them, placing an ever greater burden on the people. If the EU Generalised System of Preferences facility is lost, the economy will plunge even deeper in the red. In this context, detaining lakhs of civilians and expanding the armed forces constitute unnecessary and ruinous expenditures.

The social and political costs are equally huge. Horrific reports of police brutality, including the murder of two boys, Dhanushka Aponso and Dinesh Fernando, at Angulana and the abduction and torture of student Nipuna Ramanayake by SSP Vaas Gunawardene and other officers of the Colombo Crime Division, are reminiscent of the murders of the schoolboys of Embilipitiya in 1989-90, and result from the same conditions: rampant impunity for crimes committed by politicians in power, the state security forces and the police. This impunity, in turn, is fostered by the suspension of the rule of law resulting from the PTA and Emergency Regulations, which can only be justified by claiming that the LTTE is still a threat.

The only way to reverse the degradation of Sri Lanka’s economy and polity is to acknowledge that the war is over and take the appropriate measures: release all the Vanni IDPs immediately, slash military spending, dismantle the paramilitaries, redeploy demobilised soldiers to civilian reconstruction tasks, replace military and ex-military administrators with civilian ones, dismantle the HSZs, resettle all displaced civilians including those displaced by HSZs, repeal the PTA and Emergency Regulations, restore democratic rights, especially to freedom of expression, and release J.S. Tissainayagam and others incarcerated for exercising this right. The best way to ensure that Sri Lanka retains its EU GSP+ facility is to do the right thing, failing which, the government must take full responsibility for the loss of jobs and revenue.

While the Tamils were being butchered by the Sri Lankan State, global Tamils protested peacefully. Despite that, the UN and many other powerful countries failed to support the victims of State terrorism other than issuing statements condemning the Sri Lankan State and the LTTE. And finally, the world demanded the Tamils’ defensive cadres, the LTTE, to silence their guns. But they failed to demand the Sri Lankan armed forces to follow suit. Furthermore, the Sri Lankan State punished civilians by keeping them in the Nazi-style camps tightly guarded by the armed forces in the militarized barbed-wire camps in Vavuniya without providing any basic facilities.

Australia was one of the countries that cried foul when thousands of Tamils were butchered by the Sri Lankan Sate. Despite all the hardships the Tamils endured–poor health, sanitation, lack of food and water, not to mention the further hardship the Tamils will face in the coming monsoon season–Australia extended their warmest greetings to Sri Lanka and consolidated their trade between the two countries. Thanks to Australia and others who continue to extend friendly relations with the terrorist States who have killed tens of thousands with abysmal records of human rights abuses. Sri Lanka’s intention to treat Tamils as human beings has vanished forever and for them, Tamils are history. Sri Lanka still fails to recognise the aspirations of the Tamil people as a nation.

Tamils’ claims validated

Although many countries did not hear the pleas of the global Tamils, the video shown on Channel 4, and thereafter the images circulating on the internet, reveal the mutilated, naked bodies of Tamil captives, both men and women. Many bodies in the pictures lacked torsos, limbs, and hands. While one image showed just the skeletal remains of the upper part of a body, another showed badly eaten away portions of the head of a slain man.

The video is more than written evidence to prove and to bring the Sri Lankan State to justice for unleashing the ethnic cleansing, especially targeted upon the Tamils. The Sinhala soldiers who speak in the Sinhala language did everything possible as vultures in the background of the dead waiting to prey on the dead bodies. These images are nauseating, reflecting the extreme chauvinistic and morbid tendencies of the Sinhala chauvinism perpetuated on the Tamils.

The UN wants the Sri Lankan government to set up an independent probe into the authenticity of a video clip aired on the BBC Channel, allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing prisoners. If the Sri Lankan government’s denial is validated as a result of an inquiry, the international community can rest easy and the government will have been vindicated according to them. They will use any excuse to absolve the Sri Lankan government of their crimes against humanity and enhance their impunity. Confident of the Sri Lankan government again cheating on this investigation which he describing the images as “horrendous,” the official said that it indicated a serious violation of international law if found to be authentic. The influence of the triple gem bestowed on Ban ki Moon and other UN officials visiting Sri Lanka prevails. The UN is as corrupt as the Sri Lankan government. They can do business together. It is indeed a disgrace that the UN has descended to this base level.

Now, the UN and the world community who speak of crimes against humanity in the civilized world have the right to speak out and bring the perpetrators of such crimes to book. Although Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC), ICC can book Sri Lanka as they did to other countries, especially of East European and African countries in the past. There are a few options, such as judges of the court. Also, several member states of the ICC can also formally file the case against Sri Lanka, and many other viable options are available to book Sri Lanka. But, the question is whether the UN and the ICC will do it.

Norway has already sounded out that they will support the move to charge Sri Lanka because Sri Lanka has unleashed violence on Tamils. Based on the video footage by the British broadcasting Channel 4 that depicted the cruel killings of Tamils, international peacemaker and Norwegian External Affairs Minister Erik Solheim has suggested that the global community investigate the war crimes committed by Sri Lanka.

Earlier, Erik Solheim led the peace keeping time on behalf of UN to settle the dispute between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government which resulted in futility. Further, he said he would urge for the UN and the International Community to commence an investigation. He said: “The Channel 4 video is more than solid evidence to accuse the government and those who committed the crime is punishable under law. Thousands of Tamils went missing during the bloody war and no one has questioned the government regarding this violation of Human Rights. The ruling government has wilfully ignored human rights and laid rules of their own. Without evidences, the UN was unable to proceed, but now we have the necessary docs to bring them under custody. Moreover, they have committed the punishable crime of kidnapping international journalists with their white van and I will urge the envoy to put an end to this atrocity.”

Sri Lanka condemns Norway and Britain

Upon bringing to light the video, the Sri Lankan President’s Media Unit released a statement saying the government “will make a strong protest to Channel 4 with regard to the contents of this video and also bring the matter to the notice of the relevant authorities…” It described the footage as “false and doctored.” It promised to “pursue remedies available with regard to the distortion of truth.”

Further, Sri Lankan leaders issued statements condemning Britain for permitting the Channel 4 broadcast without investigations. Little do they realise that in Britain, the mother of Parliamentary democracy, freedom of expression, even by the media, is sacred. Channel 4 representative Mr. Jonathan Miller commented on the Sri Lanka Government denial, saying: “I think Steven Spielberg would have had a hard job staging this grim scene. We were unable to verify the authenticity of the footage, but we did our level best to do so and we would not have broadcast our report had we not been confident with the expert analysis we received. Before we went to air, I watched the video with a leading Sri Lankan human rights investigator – a Sinhalese himself – who provided forensic insights into its authenticity. This investigator has many years of experience looking into abuses and impunity in his homeland, but he’d never seen anything like this.”

A column under the heading ‘Heil Solheim’ written by Gomin Dayasri on August 31 appearing in the Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence website, badly condemned the Norwegian Minister, Erik Solheim, and Channel 4. It further says that such periodic releases through friendly media sources are a part of LTTE false propaganda to discredit the Sri Lankan Forces, which have been duly exposed previously. There is not an iota of substance to relate it to Sri Lankan forces except for representations made in the voice cast of the narrator from the studio.

The writer claims, “For the record, previously too, Channel Four journalists were deported from the country for disseminating falsified pictorials, which they did not challenge. Channel Four has a history of desiring to discredit Sri Lanka and has fallen foul of the authorities and harbours a grievance; which does not make it a reliable objective media presenter.”

The statements from Sri Lankan leaders and the articles by well known Sinhala chauvinists appearing in the government websites clearly show that Sri Lanka will not respond cordially with the countries coming against the violations committed by the Sri Lankan State. Even powerful regional associations such as the European Union and NATO have done nothing to disapprove of Sri Lankan atrocities.

It is an irony that the descendant members of one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, such as the Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in Asia, cannot stand up, speak and join with the civilized world in condemning such barbarities. It is also because those who claim to be champions of such a civilization have disgracefully and unashamedly traded and capitulated its reputation for positions, wealth and power. Take the case of Karunanidhi asking the Indian Central government to verify the authenticity of the Channel 4 exposition as if it would ever happen.

And the global community remains a mute spectator; the Tamil people, who make up nearly 80 million world-wide, have not yet lost faith in the global governments completely.

As a civilized nation, Tamils gratefully extend their sincere thanks to BBC Channel 4 and JDSL for having the courage and the unrelenting efforts in revealing the truth which we believe they will continue to do. It is very important that, in the interests of justice against crimes against humanity, the veracity of the tapes in question be independently investigated once again and the world be told of their authenticity.

The Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa, who was to attend the UN sessions in New York with the usual entourage of 150 persons to prop him up, we are informed, has now chosen to attend the 40th anniversary of the founding of an international terrorist State of Libya under Gaddhafi. He will, we are sure, be more at home there, than in the company of some UN representatives. Ban ki Moon will undoubtedly miss him.

The Fate of Internally Displaced People

Perhaps the most urgent issue is the fate of internally displaced people (IDPs), especially the Vanni civilians who were displaced in the last stages of the war. Reports of conditions in the camps where they have been interned vary; but the central issue is not the conditions under which they are being detained, but the very fact of their detention. Various spurious arguments justifying it have been put forward by the government and its supporters, none of which hold water. The fact that in many cases their homes have been destroyed and the areas from which they come have been land-mined by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would certainly suggest that the government should offer them shelter until they can return safely, but that is very different from forcibly preventing them from leaving the camps, even if they have homes or relatives elsewhere. Indeed, one family has filed a fundamental rights petition before the Supreme Court, arguing that it is unconstitutional to detain them thus. The Supreme Court has allowed the reunification of this family within one of the camps, but the larger issue of the violation of fundamental rights still remains unaddressed.

Another argument is that LTTE cadres are hiding amongst the civilians, and therefore a process of screening needs to take place before they are released. This might have been plausible if there had been a steady stream of civilians being released as they were screened and cleared, but so far, only senior citizens have been released – that, too, after a court ruled that large numbers of elderly people were dying of dehydration and malnutrition. The plea by Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) leader Anandasangaree on behalf of a one-year-old child whose release had been refused by the authorities makes nonsense of the security argument: are we really to believe that it takes more than two months to ascertain whether or not infants are LTTE cadres who pose a threat to security? A report by the International Center for Strategic Defense that inmates can secure their release by bribing the military authorities running the camps 1-3 lakh rupees makes the ‘security’ claim even more farcical, and suggests that these hapless people are being held for ransom – unless, indeed, the purpose is even more sinister.

In fact, while the last batch of displaced people has now been interned for over two months, earlier batches have been deprived of their liberty for much longer. If this situation continues, it will become a Crime against Humanity as defined by the International Criminal Court (ICC), since it involves ‘severe deprivation of physical liberty’ and ‘severe deprivation of fundamental rights’ of a civilian population. With each passing day, the government’s claim that the assault on the LTTE’s last bastion was launched in order to free the civilians held hostage there looks less plausible, and the allegation that the real purpose was to effect a transfer of population – also defined as a crime against humanity by the ICC – looks more likely. It is an irony that a government that has gone to great lengths to refute the charge of war crimes should open itself up to the more serious charge of crimes against humanity, this time requiring no investigations since they are being committed in front of the whole world! Foreign governments and aid agencies involved in providing for the Vanni IDPs are understandably getting anxious about continuing to contribute to the illegal detention of innocent civilians.

The immediate release of displaced persons who have been interned, and speedy resettlement of all displaced people, including the Muslims ethnically cleansed from the North by the LTTE in 1990, must be part of any post-war programme, and foreign governments and aid agencies should insist on these as conditions for assisting the government of Sri Lanka in relief, reconstruction and redevelopment. Access to the camps and registration by the ICRC and/or UN of all inmates, both of IDP camps and detention camps where LTTE cadres are being held, is also necessary, in views of reports that abductions and disappearances have been taking place.

Demilitarisation and Restoration of the Rule of Law

In the latter stages of the conflict, the military was doubled to around 200,000 personnel, and one would imagine that with the defeat of the LTTE and end of the war it would be halved to its original size, with the demobilised soldiers being re-employed in civilian tasks like the reconstruction that so urgently needs to be done. Instead, there have been proposals that it be expanded by another 100,000. This proposal should cause concern not just to minorities, but also to the majority of Sinhalese citizens, because against whom would this enormous military be used, now that the LTTE is no more? And who would pay for it? Since IMF loans normally do not have have political conditions, it is likely that the reason why a projected loan still has not been approved is the fear that an already heavily indebted government would not be able to pay it back if it embarks on such a huge military spending spree. If the cost of military expansion is borne by the public, which is expecting living conditions to improve with the end of the war, there is likely to be protest in the South. Perhaps that is the expectation.

The government speaks with two tongues when it talks about the LTTE. On one side, it claims that the LTTE has been completely defeated and the war is over: the huge popularity of President Rajapaksa is premised on this notion, as are the celebrations that accompanied the announcement. Yet government policies, including an increase in military spending and the continued incarceration of hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, can only be justified on the assumption that the LTTE is still a potent threat. Again, paramilitaries kept by Tamil parties like the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) were earlier justified by their need to defend themselves from LTTE assassins, but this excuse no longer holds. They should be disarmed immediately.

The LTTE’s war machine has been destroyed, and its leadership, including its supreme leader Prabakaran, killed; there is no chance that it can be revived in the near future. Desperate attempts by the pro-LTTE Tamil diaspora to foster the illusion that it is still alive have more to do with their claims on LTTE financial assets than with anything going on within Sri Lanka. The proposal for increased militarisation is based on a Sinhala nationalist view of the conflict, which sees it solely as a problem of terrorism and separatism. Why this terrorism and separatism arose is left unexplained, because the Sinhala nationalist narrative conveniently leaves out all the discrimination, persecution and violence directed at Tamils prior to the outbreak of the war; if the pogroms of 1983 are reluctantly admitted to have taken place, the official death toll resulting from them is cited: 300-400 as opposed to 2000-3000, which is the unofficial death toll. Hence, they argue, the way to prevent similar problems aising in the future is to militarise society even more, and keep in place the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and Emergency Regulations, which allow state actors to violate human and democratic rights with impunity. The horrible paradox is that if the real precursors to the war are recognised, it becomes evident that violation of the human and democratic rights of Tamils and militarisation are precisely what led to it! In other words, what are seen as measures to avert future terrorism and separatism could become catalysts of these very problems.

Furthermore, the destruction of the rule of law wrought by decades of the PTA and Emergency Regulations affects all sections of society in all parts of the country. A bizarre example is the public boast by Labour Minister Mervyn Silva, already infamous for his assaults on mediapersons in the state TV channel Rupavahini, that he was responsible for the murder of journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga and the brutal assault on Poddala Jayantha, general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association. That a minister close to the president can preside over a mafia with such impunity speaks volumes about the lawlessness prevailing in Sri Lanka. The Asian Human Rights Commission reports that other ruling party politicians too run criminal gangs that terrorise the South, while the kidnapping of little girls for ransom in the East, and their subsequent murder, is blamed on one of the state-linked Tamil paramilitaries.

A particularly disturbing development is the branding of lawyers defending the publishers of the Sunday Leader in a case filed by the Defence Secretary as ‘traitors’ on the Defence Ministry website, a clear instigation of physical attacks on them by state-linked stormtroopers. One is reminded of the reign of terror in the late 1980s, when anyone who criticised the state was designated a JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna) member or supporter and therefore worthy of death, while lawyers who defended them were tortured and killed. Unless civil society in Sri Lanka wakes up to the danger and takes action to avert it, there is every likelihood that there could be a repetition of that nightmare.

Democratic Rights and the Executive Presidency

This brings us to the issue of freedom of expression, a sine qua non of democracy. The International Federation of Journalists has called on the government to ‘Stop the War on Journalists’, and this is surely an apt expression when the numerous cases of detention, imprisonment, assault, torture and murder of journalists are considered, while several others have been forced into exile in order to escape a similar fate. According to this professional organisation, Sri Lanka has long been considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. This situation continues unabated even after the annihilation of the LTTE, which was also renowned for its denial of freedom of expression. The modus operandi of the state is in fact a mirror image of the LTTE’s crushing of dissent: those who disagree with the powers-that-be are in danger of being labelled ‘pro-LTTE’ and ‘traitors’, and thereafter subjected to arrest and detention, abduction and assault or murder by state-linked criminal gangs. This has been the fate even of people who have all along been vociferous in their criticisms of the LTTE!

It is worth pointing out that this is not just a denial of the right to freedom of expression of mediapersons, but also of the right to information of the public. As of now, the clampdown on freedom of expression is not yet complete, but if it progresses further, the public will be fed only the state’s version of what is happening in the country, and kept ignorant of developments detrimental to their own interests. The revival in June 2009 of the draconian 1973 Press Council Act, designed to protect government privilege rather than the public’s right to information, and opposed by Mahinda Rajapaksa himself while he was in the opposition, is one more step in this direction.

The use of the same criminal gangs against lawyers and opposition politicians undermines the independence of the judiciary and the right to free and fair elections. But these institutions are also undermined by the existence of the Executive Presidency. The absolute power held by this individual trumps the rights of everyone else, and makes a mockery of democracy. This is illustrated by the fate of the 17th Amendment. Passed during Chandrika Kumaratunga’s presidency in a rare moment of unanimity in 2001, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution attempts to curtail the power of the Executive President by appointing a Constitutional Council with representation from all parties in parliament, which in turn would select chairpersons and members to the Election Commission, Public Service Commission, National Police Commission, Human Rights Commission, Bribery and Corruption Commission, Finance Commission and Delimitation Commission; its approval was also mandatory for appointments to the offices of the Chief Justice and Judges of the Supreme Court, the President and Judges of the Court of Appeal, members of the Judicial Service Commission other than the chairperson, the Attorney-General, Auditor-General, Inspector-General of Police, Ombudsman and Secretary-General of Parliament. The aim was to ensure the independence of these institutions.

However, as the terms of these appointees came to an end during the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa, he started making appointments without consulting the Constitutional Council, which itself finally became defunct as the government failed to appoint a new one. This occurred despite a determined campaign by civil society organisations, spearheaded by the Organisation of Professional Associations. The consequences were disastrous for the justice system, human rights, the fight against organised crime, free and fair elections, and attempts to curb nepotism and corruption.

This whole sequence shows that any attempts to curtail the absolute power of the Executive President which depend on the concurrence of the individual in this position are pointless; neither democracy nor good governance can be ensured unless and until the post is abolished.

Equality and Democracy versus Ethnic Nationalism

The constitutional amendment that is most often cited as being crucial to a political solution of the ethnic conflict is the 13th Amendment, enacted in 1987 in the wake of the Indo-Lanka Accord. The provisions of this can be summed up as (a) granting parity of status to Tamil as an official language alongside Sinhala, and (b) granting devolution of power to Provincial Councils. The former, of course, was promised even prior to Independence: a long-overdue measure which could, if implemented, ensure a much greater degree of equality to Tamils. But it is the latter that is normally given more prominence.

At the time of the Accord, devolution was seen as satisfying the aspirations of the Tamil minority by granting Tamils a degree of self-government in the Tamil-majority Northeastern province which was created by the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces (now de-merged again). The arguments in favour of it need careful scrutiny, however. Do they suggest that Tamils in the North and East would have rights that Tamils in other parts of the country would not? Or that Sinhalese would have rights in the rest of the country which they would not have in the Northeast? What about Muslims and smaller minorities: lacking any territory, would they be deprived of self-determination?

The linking of territory to ethnicity, religion or language is always dangerous, and in Sri Lanka especially so. The fundamental argument of Sinhala nationalism is that the Sinhalese, as the majority in Sri Lanka as a whole, should have rights and privileges denied to people of other communities. Does the argument for devolution or self-determination implicitly accept this reasoning? For the LTTE, clearly, it did. For example, self-determination meant butchering Muslims in the East and ethnically cleansing them from the North. In the course of my interviews with internally displaced people in 1990, displaced Muslims told me their Tamil neighbours had wept when they were being evicted, but were unable to persuade the LTTE to allow them to stay. I came across three Tamil women in one Tamil camp whose Sinhalese husbands had been killed by the LTTE; they were petrified that their little bilingual children would say something in Sinhala and give themselves away. In a Sinhalese camp was a Sinhalese man who had managed to escape, who revealed, in hushed tones, that his wife, who was in the camp with him, was Tamil. In a country where people from different communities have lived in mixed neighbourhoods and mixed families from time immemorial, linking a particular community to a particular territory necessarily entails terrible violence, crimes against humanity, and the prohibition of genuine love and friendship, which recognise no communal barriers.

Territorialising rights suggests that rights are a zero-sum game: since the territory of Sri Lanka is finite, more of it for one community means less for another. This is why Sinhala extremists have been able to convince some moderates that recognising ‘minority rights’ means giving up part of what they legitimately see as their country. For Tamils, surely, it is the opposite: defining only the North and East as ‘traditional Tamil homelands’ entails giving up a large part of what they can legitimately claim as their country: the whole of Sri Lanka. So what is the solution?

Relentlessly insisting on equality, the bedrock of democracy, would disarm the Sinhala chauvinists, because it could be pointed out that the minorities are simply asking for equality before the law and equal protection of the law, equal rights and opportunities, and not demanding that anything be taken away from the Sinhalese. Sri Lanka does not have the same language problems as India, since there are only three national languages, Sinhala, Tamil and English. In India, children routinely learn three languages at school, and children in Sri Lanka could easily do the same; indeed, some have already begun to do so, and if the effort is continued and expanded, the next generation would not have the same linguistic problems as this one. In the meantime, it would be necessary to recruit Tamil-speaking people and interpreters to all government offices, police stations, courts, army outposts, and so on, so that parity for Tamil can be implemented properly. If all children could be educated in the medium of their choice and all citizens could communicate with the state in the national language of their choice, practice the religion of their choice in the way they choose or practice no religion if they so choose, and develop their culture individually and collectively in all parts of the island, there would be no need to make special provisions for Tamil-majority provinces.

Even the demand for devolution needs to be reframed as a demand for democratisation that brings government closer to all the people, not just minorities, apart from being made far stronger than the 13th Amendment, which has loopholes allowing the Centre to take back the devolved powers. Along with the demand for abolition of the Executive Presidency, and further devolution to smaller units, it would give all the people of Sri Lanka more control over their lives, instead of having their lives ruled by a remote power in Colombo that knows little and cares less about their needs. Admittedly, the history of Sri Lanka from Independence has been one of oppression of minorities, and while some wrongs have been righted (e.g., disenfranchisement of the plantation workers, discrimination against Tamil by law and constitution), new injustices have arisen, foremost among which is the denial of liberty to the Vanni IDPs. Therefore some mechanism to guard against such injustices would be advisable, and this can partly be achieved by giving minorities more power at the Centre through a Second Chamber.

However, the best safeguard for the equal rights of minorities would be the understanding throughout society that democracy is not a zero-sum game, but the very opposite. As Pastor Niemoller wrote in the poem quoted by Lasantha Wickrematunga in his last article, published posthumously, if we don’t stand up for others when they are under attack, then there will be no one to stand up for us when we are attcked. In other words, by defending democracy for others, one is defending democracy for oneself. All but the oppressors have an interest in maximising democracy, and solidarity between different sections of the oppressed (including women, workers and the rural poor, as well as minority communities) is essential if the struggle for it is to be won in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka, considered a banana republic and economically far worse than its prosperous but tiny neighbour Singapore, has chosen to challenge a country listed on the top of the lists of the Human Development Index by the United Nations. Canadians armed with Canadian passports sail through any immigration desk around the world with ease and respect. Even the Cubans who hate Americans love Canadian passports.

Canadian passport holders can enter anywhere in the world while the majority of the countries around the world need visas from Canadian consular offices in their home countries and those, too, are not easy to get because the Canadian immigration system is very strict. But, Canadians do not face such hardships in getting visas to any other country.

Canada reaps

Recently Canadian Minister for Immigration denied entry to the maverick British parliamentarian George Galloway. His application for a Canadian visa was rejected in March 2009. Canada claimed that he was a threat to national security as he was an advocate for stopping the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and donated money to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian territories.

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, justifying Canada’s decision, said “I don’t see why we should make exceptions and override the decision of our professional border security agents in making a judgment about the inadmissibility of someone who provides funding and resources to an illegal terrorist organization.”

There is a saying in Tamil – “Vithai Vithaithavan Aruvadai Seivaan” (One who sowed the seed will reap the harvest). So it is poetic justice for Canada which labels even a British parliamentarian with terrorist tag to see one of her top parliamentarians booted out for the same reason! Unlike Canada, Sri Lanka is world’s most politically unstable and financially bankrupt Third World country begging for loans from IMF.

Sri Lanka tagged Canada’s much respected politician as a threat to national security. He has more than three-decades of public service experience and was the premier of Canada’s largest populated province, Ontario. Currently, he is Canada’s main Opposition Liberal Party’s foreign affairs critic. Sri Lanka has simply thumbed its nose at Canada and that too in the most uncivilized way. Canadians consider this as a great insult to their country, but the million dollar question is whether Canada will take sweet diplomatic revenge or just remain mute?

Rae’s testimony

Soon after Bob Rae spent 12 hours at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Katunayake, he was bundled out on a plane to England where he issued a statement. He said: “In the evening of Tuesday, June 9, 2009, I arrived on a flight from Delhi to Colombo, Sri Lanka. I had successfully applied to the Sri Lankan High Commission for a visa and had discussed my visit with the Sri Lankan Commissioner, the Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, and with officials from DFAIT.”

He stated: When I arrived at immigration in the company of two Canadian High Commission officials, I was, after some delay, told that I was being refused entry on the grounds of national intelligence. Since that time I have spent over twelve hours at the airport trying to find a reason for this decision. I have had the full support of officials here and in Ottawa. The Government of Sri Lanka is sticking to its position, and I am being put on a plane to London at 1:15 p.m. Sri Lankan time.

Further, he said: “The Sri Lankan government has made this decision because they have apparently reached some ill-conceived and defamatory conclusions about me. But, after thirty years of public service at home and abroad, I have to say this decision reflects on them, and not on me. I have fought against violence and extremism all my life. Everyone knows that, and the record of my actions, speeches and reports is there for all to see. What they now also know is that the government of Sri Lanka is afraid of dialogue, afraid of discussion, afraid of engagement. All I can say is shame on them. If this is how they treat me, imagine how they treat people who can’t speak out and who can’t make public statements.”

The personal statement released by Bob Rae leads us to believe that he is really fed up with the Sri Lankan government’s decision and he, too, indicates that the decision made by Sri Lanka was actually a shameful act inflicted upon Canadians, not personally against him. Sri Lanka’s stance is quite understandable when it has ignored respect for humanitarian law and calls for a political process. Instead, Sri Lanka lambasted western political and diplomatic representatives as “White Tigers” on the payroll of the LTTE. We have seen similar tendencies elsewhere—Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma—but possibly nowhere as systematic and blatant as in Sri Lanka.

Canadian Tamils don’t trust Rae

Though Tamils in Canada think Bob Rae is an opportunistic and a wily politician. When he contested the election in Toronto Centre, where a sizeable number were ethnic Tamils, he promised that he would speak in support of right to self-determination for Tamils in Sri Lanka and he would support Eelam Tamils in Canadian parliament. However, after he got elected, his promises turned out to be empty rhetoric.

He often described Sri Lanka as a “Model Democracy” and decried LTTE’s terrorism. He was quick to decry LTTE’s “extremism and violence” but was slow to condemn state terrorism unleashed against Tamils. Bob Rae will, at least now, realize the real face of Sri Lanka.

During his frequent visits to Sri Lanka since 1999, as Chairman of Ottawa-based Forum of Federations, he met the leaders of Sri Lankan political, religious, and community organizations. He took part in the peace talks held in Oslo, Geneva, Tokyo and other cities. He dined with the LTTE leadership during his visits to the LTTE’s former strong-hold and its political headquarters, Kilinochchi. He participated in all the seminars and meetings organized by anti-LTTE movements in Sri Lanka, Canada, and England.

When this writer asked Bob Rae to comment on the present plight of Internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka and other questions about Sri Lanka, he said he would not be able to answer any questions yet, except to say, “I really do believe that they are less important than ensuring better conditions in camps and a better future for all the people living in Sri Lanka.”

Another liberal party parliamentarian from Scarborough, Agincourt Jim Karygiannis, said he, too, applied for a visa at the Sri Lanka’s High Commission in Ottawa to travel to Sri Lanka. The officials told him that they would not have any problem issuing the visa, but they are not responsible once he arrived at the airport because the Sri Lankan defense ministry may or may not permit him to enter the country. He then decided not to travel to Sri Lanka.

Upon assuming power, the right wing conservative government led by Stephen Harper banned the LTTE as a terrorist organization and followed two years later placing the community based World Tamil Movement (WTM) on the terrorist list. However, the Sri Lankan government did not show gratitude to the Conservatives. When Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai applied for visa to Sri Lankan High Commission in Ottawa, the High Commissioner denied him a visa. Obhrai said he wanted to visit Sri Lanka in early June 2009 to see conditions in the internment camps. The time is now ripe for Liberals and Conservatives to become cognizant of the ultra-chauvinist Sri Lankan state and its oppression of the Tamil people. For behind Colombo’s public parade of bodies of dead rebels and tasteless celebrations of ‘victory’ over the Tamil Tigers, there hides today a horror list of unspeakable war crimes committed by the Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime.

The time is ripe for Canada to review its diplomatic and political relationship vis-à-vis the failed state of Sri Lanka.

This is one of the most unprincipled and shameless resolutions ever adopted by anybody of the United Nations in the history of that now benighted Organization. It would be as if the U.N. Human Rights Council had congratulated the Nazi government for the ‘liberation’ of the Jews in Poland after its illegal and genocidal invasion of that country in 1939.

– Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, referring to the resolution passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Sri Lanka war

The peoples of the world are now witnesses to the disappointing actions of the United Nations (UN) in their duty to stop hostilities, prevent human rights abuses and to bring peace to any member states. The most recent events in Sri Lanka are the latest example of the UN’s inability to intercede and require member nations to follow the international law which they have to safeguard. In Sri Lanka over 30,000 Tamils were killed while over 280,000 Tamils are currently contained in camps similar to the ones set up by the Nazi Germany against the Jews. But the most global face of the UN, the Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, visited Sri Lanka and witnessed the evidence of atrocities, and instead of chastising Sri Lanka, he spoke in favour of those who committed them rather than the victims. The UN failed in the 30-year battle between Sri Lanka and the Tamils. Before more atrocities occur the world over and more people suffer, the UN must be revamped into a true global authority. Considering the fact that Ban was part of a government headed by Roh Moo-hyun the former president of South Korea who recently took his own life when accused of corruption while heading a government tainted with corruption, Ban Ki Moon’s behaviour comes as no surprise. It is, however, a tragedy to the future of the UN.

League of Nations failed

For the failure of the League of Nations, many reasons were attributed including that it did not have a socio-economic plan, it represented radical and conservatives, it did not intend to unite or build a genuine society, etc. Many countries were then controlled by European countries. The League of Nations did not achieve anything positive for the prosperity of people, but it served for the high powers in particular governments, and more importantly, it helped the great economic depression in the 1930s. It also stated that all countries should disarm, but it is impossible to disarm as the armoury is fundamental for the security of a state in order to protect itself from foreign occupation. The League of Nations had three organs: The Assembly, The Council (permanent 5 and non permanent 6) and The Secretariat. All these bodies had done nothing to empower the people around the world or help to end the conflicts. So, the failure of the League of Nations was inevitable; however, the necessity for an effective international body arose. As a result, leadings powers played a major role in forming the UN.

Steps to the formation of UN

The eight major steps in the process to form the UN are: The first step came with introducing the name ‘U.N.’ at the London Declaration in 1941; The second conference was called “Atlantic Character” to discuss on the following issues (a) Right of Self-Government (b) Sovereignty & Equality of the States (c) Oppose any kind of aggression (d) Fixed territorial boundary (e) Establish international economic cooperation (f) Arms control and (g) Peaceful settlement of disputes. Twenty nine countries agreed; In October 1943, the third conference was called “Moscow Declaration” held where operation plan was made and formally the name ‘United Nations’ was announced; The fourth meeting was called “Tehran Declaration” in November 1943 where the countries participated endorsed the plan of Moscow; The fifth conference was called “Bretton Woods Conference” which was held in New Hamspire in the U.S in July 1944 where parties decided to form three organizations — General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank (WB). Later, GATT was renamed World Trade Organization (WTO); The sixth conference was “Dumbarton Oaks Conference” held in Washington in the U.S in August and September of 1944. Two steps were taken, one of which was inviting all the countries for feedback, and the second was only for selected countries (U.K., France, U.S.S.R and U.S.A) in a closed door meeting where they came up with forming Security Council; the seventh conference was called “Yalta Conference” which was held in Yalta (capital city of Crimea); And a final meeting was held in San Francisco in April 1945 where 50 countries participated and decided to abolish the League of Nations. They also decided to form a social and economic council, and establishment of international court of justice. Finally, the Charter was signed on June 26, 1945. The UN officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, with the headquarters in New York City after the five permanent members ratified the Charter along with 46 other member states. It had faced many hurdles throughout its lifespan.

UN played little role

As of now, 192 member states are registered members of the U.N. Five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, each of which has veto power, while 15 temporary members for the Security Council. From its headquarters, the UN and its agencies decide on administrative and other issues in regular meetings held throughout each year. The principal headquarters of the UN are in New York, but some leading other agencies of the U.N. including regional headquarters of the U.N. are located in Geneva, The Hague, Vienna, Montreal, Copenhagen, Bonn, and Thailand.

The Secretary General is the most recognized post throughout the world. The Trusteeship Council was included in the UN in order to inquire into the background information of any nation and make suggestions to the UN that would help decolonize the countries which were colonized by the European powers; as a result, many countries became sovereign states. However, the Trusteeship Council suspended all its operations in 1994 with the independence of Palau. Although it remains as one of the main bodies of the UN, it is no longer active. However, the UN has failed to realize that the Trusteeship Council is really needed in the post-colonial period because many nations were brought under one umbrella by the Europeans for their own administrative convenience, and those nations still feel that they should be liberated from the majority and returned to their initial independence.

For instance, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka are two totally different cultural entities. They do not share common cultural, linguistic, religious, historical, political or economic ties. As a result, both ethnic groups have been in conflict since independence from Britain in 1948. At first, they fought through peaceful political agitations until, in 1983 when the Tamil militants rose to fight militarily for independence when talking proved futile. Were the Trusteeship Council effective, they could have sent monitors to study the situation before identifying Tamil aspirations. This would have avoided the deaths of over 100,000 Tamil civilians, in addition to over 20,000 LTTE cadres and over 20,000 Sri Lankan soldiers.

The only body that is effective is the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), who reach out to the people around the world through various programs through the WHO, UNICEF, UNHCR and others. However, these organizations were pulled out from the war zones in the case of Sri Lanka and other powerful hegemonic bodies of the UN failed to assist the ECOSOC. They failed to help the suffering civilians, which makes the entire UN system a failure.

Ban Ki Moon talks in platitudes and his statements are merely academic and irrelevant

When thousands of Tamils were dying in the hands of the Sri Lankan state through aerial and artillery shelling for more than six months without a break, Ban Ki Moon failed to stop the hostilities between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan armed forces. He issued statements and sent his aid to Colombo for talks, but the UN failed to stop the hostilities. As a result, there were more than 30,000 Tamil civilians killed since January 2009 to May 2009. Over 280,000 civilians have been put in internment camps established by the government in Vavuniya without allowing the international media or UN agencies or any other non-governmental agencies to help despite outcries that the government armed forces were torturing civilians. The Inner City Press reported on June 2, 2009 quoting UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs as its source: “Between the May 27 and May 30, over 13,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) simply disappeared from the internment camps in Vavuniya.”

Some of the horrendous injustices and abuses are carried out by the Sri Lankan armed forces and their sponsored paramilitaries: Children under the age of 18 are taken into camps, separating them from their families; another group of youngsters put in another set of camps; another set of camps allocated for young women; another set of camps for married women; another set for married men; separate the infants from mothers; separate the elders from their children. So, the relatives, although they may be living in the same region, cannot meet or find out where they are because the armed forces are guarding them behind barbed wire. Physical and mental tortures include: demanding women to bathe naked in front of the soldiers, kill them and take away their kidneys and other human organs, raping women in front of their close relatives, taking thousands of youths to undisclosed locations on the pretext that they were members of the LTTE or their supporters with their whereabouts still unknown. And many other unspeakable tortures and abuses.

However, Ban Ki Moon, after heavy criticisms from the EU and the U.S., went to see the ground situation in Sri Lanka. He visited Sri Lanka on the eve of Friday, May 22, and returned to Denmark on May 23. He was given a helicopter ride by the Sri Lankan government and he managed to see the areas devastated by the war after it had been scavenged of evidence of heavy artillery bombing in advance assisted by his despicable stooge, Vijay Nambiar, whose brother was in the pay of the Sri Lankan government. He was also taken to the internment camps in Vavuniya. Actually, the government showcased their better camps. Ban Ki Moon was never allowed to speak to the refugees alone. He was always accompanied by senior army commanders to ensure the refugees spoke favourably of the camps.

After the tour in the North of the island, he visited Kandy, which is the home of The Sri Dalada Maligawa or The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic where Sri Lankan president and his brothers along with the military leaders provided a feast to the UN top diplomat and others at the President’s house. They told Moon about the LTTE attack on The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in 1998. After seeing and hearing all these, Moon made statements. He said Sri Lanka should resettle 80 percent of the displaced people by end of this year. Also, the government should fulfill the political demands of Tamils. More importantly and surprisingly, he stated that he was overwhelmed by the devastated war zone where he saw the debris of the damaged buildings, but never mentioned a word about massive human debris. Over 30,000 people were killed on this stretch of land. Over 20,000 people died due to starvation and died in the roads from fatal injuries and many were shot and killed by the Sri Lankan army after capturing the areas because they thought these people were either members of the LTTE or their families. Above all, they were Tamils and that was what mattered.

The Times newspaper, in a shocking editorial on May 29, claimed that at least 20,000 Tamil people were killed on the Mullaitivu beach by Sri Lanka army shelling. It cited evidences of aerial photographs, official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony collected by the newspaper: “present clear evidence of an atrocity that comes close to matching Srebrenica, Darfur and other massacres of civilians.” The paper further said that the casualties would be high as when international monitors, international aid agencies and even the media are given access to enter the region. However, the government rejected access to anyone. But, Ban Ki Moon was lucky enough to fly over the region escorted by the Sri Lankan military.

More heartbreakingly Ban Ki Moon said he did not see any heavy armoury vehicles being used by the Sri Lankan armed forces during the fighting in the region. What a joke. He apparently needs to change his glasses. Moon visited the region almost a week after the government claimed that they won military victory by capturing the areas controlled by the LTTE after killing the LTTE leaders and fighters. No one needs to be a rocket scientist to realize that the Sri Lankan armed forces can easily remove all the heavy armoury vehicles before Moon’s visit. After all, Nambiar was there in advance to advise them on the clean up lest his boss should see them.

In any event, the UN can no longer act as a global organization for the betterment of humanity, thanks to Ban Ki Moon. Their officers are self-serving subservient to states that maintain them financially. Many international law and international relations experts argue that the UN should be completely reorganised, as all the administrative bodies, except the Social and Economic Council, are biased and lack the fortitude to bring global peace. Sri Lanka, a tiny island, in the Indian Ocean, is a classic example. Although not a major powerhouse for attracting the interest of global powers, with very little military power and receiver of military supplies from other countries, the corrupt behaviours of the UN’s top officials and their servile team could bring UN to its knees due. So, the question arises as to how could the UN put an end to a major global crisis if any major military and economic powers are involved? The global society needs to think that any single, powerful country can use nuclear weapons against one another, and even if the UN sends emissaries and the UN Secretary General visits, their support still goes to the violators in the end. Ban Ki Moon has made sure that there would be no justice to the oppressed even from the highest citadel of humanitarian justice.

The UN call to the Sri Lankan government is an admission that the Government of Sri Lanka has not offered terms of negotiation nor even terms for the LTTE’s surrender. The government’s intentions, instead, are advertised more clearly on the Sri Lankan Army’s website. On May 5, the military spokesman announced “The 58, 53 and 59 Divisions of the Army were advancing from three different directions and moving towards the area where some of the key LTTE members and Tiger leader Prabhakaran were hiding.” The Army’s site is rich with details of ever more captures of LTTE arms caches, captures and killings of LTTE “suspects”. The site is steeped in counterinsurgency language: LTTE are referred to everywhere as “terrorists”. Deaths in the No-Fire Zone are always attributed to the LTTE firing on civilians. Any killings by the Army are of “terrorists”. As a last resort, the government can blame collateral damage on the LTTE’s “blending” with civilians (which, according to many reports, is occurring, with LTTE fighters preventing civilians from leaving the zone and shooting at them).

Tragically, the UN’s call is likely to fail on both sides. The LTTE, whose forces had included naval and even some air force capacity, has been destroyed as a conventional force. Its cadres can only hope to survive if they are allowed to leave their surrounded No-Fire Zone with the civilians in a ceasefire arrangement. From their perspective, to allow the civilians to leave would be to guarantee their own deaths. The government, meanwhile, is being carried forward on the momentum of its own military success. Seeking a military solution rather than a political solution to the conflict and seeing the prospect of a total military victory, the government is trying to persist until the LTTE leaders are captured or killed, and have shown a willingness to kill thousands of civilians to reach this goal. By keeping journalists and humanitarian workers out of the war zone, attacking the accounts of Tamils whose stories get out, and amplifying stories of LTTE abuses, the Sri Lankan government has bought time to pursue the military option, time purchased in international indifference and civilian blood.

There are both recent proposals and social movement precedents for political solutions to the Sri Lankan conflict, that feature federalism and autonomy in the Tamil-majority areas of the North and Northeast. The problem is that neither the Sri Lankan state, nor the regional powers involved (India, Pakistan, China), nor the US, has any interest in such solutions. They point to abuses by the LTTE and to its refusals of negotiations, in 1994 and 2002. The LTTE have made errors and committed abuses. But they are slated for destruction not for these, but because their presence in the North and Northeast prevents access to territories coveted by multinationals and the state for tourism and agribusiness megaprojects. The devastating 2004 tsunami had the effect of clearing territories under government control, destroying thousands of fishing communities on coveted coastal real estate. In the areas controlled by the government, these territories were rebuilt for corporations (Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” has a chapter on this). As the Sri Lankan army moves north, it is finishing the work of the tsunami: moving whole Tamil communities into internment camps, destroying organizations of resistance, and asserting territorial control.

When wars against civilians close political options, the voices and ideas of peoples are silenced. They become victims while the world watches armed actors fight it out over their bones. Despite their slim chance of success, the main elements of the call by the UN and humanitarian organizations: for a ceasefire, for the government allow journalists and humanitarian organizations in, and for a political solution to the conflict, are correct. To understand the forces against such a solution, some background is necessary. Although the brief account below omits very important details, it provides some background that is crucial for understanding today’s fighting and in considering future options for peace.

Sri Lanka is a country of about 21 million people, about 74% of whom are Sinhalese. Some 3 million are Tamils and another 1 million are “Indian Tamils” or “Up Country Tamils”, who have a different history on the island. In precolonial times, there were separate Tamil and Sinhalese kingdoms with little interaction or armed conflict. British colonialism turned this complex society into an imperial plantation. It subordinated Sinhalese Sri Lankans to plantation labour and moved populations, importing a large number of Tamils from India to work in plantations in the central hills of the country (these are now the “Tamils of Indian Origin”). After independence in 1948, Sri Lankans, like other South Asians, struggled to forge independent nations out of economies and polities restructured for colonialism. While many Sinhalese and Tamils struggled together for agrarian and political rights, ethnic-based mobilization also occurred. As in other South Asian countries, this “communalism” caused tremendous damage. Disputes centered on competition for civil service jobs. In 1956, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which mobilized on a Sinhalese communalist platform, made Sinhala the official language and imposed quotas in government jobs. The Sinhalese-dominated army was sent to the northern provinces in the early 1960s for the first time, and abuses committed then caused resentment and eventually helped fuel guerrilla movements.

1977 is a key year for three reasons. First, in 1977, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) ran in elections on a platform of independence for a new Tamil Eelam state in the Northeast, receiving overwhelming support in the northern and eastern provinces and declaring autonomy from the government in Colombo. Second, the LTTE appeared on the scene in this year as well.

Third, and most important, 1977 was the year IMF structural adjustment came to Sri Lanka, exacerbating the conflict dramatically. From independence until 1977, Sri Lanka had been viewed, like the Indian state of Kerala, as an imperfect but interesting model for social progress in spite of relative economic backwardness. Much of this progress was lost after the restructuring. For example, land reforms enacted in the 1950s gave farmers a degree of protection from creditors. These were lost in the IMF structural adjustment program.

In addition to opening financial, trade, service, and construction sectors to privatization, the government participated in a megaproject, the Mahavali Scheme, to divert the largest river for irrigation and power-generation. Lands “opened up” by this scheme were given to Sinhalese (themselves peasants who were displaced by the IMF restructuring), even though these lands were opened in the Tamil east. Settling some 80,000 Sinhalese in the east, where Tamils were some 40% of the population (they are 86% of the population in the north), was viewed as colonizing Tamil lands and referred to as a “West Bank solution”.

From 1977 to 1983, the economic situation continued to deteriorate under the IMF-WB regime. Price controls and subsidies were eliminated, communal problems worsened, and the government gave itself new powers to crack down on “terrorism” as well as protests and riots. 1983 is typically dated as the start of the civil war. That year saw abuses by the Sri Lankan army, ambushes by the LTTE, and horrific communal riots against Tamils that killed thousands and included an element of government complicity. Many Tamils left the southern provinces for the north.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, a Sinhalese insurgency was taking place by the Janatha Vimukthi Perumana, ‘People’s Liberation Front’, or JVP (now a major political party). Made up mostly of Sinhalese youth, the JVP rose in rebellion several times (in 1971 and again 1987-9) and assassinated some major political figures. They were crushed, with some 10,000 killed in 1971 and 40,000 or more killed in 1987-9. India assisted Sri Lanka in crushing the JVP rebellions. The JVP rebellions suggest two things. First, that the structural violence and impoverishment that gave rise to the LTTE are also operative in the majority Sinhalese community, and that such violence is not solely an ethnic problem. Second, that the state’s model for dealing with such problems is not to address them, but to physically destroy the activists and attempt to co-opt the leadership.

Since 1983, the civil war against the LTTE has been divided into four periods. During Eelam War I, 1983-1987, India supported the LTTE and which ended with an Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) in the Tamil areas. The 1987-1990 was the period of the IPKF debacle, which ended with the IPKF fighting the LTTE and being told to leave by the Sri Lankan government. In 1991, the LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in Tamil Nadu. From 1990-1992, the LTTE expelled most of the Muslim population from the North through massacre, with about 150,000 Muslims fleeing the North by the end of the period. Eelam War II (1990-1995) ended with a ceasefire and attempted peace talks. Eelam War III (1995-2002) was the period of the LTTE’s greatest military success and ended with an internationally monitored ceasefire agreement. The current round, Eelam War IV, which began in 2006, during which the Sri Lankan Army has imposed a near complete defeat on the LTTE.

Several factors explain the success of the Sri Lankan Army in this round, success that had eluded it for decades. First, the most important single factor is the banning of the LTTE and its classification as a ‘terrorist organization’ since the War on Terror. This classification has denied the LTTE its main sources of finance and supply. The Sri Lankan government has been able to destroy LTTE sea supply lines and sink many supply ships. Second, in March 2004, the eastern commander of the LTTE, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan (Colonel Karuna) broke from LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabakharan’s main group. In mid-April, Prabakharan’s forces attacked Karuna’s group, which fled with his veterans and was placed under government protection. Karuna organized the Tamil Eelam People’s Liberation Tigers (TEPLT), a defection that cost the LTTE 5-6000 soldiers and, ultimately, the eastern province. Third, other regional actors (India, China, Pakistan), are more closely aligned with the government than they had been (see for example this 2006 assessment by Indian writer Sudha Ramachandran). Fourth, as a part of the “War on Terror”, Sri Lanka’s war has received US support as well. The extent of US assistance to Sri Lanka in this operation is unknown, but the US did state that they had an assessment team of the Marines in Sri Lanka for months before the operation began. Speaking in India on May 14, US Pacific Command Chief Admiral Timothy J Keating told reporters:

“We had sent a military assessment team about two to three months ago under a Brigadier General of the United States Marine Corps to Sri Lanka to work with our embassy there and abide by the situation. We prepared a range of military options that were and remain available (for the crisis).”

Fifth, the devastation of the 2004 Tsunami and the politicized reconstruction processes may have disadvantaged the LTTE. 30,000 people were killed, half a million to a million made homeless, and two-thirds of the fishery was wiped out. The highest percentages of affected people were Tamils and Muslims. One of the hardest hit districts was Mullaitivu, one of the sites of recent fighting. US and Indian troops were involved in emergency response to the Tsunami in the Northern region, and the LTTE complained that these foreign forces provided intelligence to the government.

In addition to the abuses they have committed, the LTTE also made three strategic mistakes that exacerbated each of the above problems. First, they denied pluralism in Tamil politics, claiming for themselves, sometimes through violence against rivals, the role of sole representative of Sri Lankan Tamils. Second, they increasingly favoured the military over the political, which gradually cut them off from their base and alienated the people. Third, they did not make links to related struggles against the common sources of oppression or coalitions with other oppressed peoples, Sinhalese or, especially, Muslim: the expulsion of the Muslims from the North in the 1990s was perhaps the worst example of this. Their mistakes and abuses are themselves products of the violent context, but they isolated the Tigers and made them politically more vulnerable to destruction.

Communalism, like insurgency, feeds on the memory of atrocities like the one that is unfolding today. All of the elements exist for the current round of fighting to end in a tragedy still more horrible than the thousands killed (UN estimates are 6,500 killed) and tens of thousands displaced. Whether LTTE leaders are captured alive (an unlikely proposition given the organization’s practice of carrying cyanide capsules around the neck rather than being captured and tortured by the Army) and treated to “victor’s justice” without parallel war crimes trials for the government’s crimes or slaughtered wholesale along with thousands more civilians, the horrors of the No-Fire Zone will not be easily forgotten. The Tamil population, especially those in the IDP camps and the No-Fire Zone, is in a more precarious situation than ever before, and dangers to them will only increase without a political solution. A ceasefire and political solution could give decent forces in the country a chance to begin to address the structural violence that victimizes all Sri Lankans, and Tamils especially. The bloody massacre being prepared is an attempt to finish the work of the tsunami, clearing lands, locking down peoples, and handing the country over for plunder.

The LTTE and its supporters in the Tamil diaspora

For example, LTTE (Tamil Tigers) supporters among the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora have been shouting themselves hoarse, demanding that the international community intervene to save Tamil civilians in the war zone from the government of Sri Lanka. They fail to mention important information conveyed by survivors who have escaped: that the LTTE forcibly kept civilians in the war zone, shooting them if they tried to escape; that it deliberately placed its heavy weaponry close to civilian installations and fired at government forces, thus using Tamil civilians as human shields; that it was conscripting up to five people from a family, including children as young as eleven years old, to work as slave labor and to be sent into combat; that it threatened to wipe out the families of these conscripts if they surrendered; and that many of the fatalities and loss of limbs of those trying to escape were the result of land mines laid by the LTTE.

Moreover, today’s predicament is the consequence of actions of the LTTE leadership over the past fifteen years. When Chandrika Kumaratunga came to power in 1994, the whole country was ready for a change in the constitution which would guarantee equal rights to minorities, and substantial devolution of power to the provinces that would have allowed the Tamil-speaking majority in the North-East a large degree of self-government. Neelan Thiruchelvam, an internationally renowned scholar and member of the Tamil United Liberation Front, played a critical role in authoring the political package. Instead of grasping the chance to redress Tamil grievances, the LTTE restarted the war after a brief ceasefire, and in 1999 assassinated Thiruchelvam.

The 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) offered another chance; despite the global ‘war on terror’, the LTTE enjoyed international legitimacy, and when its negotiator Anton Balasingham and government negotiator G.L. Pieris agreed to consider a federal solution, many thought the end of the war was in sight. But that chance too was thrown away by Prabakaran. In 2004, he proceeded to threaten his Eastern Commander Karuna with annihilation when the latter criticised his policies. Prabakaran failed to liquidate Karuna but massacred a large number of Eastern cadres, and the consequent defection of the LTTE’s Eastern forces played a key role in its defeat. The assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in August 2005 – in effect, a declaration of war – resulted in rapidly waning international sympathy for the LTTE. Later that year, an LTTE-enforced boycott of the presidential elections in the area it controlled resulted in a victory for Mahinda Rajapakse. Then a series of LTTE attacks on the security forces resulted in a resumption of hostilities.

Every single one of these actions contributed to the current tragedy in the Vanni, but we did not see the pro-LTTE diaspora protesting against them. Given all the information about war crimes perpetrated by the LTTE and its major role in the carnage, one would expect the demonstrators, if they have genuine concern for the civilian victims of the war, to urge the LTTE to release all civilians and conscripts so that they can escape from the fighting. Instead, they have been flying the LTTE flag, while David Poopalapillai, spokesman of the Canadian Tamil Congress, alleged the UN was assisting in the genocide of Tamils when it accused the LTTE of holding Tamils against their will! In effect, LTTE supporters in the diaspora have been supporting the oppressors of Tamils, and thus contributing to the slaughter.

The Government and its supporters in the Sri Lankan Diaspora

The pro-government diaspora has been equally ghoulish. The government proclaims that it is (a) trying to free civilians held hostage by the LTTE, and (b) fighting a war against terrorists. The priority, clearly, is the latter, as suggested by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s preference for the Beslan model, in which the lives of hundreds of hostages (including children) were sacrificed in the interests of killing the terrorists. Stories told by escaped civilians suggest that this is indeed the model that is being followed by the government. They describe being bombarded with heavy artillery by government forces, leading to massive casualties; and the majority of these traumatised people have been imprisoned in internment camps where they are separated from loved ones, facilities are abysmal, and allegations that women have been raped and killed cannot be discounted in the absence of independent reports from the camps. All this confirms that the priority is a military victory over the LTTE, and the sacrifice of the lives, limbs, liberty and dignity of thousands of civilians is considered an acceptable price to pay. These allegations do not have the familiar ring of LTTE propaganda, and government attempts to portray them as such fall rather flat after its claim that there were only 70,000 civilians in the LTTE-controlled area was followed by the exodus of over 170,000 civilians from the very same area!

This is not to say that there have been no instances of humanitarianism on the part of armed force personnel; indeed, the army commander who gave his own food to famished refugees sounds much more humane than members of the pro-government diaspora who suggest that these hundreds of thousands of people are not really civilians at all, and the government would be justified in treating them as enemy combatants. Like LTTE supporters, apologists for the government fail to look back at actions of the current regime which contributed to this bloodbath. For example, all military experts agree that the loss of Karuna and his Eastern force was a key turning-point leading to the defeat of the LTTE. There would surely have been many more defections if the political solution worked out in the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) by Tissa Vitharana, mainly on the basis of the Majority Report of the Panel of Experts, had been accepted by the government in 2007. Only hard-core Prabakaran loyalists would have wanted to continue fighting for a totalitarian Tamil state if they had the option of freedom, equality and dignity in a united Sri Lanka. The political decimation of the LTTE would have shortened the war and saved many thousands of lives, including those of Sinhalese soldiers. But the President and the SLFP sabotaged the political process, making a bloody military showdown inevitable, while members of the Left who colluded with the Rajapakse regime in sabotaging the process also share responsibility for the carnage. Like Prabakaran, the Rajapakse regime has responded to criticism by killing its critics, as in the case of Lasantha Wickrematunge, and this has compromised its capacity to serve the interests of the democratic majority in Sri Lanka.

Foreign Actors

As for foreign actors, politicians of Tamil Nadu deserve special mention for their readiness to sacrifice the welfare of Sri Lankan Tamils in order to boost their electoral fortunes. Like members of the pro-LTTE diaspora, they never once used their political clout to deter the LTTE from carrying out even its most egregious human rights violations, such as the systematic annihilation of Tamil critics, forcible conscription of Tamil children, or attacks on Muslims. Nor did they urge the LTTE to take the various chances of peace with justice offered to it. Instead, they allowed the LTTE to wreck all such opportunities and behave in a dictatorial fashion which has earned it the hatred of Tamils forced to live under its jackboot. Today, they want to impose the LTTE’s fascist vision of Eelam on the people of Sri Lanka’s North and East, who have already been through such unspeakable suffering. Could there be any greater betrayal of the Tamils of Sri Lanka?

By comparison, the Congress Party comes through as having more sympathy for the suffering civilians, yet the fixation of its politicians on the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, introduced as a consequence of the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987, betrays a disconnect from subsequent developments in Sri Lanka, not all of which have been negative. One of the many reasons why the 13th Amendment failed was that it did not devolve enough power to the North-East, which has a Tamil-speaking majority; it also left intact the dictatorial Executive Presidency. Since then, political packages worked on by Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim experts have been crafted, and these offer more genuine devolution of power to the provinces as well as more democracy to all the people of Sri Lanka. Unless the government of India keeps abreast of political developments in Sri Lanka, it will not be able to play the positive role it could be playing.

The chorus of Western governments calling for a ceasefire suffers from their failure to make any suggestion whatsoever as to how a ceasefire could be used to extricate the civilians held hostage by the LTTE. During the 2002 ceasefire, the Norwegian mediators and Nordic Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission allowed the LTTE to tighten its hold on the populace in its power, kill off Tamil peacemakers, conscript children, and arm itself to the teeth, thus aiding the outbreak of Eelam War IV which is ending in such tragedy; and they did so with the full backing of other Western powers. If a human rights agreement with UN monitoring had been put in place at the beginning – and it could have been done with government consent, since the vast majority of human rights violations were being committed by the LTTE – the avalanche of war crimes when the fighting resumed would not have occurred. Yet Tamil dissidents pleading for such an agreement were ignored by the West, and regarded as ‘spoilers’ by the Norwegian government. Furthermore, if the ceasefire was to play a positive role, it should have been used to negotiate a political settlement, yet this was made impossible by the exclusion of representatives of Muslims, non-LTTE Tamils, and others from the negotiations. If a new ceasefire were to have the same effect, it would be worse than useless. And if Western governments had not discredited themselves by ignoring the LTTE’s blatant human rights violations during the previous ceasefire, they would have had more influence now.

Others too have contributed to the current disaster; among them: Ranil Wickremasinghe and the UNP, who sabotaged a political solution in 2000; some members of the Left who supported the LTTE’s struggle for Eelam in the name of ‘self-determination’ of Tamils (as though being deprived of freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to vote, and having children torn from school and their parents to be turned into cannon fodder constitutes ‘self-determination’!); NGOs and Sinhalese liberals who turned a blind eye to the LTTE’s human rights violations during the 2002 peace process, itself premised on an affirmation of Tamil nationalism, regardless of warnings by Tamil dissidents that this would lead to a backlash of Sinhala nationalism and government violations of human rights; and, in general, all those who acquiesced in the LTTE’s totalitarianism and the downward slide into state totalitarianism.

The APRC crafted a viable political solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka two years ago. All those who wish to bring to an end the ongoing tragedy should be working not only for humane treatment of displaced civilians and their right to freedom of movement and to return to their original homes, but also for a political solution which has already been worked out in Sri Lanka, and would satisfy the democratic aspirations of citizens of all communities in all parts of the island.

It is only now, as they take to the streets of western cities, and the persecution of their compatriots reaches a crescendo, that we listen, though not intently enough to understand and act. The Sri Lankan government has learned an old lesson from, I suspect, a modern master: Israel. In order to conduct a slaughter, you ensure the pornography is unseen, illicit at best. You ban foreigners and their cameras from Tamil towns like Mulliavaikal, which was bombarded recently by the Sri Lankan army, and you lie that the 75 people killed in the hospital were blown up quite willfully by a Tamil suicide bomber. You then give reporters a ride into the jungle, providing what in the news business is called a dateline, which suggests an eyewitness account, and you encourage the gullible to disseminate only your version and its lies. Gaza is the model.

From the same master class you learn to manipulate the definition of terrorism as a universal menace, thus ingratiating yourself with the “international community” (Washington) as a noble sovereign state blighted by an “insurgency” of mindless fanaticism. The truth and lessons of the past are irrelevant. And having succeeded in persuading the United States and Britain to proscribe your insurgents as terrorists, you affirm you are on the right side of history, regardless of the fact that your government has one of the world’s worst human rights records and practices terrorism by another name. Such is Sri Lanka.

This is not to suggest that those who resist attempts to obliterate them culturally if not actually are innocent in their methods. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have spilt their share of blood and perpetrated their own atrocities. But they are the product, not the cause, of an injustice and a war that long predates them. Neither is Sri Lanka’s civil strife as unfathomable as it is often presented: an ancient religious-ethnic rivalry between the Hindu Tamils and the Buddhist Sinhalese government.

Sri Lanka as British-ruled Ceylon was subjected to a classic divide-and-rule. The British brought Tamils from India as virtual slave labor while building an educated Tamil middle class to run the colony. At independence in 1948, the new political elite, in its rush for power, cultivated ethnic support in a society whose real imperative should have been the eradication of poverty. Language became the spark. The election of a government pledging to replace English, the lingua franca, with Sinhalese was a declaration of war on the Tamils. The new law meant that Tamils almost disappeared from the civil service by 1970; and as “nationalism” seduced parties of both the left and right, discrimination and anti-Tamil riots followed.

The formation of a Tamil resistance, notably the LTTE, the Tamil Tigers, included a demand for a state in the north of the country. The response of the government was judicial killing, torture, disappearances, and more recently, the reported use of cluster bombs and chemical weapons. The Tigers responded with their own crimes, including suicide bombing and kidnapping. In 2002, a ceasefire was agreed, and was held until last year, when the government decided to finish off the Tigers. Tamil civilians were urged to flee to military-run “welfare camps”, which have become the symbol of an entire people under vicious detention, and worse, with nowhere to escape the army’s fury. This is Gaza again, although the historical parallel is the British treatment of Boer women and children more than a century ago, who “died like flies,” as a witness wrote.

Foreign aid workers have been banned from Sri Lanka’s camps, except the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has described a catastrophe in the making. The United Nations says that 60 Tamils a day are being killed in the shelling of a government-declared “no-fire zone.”

In 2003, the Tigers proposed a devolved Interim Self-Governing Authority that included real possibilities for negotiation. Today, the government gives the impression it will use its imminent “victory” to “permanently solve” the “Tamil minority problem,” as many of its more rabid supporters threaten. The army commander says all of Sri Lanka “belongs” to the Sinhalese majority. The word “genocide” is used by Tamil expatriots, perhaps loosely; but the fear is true.

India could play a critical part. The south Indian state of Tamil Nadu has a Tamil-speaking population with centuries of ties with the Tamils of Sri Lanka. In the current Indian election campaign, anger over the siege of Tamils in Sri Lanka has brought hundreds of thousands to rallies. Having initially helped to arm the Tigers, Indian governments sent “peacekeeping” troops to disarm them. Delhi now appears to be allowing the Sinhalese supremacists in Colombo to “stabilize” its troubled neighbor. In a responsible regional role, India could stop the killing and begin to broker a solution.

The great moral citadels in London and Washington offer merely silent approval of the violence and tragedy. No appeals are heard in the United Nations from them. David Miliband has called for a “ceasefire”, as he tends to do in places where British “interests” are served, such as the 14 impoverished countries racked by armed conflict where the British government licenses arms shipments. In 2005, British arms exports to Sri Lanka rose by 60 percent. The distant voices from there should be heard, urgently.

This war without independent witness in itself is a crime against humanity.

It so happens, the civilians who are caught in this conflict don’t seem to have any real “no-fire” zones to run for safety. Over 50,000 civilians are said to be trapped with the Tigers, in a 4 square kilometer pocket of coast-land, surrounded by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.

More than 100 children had been killed in weekend shelling which the United Nations called a civilian “bloodbath.”

The UN Security Council must not treat this as a side issue, but for the sake of humanity, the Tamil civilian matter ought to be at the top of the agenda. All of them have suffered more than enough. It is so sad, that these innocent human beings, are being used as mere political tools.

The Western Governments and the UN must set an ethical example to the world. To be seen to send a strong message by action, that the value of human beings cannot be degraded for selfish and temporal reasons.

All human life without regard to race, creed, or color is precious. Tamil civilians must be saved, each one of them: women, children and men. Tomorrow is too late.

Earlier this month, we came perilously close to such a flashpoint when the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked by a highly organized group of terrorists in Lahore.

It is worth noting that the Sri Lankan cricket team was in Pakistan to fill in for the Indians, who had withdrawn from the tour after the Mumbai attacks. But imagine that the Indian government had not canceled the tour — not an entirely unthinkable proposition, given that the two countries have played each other an incredible forty seven times in the last five years.

Imagine that it was the Indian cricket team making that fateful journey in the tour bus near Gadaffi stadium.

For millions of Indians, their cricketers are like Michael Jordan and Jesus Christ rolled into one, precocious bundles of talent delivering salvation on a daily basis. Even if one of those cricketers were to find themselves at the wrong end of a stray bullet, the Indian government would have little choice but to declare war — especially given that this is an election year.

In the event of an all-out war the first casualty (before the millions that will tragically follow in a battle between two nuclear rivals) would be the American war on terror. Pakistan would redeploy its troops from the troubled Afghanistan region to its Eastern border. An American military already strapped for resources would find it difficult, if not impossible to tackle a resurgent Taliban.

A dangerous reduction in Pakistani troop levels fighting the Taliban is not mere conjecture.

Most recently, in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks, the Pakistani army, fearing a reaction from India, moved over 10,000 troops from the western border to the Indian front.

In 2001, after armed terrorists launched an attack on the Indian Parliament, Pakistan redeployed over 120,000 troops that were otherwise engaged in fighting the Taliban to the Line of Control in Kashmir in response to an Indian build-up of over half a million soldiers.

To take a self-serving view (consistent with the last two decades of American foreign policy), a reduction of hundreds of thousands of soldiers is a luxury the American military can ill-afford.

To avoid an irreversible setback to the war on terror, President Obama should deliver on his election promise of adopting a twenty first century approach towards Pakistan. (During the debates, South Asians chuckled with glee, as he memorably became the first American Presidential candidate ever to pronounce “Pakistan” correctly, even as McCain grappled with a fictional “Qardari.”)

There have already been some significant breaks with the past.

Within a few months of assuming office, Hillary Clinton has called for a “big-tent” meeting with all players who have a stake in Afghanistan. “If we move forward with such a meeting,” she said, “It is expected that Iran would be invited, as a neighbor of Afghanistan.”

On a global footing, the Obama administration needs to take this progressive strategy one step farther to the East and make room for India, who like Pakistan, is a also victim of terrorism in the region (Several members of the Lashkar-E Taiba, the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks operate freely in the North Western province).

A similar global outlook needs to be fostered even within Pakistan. A twenty first century approach would focus not merely on the troubled North West Frontier Province. It would also encourage the dismantling of terrorist infrastructures across the country — from the Al Qaeda camps in Swat to the LET training camps in far away Punjab.

A twenty first century approach would look beyond mere ideology. Surprisingly, the terrorists can teach us in this regard. They have consistently abandoned rigid fundamentalist positions to achieve more secular objectives. To give just one example, noted analyst B. Raman pointed out after the attacks on the Sri Lankan team that the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a member of the International Islamic Front (IIF) of Al Qaeda has a history of collaboration with the Sri Lankan LTTE — even though the LTTE has a track record of persecuting Muslims.

The Obama administration has already signaled a willingness to look beyond narrow geographies and ideologies. Let’s hope they stay the course. They could make headway in taking on the Taliban. They could deliver meaningful change to the people of India, who live every day not also in fear of a terror attack, but also in dread of an irrational response from their government. They could provide relief to the long-suffering population of Pakistan that has been an innocent victim of international crossfire since the 1980s. And they can inject life back again into the beautiful game of cricket, with which its silly points, leg slips and rest days has no reason to get mixed up in the messy affairs of the modern world.

Arun Krishnan is the author of The Loudest Firecracker, a coming of age novel set in urban India and the host of “Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies,” the number one rated Indian podcast on iTunes.

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader’s 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence thanks to the public-spiritedness of citizens who at great risk to themselves pass on this material to us. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 15 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us.

The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it.

Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic… well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you’d best stop buying this paper.

The Sunday Leader has never sought safety by unquestioningly articulating the majority view. Let’s face it, that is the way to sell newspapers. On the contrary, as our opinion pieces over the years amply demonstrate, we often voice ideas that many people find distasteful. For example, we have consistently espoused the view that while separatist terrorism must be eradicated, it is more important to address the root causes of terrorism, and urged government to view Sri Lanka’s ethnic strife in the context of history and not through the telescope of terrorism. We have also agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens. For these views we have been labelled traitors, and if this be treachery, we wear that label proudly.

Many people suspect that The Sunday Leader has a political agenda: it does not. If we appear more critical of the government than of the opposition it is only because we believe that — pray excuse cricketing argot — there is no point in bowling to the fielding side. Remember that for the few years of our existence in which the UNP was in office, we proved to be the biggest thorn in its flesh, exposing excess and corruption wherever it occurred. Indeed, the steady stream of embarrassing exposes we published may well have served to precipitate the downfall of that government.

Neither should our distaste for the war be interpreted to mean that we support the Tigers. The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have infested the planet. There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated. But to do so by violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim to be custodians of the dhamma is forever called into question by this savagery, much of which is unknown to the public because of censorship.

What is more, a military occupation of the country’s north and east will require the Tamil people of those regions to live eternally as second-class citizens, deprived of all self respect. Do not imagine that you can placate them by showering “development” and “reconstruction” on them in the post-war era. The wounds of war will scar them forever, and you will also have an even more bitter and hateful Diaspora to contend with. A problem amenable to a political solution will thus become a festering wound that will yield strife for all eternity. If I seem angry and frustrated, it is only because most of my countrymen — and all of the government — cannot see this writing so plainly on the wall.

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government’s sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.

The irony in this is that, unknown to most of the public, Mahinda and I have been friends for more than a quarter century. Indeed, I suspect that I am one of the few people remaining who routinely addresses him by his first name and uses the familiar Sinhala address oya when talking to him. Although I do not attend the meetings he periodically holds for newspaper editors, hardly a month passes when we do not meet, privately or with a few close friends present, late at night at President’s House. There we swap yarns, discuss politics and joke about the good old days. A few remarks to him would therefore be in order here.

Mahinda, when you finally fought your way to the SLFP presidential nomination in 2005, nowhere were you welcomed more warmly than in this column. Indeed, we broke with a decade of tradition by referring to you throughout by your first name. So well known were your commitments to human rights and liberal values that we ushered you in like a breath of fresh air. Then, through an act of folly, you got yourself involved in the Helping Hambantota scandal. It was after a lot of soul-searching that we broke the story, at the same time urging you to return the money. By the time you did so several weeks later, a great blow had been struck to your reputation. It is one you are still trying to live down.

You have told me yourself that you were not greedy for the presidency. You did not have to hanker after it: it fell into your lap. You have told me that your sons are your greatest joy, and that you love spending time with them, leaving your brothers to operate the machinery of state. Now, it is clear to all who will see that that machinery has operated so well that my sons and daughter do not themselves have a father.

In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death, but dare not call his name. Not just my life, but yours too, depends on it.

Sadly, for all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other President before you. Indeed, your conduct has been like a small child suddenly let loose in a toyshop. That analogy is perhaps inapt because no child could have caused so much blood to be spilled on this land as you have, or trampled on the rights of its citizens as you do. Although you are now so drunk with power that you cannot see it, you will come to regret your sons having so rich an inheritance of blood. It can only bring tragedy. As for me, it is with a clear conscience that I go to meet my Maker. I wish, when your time finally comes, you could do the same. I wish.

As for me, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I walked tall and bowed to no man. And I have not travelled this journey alone. Fellow journalists in other branches of the media walked with me: most of them are now dead, imprisoned without trial or exiled in far-off lands. Others walk in the shadow of death that your Presidency has cast on the freedoms for which you once fought so hard. You will never be allowed to forget that my death took place under your watch. As anguished as I know you will be, I also know that you will have no choice but to protect my killers: you will see to it that the guilty one is never convicted. You have no choice. I feel sorry for you, and Shiranthi will have a long time to spend on her knees when next she goes for Confession for it is not just her owns sins which she must confess, but those of her extended family that keeps you in office.

As for the readers of The Sunday Leader, what can I say but Thank You for supporting our mission. We have espoused unpopular causes, stood up for those too feeble to stand up for themselves, locked horns with the high and mighty so swollen with power that they have forgotten their roots, exposed corruption and the waste of your hard-earned tax rupees, and made sure that whatever the propaganda of the day, you were allowed to hear a contrary view. For this I — and my family — have now paid the price that I have long known I will one day have to pay. I am — and have always been — ready for that. I have done nothing to prevent this outcome: no security, no precautions. I want my murderer to know that I am not a coward like he is, hiding behind human shields while condemning thousands of innocents to death. What am I among so many? It has long been written that my life would be taken, and by whom. All that remains to be written is when.

That The Sunday Leader will continue fighting the good fight, too, is written. For I did not fight this fight alone. Many more of us have to be — and will be — killed before The Leader is laid to rest. I hope my assassination will be seen not as a defeat of freedom but an inspiration for those who survive to step up their efforts. Indeed, I hope that it will help galvanise forces that will usher in a new era of human liberty in our beloved motherland. I also hope it will open the eyes of your President to the fact that however many are slaughtered in the name of patriotism, the human spirit will endure and flourish. Not all the Rajapakses combined can kill that.

People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted. An example that has inspired me throughout my career in journalism has been that of the German theologian, Martin Niemöller. In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: it was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niemöller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niemöller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: The Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled. Its staff will fight on, unbowed and unafraid, with the courage to which you have become accustomed. Do not take that commitment for granted. Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.

Pirapaharan spoke more about peace outlining the need for a peaceful settlement to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. He outlined circumstances leading to Tamil youths taking up arms against the Sri Lankan government subsequent to the Sri Lankan state failing to address the grievances of Tamils through peaceful means since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948 and heaping oppressive terrorist measures upon the Tamil people: “In the beginning, it was a peaceful and democratic struggle by our people for justice. The racist Sinhala state resorted to armed and animal-like violence to suppress the peaceful struggle of the Tamil people for their political rights. It was when state oppression breached all norms and our people faced naked terrorism that our movement for freedom was born as a natural outcome in history. We were compelled to take up arms in order to protect our people from the armed terrorism of the racist Sinhala state. The armed violent path was not our choice. It was forced upon us by history.”

With this emphasis on peace, it seems that the LTTE leader has changed his strategy towards winning the rights of Tamils through peaceful means in stark contrast to his previous statements in which he gave much importance to dealing with the Sri Lankan state through military means. Although the LTTE has the potential to win the war in the long run, Pirapaharan’s speech with emphasis on peace rather than war shows that the LTTE wants peace. He realizes the need for a political solution to end the three-decade-old ethnic conflict, to prevent more civilian casualties and to buy time to win global support especially that of India.

This statement shows that the LTTE leader is handling the issue seriously through political and diplomatic thinking. The question is whether Sri Lanka would fall into the trap of the LTTE military, will it suffer political and diplomatic blows in the international arena or both? An answer to these questions will come to light before early next year.

In this context, it is important at this juncture to look at the perceptions of the LTTE leader and that of his opponents, as well as those of the global forces who hold the key to making an historic move in the months to come to help solve the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict.

LTTE leader outlining historical facts

“From the day that British colonialism was replaced with Sinhala oppression,” Pirapaharan said, “we have been struggling for our just rights – peacefully at first and with weapons thereafter. The political struggle for our right to self-determination has extended over the last sixty years. During this period our struggle has gone through different shapes, phases developments before advancing to maturity.”

Although these facts have been stated in the past, the weight of his latest statement is in the indirect accusation of the western world for creating the post-colonial conflicts. He quite rightly indicated that Britain should be held responsible for what is happening in Sri Lanka since it was Britain that brought the Tamil and Sinhala kingdoms together for their own administrative convenience.

The LTTE leader further stated that the LTTE had never stood in the way of national, geopolitical, or economic welfare of any other country, and added that the profound aspirations of the Tamil people were not harmful to the welfare of any other country or their people. He wanted neighbouring India to realize that the LTTE wouldn’t be a threat to their territorial integrity and sovereignty. The central government in New Delhi believes that the Dravidian race from the southern part of India could gain momentum for secession if the Dravidian race in other parts of the world gained power, and it is this perception that has cast New Delhi in a critical role against attaining independent Tamil Eelam from time to time. Southern Indian politicians, especially Tamil Nadu politicians and even Tamil Eelam leaders, have re-emphasized that New Delhi would never have to worry about it, but India still holds on to the belief.

He appealed to the countries that have banned the LTTE to remove this ban. With its greed for the land of the Tamil people Sinhalam has engaged on a militaristic path of destruction. It has sought to build the support of the world to confront us. It is living in a dreamland of military victory. It is a dream from which it will awake. That is certain. He said, “We have never been against adopting peaceful means and we have never hesitated to take part in peace talks.”

LTTE leader embraces India

Pirapaharan reiterated the past relationship between India and LTTE: “Great changes are taking place in India. The voices of support for our struggle that were stifled are again being heard loudly.”

Obviously the LTTE leader wants greater support from Tamil Nadu in order to win his struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam. Tamil Nadu is home to nearly 70 million Tamils and nearly 10 million more Tamils are living all around the world including India. The LTTE does not want to isolate the Tamils based on their birth place. They want unity among the Tamils. These are the aspirations of Tamil Nadu leaders. Hence, the political change in Tamil Nadu will be a boost for Pirapaharan.

Further, the LTTE wants India’s support which will in turn garner the support of the International Community. He expressed his gratitude to the people of India saying, “Not withstanding the dividing sea, Tamil Nadu, with its perfect understanding of our plight, has taken heart to rise on behalf of our people at this hour of need. This timely intervention has gratified the people of Tamil Eelam and our freedom movement and given us a sense of relief. I wish to express my love and gratitude at this juncture to the people and leaders of Tamil Nadu and the leaders of India for the voice of support and love they have extended.”

He also appealed to the Indian government to take constructive action to remove the ban which remains a stumbling block for the good relationship between India and the LTTE. It is obvious that the LTTE leader is a classic tactician with over three decades of military, political and diplomatic experience and manoeuvres. Once, India was his temporary home while his cadres fought in Eelam against Sri Lankan armed forces. He was the charismatic leader with the courage and the talents to force India to pull out the Indian armed forces from Eelam after three years of war between 1987 and 1990. All these show that Pirapaharan could do a lot in India on behalf of his homeland.

Slap on the face of International Community for helping Sri Lanka

Pirapaharan lambasted the International Community for helping the Sri Lankan state in the war against Tamils. He blamed the IC for playing a double game in the affairs of the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict saying that while they encouraged the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government in the peace process, they branded the LTTE a terrorist outfit giving the Sri Lankan government the upper hand in the peace talks.

He also posed the question of when the Sri Lankan state would grant autonomy for the Tamils. After cleansing the Tamils from Sri Lanka or after destroying the Tamils’ representatives, the LTTE? The IC has fallen into the political and diplomatic trap of the Sri Lankan government.

He said some countries identifying themselves as so-called “Peace Sponsors” rushed into activities which impaired negotiations. “They denigrated our freedom movement as a terrorist organisation. They put us on their black list and ostracized us as unwanted and untouchable. Our people living in many lands were intimidated into submission by oppressive limitations imposed on them to prevent their political activities supporting our freedom struggle.”

He further said: “Humanitarian activities pursued by our law-abiding people in many countries, well within the purview of the law of the land, have been belittled and curtailed. These activities were aimed at providing humanitarian aid to helpless victims of genocidal attacks by the Sinhala-run Sri Lanka state in Tamil areas. However, these humanitarian activities were branded as criminal activities in those countries. Representatives of the Tamil people, along with community leaders were arrested, jailed and insulted.

“The explicit bias shown by the activities of these countries affected the talks, in its balance and in its consideration of our status as an equal partner. This further aggravated the racist attitude of the Sinhala state. Sinhala chauvinism was encouraged to raise its head with impunity and inevitably push the Sinhala state further on its war path.”

The LTTE leader’s frustrations over the IC is reasonable because it was none other than the western world that wanted immediate peace talks in Sri Lanka because the LTTE was gaining the upper hand militarily. And, earlier in the last century, U.S.-led coalition forces intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq and wanted an immediate ceasefire in Sri Lanka allowing temporary peace in the Indian Ocean island nation. Even now these coalition partners want peace on the island for their own benefits with no heed to the grievances faced by the Tamils on the island.

Sri Lankan military continues its genocidal war

The LTTE leader described how the Tamils face military operations imposed upon them and how the LTTE has embarked on a historic journey, as hazardous and strenuous as never before as the Sri Lankan armed forces advance with the military aid of foreign governments with the aim to cleanse the Tamils from their traditional habitat.

“In this historic venture, we have encountered numerous turns, twists and confrontations. We have faced forces much mightier than ours. We have had direct confrontations even against superior powers, stronger than us. We have withstood wave after wave of our enemy attacks. Standing alone, we have blasted networks of innumerable intrigues, interwoven with betrayal and sabotage. We stood like a mountain and faced all dangers that loomed like storms. When compared to these happenings of the past, today’s challenges are neither novel nor huge. We will face these challenges with the united strength of our people.”

The LTTE leader rightly pointed out that the Tamils are not fighting to occupy Sinhalese areas. Rather they are fighting to save their own lands. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism or fighting to safeguard the sovereignty of Sri Lanka, it is indulging in violence causing heavy damages and casualties to the civilians.

When the Sri Lankan state realizes that the Tamils are living in their historical lands, the conflict on the island will end. The belief that entire areas of the island belong to Buddhist Sinhalese is fraught with danger and cannot hold water in empirical analysis. It could be argued that the Tamils were living in Sri Lanka for millennia well before the Sinhalese moved into Sri Lanka through Tamil Nadu from Orissa or via the Bay of Bengal. The Tamils have a solid claim for an independent Tamil Eelam as the Tamils have a great history, language, culture and religion. The claim for wiping out the Tamils or wiping out the LTTE is meant to weed out the Tamil race from their inhabited lands whose ancestors have lived on those lands for millennia.

Sri Lanka and India reject LTTE’s claims

Immediately after LTTE leader’s statement came out, the Sri Lankan high-portfolio ministers and military officials issued separate statements describing the LTTE leader’s speech as nothing but an acknowledgement that the LTTE could not continue war with the Sri Lankan state as before.

Sri Lanka’s defence spokesman, Keheliya Rambukkwella, said that the Sri Lankan government viewed the LTTE’s speech not as a hero’s speech, but as a plea to the International Community in the face of the Tigers loosing control of areas hitherto held by them.

He further said: “The LTTE leader has proved in his speech that he is a criminal and that through his speech he is just making a plea for pardon.” Pirapaharan was begging the International Community to grant him a pardon for the earlier actions of the LTTE. He said: “Now the world has realized that terrorism cannot be tolerated anymore.” Further he said Pirapaharan had not mentioned even a single word about the government requiring the Tigers to lay down arms as a prerequisite for talks. “By remaining silent about laying down arms he has proved that he is not ready for talks,” Minister Rambukkwella said.

Never in the course of his speech did Pirapaharan ask for pardon nor did he in any anyway suggest that the LTTE was losing its military prowess, and for Rambukwella to rush make such a pathetic and desperate conclusion is absurd. Pirapaharan says that he wants justice from the International Community because the rights of Tamils are being rejected by Sri Lanka and the Tamils want International Community recognition for their right to self-determination. He also wants India to lift the ban on the LTTE as a terrorist outfit since they are fighting for Tamil liberation who have sacrificed enough lives for their freedom.

Another hardcore Sinhalese, Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama, said Pirapaharan’s overtures to India will not find accommodation. He has called upon Pirapaharan to heed President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s call to lay down arms, renounce terrorism and enter the democratic path, in order to be part of the political process that is already underway, to evolve a sustainable solution that will bring lasting peace and stability to Sri Lanka. Bogollagama is now desperately trying to link or equate LTTE militancy to the most recent Islamic terrorist attack in Mumbai. Fortunately for the Tamils it is becoming increasingly evident that Pakistan a sovereign state and a close ally of Sri Lanka, closer than to India, and has links to this international terrorist attack. We hope the only surviving assailant, a godsend to the Tamils, will be allowed to live long enough to tell the whole story. In fact the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK in a BBC interview on 29 November 2008 stated that photographs of the assailants show them as being dark skinned so they were LTTE Tamils – as if there were no dark skinned people in Pakistan. A preposterous way of taking the red herring across its trail. And the question is, why?

Bogollagama does not know the ground reality in India. He should know that over 20,000 students throughout India’s states took part in a rally in New Delhi recently urging the Indian government to put pressure upon Sri Lanka to declare a ceasefire and to grant autonomy for Eelam Tamils. The Indian central government would lose millions of dollars worth of tax money in a day if the Tamil Nadu state launched a state-wide strike. Tamil Nadu has already conducted such a protest. Sri Lanka’s conflict is boiling over externally and it will no doubt have a greater impact in the lives of Indian citizens on its soil, prompting India to take a leading role in solving Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict and single-mindedly deal with the terrorism of Pakistan.

Sri Lankan officials claim, quoting Indian officials, that India would not lift the ban on the LTTE. Indian officials in New Delhi also confirmed this. They said the question of acceding to the request did not arise since the ban, first imposed in 1992, had been extended for another two years.

In any event, the LTTE leader’s speech was meant to draw the attention of India and the International Community to the conflict and the Eelam Tamils’ right to self-determination. This will only happen when the LTTE is internationally recognized as the freedom fighters of the Tamils and the terrorist brand is lifted. The claim that the LTTE leader is on his death bed and the LTTE is withdrawing from its controlled areas as a tactic to put the enemy in military and political defeat is groundless.

Ultimately, we all have to learn to be Sri Lankans. The day we are able to think as Sri Lankans first, and later as Tamils, Sinhalese, Muslims and Burghers, that is the day we will win. That will be the winning point.¹

The sad reality, however is, the Government forces are not winning. When they are indiscriminately targeting and attacking Tamil civilians they are indeed loosing. The war for the hearts and minds of the Tamil nation is not won. The ground is lost. There are more internally displaced people (IDP) created by this state-sponsored human catastrophe.

The government is fighting a losing battle.

It is reported that a government agent from the town of Killinochi has said: “As of August 8, a total of 113,397 people have sought IDP status inside the district.”²

Reports from on-the-ground reveal:

Civilians are also continuing to be killed and injured by the indiscriminate attacks. Since the attack of the Mulliathivu hospital complex at 1.00am on 9 August, five civilians were killed and more than 25 have been injured by shelling and bombing. A large number of schools as well as hospitals were displaced adding to the chaos created in civilian life.”³

Tamils, no doubt, appreciate the sentiments expressed by the Defense secretary. However, the suffering Tamils are acutely aware that comment is free, while fact is sacred. The fact of the matter is: action speaks louder than words, and the actions of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksha regime’s speak loudly.

How can the Defense Secretary hypocritically expound on peace when he has innocent blood in his hands?

1. “Learn to be Lankans, that is the winning point, says Defence Secretary,” LankaNewspapers.com, 15 August 2008.
2. From the Peace Secretariat of Tamil Eelam website.
3. Ibid.

Peaceful words uttered by Colombo politicians are only meant ensure that their respective governments remain in power. There is no desire or intent to implement any means of establishing peaceful relations with Tamils. But, Tamil-speaking people are not the only population affected by the war. The majority Sinhalese are also paying a high price.

President demands LTTE to lay arms down

Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is patriotic towards his birth place Hambantota as evidenced by his attention towards developing his home district at the expense of fulfilling the role of a responsible leader working towards the development and betterment of the whole country – particularly when thousands of Sri Lanka’s citizens are suffering. Clearly, politicians are intent on ignoring the deaths of innocent Tamils and Sinhalese to avoid taking responsibility for their role in not finding a solution to the country’s national problem. Developing a village or a district, or providing funds to certain interest or religious groups won’t lead the country into prosperity. Previous leaders like J.R. Jeyawardene, Srimavo Bandaranaike, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Chandrika Kumaratunga or Ranil Wickremesinghe held talks with the LTTE directly or indirectly to demonstrate to the world that they were taking action to solve the Tamil national question. All their attempts failed.

Despite these lessons from the past, even though he was a leading MP and Prime Minister led by former President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa doesn’t seem to be paying attention. Soon after he came to power, he brought his brothers and relatives into his administration. He made history by creating a jumbo Cabinet with over 50 cabinet ministers and providing those ministers with cars, houses and security while the majority of the country lives well below poverty line.

Although the President’s brothers lived in the U.S and he, himself, has paid many visits to the U.S., he never saw fit to work towards converting his warring, fractious country into a modern prosperous country, matching the standards of neighbouring Maldives and India. The Sinhalese have no choice but to live according to what their leaders have to say. If neutral or anti-government media outlets highlight the sufferings of the common people at the hands of their Government, the Government threatens the media with harsh punishment.

On June 24th, President Rajapaksa met religious dignitaries at his house who told him that certain groups were engaging in propaganda against the Government and bringing disgrace to the country. The President’s Office described the meeting as cordial saying that the dignitaries came together as an inter-religious body to challenge these forces and depict the true picture of the country. The President told them that it was not his intention to go to war with the country’s people and that he would not hesitate to work with the LTTE if they laid down their arms, emphasising that he would not let parts of his country fall into the hands of a terrorist organization. He did not specify to whom he was referring as the terrorist organization on the island.

During the meeting, Ven. Prof. Bellanwila Wimalarathana Thero, a Buddhist monk, said religious leaders of all faiths were keen to work closely with the President while ensuring the religious freedom of every community. President Rajapaksa reiterated that the Government would only negotiate a political solution to the crisis if LTTE terrorists laid down their weapons.

Is it possible for the LTTE to lay down their arms?

Twenty years ago, the LTTE leader was escorted on an Indian plane to New Delhi and held at the Ashoka Hotel on the direction of former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and was coerced into signing a paper agreeing that the LTTE would lay down their arms in exchange for the presence and support of the Indian armed forces in Tamil areas. The Indian armed forces arrived in Sri Lanka, but they fought against the Tamils, leaving the LTTE no option but to take up arms again, this time against the people who’d sworn to protect and defend them.

The results of the conflict were bitter for both Tamils and India. India lost over 1500 soldiers in addition to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, and over 15,000 Tamils were killed while tens of thousands more were tortured and/or raped, or fled their homes as refugees. Even after all this, Sri Lanka’s President still thinks the LTTE will agree to put down their weapons.

Arguments abound in Tamil circles about how reasonable it is for the Government to demand the LTTE lay down arms while the LTTE still controls parts of the Tamil areas with its own judicial, police, customs and revenue administrations. The LTTE continues to hold some members of the Sri Lankan armed forces in custody for trespassing into Tamil areas. Further, the LTTE will not lay down their weapons so long as the Government allows the Pillayan group, EPDP, PLOTE of Siddarthan group, EPRLF of Varatharaja Perumal and other paramilitaries to patrol the streets fully armed. These groups only received voter support in the last election because the voters were threatened at gunpoint. The Tamils refused to accept these groups as their sole representative, instead, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) went out with the mandate in the 2004 elections that if the Tamil people recognized the LTTE as their sole representative they should vote for TNA. Tamils voted overwhelmingly for the TNA. The President knows about all these but, like a true politician, his only interest is to remain in power. It seems a political leader can only survive if it promises to fight against and not negotiate with the LTTE.

Past Sinhala leaderships, including the UNP and SLFP, demanded the LTTE to lay down their arms as a pre-condition, but the LTTE never accepted because the leadership-governed forces continued to fight using guerrilla warfare tactics. The most recent demand comes in the wake of the LTTE’s favourable position as a military victor using conventional armed forces and diplomacy, with the support of many global governments.

Unless the GoSL embraces the LTTE and engages in effective and meaningful peace talks, the LTTE will continue to defend the rights of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The LTTE leader has shown that he is a better leader than the common politician, and has the experience of dealing with the country’s many leaders and military commanders who have continually threatened to kill or capture him. The LTTE leader leads his movement much more aggressively than before using modern weapons, and has the confidence and gratification that all those who have threatened him with his life have faded into Sri Lankan history.

There is also, as we know, the strange amalgam called the state religion. State puts its authority behind a chosen sect and gives it primacy over other religious bodies. In return, this chosen sect rubber stamps its spiritual cloak over the actions or inactions of the state. The classic example is, just before a territory-expansion/colonising war, this chosen sect can hoodwink the masses by declaring it to be a Just War or even a Holy War. The trickery is, people often don’t ‘see’ the subtle politicking of a state religion. State is left here, by hook or by crook, “to impersonate God.” William Cavanaugh observed in Torture And Eucharist, ‘As the state itself becomes guarantor of rights, human rights become tied, in bitter irony, to the security of the state.’

Theravada

Buddhism is state religion in the failed state of Sri Lanka. The divisive theology of the Buddha Sangha is the back-bone of the state. Sangha not only believes in the primacy of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, (as is enshrined in the Constitution) but also it believes that Lanka is the chosen land for a chosen race called the Sinhalas.² The Tamils (Demelu) are viewed as the contaminating element³ Angarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) the political activist/ scholar-monk preached the uniqueness of the land and the Sinhala nation. He promoted the idea that the Sinhalas were a pure Aryan race.⁴

So, the Sri Lankan state is well and truly a Sinhala-Buddhist state and there is no leg room for the flourishing of pluralism.

It is risible for western governments to expect the Sinhala state to guarantee the safety of human rights of the Tamils. Since the 1950’s there have been a series of state-sponsored pogroms and secret colonisation of the traditional homelands of Ceylon Tamils.⁵ Since the 1980’s there has been an unceasing war against the Tamils. Over 80,000 civilians have died and many more maimed. (There is “no official figure” as such, but this figure is generally accepted by HR organisations.)

It is in this context, the idea of Tamil Eelam has to be examined. If the result of a self-determination struggle claims back the traditional Tamil home-land as the sovereign state, then, that cannot be a criminal idea. The question is: can Tamil Eelam and the Sinhala state remain within the confines of a sovereign Sri Lanka in a twin-state solution?

1. Archbishop Oscar Romero, “The Last Sermon,” from The Church and Human Liberation, March 14, 1980.
2. Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed? The University of Chicago Press, 1992. This book was banned in Sri Lanka.
3. Urimila Phandis, Religion and Politics in Sri Lanka. London: C. Hurst and Co., 1974.
4. Lawrence J Swier, Sri Lanka: War-Torn Island. World in conflict series.
5. A. Sivanandan, “Sri Lanka: racism and the politics of underdevelopment,” Race and Class Journal, Summer 1984.