In the case of its ally Sri Lanka it did not need to send troops to win the war against Tamils struggles for liberation. The Western powers provided Sri Lankan governments military with weaponry, war intelligence and training to win the long war against Tamil nationhood. But, after the mutual victory, the axis also criticizes the current government for having committed excesses. This approach is the best of all possible worlds for Western dictates: world domination for the cause of humanity is what they say if you read between the lips of communicators for globalization George Bush- Barack Obama-Hilliary Clinton, Tony Blair-Gordon Brown-David Cameron.

While China and Russia also militarily and economically assisted Sri Lankan governments in avoiding federalism for the two peoples: majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils, they did so without the hyperbole of “protecting human rights”. Unfortunately, Cuba and its associates in the eight Latin American nations ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the peoples of the Americas) got caught up in the geo-political game by supporting Sri Lanka Sinhalese chauvinism politically but without funds and weapons.

Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, Cuba’s Permanent Representative to United Nations Office at Geneva, argued at the 19th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC), last March 22, that the United States acted contradictorily for presenting a resolution asking Sri Lanka to implement its own mild report, Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), and slightly criticizing the government for not addressing human rights abuse that occurred during the end of the civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).¹

Rodríguez ridiculed the US position given that, as he said, 40% of military hardware sold to Sri Lankan governments between 1983 and 2009 (the duration of the war for liberation) came from it and its closest allies, the UK and Israel.

“Why do they doubt Sri Lanka after having sold so many weapons?” Rodríguez inquired. While Cuba backed Sri Lanka 100%, disregarding the plight of over two million Tamils, its ambassador considered the US resolution as “interference” into the affairs of the sovereign state.

An excellent book, Arms Trade with Sri Lanka: global business, local costs, put out by the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society and the Swedish Sri Lanka Committee provides some hard-to-find figures on what countries provided what armaments to Sri Lanka. Most of the weaponry that the LTTE acquired came from capturing enemy arms and some were bought on the black market. Sri Lanka bought its weapons from a score of governments of all stripes. The Sinhalese governments spent between 7 and 17% of their budgets on the military during the war.

Between 1999 and 2008, the largest military equipment (towed guns, tanks, fighter and trainer and transport aircraft, helicopters, fast sea craft, mines, radar, missiles and rockets, armored bridge layers, surveillance and communication equipment) came from China and Russia, later also Ukraine and Iran—on the one end of the spectrum—and from the US and nine EU states on the other end. Military suppliers also included Pakistan and India from the middle.

This article focuses on military support the US, EU and Israel provided the repressive Sri Lankan governments. Moreover, the US and EU are Sri Lanka’s greatest economic trading partners.

Israel

The Zionist State—which practices genocide against the Palestinians whose right to self-determination was recognized by 46 governments on the HRC during the 19th session with only the US voting against—hardly comes into the spotlight when the Sri Lanka-Tamil conflict is discussed.

Nevertheless, “Israel has been a faithful supplier to Sri Lanka” serving the military, commerce and politics, as the Swedish book maintains.

The most decisive sales and donations in the latter years of war came from Israel (and China). A vast number of combat aircraft—nine of 24 since 2000; 16 Kfir jets in all—and many of the ships (especially six Super Dvora and 38 Shaldag fast patrol craft) used by Sri Lanka came from Israel. It also supplied seven unmanned vehicles, 16 anti-ship mines, communication and surveillance equipment, and great quantities of ammunition; plus pilots and Mossad intelligence agents.

Makhdoom Babar, editor-in-chief of the pro-Sri Lanka government Daily Mail reported that Israel uses Sri Lanka waters to test their missiles.

A 2009 SIPRI report, “International Arms Transfers”, shows that between 2000 and 2007, Sri Lanka acquired “several large warships from India, Israel and the USA”. The Swedish-based international arms conflict monitor reported that Israel has been a major and effective arms supplier.²

Mossad-Israel military intelligence also played an important role in preventing Tamils from gaining their liberation. In the 1980s Israeli experts advised Sri Lanka to create border villages and arm Sinhala civilians as home guards. This is what the US also did in parts of Southeast Asia during its genocidal war in the 1960s-70s.

Economic Union

EU sale of weaponry to Sri Lanka has violated its code of conduct on arms export since it was enacted in 1998 to prevent aiding and abetting human rights abuse. As if to compensate for its hypocrisy, the EU lifted part of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in August 2010 due to Sri Lanka’s “poor human rights record”. But EU still offers “limited tariff preferences” to Sri Lankan imports.

Despite this lessened export tax break, the EU continues to be a major market (SL largest apparel buyer), and the island’s economy grew by 8%, in 2010, thanks to loans from the IMF.

During the last decade of war, France provided several small sea craft. Czech Republic sold 16 rocket systems and 52 tanks. Slovakia is, after the UK, the only European country that publicizes its military sales to SL after the restart of the war, in 2006. It lists the sale of 10,000 rockets worth £1 million.

A June 2, 2009 article, “UK sold arms to Sri Lanka during Tamil Tiger conflict”, points out the hypocrisy of European governments in voicing criticism of human rights abuse while they continue to sell arms to the Sri Lankan mass murdering regime.

In 2008, the UK approved £4 million worth of weaponry including armored vehicles, pistols and machine guns, and 12 large naval guns.

At the close of the war, the EU Observer reported:

“The EU is appalled by the loss of innocent civilian lives as a result of the conflict and by the high numbers of casualties, including children, following recent intense fighting in northern Sri Lanka,” said European foreign ministers in a statement, 18 May, 2009.

The EU calls for the alleged violations of these laws to be investigated through an independent inquiry,” the statement continued. “Those accountable must be brought to justice.”

Nevertheless, EU member states – including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the UK, France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Poland – had armed the Sri Lankan government since the election of Mahinda Rajapaksa, in 2005.

According to the EU’s latest report on arms export licenses published in December, the nine governments authorized arm sales licenses to Sri Lanka to the value of €4.09 million in 2007 [small weapons, ammunition, explosives, missiles, vehicles, naval vessels, aircraft], the same year that Colombo launched its final offensive on the Tamil rebels.

Australia is among the western suppliers to Sri Lanka. It granted $52.5 million in development assistance (2010-11) — plus $11 million to catch criminals including Tamil refugees trying to flee the blood-torn nation.³

“U.S. Military Assistance to Countries Using Child Soldiers, 1990-2007”

This Center for Defense Information report (above sub-head) shows how the United States continues to supply military support to many countries, including Sri Lanka, when the government or its paramilitary allies recruit children to war against opponents, despite United Nations ban on such support.⁴

“The U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” shows where it supplied military assistance between 1990 and 2007, and often to states that commit human atrocities: “the United States continues to provide millions of dollars in Foreign Military Sales (FMS), Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), Excess Defense Articles (EDA), International Military Education and Training (IMET), and Foreign Military Financing (FMF).”

A CDI chart shows that the US sold (or donated) $143 million in military aid to Sri Lanka’s military in the 17-year period. US foreign military sales, in 2007, were $60.8 million—the greatest amount for any single year—plus $1.44 million was spent on military training and financing. Green Berets were used since 1996 in “Operation Balanced Style” to train soldiers.

Contrary to claims that the US cut off military sales or assistance, it has not done so. Between 2007 and 2009, the US sold a few cutters, radar systems, and 300 trucks. It also sold helicopters, some of which were made in Canada. (Canada also sold small arms amounting to less than $1 million in 2007-9.) The US did cut back sales in 2009 but the 2010-12 fiscal year budget calls for nearly $3 million in Foreign Military Financing and International Military Education and Training.

Economic and Military sales and assistance continue despite the fact that the US admits that the Sri Lanka government and its paramilitary allies practice torture, murder, disappearances, child recruiting and other brutalities. The US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor report of March 6, 2007 reads:

The [Sri Lanka] government’s respect for the human rights of its citizens declined due in part to the breakdown of the CFA [Cease-Fire Accord of 2002]. Credible sources reported human rights problems, including unlawful killings by government agents, high profile killings by unknown perpetrators, politically motivated killings by paramilitary forces associated with the government and the LTTE, and disappearances. Human rights monitors also reported arbitrary arrests and detention, poor prison conditions, denial of fair public trial, government corruption and lack of transparency, infringement of religious freedom, infringement of freedom of movement, and discrimination against minorities. There were numerous reports that armed paramilitary groups linked to government security forces participated in armed attacks, some against civilians… the government strengthened emergency regulations that broadened security forces’ powers in the arrest without warrant and non-accountable detention of civilians for up to 12 months.

The US State Department’s April 6, 2011 “Background Note on Sri Lanka” shows that the US has steadily supported Sri Lanka militarily and has benefited economically from trade.

Exports to the United States, Sri Lanka’s most important single-country market, were estimated to be around $1.77 billion for 2010, or 21% of total exports. The United States is Sri Lanka’s second-biggest market for garments, taking almost 40% of total garment exports.

U.S. assistance has totaled more than $2 billion since Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948… In addition the International Broadcast Bureau (IBB)–formerly Voice of America (VOA)–operates a radio-transmitting station in Sri Lanka. The U.S. Armed Forces maintain a limited military-to-military relationship with the Sri Lanka defense establishment.

Even as it publicly expressed some criticism of Sri Lanka for not implementing its own investigation into possible human rights abuse, the Obama administration backed a $213 million World Bank loan last March for Colombo development.

US assisted in annihilating Tamils

In January 2006—just weeks after the Rajapaksa-led government had come to power—then US ambassador, Jeffrey Lunstead, warned the LTTE that if it refused a settlement on Colombo’s terms it would face “a stronger, more capable and more determined Sri Lankan military.”

Lunstead added: “Through our military training and assistance programs, including efforts to help with counter-terrorism initiatives and block illegal financial transactions, we are helping to shape the ability of the Sri Lankan government to protect its people and defend its interests.”

For such support, Sri Lanka signed the Access and Cross Servicing Agreement in March 2007 that allows US warships and aircraft to use facilities in Sri Lanka. Combined support by the US and its allies, as well as China-Pakistan-Iran immense sums of military armaments, weakened the ability of the LTTE to hold its ground. This led to the “liberation” of Kilinochchi, “the city that for a decade had served as the capital of the LTTE-controlled enclave in parts of the island’s north and east,” as Keith Jones wrote.

“Last Wednesday [January 7, 2009], the US embassy in Colombo issued a statement that welcomed the Sri Lankan state’s recent victories in the war…and urged Sri Lanka’s government and military to press forward with the annihilation of the LTTE. The key passage in the statement read: ‘The United States does not advocate that the Government of Sri Lanka negotiate with the LTTE, a group designated by America as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997.’”

“US pressure was critical in getting Canada, the states of the European Union, and other countries to proscribe the LTTE. These bans have deprived the LTTE of financial support from the hundreds of thousands of Tamils chased from their island homes by the civil war,” Jones continued.

“The new-found prowess of the Sri Lanka military is due almost entirely to the support it has received from Washington directly or from key US allies.”

The United States and its allies thoroughly supported Sri Lanka governments, allowing genocide and aiding in war crimes, and now dawns a façade of “concern for human rights.”

Conclusion

US-UK axis hypocritical complicity should lead Tamils and their supporters everywhere to change strategy in the struggle for justice.

Sinhala academic Dr. Jude Lal Fernando speaking in Toronto recently on the “Tamil struggle for self-determination: a leftist Sinhala perspective” compared the success of the peace process in Ireland to the failure of the peace process (2002-6) in Sri Lanka. His conclusion, as summarized, shows how it was primarily the US-UK axis that prevented a peaceful solution in which autonomy (some at least for Tamils) could have been the outcome for both sides. And he spoke of a new strategy.

The negotiations in Ireland were based on “parity of status” between the warring parties while in Sri Lanka neither the Sri Lankan Mahinda Rajapaksa government nor the US-UK axis allowed for parity and that is why the LTTE did not surrender arms and sometimes engaged the government army in battle during the cease-fire.

In the case of the warring parties in Ireland, the Clinton regime allowed representatives of the Catholic liberation forces to meet the Irish Diaspora in the US and to negotiate equally. In contrast, the Bush regime forbad the LTTE to enter its territory. Dr. Fernando argues that the former treatment bolstered the confidence of the Irish Republican Army in the peace process, while the latter treatment resulted in the opposite, and thus the US is as “blameworthy for the 2009 massacre” as is the Rajapaksa regime. This also includes the role of UK-EU since its 2006 ban on the LTTE made explicit a military solution by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and its allies.

Dr. Fernando was a key coordinator of the Dublin Permanent People’s Tribunal in Sri Lanka, which, in January 2010, concluded that Sri Lankan governments had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that the issue of genocide should be investigated.
The “tactic employed by the Sri Lankan government, aided and abetted by the international community, was to bomb the Tamil people until they were ‘reduced to a survival instinct’ but not to the human instinct of demanding freedom. In this light, the entire reality of the 2009 genocide has been misconstrued and misrepresented to the world as simply a military operation against terrorism. On the contrary, the peace process itself confirmed that the Tamil national question is a legitimate political question and not a terrorist problem”, asserted Fernando, according to Tamil Net.

Finally, Fernando speaks directly to the erroneous tactic of many Tamil groups in the Diaspora. He maintains that many have been deceived by the US sponsored resolution at the Human Rights Council. The pro-LLRC resolution does not oppose or even mention the root causes of the national question, nor the history of genocide. In fact, it accepts the legitimacy of waging war to protect the sovereignty of the state, which is, ironically, the same position as Cuba-ALBA, Russia and China.

By launching a slight criticism of the state, without going to the core of the matter, the US-UK axis diverts attention away from the real causes of the long-standing conflict: nationalist Sinhalese chauvinism, racism, religious intolerance, and the “right” to practice discrimination and genocide.

“Instead of trying to align itself with international powers, the Diaspora must stand on its own two feet and say that the aspirations of the Tamils uncompromisingly remain the same based on the principles of nation, homeland, and self-determination,” concludes Fernando.

1. See “Cuba Outvoted at UN Human Rights Council over Sri Lanka-Tamils.”
2. Israel is, in fact, the world’s fourth largest arms seller: $7.3 billion sold in 2010. The US government is the biggest weapons exporter at $31.6 billion. Much of the armaments that Israel sells come from the US.
3. “Rudd ignores war crimes and boost ties with Sri Lanka,” Sam King, February 19, 2010.
4. The CDI was founded in 1972 as an independent non-NGO monitoring institution of US and international security defense policy.

The plight of the Tamils is chronicled in Ron Ridenour’s book, Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka (Chennai: New Century Bookhouse, 2011). The oppression and genocide experienced by the Tamils is not as well-known as the occupation, oppression, and genocide experienced by the Palestinians even though it is of much longer duration.

I had known that many Tamils lived in Canada having escaped persecution back home. However, in 1997, I became more intimately familiar with the civil war in Sri Lanka while working in Maldives. Many of the workers — and some of my colleagues — were from Sri Lanka. I heard complaints that Tamils were discriminated against because of their language and religion. Worse were the tales of bloodthirsty pogroms of Sinhalese against the Tamils, including torture, murder, rapes — all this committed by Buddhists, people supposedly seeking enlightenment.

Tamils are victims of Sinhalese, but one cannot escape the conclusion that they are also victims of themselves. This comes through in the details of Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka, although the author leaves this mainly for the reader to piece together. The solidarity of the Tamil people is underwhelming.

Ridenour holds, “The Tamils have every right and need to exist in peace and equality, and this is possible only if they have their own state.” The first clause is axiomatic from any human rights-observing person; however, the second part is more open to dissension. There are plenty of examples of different ethnicities eventually coming to a more-or-less peaceful co-existence within the same state. Sometimes autonomus regions can grant the equal human rights desired by all humans. However, circumstances certainly indicate that the Sinhalese were disrespectful of the rights of Tamils and tried to impose — violently, if need be — their nationalism, language, and religion into every nook and cranny of Sri Lanka.

Tamils, of course, had every right to resist and agitate for their rights. Would partitioning the geography of Sri Lanka solve the situation, as Ridenour alludes? Or would it have served as a durable cause célèbre for Sinhalese to reunite the island? As Ridenour notes, the Tamils had a de facto state. What if they had more earnestly negotiated from the strength of their position of de facto statehood toward securing an autonomous Tamil region within a Sri Lanka nation (as an acceptable fallback position from separation)?

Very importantly, Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka provides a historical backdrop to the Sinhalese-Tamil civil war, starting with the first humans in Sri Lanka and working forward. Ridenour writes that a Tamil presence dates back many centuries in Sri Lanka. Both the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils have India as their origin. The European invasions and colonization of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) began in the sixteenth century, and were enabled by the lack of solidarity between Sinhalese and Tamils. During their colonial rule, the British brought over Tamil coolies to work the plantations.

The Tamils did economically better under British administration than Sinhalese causing envy and friction. The majority Sinhalese sought to exert themselves through making their religion, Buddhism, the sole national religion and their language, Sinhala, the sole official language. “The Tamils history in Sri Lanka is one of constant and widespread discrimination.” These chauvanistic moves were followed up with bloody violence wreaked on the Tamils, which Ridenour argues, fit the legal definition of genocide.

Eventually, Tamils formed resistance groups that defended Tamils and pressed for a Tamil state where they felt they could be free from Sinhalese discrimination and violence. The best known group was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) who were no stranger to using extreme violence and were declared terrorists by many, although Ridenour puts this label into perspective.

“Really, if I starve the Tamils, the Sinhala people will be happy.” President Junius Richard Jayewardene was quoted in the Daily Telegraph in 1983. Strangely enough, many so-called terrorists are victims of genocide.

Tamils did not just fight Sinhalese military. Tamil rebel factions fought each other; Tamils fought the Indian “peacekeepers.” The Tamils were adept at finding enemies to fight, but what allies did Tamils find?

Lack of Solidarity

Even the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuṇa (People’s Liberation Front) was opposed to a ceasefire with the Tamils, calling it “part of a western conspiracy to destabilize, divide and re-conquer” Sri Lanka. Yet, if the reasoning proffered by Ridenour for Marxist reluctance to lay down arms is correct, then it exposes a gaping contradiction among the Marxists: they preferred to fight a divisive civil war to avoid being divided.

In the end, the deep divisions among the Tamils would be their very undoing. The egos of LTTE “leader” Velupillai Prabhakaran and Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan (Colonel Karuna) in the East split the Tamils further. Karuna disobeyed orders for the transfer of his fighters, and Prabharakan expelled him from the LTTE. Karuna went over to the Sri Lankan government side.

Now the LTTE was forced to fight the government troops and three Tamil paramilitary groups. It was a losing proposition for Tamils.

Ridenour attempts to answer the question: Why the Tigers failed? The question also implies why the Tamil people failed?

Among the reasons, Ridenour points to Karuna’s defection, Prabharakan’s authoritarian leadership, his reliance on conventional warfare rather than guerrilla warfare, and Prabharakan’s brutality.

The Tigers defeat was ultimately a defeat for the Tamil people. They were a house divided. There was no unity between Sri-Lankan Tamils and Indian Tamils, no unity between Tamils and Muslims, and, of course, what unity can one expect from within an ethnicity that has an oppressive caste system? There was even divisiveness among Tamil fighters; they had to defend against each other as well as Sinhalese fighters. This is hardly a successful strategy for liberation.

A whirlwind of genocidal ferocity engulfed the Tamil people. The western media reported little of it; after all, it did not directly involve western fighters. The Tamils have lost control of areas they held in the north and the east. Ridenour writes of “enforced disappearances” of Tamils, maybe into the human trafficking market that opened. Sinhalese subsequently were being “settled” into Tamil areas and homes.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder spoke of the children’s “unimagineable suffering,” now no longer recruited as fighters are instead coerced into prostitution, sex trafficking, and alcohol smuggling.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called the devastation “… the most appalling scene I have seen …”

The Sri Lankan defense ministry triumphed its ”humanitarian operation” victory as one with zero civilian casualties. Ridenour pointed to the videos that appeared on UK’s Channel 4 which belie that defense ministry claim.

Where now?

There is a substantial Tamil diaspora that has begun to organize internationally. A young Tamil socialist, Sharmini Lathan, seems to know the way out of the morass. He told Ridenour: “We need to combine all our forces and struggles: Tamils, Arabs, Latin Americans… We need to help each other, [sic] because we have common problems and goals.”

That the United Nations accomplished nothing to protect humans from the scourge of war in Sri Lanka was unsurprising. Of some surprise was the non-solidarity not just among the Sri Lankans; it was among Arab states, leftist states such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia who abandoned Tamils. It leads Ridenour to a sad conclusion that “we are heading for moral collapse, and then fascism throughout much of the world.”

Clearly, the Tamils were discriminated against; they were persecuted; and they were forced to resist violently. They resisted largely with minimal support of leftists, communists, and revolutionaries elsewhere. Ridenour found out what he could about the Tamil struggle; he held to to his moral and ideological principles. This single person did not turn his back on the Tamils on the other side of the globe, and he called his fellow leftists out on their lack of solidarity.

Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka gives the background information necessary for the reader to become informed of what led to the civil war and its still unfolding aftermath. Ridenour criticizes the lack of leftist solidarity with the Tamil struggle, but how much of the blame do the Tamils themselves share? One surely would not go so far as to blame any people for a genocide against them, but part of the Tamil struggle was internecine. Readers of Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka will have a solid base to discuss, research further, and form their own conclusions.

1. Yes, even Arab nations unmindful of or insouciant to how that reflects on their Arab brethren in Palestine.

The resolution called upon Sri Lanka to implement its own findings and recommendations made in its report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), but extended that call to “initiate credible and independent actions to ensure justice, equity, accountability and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans.” (“Independent action” is not defined.)

Furthermore, the resolution with 24 in favor, 15 against, and 8 abstentions, “encourages” the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to offer the government “advice and technical assistance” in implementing the LLRC recommendations and to make a report on the provision at the 22nd HRC session, a year from now.

In an earlier draft, Sri Lanka would have had to provide a time table to show implementation was underway. To acquire India’s vote, perhaps, the final resolution was watered down. No mention of war crimes or crimes against humanity is included; instead, Sri Lanka is asked to investigate “allegations of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances.”¹

The resolution implies a lack of confidence in the Sri Lankan government to enact even its own mild investigation, while preventing any discussion of a more solid investigation into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that the “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” called for last year when it recommended an independent international investigation.

Comparison with May 2009 resolution

The resolution that US allies backed in May 2009 (the US was not on the HR Council then) also called upon Sri Lanka to investigate itself for possible human rights abuse, while condemning only the LTTE for terrorism and war crimes and other human rights abuses. Even though this resolution only asked the police to investigate themselves, many governments took this as an affront to sovereignty. 29 countries voted to applaud Sri Lanka and condemn only the LTTE. Nothing was stated about the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians. This resolution was opposed by 12 votes and there were six abstentions. The pattern was clear then: nearly all the Non-Aligned Movement governments voted for Sri Lanka, and the West voted for a possible critique.

This time the geo-political voting pattern was broken, and, coincidently, disproved my prediction that Sri Lanka would come through without a slap on the face.

The changes in voting are interesting:

Latin American and Africa changed votes significantly.

In 2009, all of the African governments on the Council voted fully in favor of Sri Lanka with one abstention. This time the vote was split with five in favor of the possible criticism, three opposed and five abstentions.

In 2009, five of Latin American governments voted to fully support Sri Lanka, two voted for some critique (Chile and Mexico) and Argentine abstained. Today, six governments voted for the critique with only the two ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) governments voting against any critique (Cuba and Ecuador).

The Middle Eastern governments did not change. They all voted not to criticize with one abstention, the same pattern as in 2009.

Europe, west and east, voted the same way: slight critique.

Russia and China backed Sri Lanka fully.

The countries still on the Council since 2009, which changed their votes from support of Sri Lanka to critique are: Cameroon and Nigeria; India; Uruguay.

The most significant reversal is India, given its several decades-long relationship supporting the Island nation so close to it. Although India changed its vote, it balanced the change with sovereign state solidarity with Sri Lanka.

“While we subscribe to the broader message of this resolution and the objectives it promotes, we also underline that any assistance from the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights or visits of UN Special Procedures should be in consultation with and with the concurrence of the Sri Lankan Government,” read the Indian statement, as reported by Tamilnet.com.

“Observers in Tamil Nadu said that the Indian statement contradicted the demands put forward by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. J. Jayalalithaa, who had demanded India to declare SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa complicit in genocide and war-crimes and to call for economic sanctions against Sri Lanka till the country ensured equal status to Tamils,” the website reported.

Uruguay’s change is also important. Its new president, José Mujica, was a left-wing guerrilla who spent 15 years in prison, two of it at the bottom of a well. He has placed poverty as the first order of business.

Peru was not on the Council in 2009, but its new government with Ollanta Humala as president voted to criticize Sri Lanka. He has also vowed to tackle poverty as his first priority.

The fact that two African governments have reversed their vote may indicate that international agitation has had an effect. More NAM governments abstained this time as well.

Why the difference?

Although it was the greatest terrorist state in the world that introduced the critical resolution, the United States is still a partner in the war crimes and in genocide against Tamils. It always backed Sinhalese chauvinism, discrimination against Tamils, and offered no aid to Tamil civilians. But it sees an opportunity here to polish its image as a “human rights supporter” while maintaining systematic human rights abuse in its many invasions and military interventions in the world.

The current US president is at war in seven countries, all circumscribing United Nations laws against invading countries that have not invaded the propagator of war: Afghanistan, Iraq (tens of thousands of US war mercenaries still occupy Iraq), Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda, Sudan and Libya. Furthermore, without US backing the Palestinian people would have been liberated from Zionist Israel ages ago.

These are some factors in the change:

1. Indian Tamils in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka Tamils living in the Diaspora in many countries have, since the end of the war, conducted many protests and lobbied governments for justice. A few Tamils have even committed suicide in despair and in protest.

2. Channel 4 two-part Killing Field series. The second episode was shown during these sessions and clearly pointed an accusing finger at the Rajapaksa-family regime for standing behind horrendous murders, mutilations, rape; in short, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

3. Mainstream Tamil parties in parliament in Tamil Nadu, India, were a major influence in convincing the central government to change its vote from one of applauding Sri Lanka to this critical stance.

4. The US is making it clear to Sri Lanka’s government that it is dissatisfied with it even while approving a World Bank loan of $213 million for development in the capital city, Colombo, just a week ago. The US keeps its fingers in the economy while it shows its unhappiness because Rajapaksa is offering more economic concessions to China and Russia. The US has lost its long-hoped for port in Trincomalee harbor, which China will probably acquire.

It was China, as well as Russia, Israel, Iran, and Pakistan (not exactly blood brothers) that gave and sold more military hardware to Sri Lanka in the last two to three years of war to annihilate the LTTE. The US-UK and NATO offered far less in the latter period given that they were bogged down in the Middle East.

Conclusion

Perhaps nothing substantial for Tamils in Sri Lanka will come out of this Human Rights Geo-Political game, not simply in and of itself. But the game’s rules are changed, at least in this area of the world, when so many NAM members have not sided with a fellow member. I believe that this is the case, in large part, because the evidence of gross atrocities has come to the surface. No doubt, US machinations have had some effect. But we should not be fooled that these governments are interested in the human rights of any people. The current US president sees an opportunity to score points by pointing a finger at a real culprit, just as he sought to do in Libya under false pretenses, and as he is trying to do in Syria. He, like all capitalist presidents, seeks oil, profits, and domination. He can afford to point a finger at Sri Lanka’s government today because he has lost influence there and because he wants re-election votes from human rights-concerned citizens, albeit beguiled ones.

Cuba, which started the ALBA coalition with Venezuela in 2004, needs to reflect upon its foreign policy stance and especially in regards to Sri Lanka. It has politically backed Sri Lanka, in part, because they are both members of NAM, and Cuba often acts in a knee jerk manner when the US points its finger at other nations, especially third world countries—understandably.

Yet Cuba goes overboard in backing this most ruthless Sri Lankan regime responsible for scores of thousands of civilian deaths, incarcerating hundreds of thousands without due process, continuing to militarize traditional Tamil homeland in the North and East, taking over homes, businesses, places of worship, and building hotels upon Tamil graveyards.

Cuba has acted immorally and in contrast to its long-time solidarity with the oppressed and exploited peoples of the world.

The evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide, is much too irrefutably vivid due to testimonies of victims, satellite photos, and the excellent Channel 4 documentaries with photos and videos taken either by UN aid workers, some by victims or by Sri Lankan murdering soldiers which were then sold or otherwise released to the public.

If Tamils in India and in the Diaspora keep up the pressure, if left organizations, grassroots groups, representatives of other oppressed peoples seeking liberation (such as Palestinians, Kurds in Turkey, Basques, Irish, etc.) would join in united fronts for liberation for one and all, then we might be able to bring some real hope for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Do not be fooled: The US does not want true accountability or a Tamil Eelam homeland for the oppressed minority, but the spotlight is turned on and peoples’ power could stoke the light bringing, at least, relief to the down-trodden Tamil people.

1. See Tamilnet’s story with draft changes.

Why did I, a white westerner get involved in this crazy world of Sinhalese and Tamils? I knew nothing about Sri Lanka until the end of the internal war, May 2009. I was asked by the Latin American Friendship Association in Tamil Nadu, India to look into it, because they knew of my work with Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of our America (ALBA).

I am rooted in Martin Luther King’s premise: “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”.

I got involved in solidarity with your people’s struggle because you have been so brutally treated, and because of the moral principle of solidarity with the oppressed, the struggle for justice.

In the land of my birth, The Devil’s Own Country, I experienced similar injustice committed against the native peoples and the black people as Tamils suffer. In the 1960-70s, I joined with millions of brothers and sisters of all colors to fight racism, to struggle for equal rights, for education and health care for all, the basic right to vote, and to assist the Vietnamese-Cambodians-Laotians win back their countries from the invading Yankees. We did help end the war in favor of the invaded peoples, and black people did achieve most equal rights.

But now, decades later, the world still looks as bad or even worse.

I recently read Under My Skin, Doris Lessing’s first volume of her autobiography. She wrote this nearly 20 years ago when in her 70s. I quote from a passage on page 282 that took place during World War II or soon afterwards:

“We took it for granted that when the working class – or the blacks or any other disadvantaged people – took power, they would be inspired by only the purest and most disinterested ideals.”

What do we have in the world today so long afterwards?

1. A black-faced man as the most powerful president in the world engaging in more aggressive wars at one time than any time in US history. And where I live, Denmark, the so-called “red” government continues murdering people in Afghanistan and backing up capitalism just as the neo-liberal government did.

2. Former Tamil leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) once fighting for the welfare and liberation of an entire people now engage in murdering, raping, kidnapping into slavery and prostitution, robbing their own people. Karuna, Devananda, Pillaivan—leaders of the groups TMVP, ERDP and others—work for some of the most vicious rulers in the modern world, the Rajapaksa family regime which commits genocide against the Tamil people.

3. Declared Marxists, Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, Buddhist monks ally with the Rajapaksa reign and other Sinhalese mass murdering regimes before them.

4. Black, brown, yellow-skin people once achieving government power have committed genocide or mass murder and other violent crimes against their own people. Former revolutionary leaders, many of them former guerrillas who fought for liberation of the masses or ethnic groups in many countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe now work for capitalism and material riches.

The United States committed genocide against the Vietnamese, who are now engaging in capitalism as is China, led by the false Communist party.

5. Cuba, the most successful revolutionary nation promising equality, an end to racism and poverty based upon a socialist economy and aligned with the oppressed of the world is now regressing towards capitalism and inequality, and with a foreign policy that backs the vicious Sinhalese chauvinist governments and ignores the suffering plight of the Tamil people.

I am deeply hurt and disappointed that the government of Cuba—where I lived and worked side by side with the people and government for eight years—as well as the socialistic-progressive governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and other Latin American governments have not understood that their own principle of international solidarity must apply to the Tamil people of Sri Lanka.

Cuba with the other ALBA countries contend that they are opposed to the United States and European countries “intervening” in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs. But, in reality, all that the US asks is that the Sri Lankan government investigate itself and find some scapegoats to punish for massive war crimes that can no longer be hidden. But the greatest terrorist states’ minor critique of Rajapaksa’s government for “possibly” committing war crimes is only a symbol of critique, which allows these false “democracies” to maintain a public stance, in order to obtain votes from people who can be beguiled that they are really concerned about the human rights of any people. This is the perennial Human Rights Geo-Political Game.

ALBA cannot help but know this is so. They know that the US-UK-France-Israel and others in their alliance have all along supported Sri Lankan chauvinist governments with money, intelligence, surveillance, armaments, military boats and aircraft.

The progressive governments must have forgotten the Marxist principle of self-determination, the very moral principle of the right to life, the right to equality. What would the current government of Cuba mean today about what Fidel Castro told author-photographer Lee Lockwood?

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.¹

What do Cuba and ALBA governments think today of Lenin and Marx on the matter of self-determination? In Lenin’s 1916 theses, “The socialist revolution and the right of nations to self-determination”, he wrote:

Victorious socialism must achieve complete democracy and, consequently, not only bring about the complete equality of nations, but also give effect to the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, i.e., the right to free political secession.

Today this would mean that since the proclaimed socialist state of Sri Lanka—led by a self-proclaimed coalition of socialists, communists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Buddhist monks—refuses to grant equal rights to Tamils and maintains discrimination in language, religion, education and jobs it is necessary that the Tamils achieve self-determination through “free political secession”.

Karl Marx, who lived so many years in England and is buried there, supported national independence for Ireland and did so in the interests of the socialist movement of the British workers. Marx wrote in a letter, April 9, 1870: “It is [Britain’s oppression of Ireland] the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite their organization, it is the secret of which the capitalist class maintains its power.”

This is exactly the situation for the past six decades in Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese workers have been fooled by the Sinhalese ruling class’ promulgation of racism and chauvinism, and the religious system of castes, to discriminate against Tamils. And Tamils have not been insightful enough to try to create working class and solidarity alliances with other ethnic and religious groups.

6. The peoples’ whistle blowing medium Wikileaks is a major factor in our knowing as much as we do today about the crimes of state. These communicators, especially those under attack by the terrorist governments—Julian Assange and Bradley Manning—must be supported. If our joint enemy succeeds in crushing them we will all suffer because of it.

Why is it, then, that there are so few of the 99% who are actually engaged in anti-capitalist action? Why do most of the workers, the poor and disenfranchised still cling to supporting one or another of the capitalist political parties?

The answer(s) could lie in a lack of confidence in our selves as worker leaders. We place too great a reliance on authorities be they religious or spiritual gurus or political leaders. India, for example, is still a hot bed of authoritarianism, which I witnessed recently during my book tour. The caste system is as thoroughly racist as apartheid. It is absolutely maniacal that racism is practiced within the same race or nationality or religion. This self-defeating practice is capitalism’s greatest weapon to divide and conquer. Socialism is absolutely impossible as long as people fall into the self-defeating trap of perpetuating castes and discrimination of one ethnic group over another.

We must realize that government leaders, and most religious-spiritual leaders, are not like us. They are well paid by our taxes, and many skim money from the public tills and under-the-table deals. They do not suffer materially. They are not unemployed or homeless. We must drop the illusion that they will save us.

There are positive struggles

Despite my despair of the inhumanity of humanity we do have some positive movements underway now. The Mondragon cooperatives in Spain is a possible vehicle for the transition from capitalism to socialism, at least the workers are also owners and decision-makers, which is more than socialist states accomplished. The Bolivian indigenous culture to Live Well, and not to live better—never content with just enough—is another equalitarian movement. Another great step forward is that of Occupy Wall Street. The OWS has extended into many US cities and a few other countries. In one important way, it is more advanced than the movements I was part of in the 1960s-70s. Our movements were usually single-issue oriented. Only a minority of us held socialist or communist views and we could not organize any significant movement for socialism. The OWS starts from the logic that it is capitalism that is the true culprit. This movement has to move out to the working class and convince them of this reality. I know many are making efforts.

Then we have Arab Spring. Here are millions of people literally risking their lives, willing to be killed while fighting through non-violent actions a democratic form of rule with jobs and food for the majority who are poor. I am not referring to Libya, which is a different struggle—one mainly rooted in war lord clans seeking national power supported by the imperialists. They were successful in aborting the desires of the initial protestors who were, in fact, positively influenced by the masses in Tunisia and Egypt. Even though two brutal dictators were thrown out, the capitalist system led by the army and corporations are still in control. The US-NATO’s key ally Saudi Arabia is used to brutally put down protestors in Bahrain. Today, the situation in Syria is most complicated. All sorts of forces are at play and there is no clear revolutionary force fighting for justice and equality midst the clash of national and foreign powers’ manipulations.

The Human Rights Game!

As we meet, the 19th session of the so-called Human Rights Council is meeting. Nothing will come out of this farce to favor the Tamil people. The US had hoped that Rajapaksa would ease real critique of his war crimes by adopting his own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’s mild findings and recommendations, and that he would say so at this HRC session. But the arrogant king of the lions did not feel compelled to lift even that finger. He has had all the support he needs from the west and genocidal Zionist Israel all these years, and in latter years from India, Russia, China and Iran. But western governments live in an historical conjuncture where they need to raise the façade of protecting human rights, in order to pacify their populations and to conduct “humanitarian operation” wars for profit and global domination.

Unlike in previous years, however, the US now feels like pushing the human rights button a bit more firmly since it has lost its hope of obtaining access to Trincomalee harbor for a naval base. The rising super-power China already obtained its naval-commercial port at Hambontota, and it looks like either it or the former super-power Russia will be granted the Trincomalee port too.

The latest information is that the US will introduce its own resolution regarding Sri Lanka in the last week of the HRC session (March 19-23). It purportedly will call upon the government to implement “the constructive recommendations in the LLRC report and additionally to take immediate steps to…address serious allegations of violations of international law by initiating credible and independent investigations and prosecutions of those responsible for such violations.”

As in the special HRC session in May 2009, the US and its European allies are calling upon Sri Lanka’s government to police itself. But this time, given its loss of favoritism, the US has added that it should initiate “independent investigations”, albeit the US does not back the UN’s own expert panel report calling for “an international independent investigation”.

There is a fine line between the government’s own LLRC and what the US is calling for but there is much fanfare in the world community of geo-politics. Cuba-ALBA, and the Non-Aligned Movement of 113 nations generally, resist, understandably enough, when the major imperialist state and its allies among the former colonial powers demand that they do this or that. Cuba-ALBA lands had long been forced to bow to these demands. While Cuba-ALBA are not terrorist states as are the US-EU-NATO states, they have fallen into the trap of “an enemy of my enemy is my friend”. What they fail to recognize, or admit, is that the western powers are not the only terrorist states. They fall into the double morality trap of backing the sovereignty of all Third World governments no matter how they treat their populations. Sri Lanka government is a terrible violator of human rights, and not just against the Tamils, but also against Muslims, the indigenous tribes, and it also exploits Sinhalese workers, the poor, and lower castes.

Cuba has told Sri Lanka that it “extends its utmost support to Sri Lanka at the 19th Summit of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.” The Cuban ambassador to Sri Lanka who conveyed this message of President Raul Castro is named Nursia Castro Guevara, of all names. She stated that her government “vehemently rejects fake allegations on human rights against Sri Lanka”.

It is immoral, it is a shame that Cuba totally dismisses the testimony of thousands of eye witnesses to and victims of mass murders, rapes, incarceration; and then dismiss as well serious reports by international organizations, including the findings of the UN expert panel on accountability, the videos broadcast by Channel Four, the diplomatic correspondence leaked by Wikileaks.

My statements here must not be taken out of context and misinterpreted, as Sri Lankan officials and some Cuba-ALBA solidarity people have done, to represent my position as one of siding with the US. I have not supported US governments for half-a-century.

I predict that the majority on the HRC will vote against the US’s mild resolution to be put forth and they will do so, in part, because of opposition to the US’s constant human rights abuse in many parts of the world.

But the fact that the US will lose its resolution will result in a victory for it. That nothing will occur at the HRC to force the hand of Sri Lanka’s war crimes will be used by the “democratic” West to pontificate against Cuba-ALBA, NAM, Russia, China, Iran complicity with war crimes. And these war crimes, which the US & co. helped create, will remain without accountability just as the US actually wishes. Otherwise, if there were a real investigation, the US’s own dirty linen could be exposed. Yet for many millions of unaware people in the US, the West generally, and elsewhere, it will seem as though these governments are the good guys fighting the bad guys—communists and former communists, and “colored third world” governments. It should mean a lot of votes for the puppet president of the US.

What can be done!

Tamils must not rely on the greatest terrorist in the world to help them. The Yankees offer no help without dire costs. The United States of America kills tens of millions; tortures hundreds of thousands; starves hundreds of millions. We must be aware that since World War 11, the US has invaded or intervened militarily 160 times in 66 countries. At present they are murdering people in seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, and until recently in Libya where their allies continue murdering people. They arm some Syrian rebel elements and prepare to invade Iran, or let Israel do so.

Without US support to Israel, the Palestinians would be a free people today. Zionist Israel commits genocide against the Palestinian people. It offered Mossad intelligence, great amounts of weaponry, fast Dvora naval attack craft, Kfir killer aircraft and even pilots to Sri Lanka to murder the Tamils. After the end of the war, Sri Lanka sent its military chief-of-staff, Donald Perera, to Israel as its ambassador as a reward for Zionist assistance. He told the largest Zionist daily, Yedioth Abornoth,: “I consider your country a partner in the war against terror,” thus coupling terrorism with the Palestinians’ struggle for their homeland and the Tamils’ right to exist in peace and equality. He also supported the cold-blooded murders in international waters, on May 31, 2010, of nine Turkish solidarity activists bound for Gaza with survival supplies.

I believe that your organizations must create grass roots organizations and discuss these realities. You have to abandon false hopes and stop wasting time lobbying terrorist states. You need to discuss these realities with people’s grass roots and indigenous organizations and unions in Latin America, Palestine and elsewhere where people are struggling for sovereignty, for liberation. You must explain to them your history, why you had to take up arms and fight for separation, for an independent nation. They have to hear of your suffering, of your struggles, why Tamil Eelam, political separation is a necessity when ruling powers will not grant a people their basic democratic and equal rights.

The progressive governments have won majority votes for new constitutions in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Venezuela that grant equal rights to their indigenous peoples. In Bolivia, for instance, under the new constitution there are four official national languages, three of them are indigenous as well as Spanish. If these people could know you simply want these same rights, they might listen to you and stop backing Sri Lanka.

Tamils, stand up to all terrorist states, which also support the terrorist state of Sri Lanka!

We must work for a worldwide boycott of Sri Lanka and join in the boycott of Israel.

We must communicate with other people who are struggling for their rights and join forces.

We must join with others to combat the growing racism-fascism in the West against Muslims and Arabs.
We must prove the case of genocide against Tamils as did the International War Crimes Tribunal during the war against Southeast Asians. We could ask the Permanent People’s Tribunal—which found that Sri Lanka committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during its sessions in Dublin, Ireland, January 2010—to take up such an investigation.

We have wandered over the deserts and the seas. We have been hungry and thirsty. We have been murdered and tortured. We are of the working class, of the castes; we are many races and nationalities. We share a common vision: freedom and equality; bread and water on the table; a shelter over our heads. We must fight together to live in peace and harmony.

Che Guevara would be on our side today!

1. Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel, New York, 1967.

Until the past few weeks it looked as though the “international community” (US, UK-Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan), the east (Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran), the Middle East-Libya/Africa) and the progressive South (Cuba-ALBA+, South Africa)were content with ignoring Sri Lanka’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This tragedy was not even placed on the agenda despite the UN’s “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” delivered to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, March 31, 2011. The panel determined that both the Sri Lankan government-military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE/Tigers) had most likely committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. It called for an independent international investigation into credible allegations leveled at the state. The LTTE was crushed by May 18, 2009 and no longer exists.

On the agenda for the upcoming 19th session are 80 reports and missions with 40 addendums concerning about 50 countries. None deal with Sri Lanka, not even under section E, “Combating impunity and strengthening accountability, the rule of law and democratic society.” The 18th HRC session (May-June 2011) had also avoided placing the matter on the table despite the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Navi Pillay) request while the Secretary-General was/is silent.

While there would be no accountability, the “Human Rights Game” requires a façade of concern. At the end of last January, US State Department officials Thomas Melia and Lesley Taylor met with a Tamil citizen group in Jaffna to tell them what to expect at the 19th session. Eighteen notes of the meeting were taken by participants and sent to Tamilnet.

The key points were: “There is no possibility of a resolution” [concerning the UN expert panel and war crimes issue]. This is due, partially, to the lack of “sufficient pressure” from the affected people. What can be expected is a positive reference to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) report conducted by appointees of the Sri Lankan government. While the US may ask the Rajapaksa family government to implement the recommendations the Commission made, which it has done nothing about in the three months since its delivery, the US will do nothing to “antagonize the GOSL” (Government of Sri Lanka) nor is it interested in “instituting an accountability mechanism”.

It may be that high ranking members of the Sinhalese government were not so keen even with this minor pressure to adopt its own commission’s report.

Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission

Led by former Attorney General C.R. de Silva, the eight Rajapaksa appointees on the LLRC did not address possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by the government. The commission of inquiry into the time of ceasefire (2002) and the end of the war found no government or military entities culpable that required any process of accountability. It did, however, poke a hole in the government’s constant litany that “no civilians were killed” by it, and implied that some security forces might have caused some deaths and injuries of civilians although there had been no intent to cause harm. It stated that numerous citizens’ testimonies related to disappearances. It admitted that there may have been some “bad apples” but no systematic atrocities took place.

The LLRC report’s major significance is its recommendations that the north and east be demilitarized, that paramilitary groups be dismantled, that a degree of devolution of local power to Tamils take place, and that the police departments be made a separate institution from the military.

Regarding the last point, there are more military and police today—300,000 —than during the war and all are under the command of the Minister of Defence, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, one of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brothers. G. Rajapaksa uses one-fifth of the state budget, $2 billion. About 40 members of the Rajapaksa family hold government, parliamentary and key institution posts.

Following the Jaffna meeting with a Tamil civilian group, the US initiated meetings with Sri Lanka government officials with the aim of having them step in line. Three leading US officials—Marie Otero, under secretary of state for democracy and human rights; Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs and former ambassador to Sri Lanka; and Stephen Rapp, ambassador-at-large for international war crimes—traveled to Sri Lanka to let the GOSL know what was expected. Its arrogance was becoming an embarrassment to the Human Rights Game.

The Tamil coalition of political parties, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), must also pay attention. While it has long demanded that accountability of war crimes committed be addressed, some members also call for the LLRC recommendations to take precedence. One significant instance is the confusion caused by two Alliance leading MPs, R. Sampanthan and M.A. Sumanthiran, who told US’s man, Stephan J. Rapp, on February 7, that the TNA wanted an independent inquiry, accountability and “meaningful” devolution of power. One week later, Sumanthiran stated to BBC that the “TNA backs a domestic process to implement the LLRC recommendations. We ask for an international probe only after a failure at that.”

At the same time, a natural ally with the Tamils, South Africa’s government, signaled approval of the LLRC report and recommended the government implement the recommendations. It did say that the LLRC should have delved into accountability. Just the year before, the African National Congress called upon the UN to implement an investigation recommended by the panel of experts.

Perhaps the Rajapaksa brothers were still balking because the media reported, February 10, that Secretary of State Hiliary Clinton sent a letter explaining what the Sri Lanka government must do:

1. Submit an action plan with time frames to establish implementation of the LLRC;
2. Consent agreement to be signed between the government and the TNA;
3. Release General Sarath Fonseka, the key general victor over the LTTE, from prison, where Rajapaksa sent him over differences and because Fonseka challenged him in elections, something that the US might want to see happen again.

For emphasis the US threatened to reveal voice recordings of Defence Secretary G. Rajapaksa and field commanders in which he instructed them to kill all senior members of the LTTE even if they carried a white flag of surrender.

Under secretary Otero told Colombo journalists that the US will support a resolution calling for the government to implement its report. She spoke favorably of Sri Lanka’s government saying the US had over the years supplied it with $2 billion, much of it in military assistance to fight the Tigers and prevent a separate Tamil nation.

“The United States has long been a friend of Sri Lanka; we were one of the first countries to recognize the LTTE as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, in 1997,” she said.

Human Rights Game and the Players

1. The western US-EU-Israel-India axis
2. The eastern Russia-China-Pakistan-Iran semi-alliance
3. The Middle East/Africa parts of the Non-Aligned Movement
4. The progressive Latin American NAM area

Many of these governments, especially the western and eastern ones, have directly supported the various Sinhalese chauvinist governments with money and credits, military equipment, intelligence, military training and mercenaries.¹

In the writing mentioned above,¹ of the states materially and military supporting Sri Lanka, I inadvertently left out Russia, which has sold weapons and military aircraft to Sri Lanka governments over the years. Even after the war in 2010, during which hundreds of thousands of Tamils were suffering in concentration camps, Russia offered Sri Lanka $300 million in credit to buy military aircraft and armaments, among other items. Only $500,000 was allocated for “relief”.

There has not been much or any economic or military aid from Group 3 but these governments support Sri Lanka and oppose not only the guerrilla warfare but the very demand for an independent nation within the state of Sri Lanka. That is what Tamil Eelam means and what, until the end of the war, almost all Tamils in Sri Lanka wanted, including political parties that did not take up arms. Most people in Tamil Nadu, India, and the rest of the Diaspora sought the same.

Group 4 is caught in an ideological bind—between solidarity with oppressed peoples and solidarity with third world sovereign states—but concludes in condemning the Tigers for terrorism, ignoring the victimized civilian Tamils, and politically supporting the Sri Lanka government. In the May 26, 2009 HRC resolution, the Cuba-led majority praised S.L. for its “commitment” “to the promotion and protection of all human rights”; congratulated it for freeing Tamil civilians from the terrorist Tigers; reaffirmed “respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka”.

The Western group opposed this resolution for its geo-political reasons. It asked Sri Lanka to conduct its own investigation and the LLRC is the result.

So, what I think will happen at the 19th session is that there will be no talk about the UN expert panel report or independent investigations into accountability. Some NGOs disagree with me and think that the US will press for accountability.

In my view, the Rajapaksa’s government will present a “National action plan for the protection and promotion of human rights” in conjunction with the LLRC. This will please the US-EU-India axis. Israel may not take any position believing, perhaps, that the Rajapaksan absolute arrogance and unwillingness to do anything was the best course. This course is its’ own against the Palestinians.

If for some odd reason, Sri Lanka does not add implementations into its action plan, there will then be a Group 1 resolution demanding it to do so. The session will end either with the passage of such a resolution or, if Sri Lanka still balks then its ALBA-NAM allies, being the majority on the HRC, will vote down any western approved ploy.

Either way, the Human Rights Game will conclude (for now) thusly:

Group 2 will look gray in its lack of critique of Sri Lanka, its do-nothing approach. Group 3 can contend simply that it supports all 113 NAM governments. Group 4, the socialist-communist and progressive-led governments of Latin America, and especially Cuba-ALBA, will have egg on their faces for having only praised the brutal Sinhalese chauvinist government and not played any Human Rights role in favor of the civilian Tamils. They have only played the Geo-Political Game and done so in a staid manner: the enemy of my enemy is my friend type.

However the play unfolds, I predict that the western group will come out looking like the good guys in the Human Rights Game. The eastern and southern groups will especially look like the bad guys.

This will be the view most westerners, including many progressives, will take. For many voters in the US, Obama will look like the hero on the white horse in the White House.

Sri Lanka-Tamil conflict can also be viewed in the context of the Arab Spring and the role that Group 1 plays in diverting the uprisings to suit its imperial needs. Knowing little of the reality, most liberal-progressive-left westerners think Group 1’s role in Libya was best for the Human Rights Game, and also with the tragedy in Syria where complications are similar to those in Libya.

What should be clear to thinking people, to people who seek real human rights and justice, is that almost no government wants authentic accountability judged upon a friendly government because it could be its turn next.

If there were true accountability spread around how would Group 1 look led by the US with its long history of invading weaker countries for their resources and for political control, committing war crimes including systematic torture? What about accountability for the two-three million Iraqis killed since US attacks on that sovereign nation from 1991 to the present? What about accountability of the “coalition of the willing” for mass murder and seizure of Afghanistan? What about Obama accountability for seven wars for oil-$ and global domination (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Uganda); and Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people? What about genocide in Rwanda where the “peacekeeping” mission of the US-UK-France played a major role? Then there is giant China and minority Tibet being overrun with Chinese just as Zionists overrun Palestine and Sinhalese do the same in Tamil’s traditional homeland in the north and east.

This appears to be the view also of at least one of the three international organizations representing Tamils rights and seeking a Tamil Eelam. The Transnational Government for Tamil Eelam issued its news release concerning the upcoming HRC session, February 17:

This dismal failure in the position taken by the US and several other governments to address the crucial issue of justice is a source of grave disappointment to the Tamils”…”Today, again, the world’s governments are disregarding their moral and legal obligations by focusing exclusively on Sri Lanka’s own LLRC Report, which has been rejected outright not only by the Tamil people…

It would be a fallacy to imagine that the very power structure which stands accused of these heinous crimes will now begin a process to bring its own members to justice. Therefore, we perceive the leading governments’ choice to focus exclusively on the LLRC Report amounting to an attempt to derail the mounting international clamor for formal international investigations on Sri Lanka.

Less clear in my eyes is what Cuba-ALBA thinks it achieves from the Human Rights Game by entirely denying Tamils’ suffering. These governments do not mistreat their own nationalities, ethnic groups or religious peoples and, unlike many governments in Groups 1-3, they are not terrorist states. It is also understandable that they are critical of any interference by Group 1, with all its hypocrisy and its subversion against almost all of Latin America. One might think that Bolivia and Venezuela could be skittish about Tamil Eelam because there are groups there that want to create their own separate nation. But these are small groups that are orchestrated by comprador capital aligned with the US and have nothing to do with discrimination against any nationality, ethnic group or religion.

I think that Che Guevara would understand the need for solidarity with the Tamil people. He would be on their side today!

In reality, Rajapaksa’s stonewalling criticism of his regime’s war crimes and his systematic denial of truth is working. Groups 1, 2 and 3 tell Rajapaksa to make a little concession and the Human Rights Game continues. The show must go on!

Out of the negative comes the positive

Although impunity for war crimes will continue, genocide be ignored, and an independent nation a pipedream, there are positive developments.

1. Media attention of the Tamils’ plight was garnered by the whistle-blowing medium Wikileaks, which began leaking correspondence between the US Department of State and hundreds of diplomatic missions around the world on November 28, 2010. Initially Wikileaks convinced five core mass media to use the raw data and produce articles. Subsequent to releases of many files about the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by “cablegate”, hundreds more media picked up revelations of massive governmental lying and corruption, and crimes of many types including war crimes, not the least committed by United States governments. 3,166 of the 251,287 cables concerning Sri Lanka war crimes and obtained by Wikileaks—perhaps through brave Bradley Manning—are from the US Embassy in Colombo.

The Boston Globe reported, December 9, 2010: “No foreign leader fared worse in the cables released by Wikileaks than Sri Lanka’s Mahinda Rajapaksa”, referring to US Ambassador Patricia Butenis implications of his role in war crimes.

Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa, one of the President’s brothers, candidly remarked, according to Butenis’ January 15, 2010 cable, “I am not saying we are clean; we could not abide by international law—this would have gone on for centuries, an additional 60 years.”

Minister of Defence Gotabhaya Rajapaksa admitted the same to US Senate Foreign Relations staff members. Ambassador Butenis implicated all the Rajapaksa brothers in government as well as other senior civilian and military leaders in conducting war crimes.

World attention concerning the war crimes committed by the Sinhalese chauvinist government(s) has occurred because of the alternative medium Wikileaks but also due to a group of Sinhalese and Tamil journalists who escaped from Sri Lanka and formed the organization and website www.jdslanka.org. The Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka obtained a short video of 17 frames taken by a Sri Lanka soldier showing eight or nine naked prisoners bound and blindfolded being executed at Kilinochchi. JDS presented the film to UK’s Channel 4. After forensic verification of the film, which was taken January 2, 2009, Channel 4 broadcast it on August 25, 2009. Then in June 2011, Channel 4 broadcast the devastating documentary, “Sri Lanka Killing Fields”.

2. Despite the GOSL maintaining a “zero tolerance policy on torture,” the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has determined that torture is apparently accepted and practiced by the government. In its November 28, 2011 report on Sri Lanka it was found that many allegations of torture and ill-treatment were common, also “enforced disappearances, sexual violence, unacknowledged detention” [as well as] “threats to civil society, journalists, lawyers, and other dissenting voices.”

CAT Rapporteur Ms. Felice Gaer asserted that Sri Lanka has the world’s largest number of disappearances. Sri Lankan cabinet advisor and previous Attorney General Mohan Peiris conceded that of the 6,000 people arrested annually, there were “only 400 torture allegations”.

CAT underlined “the prevailing climate of impunity” and “the apparent failure to investigate promptly and impartially wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed.”

CAT also criticized the LLRC for its “apparent limited mandate” and “alleged lack of independence”.

While the US government has a long history of torturing people and even offers instructions about how to torture at its “School of the Americas” in Georgia, its ambassadors do sometimes inform the Department of State when other governments conduct torture. Again thanks to Wikileaks, the world can know about a May 18, 2007 cable sent by Robert Blake, then ambassador to S.L. He reported how government-connected Tamil paramilitary groups, Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal and Eelam People’s Democratic Party, “keep critics of the GSL fearful and quite”.

These anesthetized Tamils torture and/or kill many of their own people, who sympathized with the Tigers or who seek basic rights from the government. The para-militarists also kidnap and sell Tamil women into prostitution and sell children into slavery. Leaders Karuna and Douglas Devananda were former leading Tiger guerrillas who now enjoy government posts. Karuna even joined the leading government party and became a minister.

3. On September 16, 2011, sixteen NGOs asked the HRC president of the 19th session to invite both the GOSL and the UN Secretary-General to place the UN expert panel report on the agenda, as well as the LLRC. This is significant grass roots pressure as the groups include some of the best known, such as Amnesty, but also others from third world countries, such as the African Democracy Forum. Furthermore, the current HRC president is a woman from Uruguay, Laura Dupuy Lasserre.

Following the May 2009 HRC emergency session in which Uruguay voted for the Sri Lanka prepared resolution, a new president has been elected in Uruguay, José Mujica. Not only is he a socialist but he was a guerrilla in the Tupamaro liberation movement. Once captured, he spent 15 years in prison, some of it under torturous conditions, including two years confined at the bottom of a well. It might just be that Uruguay will press for a bit of justice.

4. One institutional voice asking for the UN expert panel report to be taken seriously is the European Parliament. In a “join motion for a resolution”, February 9, 2012, the parliament agreed to “support efforts to strengthen the accountability process in Sri Lanka”, including the establishment of a “UN Commission of inquiry into all crimes committed, as recommended” by the panel.

Although the EP has no binding powers, it can prod and further inform the public.

5. For the first time (to my knowledge) an internationally renowned Buddhist has spoken out publicly against fellow Buddhists’ treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka. In an apparently undated letter (sometime in February 2012), Thai activist-economist-philosopher Sulak Sivaraksa has appealed to the “Sinhala Buddhists first of all to acknowledge the crimes that they committed against their own Tamil sisters and brothers and ask for forgiveness from the Tamils.

”Rejoicing at the war victories, when thousands have been killed, ‘disappeared’, maimed, raped and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and detained, is totally against the dhamma” [the way].

Sivaraksa has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. He received the 2011 Niwano Peace Prize for furthering world peace. He is considered a “Thai institution”.

These positive points I have listed can give us some hope that more and more people are not to be fooled about who the culprits are regardless of how the world’s governments do their best not to assure accountability while maintaining impunity for their war criminals, which otherwise would mean many of their own leaders would be imprisoned.

What to do

I conclude with a few pointers about how we can go forward.

Several Tamils I have come to know tell me that Tamils from Eelam are among the “most inward looking people” while complaining that other people are not interested in their welfare.

Furthermore, most of the Tamils in the Diaspora rely on western governments, and perhaps India, to fight their battles. They ask them to have the Sri Lankan government judged, condemned and punished, and even go so far as to ask for support to create a new legal nation, that of Tamil Eelam within the state of Sri Lanka. But this political-economic world has no place for pipedreams and fairy tales.

I take from the many millions of righteous rebels in the Arab Spring movement—those not doing the West’s errands—as an example of what could be done. I take also from what many of us were doing in the 1960s-70s in the US and around much of the world. I take also from what the folks are doing in the Occupy Wall Street (and beyond) movement today.

1. Drop illusions of winning through political parties’ parliamentary power. Stand up to all terrorist states.
2. Organize from the grass roots. Go door-to-door. Learn and educate.
3. Use fewer speeches, fewer rallies and connect organizing with speeches and rallies..
4. Join in with other peoples’ struggles. Engage in solidarity work especially with the Palestinians whose struggle is nearly identical to your own. Israel is to Palestine what Sri Lanka Sinhalese governments are to the Tamils.
5. We must combat the growing racism/fascism in the West against Muslims and Arabs.

We have wondered over the deserts and the seas. We have been hungry and thirsty. We have been murdered and tortured. We are of the working class, of the castes. We are many races, ethnic groups, nationalities, religions and non-religion. We share a common vision: freedom and equality; bread and water on the table; a shelter over our heads. We must fight together if we are to live in peace and equality.

1. See my Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka p. 121-5 to see who financed and finances Sri Lanka’s human rights abuse. Add Russia to the long list: India, US, Israel, U.K., EU, Japan, Iran, Pakistan and the greatest war crimes contributor of them all in Sri Lanka, China.

“To be internationalist is to pay our debt to humanity” says Fidel Castro and this can be read on many billboards in Cuba.

What is internationalism?—cooperation among people and nations, states my dictionary. The book of definitions maintains that internationalism is a principle of communism and socialism. It is the belief of ideological leaders such as Lenin, Fidel and Che.

Che wrote in his essay, “Socialism and Man”, that proletarian internationalism isn’t just a duty but a necessity. If revolutionary leaders forget this, Che wrote, the revolution will lose its inspiration and imperialism will benefit.

Che was also known for having severely criticized Soviet Union leadership for having lost its internationalism with the world’s proletariat and the Third World. Following up on Che’s critique, I find it important to criticize communist and socialist parties, and governments led by these parties, which let down people who are oppressed by, or invaded by, national or foreign powers.

Internationalism in action

1. Internationalists must support resistance fighters against invasions. Therefore, one must chastise political parties and groups that give political or moral support to those who call themselves the Iraq Communist Party as it is part of the Quisling government the USA terrorist state set in. ICP leaders live side by side the invaders in the Green Zone. That there are organizations in the United States, UK, Denmark and elsewhere, which call themselves communist or socialist parties and that cooperate with the world’s greatest terrorist state is incomprehensible, shameful, immoral and anti-internationalist.

2. The same applies to people who still support the Zionist state of Israel, which commits genocide against the Palestinian people. Millions of decent people have gotten together to support Palestinians in many ways, including Ships to Gaza. In Denmark, four groups of people have challenged the state’s terrorist laws by donating solidarity aid to the secular leftist PFLP which is part of the Palestinian resistance. Rebellion (Denmark), Fighters and Lovers, Horserød-Stuthoff Association (veterans of WWII resistance fighters imprisoned in Horserød and Stuthoff prisons), and TIB’s club (local carpenters near Copenhagen) have aided both PFLP and FARC, Colombian armed liberation movement.

3. Internationalist can not cooperate with US-NATO aggressive wars, which always have the goal of controlling that country’s economy and politics for capitalist profits. It is shameful that many experienced socialists and communists, as well as naïve progressive people, have backed up West’s big capitalist plans to take over Libya, and thus have bombed Libya back to the stone age. Denmark was one of only six countries that dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Libya, destroying much of it infrastructure, schools, hospitals…In fact, Denmark dropped more bombs on Libya than it has on any other country in its history, Afghanistan included. And the pilots were cowards as there was no resistance by Libya’s air force, already decimated.

This conflict has little to do with the Arab Spring movement. It is a conflict between internal war lords, with ordinary people involved who wished to increase democracy but who were misled by US-NATO whose forces seek to control Libya’s oil and avoid a gold-based currency that Gaddafi was promoting amongst all African countries. Now, US-NATO has placed a lackey government in Tripoli just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

4. Internationalists must also criticize comrade governments, such as Cuba and ALBA governments in Latin America, when they make big mistakes regarding internationalism. We can’t be true comrades-solidarity activists by keeping our mouths shut when this occurs. Such is the case with their support of the brutal government of Sri Lanka, which practices genocide against the minority Tamil population. Ever since independence from Great Britain, in 1947, the majority Sinhalese governments and chauvinist Buddhist monk system has discriminated against Tamils. They have constantly been treated as second class citizens, their language and religions relegated to secondary status without national recognition. Even pogroms have been employed with the brutal murder of many thousands on various occasions. And since May 2009, following the end of a 26-year civil war, ethnic cleansing in the traditional Tamil homeland in the north and eastern areas is the rule of the day.

Cuba and ALBA have spoken only positively of their historic ties with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), to which Sri Lanka is a member, but so are 130 other nations. One cannot, in the name of protecting each nation’s sovereignty, avoid critique when one or more of these nations oppresses or conducts pogroms and genocide against part of the population. Nor can we accept as an excuse the immoral geo-political game that nearly all governments of whatever color play.

We shall also criticize Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and other Latin American progressive governments for helping the US and France in their ouster of the only decent and only democratically elected people’s president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These Latin American governments actually assist the US’s 2004 coup d´état against Aristide by placing occupying troops in the small country, seeking to dampen the people’s anger. These progressive governments should, instead, back up the people’s desire to bring their president back to state power, just as they sought to do for President Zelaya in Honduras where national capitalists and generals kicked him out of office, with background support once again by the United States government.

5. On the personal and organizational plain, internationalism operates when workers of a major firm ask people to boycott a product because of the mistreatment of the workers by the firm. This is the case with Coca-Cola whose workers in Colombia asked us to stop buying the “drink of the death squad” (David Rovics song), because it hires mercenaries to murder workers who seek to organize a union and struggle for collective bargaining. Workers in other countries, such as Guatemala, and farmers in India have asked the same.

It is with joy that I can state that here where we gather (carpenters’ hall in Valby, Denmark), this union is one of the few local unions and political or grass roots groups in Denmark that has boycotted Coca-Cola. This is something any and all individuals can do. It is just a soda drink. So drink something else. Boycotting Coca-Cola is just like boycotting all products from Israel and Sri Lanka. It is a simple act of solidarity, of internationalism.

Charlotte and I have just returned from a six week trip in India where two of my books (“Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka” and “Sounds of Venezuela”) were published by New Century Book House, Tamil Nadu. The Tamil book concerns the history and contemporary life of the Tamil people in that island-nation, and the need to act in solidarity with them. The Venezuela short book concerns this people’s efforts to create a better world for themselves and solidarity with all peoples. When people asked us where we are from we often replied that we are “internationalists”. Interestingly, many Indians understood our meaning and were pleased to think in terms of being brothers and sisters in the world.

This concept, and feeling, of brotherly love, of internationalism has taken off in a bigger way, in 2011, than in many decades. It started in Tunisia, and has expanded to the indignados in Spain, to the anti-capitalists in Wall Street and in hundreds of cities throughout the US and the West.

We have much to criticize and yet much to be glad for as 2012 opens. We must remember and appreciate those who set us off on this new anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist, non-violent and democratic revolution—from the martyr in Tunisia (street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi) and his Iraqi spiritual brother a bit earlier, shoe-thrower Muntazar al-Zaidi, to Occupy Wall Street protestors to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and co-workers at Wikileaks, who helped spark it all by blowing the whistle on the war criminals. These modern-day Paris Commune resisters without arms—OWS and Occupy the World—are growing and they are presenting a vision and with it a program-in-discussion that must be studied and supported.

Internationalism is an endless struggle, an endless challenge. It does not end even when one or more of our political parties take over the governing reigns. We activists from the streets must always keep our wary eyes pinned on the leaders, regardless of their names, just as our clear eyes cast light upon humanity’s future.

Europeans invaded the Americans and stole the lands and wealth held by native peoples for thousands of years. They enslaved black Africans who they held as slaves and even after slavery ended they kept them as second-class citizens.

Black people developed various forms of struggle including civil disobedience, sit-ins, pickets, mass rallies, propaganda, and voting for equality where possible. Another form of struggle was the Black Panther Party’s armed self-defence when attacked by Ku Klux Klan and the ruling class’ police. Another form was the Gravey Movement that called for separation from the United States, demanding territory in the south. Very much like the Tamils after the 1976 Vattukottai resolution.

In the United States millions of blacks and whites fought this racist discrimination for over a century and eventually won most basic rights but not before millions were arrested, imprisoned for long times, and many murdered. Many thousands of black people were lynched, burned alive, mutilated, tortured to death until the 1980s.

Fidel Castro: “Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are out enemies…Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers.” “To be internationalist is to settle our debt with humanity.”

Che Guevara from Socialism and Man: “The revolutionary is the ideological motor force of the revolution. If he forgets his proletarian internationalism, the revolution, which he heads 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.”

I believe that these principles apply to the Tamils of Sri Lanka. I believe Che would agree with your struggle for equality and when not possible to achieve within the Sri Lankan chauvinist context, he would understand your fight for your own nationhood.

I think this is also what Lenin meant in his 1916 thesis, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”:

“Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and, consequently, not only introduce full equality of nations but also realize the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, that is, the right to free political separation.”

I am hurt and deeply disappointed that the government of Cuba—where I have lived and worked side by side with the people and government for eight years—as well as the socialist-progressive governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and other Latin American governments have not understood that those principles must apply to the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. I got involved in solidarity with your people’s struggle because you have been so brutally treated, and because of these righteous principles expressed by Lenin, Fidel and Che. I have written critically about these governments siding with the Sinhalese governments of Sri Lanka while it denies the Tamil people those basic principles and rights, and commits genocide.

Perhaps Cuba+ have not understood the history of struggle that Tamils have undergone to win full equal rights before taking up arms. For 30 years you fought peacefully but you were met with brutal force, with pogroms/massacres of hundreds and thousands of people—even worse than that used against blacks in the US, and against Palestinians by Israelis. And, unfortunately, it was not only the governments that have done this against Tamils but also misguided Buddhist monks who betray the peaceful, coexistence values of Buddhism.

Your people’s organizations must meet and discuss these realities with the communist and socialist parties and with people’s grass roots and indigenous organizations in Latin America and elsewhere. You must explain to them your history, why you had to take up arms and fight for separation, for an independent nation. They have to hear of your suffering, of your struggles, why Tamil Eelam is a NECESSITY. You must remind them what they say about international solidarity, about what Lenin meant about political separation when the ruling powers will not grant a people their basic democratic and equal rights.

The progressive governments have won majority votes for new constitutions in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Venezuela that grant equal rights to their indigenous peoples. In Bolivia, for instance, under the new constitution there are four official national languages, three of them are indigenous ones as well as Spanish. The same equalitarian development is happening in several progressive, pro-socialist governments in Latin America. If these people could know you simply want these same rights, they would listen to you and stop backing Sri Lanka. But they have been misguided because when they hear the worst terrorist in the world—the United States of America government—raise a little finger of possible criticism that maybe the Sri Lanka government should investigate itself to find some official scapegoat for violating human rights, Cuba should react against this hypocrisy. But they must know that in this case the Sri Lanka government is a terrible violator of human rights, and not just against the Tamils, but also against Muslims, the indigenous tribes, and it also exploits Sinhalese workers and the poor, and castes.

We must understand that Cuba, and so many governments and peoples, has been victimized by the United States false accusation that it commits “human rights abuse”. Cuba has been blockaded by the US since its victory in 1959. The US tried to overthrow the new revolution in April 1961. It brought the entire world to the brink of a nuclear war in October 1962. The US has sabotaged Cuba, murdered and handicapped thousands of its citizens; it even infiltrated bacteriological diseases in its livestock, its grains and sugar cane.

What has Cuba done to “deserve” this murderous aggression? It has done what Big Capital does not do, what imperialists will not do. It has introduced full and free education and health care. It has assured every citizen food and shelter. No one starves. 80% of its people own their own homes after paying the state simply what it actually costs to build them.

It has organized an excellent system of disaster management in which people and their animals are evacuated before hurricanes hit the island nation. And more often than not no one is killed, and their livestock is saved. That is not what happens in the United States especially in the areas where blacks and poor people live and are struck by natural disasters.

Cuba came to the aid of Angola when attacked by apartheid South Africa. Cuba, alongside with the new Venezuela, comes to the aid of tens of millions of people in scores of land around the world with their medical care, curing even blindness, and educating people to read and write, offering sports and technical assistance. Cuba has more doctors serving the international arena than is offered by all the governments in the United Nations. Cuba does not export war and torture, disease and starvation. It exports “human capital”.

Tamils in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka Tamil refugees here and in the Diaspora should not rely on the greatest terrorist in the world to help them. The Yankees offer no help without humiliating costs. We must be aware that since World War 11, the US has invaded/intervened militarily 160 times in 66 countries. We must understand that now with a black-faced puppet president of Big Capital, the imperialists are at war in seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and now Uganda. They kill tens of millions; they torture hundreds of thousands; they starve hundreds of millions.

US’s staunch ally, Zionist Israel commits genocide against the Palestinian people. It offered Mossad intelligence, great amounts of weaponry, killer aircraft and even pilots to Sri Lanka, in order to murder the Tamils. After the end of the war, May 2009, Sri Lanka sent its military chief-of-staff, Donald Perera, to Israel as its ambassador, a reward for Zionist assistance. He told the largest Zionist daily, Yedioth Abornoth: “I consider your country a partner in the war against terror,” thus coupling terrorism with the Palestinians’ struggle for their homeland and the Tamils’ simple right to exist in peace and equality.

Perera spoke proudly of having “a great relationship with your military industries and with Israel Aerospace industries.”

Perera spoke about the murder, on May 31, 2010, of nine Turkish solidarity activists bound for Gaza with survival supplies: “I can understand that Israel had to protect itself.”

Perhaps because of the complexity of geo-politics, the history of standing for sovereignty of the member nations of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM), the leaders of Cuba and ALBA lands (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America) cannot support the goal of a separate nation within Sri Lanka. But they could be convinced to chastise the Sri Lankan government for its atrocities against the Tamil people, and the other oppressed people under the chauvinist Sinhalese leadership. They could see within the context of their moral ideology that it is only right that Tamils must have equality and the basic right to exist without fear of murder and takeovers of their homes and lands. Your peoples’ organizations should remind these pro-Palestinian governments that it is only Israel that supports the US blockade against Cuba; that it is the US and Israel that lead the tiny opposition to Palestine’s right to be a member of the United Nations.

Regardless of whether Cuba has achieved socialism—it is a long process after all and there is so much destruction and subversion coming from the Yankee imperialists—the Cuban people and the government are still worthy of our love and support. They have conducted no wars or torture against any people and they have helped many millions. It is now time that they are approached by all your organizations and become convinced to come to the aid of their natural brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka—the oppressed Tamil people.

We have wandered over the deserts and the seas. We have been hungry and thirsty. We have been murdered and tortured. We are of the working class, of the castes; we are many races and nationalities. We share a common vision: freedom and equality; bread and water on the table; a shelter over our heads. We must fight together to live in peace and harmony.

We must unite around the world and struggle for an independent international investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity against Sri Lanka government leaders.

We must call for a worldwide Boycott of Sri Lanka. Che Guevara would be on our side today!

A positive sign of recognition for Tamil rights is the dramatic Channel 4 UK documentary, Sri Lanka Killing Fields, shown first at a June Human Rights Council session and then worldwide.

Rudrakumaran is Prime Minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), and a prominent activist in the Diaspora. He earned law degrees from the University of Colombo and Southern Methodist University. He later studied and wrote articles about self-determination at Harvard Law School

Upon the end of the long civil war in Sri Lanka, May 2009, Rudrakumaran saw the need for international representation of Tamils’ right to sovereignty. He and other Tamil professionals held meetings in Malaysia and Switzerland to initiate the TGTE on the basis of nationhood, a homeland and the right to self-determination.

As these Tamil leaders in exile were gathering forces, they were surprised and disconcerted that Cuba and other new progressive governments in Latin America sided with Sri Lanka at the May 2009 sessions of the Human Rights Council, and not only against the guerrilla movement but also against the Tamil population interests

“Tamils always looked upon Fidel and Che as heroes,” the PM said. “Our people are shocked by Cuba’s position since May 2009. Perhaps it is due to poor communication. We want to send a delegation to Cuba, to Venezuela and other ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America] governments to explain our position and to engage in dialogue.”

PM Rudrakumaran maintains that his Transnational Government is not tied to any government or international power. “We are not at the mercy of any power, but will accept support for our cause from whoever cooperates with us.”
The TGTE stresses democratic forms of decision making. In the spring of 2010, elections for delegates to the TGTE were held in 12 countries. In some cases, the proposed candidate met no competition and so there was no election. Tens of thousands participated.

Fifty-six elected delegates gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA) to officially form the Transnational Constituent Assembly on May 17-19, 2010. Thirty more delegates participated via video conference from London and Geneva. On November 3, the TGTE announced its first cabinet. Of the 10 ministers and 10 deputy ministers, five are women.
The TGTE is not to be confused with a “government in exile”, as there had been no independent state with a government that later sought relocation. It is a transnational government in transition and campaigns for nationhood through diplomacy and education. The real government will be established in the homeland when that is physically possible.
TGTE strategy is to work with all existing local, national and international Tamil organizations in the Diaspora, and to create a power centre for diplomacy with all governments possible. It also seeks to work in partnership with Tamil leadership inside Sri Lanka but has not been able to establish ties, at least not officially, given the belligerent nature of the S.L. government.
Getting to this point started following independence from Britain, in 1947-8. “Our people were conservative in many ways,” PM Rudrakumaran explained.
“We were nationalistic, not revolutionary. We had castes and women were not treated equally. We sought equal rights with the majority Sinhalese by using peaceful, non-violent means. But the Sinhalese governments and racist monks and other extremists beat and killed us. They conducted several pogroms in which thousands of Tamils were killed in terrible ways.
“Finally, in 1976, all the Tamil political parties in and out of parliament, from conservative to the most radical and revolutionary decided to struggle for an independent nation in the North East homeland,” Rudra, as he is known, continued.
“When the liberation struggle took up arms, all the barriers were broken. In fact, women played an important role in the armed struggle.

“The Tigers [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] gave us the dignity and strength to fight. Today, however, the struggle is on the diplomatic plane. We look forward. We are not mired in the past or in speculation about whether the Tigers committed terrorism.”

TGTE Guiding Principles

1. Commitment to achieve Eelam, an independent, sovereign State—nationhood, homeland and right to self-determination.
2. Tamil Eelam will be a secular state.
3. TGTE shall assist in establishing health facilities in the homeland, homes and refuges for those affected by the war; promote cultural activities stressing Eelam Tamil distinctiveness. Much of this work will have to be done indirectly as the TGTE cannot be in Sri Lanka.
4. Promote education in the homeland.
5. Promote economic welfare.
6. Conduct foreign relations through lobbying.
7. Seek prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
8. Protect the equality of women and all Tamils.
9. Provide welfare of families of martyrs, former combatants and families affected by the war. One practical project is to establish monuments for martyrs in the Diaspora since their memorials and graves have been destroyed by the Sri Lankan government.

PM Rudrakumaran said that the TGTE has good relations with the two other international organizations fighting for Tamil sovereignty: Global Tamil Eelam and the Council of Eelam Tamil in Europe.

“We all agree to the same goals and our means are the same—not armed struggle but peaceful protests and diplomacy. We are different in that the TGTE has elected representation in the form of a transnational government, a rather special breed of government,” Rudra said.

“We are encouraged about our future prospects. We see it favorable for us that a referendum was held for South Sudan [in 2005], in which 98.3% voted for secession. The TGTE attended the inauguration ceremony in Juba, July 10, as government guests of the new nation.”

TGTE deputy foreign minister Kanaganthram Manickavasagar and PM spokesperson Jeyaprakash Jeyalingam were among the guests when Salva Kiir signed the new constitution and was sworn in as president.

World leaders were present, including Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon. Sri Lanka sent a minor envoy, Tissa Vitharana, senior minister of scientific affairs.

Prime Minister Rudrakumaran’s message to the newest nation, number 193 recognized by the UN, read: “We salute [you] for [your] sacrifices to become free and admire [your] courage and determination.”

“Our strategy is similar to that of the Republic of South Sudan,” the PM said. “We want the international community to press for and supervise a referendum on Eelam as occurred in South Sudan. Our peoples have undergone similar fates: genocide, followed by struggles for independence met by war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Tamil guerrillas had called for ceasefires and a peace deal leading to a referendum for independence. Finally, in 2001, a ceasefire was achieved but only after the guerrillas had decimated much of Sri Lanka’s military might. However, when Mahinda Rajapaksa won the presidency, in 2004, he established a family fiefdom bent on annihilating all Tamil opposition. He smashed the ceasefire and took warring advice and technical-surveillance aid from the US Bush regime; massive weapons, communication infrastructure, boats and fighter aircraft from China; fighter aircraft, intelligence agents and technology from Israel; boats, missiles and moneys from India; moneys for oil and weapons from Iran; weapons from Pakistan; arms and patrol boats from UK and France; and technology and loans from Japan.

Rudrakumaran has no illusions about the interests of major governments representing former and current colonialists and empires. “How does one play the game and not allow a big power to decide? Our skills and our dedication to our united goal of sovereignty determine how we act. We won’t compromise sovereignty. Ours is a struggle for nationality and not one based on ideological or economic grounds.”

Rudrakumaran hopes that India will change its pro-Sri Lanka attitude towards one of support for Tamils. He sees the geo-political wind turning toward both China and India’s interests. As China’s influence grows in Sri Lanka, India is confused about how to act. He does not believe that India is currently acting in its long term interests by sidling up to the Rajapaksa government and thinks that India will soon realize that.

The Tamil leader is also encouraged by recent developments in the 18th session of the Human Rights Council just completed (September 12-30). It appears that the report by an expert panel appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on “accountability in Sri Lanka” now has a chance to be discussed by the HRC at its 19th session. At least that is proposed by Ki-moon and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

The report was delivered last March and is quite critical of the Sri Lanka government for possible human rights abuse of Tamil civilians and combatants in the last months of the war, which ended May 2009. The report calls for an independent investigation into credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In this HRC session, unlike in that of other sessions, neither India nor any of the Latin American countries expressed verbal approval of the Sri Lanka government when it denied any wrong doing.

See TGTE’s website: http://govtamileelam.org/gov/.

The main cause for failure was a missing vehicle with their heavy weaponry. Nevertheless they were able to cause three times the numbers of casualties that they suffered. Nearly one-half of the rebels were killed but most of them died under or following torture.

After being held for 76 days in isolation without access to reading material, Fidel Castro, the 26-year old leader, came into a courtroom filled with 100 soldiers. He gave a rousing defense of the need for revolution to topple the dictator and change the corrupt and brutal socio-economic system so that all could be fed, obtain education and health care, so that farmers could own land and all have a voice.

In his five-hour speech, Fidel said, “The right of rebellion against tyranny, Honorable Judges, has been recognized from the most ancient times to the present day by men of all creeds, ideas and doctrines.”

Instead of asking for acquittal, he demanded to be with his brother and sister rebels in prison. “Condemn me, it does not matter, history will absolve me!”

Fidel Castro considers ethics and morality to be essential for revolutions. In My Life: Fidel Castro, the 2006 interview book with Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel speaks of these highest principles on numerous occasions. He asserts that “especially ethics” is what he learned most from the national liberation hero, José Martí.

After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, from December 2, 1956 to January 1, 1959 the revolutionaries acted in a moral manner. Cuba’s revolutionary armed struggle was exceptional in this way. As Fidel told Ramonet, “We did not kill any prisoners,” “not even one blow” was dealt. That is “our principle.” “All revolutionary thought begins with a bit of ethics.”

I think that is also the key reason why so many millions of people the world over love and respect Che Guevara: his moral stance, his example as a just revolutionary leader. This from 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.

I agree with Fidel and Che. Revolutionaries must be ethical in vision and use morality in practice, both at home and in solidarity with the oppressed everywhere. As Fidel told Lee Lockwood in Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel:

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.

I define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our conscious hand—without being attacked or oppressed beyond limits of toleration. A moral person, organization, political party or 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 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, class or caste. 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 about vital matters with relation to local, national and international policies.
6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in each of us.

Ethics and Sri Lanka Tamils

True solidarity activists have no choice. We must support a people under attack by aggressors wherever in the world. That is what I see as our task as anti-war activists concerning Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine…just as we did in the wars against Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia and the South Africans…

For us solidarity activists, and governments viewing themselves as progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe our task must be to press for the very lives and rights of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka where governments have systematically oppressed and repressed them for half-a-century.

As a solidarity activist—who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to change oppressive governments from terrorizing us—I denounce all perpetrators of terrorism, no matter the party or cause, and demand they change tactics to ones that are morally in accordance with our ideology embracing fellowship with justice and equality.

I find that most armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case with the Colombian FARC and Palestinian PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous struggle. They are up against much greater military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. The ANC in South Africa’s war for liberation also committed horrendous acts of terrorism.

Most of the dozens of Tamil groups that took up arms, at one time or another, considered themselves Marxists, and many looked up to Che Guevara and Cuba’s revolution as an ideal. But they nearly all became terrorists in much of their actions. Hear what Che Guevara meant about the use of violence.

There are always laggards who remain behind but our function is not to liquidate them, to crush them and force them to bow to an armed vanguard, but to educate them by leading them forward and getting them to follow us because of our example, or as Fidel called it ‘moral compulsion.’ (Speech “From somewhere in the world”)

This Sri Lanka Tamil ‘story’ is a tragedy especially for the Tamils; also for the world of humanity. Most people not directly involved, however, do not react because they don’t know what they can do. There are so many tragedies going on at the same time. Cynical brutality is constantly unleashed by major capitalist enterprises and their governments in the ‘first’ world, much of the former ‘second’ world as well as by national capitalists in the ‘third’ world. We live in what I call the Permanent War Age. Brutality—surveillance—suffering is the norm.

In those countries where there is little brutality, in comparison, and no aggressive war-making (I speak here of the governments of Cuba and other ALBA—Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America—countries) the leaders see the necessity of having political ties  with some war criminal governments, such as Sri Lanka. I gather that this leads them to ignore their moral solidarity principles and abandon the oppressed Tamils.

On this July 26 day of celebration, I call upon the Cuban government, as well as all members of the ALBA alliance, to return to the moral principles expressed by Fidel and Che and do the right thing by the Tamil people. Call for an independent international investigation into the war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government, and use your moral clout, your revolutionary record to demand an end to the genocide against this people.

If morality does not become integral to our struggles, I’m afraid we are headed for a worldwide moral collapse, which is already underway due to the intrinsic immorality of capitalism and its imperialism; the foundering of contemporary socialism; and the rise of fascism throughout much of the world.

The “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” was delivered to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on March 31 concerning: 1) alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the last phases of the 26-year old civil war, September 2008 to May 19, 2009; 2) consequences for approximately 300,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) and, by extension, for 2.7 million Sri Lankan Tamils, 13% of the 21 million population.

After receiving the report, which calls for investigations into these allegations, Ban Ki-moon stated that he did not have the power alone but one of three UN bodies had to request such action, either the General Assembly or the Security Council or the Human Rights Council.

The panel—chairman Marzuki Darusman (Indonesia), Steven Ratner (US), and Yasmin Sooka (South Africa)—was commissioned by the Secretary General, June 22, 2010, after Sri Lanka’s government had failed to rehabilitate or reconcile with the Tamils affected by the brutal war, which, according to the Panel, caused up to 40,000 civilian deaths in those eight months, plus several thousand combatants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government soldiers.

The Panel began work in September 2010 but had to conduct its research outside Sri Lanka as the government refused this United Nations body permission to enter its country. The Panel could interview many eye witnesses, however, who were eventually released from military camps after months of detention—many of whom bribed their way out—or who were able to escape the war zone towards the end on boats provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Several ICRC workers and other humanitarian employees were killed by government military shelling.

Of the dozens of recommendations proposed by the panel, the last two concern the United Nations.

“A. The Human Rights Council should be invited to reconsider its May 2009 Special Session Resolution (A/HRC/8-11/L. 1/Rev. 2) regarding Sri Lanka, in light of this report.”

The above cited resolution had been proposed by the Sri Lankan government to praise its behavior in the war and condemn only the LTTE for war crimes and terrorism. Not a member of the HRC, Sri Lanka got Cuba, then the Non-Aligned Movement president, to introduce it. It passed with 29 voting in favor and 12 against with six abstentions.

The Panel determined that, “the Human Rights Council may have been acting on incomplete information”.

“B. The Secretary-General should conduct a comprehensive review of actions by the United Nations system during the war in Sri Lanka and the aftermath, regarding the implementation of its humanitarian and protection mandates.”

The Panel criticized the UN’s role in this conflict. “During the final stages of the war, the United Nations political organs and bodies failed to take actions that might have protected civilians.”

The Panel recommended that the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) should “commence genuine investigations”, and an independent international mechanism established by the UN Secretary-General should also investigate what did occur.

The Panel recommended that GOSL should also “issue a public, formal acknowledgement of its role in and responsibility for extensive civilian casualties.”

In its summary, the Panel wrote:

The Panel’s determination of credible allegations reveals a very different version of the final stages of the war than that maintained to this day by the Government of Sri Lanka. The Government says it pursued a ‘humanitarian rescue operation’ with a policy of ‘zero civilian casualties’. In stark contrast, the Panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity (author emphasis). Indeed, the conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace.

Especially the Panel found credible allegations associated with the final stages of the war. Between September 2008 and 19 May 2009, the Sri Lanka Army advanced its military campaign into the Vanni using large-scale and widespread shelling causing large numbers of civilian deaths. This campaign constituted persecution of the population of the Vanni. Around 330,000 civilians were trapped into an ever decreasing area, fleeing the shelling but kept hostage by the LTTE. The Government sought to intimidate and silence the media and other critics of the war through a variety of threats and actions, including the use of white vans to abduct and to make people disappear.

The Government shelled on a large scale in three consecutive No Fire Zones, where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate, even after indicating that it would cease the use of heavy weapons. It shelled the United Nations hub, food distribution lines and near the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ships that were coming to pick up the wounded and their relatives from the beaches. It shelled in spite of its knowledge of the impact, provided by its own intelligence systems and through notification by the United Nations, the ICRC and others. Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by Government shelling.

The Government systematically shelled hospitals on the frontlines. All hospitals in the Vanni were hit by mortars and artillery, some of them were hit repeatedly, despite the fact that their locations were well-known to the Government. The Government also systematically deprived people in the conflict zone of humanitarian aid, in the form of food and medical supplies, particularly surgical supplies, adding to their suffering.

The Panel’s full text of 214 pages lists details of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity on both sides in paragraphs 246-252:
The government is accused of: murder, extermination, mutilation, arbitrary imprisonment, rape, torture, persecution founded on race, religion or politics, and disappearances.

The LTTE is accused of: violence to life and person, torture, mutilation, forced labor and forced recruitment of children, and shooting civilians trying to flee the war zone.

The IDP Tamils were brutally confined and treated. Tamils in their traditional Northern and Eastern “High Security Zones” are militarized, denied normal rights, intimidated and made victims of violence.
The Panel therefore recommended that GOSL end all state violence, release all displaced persons and facilitate their return to their homes or provide for resettlement. [Thousands of Tamil homes have been taken over by soldiers and other Sinhalese.] It should also repeal the Emergency Laws that deny democratic and civil rights.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa family regime continues to deny any wrong-doing, contending that NO civilians were killed and were later well treated in IDP camps. It claims it only attacked the LTTE. If there were civilians killed, according to government logic, it is their own fault for being there. The Panel cites international law that “an attack remains unlawful if it is conducted simultaneously at a lawful military object and an unlawfully-targeted civilian population” (paragraph 199).

The GOSL says it has established a transparency process to address the past from the 2002 ceasefire agreement to the end of the conflict, the so-called Lessens Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).

While the Panel views this as a “potentially useful opportunity to begin a national dialogue”, the “LLRC fails to satisfy key international standards of independence and impartiality, as it is compromised by its composition and deep-seated conflicts of interests of some of its members.”— Three were government officials; one an Attorney-General.

The Panel also points to the history of conflict between the government and Tamils seeking full rights. For decades the Tamils used Gandhian civil disobedience, non-violent tactics before many took up arms in several groups. The Tamils have suffered half-a-dozen pogroms, with government backing, in which thousands were brutally murdered, including mutilation and being burned alive.

In the few instances in which governments have set up commissions of inquiry to examine human rights abuses, they have “failed to produce a public report and recommendations have rarely been implemented”.

The fact is, states the report (paragraph 28):

After independence [from Great Britain in 1948], political elites tended to prioritize short-term political gains, appealing to communal and ethnic sentiments, over long-term policies, which could have built an inclusive state that adequately represented the multicultural nature of the citizenry. Because of these dynamics and divisions, the formation of a unifying national identity has been greatly hampered. Meanwhile, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism gained traction, asserting a privileged place for the Sinhalese as protectors of Sri Lanka, as the sacred home of Buddhism. These factors resulted in devastating and enduring consequences for the nature of the state, governance and inter-ethnic relations in Sri Lanka.

The first pogrom took place in June 1956 as the new Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike (Sri Lanka Freedom Party/SLFP—the same party to which the Rajapaksas belong) backed the “Sinhala Only” bill, one of several discriminatory measures against the Tamil people. Because some Tamils conducted sit-ins, Buddhist monk-led mobs rampaged for ten days, murdering 150 Tamils and burning their homes and businesses. Ironically, because Bandaranaike was willing to engage in dialogue with Tamil leaders he was murdered by a “pacifist” Buddhist monk, September 29, 1959.

Bandaranaike’s widow, Sirimavo, became PM in July 1960 and continued discriminatory policies against Tamils. She sat as PM or President four terms spread over 40 years, for a total of 13 years. She was the world’s first female PM and brought Sri Lanka into the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as a founding member, in 1961. NAM, now with118 state member, stands against imperialism, interference from foreign nations, bloc politics, and against racism. Cuba and other progressive governments, as well as reactionary ones in the “Third World”- based NAM have, therefore, backed Sri Lanka in international issues.

In 2004, Cuba and Venezuela launched ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) as an alternative to capitalist economic and political coalitions. Today there are eight Latin American government members, including Ecuador, which is now on the HRC along with Cuba. In 2009, Bolivia and Nicaragua, both in ALBA, were members of the HRW supporting Sri Lanka.

These socialist leaning governments have better human rights records than the previous capitalist governments of their countries, which were for many decades under the dictates of US imperialism and before that under European colonialism. ALBA partners now have a chance whether on the Council or not to help the Tamil people in some way, also by calling for an investigation.

This is the challenge that the countries of NAM on the HRC now face with the Panel’s recommendations for an international investigation into alleged war crimes. Will they resist criticizing a member for its racist and terrorist actions against an entire people, or will they take sides with a clearly oppressed people? The latter choice might place them voting alongside the rich, Western nations that will probably call for some sort of an investigation. (See my piece on this dilemma.)

As I view the possible thinking of socialist Cuba and other NAM countries, the dilemma is between supporting sovereignty for Third World countries confronted with interference from imperialist and former colonialist states, a legitimate issue, and conducting national policies in such a way that no section of the population is systematically discriminated against or subject to genocide.

Since the 2009 HRC resolution, there are 15 new countries on it, among them the US. One must ask: just what is the game plan of the US and its European allies, who make sounds of protest against Sri Lanka’s abuse of human rights while they are the worst offenders, constantly engaging in aggressive wars against NAM members and others: now warring against the sovereign government of Libya, the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine.

One can also ask why one of the Panel members, Ratner, participated in such an elaborate, comprehensive and just report. As a legal expert of international law he advised the US State Department (1998-2008), which is the major political aggressor in the world and has backed Sinhalese nationalist governments against Tamil’s liberation efforts, providing armaments, intelligence, finances, military training, propaganda. (See my article.)

But then most governments of both “blocs” have done the same: China, Russia, India, the UK and other European states, even Iran and also and especially Israel.

Clearly victims of US permanent war aggression, such as Cuba, react against its hypocritical “support” for “human rights”, and side with the “victim” Sri Lanka. Not in all cases, however, is the “victim” innocent. There are more offenders of human lives and civil rights than the imperialists. And the Sinhalese majority has been whipped up by Buddhist supremacist clergy and Sinhalese nationalist chauvinism by all the governments in Sri Lanka since 1948. Unfortunately, and without comprehension from my viewpoint, most of the Sinhalese-led Communist, Trotskyist, and Maoist parties have immorally allied themselves with the two major parties to keep the Tamils down.
The United Nations is comprised of 192 nations, only three in the world are not in it: Kosovo—a separatist state creation of the US-EU; Taiwan, a separated part of China; and 771 people in the state of the Vatican City. The member states of the HRC, with China and Russia and other large countries represent more than one-half the world’s citizens.

Third World countries comprise the majority on the HRC. They have many ethnic peoples long oppressed and brutalized by others. Let us remember Rwanda and how the UN failed to intervene and prevent genocide of one million people. The UN again failed in a similar debacle in Sri Lanka. Let us hope that the Human Rights Council will redeem these tragedies regardless of motives.

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 Guevara in Socialism and Man

“Castillo de MORAL” read the label. Wine named Moral, that’s what Carsten gave me.

That was big of him, a strident Marxist-Leninist who sides 100% with the victims of invasions by imperialists. For him that means no criticisms of those who resist these invasions, such as the current ones in the Middle East and Libya. No admonishment of Taliban, al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and his Baath party and Iraqi soldiers combating the invaders and their Iraqi collaborators.

Incidentally, among the first collaborators was the Iraqi Communist Party, followers of the old Moscow line. They returned from exile to support the US occupiers in its lackey government. They live in its “green zone”. This contradiction has not swayed the Moscow-oriented Communist parties of several countries from backing them—that includes, the Communist Party In Denmark, the US and UK communist parties and others. One cannot be opposed to imperialism and its invasion in Iraq and support one of the main culprits.

Yet we anti-imperialists cannot remain silent about brutal crimes committed by some of the resistance groups against innocent, unarmed civilians who are nearby when a suicide bomber lets go; or those women and girls who are raped and then punished for being raped; or, with some groups, the denial of women to enjoy sex by removing part or the entire clitoris; and, in the case of some, the denial of women to have the same rights as men, or…

This attitude of covering eyes is common among many hard-core leftists. So was it also for most Communists and anti-imperialists when Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe Communist parties were jailing and killing their own critics, many of whom were true communists and anti-imperialists.

Most of the readers of these pieces know this history. Some of us remember the hateful words and wrongful deeds committed by one group against another within our own camps: the Stalinists, the Maoists, the varying shades of red purer than the next. Today, there is less of that but at the same time there is less activity, less passion in support for those the imperialists attack.

We don’t see a Ho Chi Minh, a Fidel, or Che in the Middle East struggles to regain their sovereignty; and we are all too few who are motivated to fight for them, and when fighting do so quite mildly, not like when we fought alongside the Vietnamese.

I contend that this difference is not only because capitalism has won the battle (for now) over most bodies and minds, especially in the rich capitalist countries and not only in the “Christian” West. I contend that the Cuban revolution, and the Vietnamese revolution and their fight for sovereignty against the French and Usamericans were conducted on moral principles.

They fought without torturing the enemy, without killing and manhandling prisoners, and after victory, down to this day, the Cuban government and police authorities do not murder people on the streets or torture criminals in jail, nor torture the political “dissidents” who, more than not, have been paid with US government funds to join its side against Cuba’s government.

Some US soldiers in Vietnam, who later came over to our side, have said that some torture did occur at the hands of Vietnamese communists. If this is true, it was the exception to the rule—don’t believe for a minute that John McCain was actually tortured. Whereas with the Yankees and their European allies, and their allies in the Middle East today, or in nearly all of Latin America yesterday and today in Colombia and Honduras, or in Indonesia yesterday, or the African dictators and Zionist Israelis (the list is long) torture, rape, and wanton murder was and is normal.

Look, if we are to fight this immoral system of profit-making motivated brutality, this disregard for human worth, then we must be different. We must be moral! We must offer a hopeful future for people else why should they join us. We have lost millions of supporters and millions more potential ones because of immoral Soviet-Comecon state leaderships, the wanton slaughter and crimes of humanity committed by Cambodia’s Pol Pot “communists”, the forced recruitments and murder of civilians by the “Maoist-Guevarist” Shining Path guerrillas…

Few leftists place morality on their struggle agenda. I believe it may be so, partially, because Marx and Lenin, certainly Stalin and Mao, did not make “the ethical question” a priority. No, the working class, the masses will fight because they must, in order to survive the dictates of exploitative capitalism. It is an objective, dialectical matter not one of morality, they meant.

Yet these leaders did speak of the subjective need for consciousness, that is: objective conditions may be ready for revolution but if the individual and working class do not see it, do not feel it then revolution does not happen automatically. I contend that the lack of consciousness is a major problem in today’s world—especially among the video war game fanatic youth and their consumer hungry parents (workers) in this era of individualism, in this age of permanent war.

What is ethics and morality?

Morality is rules we apply to live by, in order to be ethical: that is, to care for one another, to live in harmony, in fellowship and peace. Ethics is necessary for our collective survival and that of our surroundings, the earth and the elements. To accomplish this universal ethic, we must share what we make, share natural resources, assure that the planet breathes life and not chemical death. It is immoral to take from others—don’t we parents tell our children that when we send them to nursery school—to make systems that favor some and exploit and destroy others, that require war-making, that destroy other life forms.

Moral rules are necessary for people to cooperate so that we can achieve goals, which we would not be able to dream of if each of us were left on our own. And morals prevent groups’ needs and goals from colliding. If there were no enforced moral rules to decide disputes, we would end in chaos, and no one would be able to achieve any goal.

So what do we put in place of gripper capitalism and its individualism “morality”? I think George Orwell said it well in his essay, “Can Socialists Be Happy?”

The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood… Men [and women] use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars [Spain, for instance], or tortured in secret prisons of the Gestapo [or Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or a myriad other secret torture chambers in many countries not the least of which are prisons in the US], not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love,” is the way that Che put it.

Many Christians, who read what the Bible says anyway, should identify with these views. Isn’t that what Jesus Christ is supposed to have stood for?

We must know by now that that is not the philosophy of the self-styled “democracies” of the West. We can’t really call it loving people when, for instance, the nation I was born in has invaded/intervened/conducted humanitarian operations 160 times in 66 nations since World War II.

We must act against our governments’ terrorist wars, “humanitarian operations”, else accept the consequences of shared blame. If we don’t stop the madness it will soon lead to world destruction.

Is it “humanitarian” to arm and aid some Libyan clans who want Gaddafi to go so that they can put in other powerful men, some of whom were Gaddafi’s sidekicks all these “successful” years of cooperation with the rich oil-thirsty governments? Unfortunately, the original massive uproar movement there has been taken over by these power hungry men. We should support the people’s uproar without being beguiled into backing the erstwhile leftist Gaddafi. The distinction is admittedly not easy to act upon.

Nevertheless, we must fight against the aggressive wars wherever they are. We must fight on the public streets and before their offices and bases, and we must support the invaded resistance fighters. Yes, I want the resistance to win over “us”. Some of them may not be the best people or have the best ways of relating to one another or the best laws—I refer to bin Ladin types here—but it is their world that “we” invade to take from them what they have. “We” don’t invade them to bring about “democracy”. No serious person can possibly believe that today.

Beyond condemning the US and its allies’ crimes against humanity, we must be even-handed if we are to be revolutionaries, or just decent people. I do not believe it to be “foolish consistency”, as Abraham Lincoln is so often cited for saying, to look all evil in the eye and call it by its name: evil. And not all the evil is deposited at the Pentagon, White House, Langley, or at Downing Street.

If we want a socially just economy and equality in human relationships (socialism, communism, anarchy…) then we must place love/solidarity/morality in the center.

There was a time following World War II when the Nuremberg Tribunal’s conclusion was widely accepted as a moral principle: “Individuals have international duties, which transcend the national obligations of obedience… Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

That is what Bradley Manning did when he leaked internal cables to the world showing war crimes committed systematically by his government. He should get the Medal of Humanitarian Honor for that not life in a chamber submitted to daily psychological torture. And so must we also back another hero, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks for making available to us the secret information about US+ war crimes, on-going torture, and US diplomats’ take on the world. I have added my solidarity, this time in the form of half my pension fund for Wikileaks defense and existence.

The moral concept of responsibility, the Nuremberg code, is what the “guilty innocent” citizens of the United States need to understand about their governments’ constant wars, and what caused September 11, 2001. Too many American Dreamers have been “good Germans” for too long. Whoever it was who conducted those wrongful acts of terror—and I do not doubt that some elements in the Bush regime were accomplices—they should not be applauded as heroes. But the world that was threatened by those acts has to understand WHY they unleashed their terror, if Arab foreigners were, in fact, the perpetrators or co-perpetrators. They acted as they did because they, and millions and millions more across the Third World, have been and are being subjected to terror and Big Time thievery by all United States governments. Unfortunately, the governments are aided by most of their working class citizens, those who join in the murder and torture as soldiers and secret agents, and mercenaries, and those who turn their heads in the hope of living the life of “ignorance is bliss.”¹

They didn’t stop with Afghanistan, purportedly seeking bin Ladin and gang—I knew from the first cry for his blood that they would never find him because they need him wherever he is or isn’t—no they went on to the main target, Iraq, then extended to Pakistan and now Libya.

While writing this series, I have been interrupted to join in small and mild demonstrations in support of the Arabic peoples’ struggles in Tunisia and Egypt, and against the empire’s bombings in Libya. Wikileaks played an important part in this popular movement beginning in Tunisia. The leaks showing how corrupted Tunisia’s Ben Ali government had been was not news to the citizenry, but when it became world known it did encourage people to rebel. They saw the opportunity, sparked by one of their own—Mohammad Bouazizi—in his suicide protest, and felt that they could pull it off with the world’s sympathy. And they were right.

Arabic despots and dynasties and Western imperialists are frightened of the contagious wave of authentic democratic rebellion throughout the Arabic world. The people want an end to their lack of power, and end to the elite’s thievery of their wealth, an end to their endemic corruption and their repression. The West was caught off guard by the rebellion, but now sees the chance to make a populist score by bombing one of the despots, a lesser one than their strongest allies in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahraini where the US Navy is entrenched. The West demands stability=passivity; it must stop the rebellion from becoming successful, which could lead to anti-capitalist movements, too. We must act in solidarity with these people and not the new governments that still back the exploitative system.

Act as we speak

Our world is ruled by one economy, capitalism. We know that capitalism is avaricious by nature; to grow it must become imperialist. That logic fits the good guys too. It is fitting the shoe of the Chinese Communist party and, to a lesser extent, our former Vietnamese comrades—our brothers and sisters victimized by U.S. crimes against their humanity. Both systems’ leaders are today exploiting their own workers. This process also has too good a start in Cuba.

It was wrong politically/morally of the governments of Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua to let down the Tamil population in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka by extending unconditional political support to the Mahinda Rajapaksa government that had just massacred tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in its efforts to destroy the Tiger army (LTTE-Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam).

The long civil war ended in May 2009, and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) voted, 29 to 12 with 6 abstentions, to applaud Sri Lanka for its victory against the terrorism of the Tigers. The majority resolution was proposed by Sri Lanka itself and introduced by Cuba, at that time the rotating leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of which Sri Lanka is a member.

OK, what is wrong with this scenario? First, Sri Lanka is neither democratic nor socialist. The economy is capitalist based with a good deal of multinational corporation enterprises.

The government murders journalists (at least 34 in seven years) who expose government crimes and discrimination against the minority Tamil population. Discrimination is codified by law and in practice in a variety of ways: language, religion, lack of equal rights to education and jobs. The majority Sinhalese have, on several occasions, conducted murderous pogroms against Tamils, usually led by Buddhist monks and with self-proclaimed leftist parties’ backing. Several thousands of unarmed Tamils have been so slaughtered. Some of the murdering political parties have claimed to follow the paths of Che, Mao, or Moscow’s CP. Today, they partake in the coalition government—United People’s Freedom Alliance—alongside the Rajapaksa family of corrupted mass murderers in the largest party, Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

This murderous racism cannot be tolerated by true internationalists. The betrayers of Che and internationalism in Sri Lanka include: Janatha Vimukthi Peramana (JVP), which ironically lost about 20,000 of its rebelling young members in attacks against them by Sri Lanka governments, in the 1970-80s; the Communist Party of Sri Lanka; the Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

The Tigers started off in the late 1970s as Marxists, shouting Che’s name to the heavens. They later murderously eliminated other Tamils in the struggle for independence and sovereignty because of differences over tactics or personalities. They bombed areas and vehicles where Sinhalese civilians were without regard to innocent lives. And they abandoned any Marxist program. They righteously fought for a homeland with sovereignty, which most Tamils wanted, but they forgot all about socialism, people’s democracy, Che’s principles.

The big capitalists on the HRC wanted a resolution that, while applauding Sri Lanka and only condemning the Tigers just like the Cuba-led resolution, asked the Sri Lanka government to look into the possibility that some war crimes might have been committed by some of its own. If so, then the government should deal with it. Rather mild, I’d say.

There was no voice inside the HRC condemning the terrorist Sri Lankan government or the greatest terrorists: the United States and Israel, with China, Pakistan, Iran, Japan, India and many more tagging along. China, though, does more than tag along. It is after big influence and is getting it.²

Then there is the moral contradiction of the Bolivian government of Evo Morales—an indigenous person whose people have long been oppressed by the same forces which have suppressed and oppressed the Haiti black people—backing the 2004 US-France-led coup against the only decent, democratically elected president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Both Aristide and Venezuela’s socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez called his ouster for what it was: a rich-backed local rebellion supported by the superpower-led coup.

After Aristide’s ouster, the US got UN support to occupy the country with 7000 troops, officially led by Lula’s Brazilian government, another contradiction in morality and history. US, France, and Canada had their troops there, too. But when enough Latin American governments sent in collaborating soldiers, the big powers mostly moved out. Since 2007, Bolivia has had 300 soldiers there. They—along with troops from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and, guess who? Sri Lanka—are paid by the UN. In Bolivia’s case, the government receives $1,028 for each soldier but only spends about $300 per solider. Is it money that takes priority over solidarity amongst continental brethren?

It is positive that fellow ALBA governments in Venezuela and Cuba send real aid to the hungry people, who are the poorest in that hemisphere, and all the more so since the last earthquake with over 300,000 killed, a like number injured and over one million homeless.

Praising Cuba for its systematic “human capital export” solidarity should not keep us from real concern about its future now decided by the Communist party leadership at its 6th congress. The new economic package does not deepen socialism and people’s democracy (one in the same), rather it deepens petty-bourgeois production relations and individualistic mentality—worker-capitalists in the making. This so-called “market socialism” will lead to more market capitalism, in reality, with big foreign investors, and tourism, still getting priority.

Communist leaders still lack trust in the working class to run the economy and set political policy.

Workers power should include oversight committees staffed on a rotating basis by actual workers across the country. I firmly support what James Petras wrote:

What especially requires reform is a new system of public accountability based on independent accounting authorities, consumers’ and workers’ oversight commissions with the power to ‘open the books’. Workers and professional control will not eliminate corruption altogether but it will challenge the authorities through independent periodic reviews…Greater accountability within the leadership is necessary but not sufficient. There must be control and vigilance by authorized commissions from below and by a parallel independent general accounting office…a new system of elected representatives to oversee the allocation of the budget to the various ministries and the power to summon responsible officials to televised hearings for a strict public accounting.³

When revolutionary, communist, anarchist organizers are engaged in workers struggles under capitalism, one of their best arguments when confronted by management that their demands are not economically possible is the demand: “Open the books.” So when they are told they now have their own economy, their own Marxist state why can they not see the books?

It is difficult to know why Communist governments in this past century never rely on their citizenry to run things. Even the best of them apparently do not truly trust their own ideology. Maybe they know more than I; maybe they know that if workers held the reigns of real power they would not go the collective way of socialism. If that is so, then what are we fighting for?

Live Well vs. Live Better

I, too, say let us be like Che. For example, when his wife called to ask for use of his government car to take their sick daughter to the hospital, his morality led him to reply that she should take the bus like every other Cuban mother with a sick child.

On a world scale when Che realized that the Soviet CP leadership did not commit itself to a forceful policy of solidarity with the Third World, he criticized them publicly as foreign policy opportunists. I am certain that he would have qualms with his comrade leaders in today’s world for similar opportunism, for lack of fulfilling the promises put forth by communist ideology.

In my opinion, what is worth fighting for is what Evo Morales and the indigenous peoples’ movement stands for in Bolivia: live well, not live better. We discussed this at length during the People’s world climate conference in Cochabamba. I excerpt here from what the Bolivian delegation to the UN presented during that time.

Faced with so much disproportion and wealth concentration in the world, so many wars and famine, Bolivia proposes Living Well, not as a way to live better at the expense of others, but an idea of Living Well based on the experience of our peoples. In the words of the President of the Republic of Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma, Living Well means living within a community, a brotherhood, and particularly completing each other, without exploiters or exploited, without people being excluded or people who exclude, without people being segregated or people who segregate.

Living Well is not the same as living better, living better than others, because in order to live better than others, it is necessary to exploit, to embark upon serious competition, concentrating wealth in few hands. Trying to live better is selfish, and shows apathy, individualism. Some want to live better, whilst others, the majority, continue living poorly. Not taking an interest in other people’s lives, means caring only for the individual’s own life, at most in the life of their family.”
“The construction of a Living Well vision to counteract Global Crisis in this era of climate chaos and diminished resources in our finite planet, means ending consumerism, waste and luxury; consuming only what is necessary, achieving a global economic ‘power down’ to levels of production, consumption and energy use that stay well within the environmental capacities of the Earth.

In order to adapt ourselves to the true reality of a post carbon era, we will have to satisfy our fundamental needs such as food, housing, energy, production, and means of support from local systems and resources. This means encouraging regional and local self-sufficiency, sustainability and control; economic localization and community sovereignty, local production for local consumption, local ownership using local labor and materials.

Furthermore, Living Well means reallocating the trillions of millions destined for war in order to heal Mother Earth who is injured by the environment issue.

Waking up the ethical and moral values of our peoples and cultures, we can make this new millennium, a millennium of life and not of war, a millennium for Living Well, for balance and complementarity. Together we can build a culture of patience, the culture of dialogue and fundamentally the Culture of Life, a way of life that is not dependent on excessive consumption of non-renewable energy that emits greenhouse gases but is based on the harmonious relationship between man and nature.

“Hagamos lo imposible!” We’ll do the impossible! Che predicted.

Notes and an acknowledgement: I thank the daughter of a preacher for inebriated brainstorming, and more thanks for the most thoughtful of gifts: a bronze sculpture of a fist gripping an angry pen.

1. See my piece, “The Guilty Innocent.”
2. See my November 2009 series on the Sri Lanka-Tamil conflict. Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
3. “Cuba: Continuing Revolution and Contemporary Contradictions”, August 12, 2007.

Many other Tamils, especially in Tamil Nadu, India, join hands in this humanitarian struggle. Together, they have achieved a great deal of real assistance and some recognition for their kinsmen and cousins albeit no government has yet to respond with consequent solidarity for this maligned people. The potential potency of a true humanitarian, internationalist United Nations yet once again has been left unfulfilled in the interests of monetary and territorial profits.

Tamils began fleeing Sri Lanka in large numbers following the second pogrom, in 1977. Led by Buddhist monks, Sinhalese mobs destroyed many of their homes and shops and murdered up to 300. This was the second of four pogroms Tamils suffered between 1956 and 1983, in which as many as 5000 Tamils were murdered; some were set aflame alive.

The first Tamils fled to nearby Tamil Nadu where 60 million Indian Tamils live. These Sri Lanka Tamils have been poorly treated by Indian authorities. Activism led by Tamil Nadu Tamils has been based on emotional connections they have to the Sri Lankan Tamils. It peaked in May 2009 but has been sporadic since then. There are signs of revival of support for the Tamils generally among the educated class based on rational evaluation of the situation for Tamils in the island.

Most Tamils migrated beyond Asia, spreading throughout the British Commonwealth, non-English speaking European countries, and the United States. Today, there are about one million S.L. Tamils living in 20 countries or more. Their relatives back home number around 2.5 million.

Migrants and refugees did not abandon their kinsmen. Most send remittances and many helped finance liberation movements, including the armed forces of the LTTE (Tigers). They established grass roots support committees in the countries where they migrated.

One of the oldest Tamil associations in the Diaspora in the United States is Ilankai Tamil Sangam. It has a continuous history of support activities since its founding in 1977, and is now conducting a boycott campaign of Sri Lanka garments, which accounts for a quarter of foreign currency earnings. As it writes, “We know that by linking employment of Sinhalese to the human rights of Tamils we can help secure a just future for our people.”

Another U.S. group, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), formed in 2008, hired US attorney Bruce Fein, a conservative Ronald Reagan government official, to file human rights violation charges against Sri Lanka’s defense minister, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, also a U.S. citizen, and General Sarath Fonseca, former head of the government’s war machine and also holder of United States residency.

TAG has also filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Washington for $30 million in damages on behalf of three Tamil plaintiffs, who had family members killed by the S.L. Army.

A separate legal attempt was made in the Supreme Court to annul part of the Patriotic Act that forbids offering assistance to terrorist groups, so defined by the US government. A Sri Lankan Tamil, US citizen, and lawyer, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, argued that supplying a liberation force, the Tigers, with “material support” is in keeping with First Amendment rights of free speech. He so contends because of perpetual discrimination by the Sinhalese governments against the Tamil population allows them no alternative but to take up arms, in order to win their rights.

On June 22, 2010, the Supreme Court denied Rudrakumaran’s case. It found, instead, that laws against “terrorism” have priority over free speech, which, for the first time, the Supreme Court has now partially criminalized.

Tamil groups in many other countries are active in boycotting Sri Lanka products—such as Act Now in Britain—and in filing lawsuits against Sri Lankan diplomats for war crimes.

Since April 2004 when the present president Mahinda Rajapaksa became prime minister, at least 34 journalists have been murdered: three Sinhalese, 29 Tamils.

Fifty-five media workers have fled into exile in that time span. Towards the end of the war, some started Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), an action group of journalists, writers, artists and human rights defenders campaigning for democracy, human rights and media freedom in Sri Lanka.

Organizing Internationally

Three international organizations have started up since the end of the war with the common goal of offering hope for Sri Lanka Tamils back at home and in the Diaspora by struggling abroad for sovereignty in Sri Lanka—Global Tamil Forum (GTF), Council of Eelam Tamil in Europe (CETE), Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). Although they all started after the defeat and collapse of the LTTE, the Sri Lanka government considers them all to be Tiger “terrorist” followers.

The GTF has committees in 14 countries. The first ones started in Britain and Canada in the summer of 2009. The GTF held its inauguration in London’s House of Commons, February 24, 2010. Several British government officials and parliamentarians were present. Foreign Secretary David Milliband spoke. He suggested that Sri Lanka embark on a “genuinely inclusive political process. Other Establishment politicians from Europe, the US, and South Africa attended as well. This event followed the EU decision to suspend preferential trade benefits (GSP) for the Sri Lankan government in protest to its brutal abuses against Tamils.

The Forum’s leader is SJ Emmanuel, a Catholic priest and follower of Gandhi. The Forum’s vision is to seek self-determination for S.L. Tamils using principles of democracy and non-violence.

Global Tamil Forum projects include boycotts of Sri Lanka products, and aiding Internally Displaced Persons (IDP). They estimate that there are at least 80,000 Tamil widows, and many thousands of orphans. It is endeavoring to sponsor at least 1000 war orphans and provide general relief for those most affected by the war. The GTF also seeks justice for the perpetrators of genocide and war crimes. They work with the Center for War Victims and Human Rights.

In an interview with a leading participant at the inauguration, a Tamil scholar and political activist, he acknowledged that by obtaining tentative political backing by Western government officials and parliamentarians can be tricky. None of these governments have forthrightly aided the Tamil cause for self-determination or its people in any material way. Since the end of the war, U.S., EU and UN leaders have made noises about protecting Tamils’ “human rights” but have not condemned Sri Lanka or brought anyone before the International Criminal Court, as they often do to leaders of governments that they oppose. No, as I have shown in other writings herein, these Western regimes have been involved with the Sri Lankan Sinhalese governments’ genocide since the beginning in the 1950s. So, what is to be gained?
“Believe me no Tamil activist thinks of supporting US or British imperialism, just as we did not support British colonialism,” he said. “But we have to present out case wherever we can, and hope that by bringing as much pressure as we can we will one day bear fruit. In politics, there are always contradictions. Most of us are more inclined toward the liberation struggles of other peoples, such as those countries in Latin America struggling free of the United States’ `backyard´ dominance. Ironically, some of these countries have sided politically with the Sri Lankan government. I think this is misguided, but they probably have done so because they see US-EU pointing a ‘human rights’ finger hypocritically at Sri Lanka leaders. And then there is China interests over there, too.”

(The United States has invaded 66 countries 159 times since the end of World War Two. All these military operations have been aggressive—some minor, some major: Vietnam, Latin America, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US has directly murdered several millions of people in military operations. Through wars and sanctions, such as that against Iraq following its first military intervention, millions more have starved to death.)

Shortly after the GFT was launched, Tamil activists in Norway and Switzerland began the Council of Eelam Tamil in Europe. They were soon joined by activists in Germany, France and Italy. They see themselves as activists, first and foremost. Many are second generation Tamils in the Diaspora.

In Switzerland, Tamil CETE activists ran for election in a national assembly to form Canton based councils. They see this as a way of uniting and strengthening the Eezham Tamil Diaspora, and putting a separate state in northern-eastern Sri Lanka on the agenda. Sixteen thousand eligible Tamil voters in Switzerland, 70% of the total number, held a referendum in January 2010. Ninety-nine percent voted yes for an independent Tamil Eelam.

Four European CETE councils, joined by Tamils Against Genocide, are filing war crimes charges against Sri Lanka diplomats sent to European countries.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) agreed to take up the case against the appointment of ex-SLA commander Jagath Dias as a diplomat to the Sri Lanka embassy in Germany. “SCET, the Norwegian Council of Eelam Tamils (NCET) and the US based NGO, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), had filed an application to the ECHR in July 2010 charging the German government for violating EU Rights conventions by accepting a Sri Lankan military commander, Major General Jagath Dias, an accused in the war crimes,” wrote Tamil Net.

One representative of the Swiss CETE, Lathan Suntharalingam, a young activist and member of the Swiss Parliament for the Socialist Party, told me, “We Tamils have to work hard to bring our cause before the world. We are very sad and confused after the defeat in 2009. We need to combine all our forces and struggles: Tamils, Arabs, Latin Americans…We need to help each other, because we have common problems and goals.”

A prominent activist in the Diaspora, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, who earned a law degree in immigration rights and constitutional law from Harvard University, saw the need for international representation of Tamil rights to sovereignty. He took the most ambitious initiative to begin the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam in the United States and throughout the Diaspora. Rudra, as he is known, called together Tamils living in many countries, mainly scholars, to a conference in Switzerland, in August 2009. Two more international meetings were held before the TGTE was officially inaugurated. Consensus was reached: a) armed struggle was defeated and is not now possible; b) the fight for sovereignty must continue.

An advisory committee of 11 persons was selected to draw up a strategy for the formation of a “Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam”. “This Government will lobby for the support of the international community and people to find a political solution to the Tamil national question on the basis of nationhood, a homeland and the right to self-determination.”

The TGTE is not to be confused with a “government in exile”, as there had been no independent state with a government that later sought relocation. It will be formed like a transnational corporation or NGO, and will campaign through political and diplomatic channels. The real government will be established in the homeland when that is physically possible.

The traditional homeland of Tamils is swarming with military personnel and camps, effectively an occupied territory. Systematic gerrymandering of electoral districts occurs. Four Tamil members of parliament, representing Tamil political parties, have been murdered under Rajapakse’s regime. Murderers of Tamils whether military personnel or police or civilians enjoy full impunity. The state prohibits equal rights for Tamils with the Sinhalese. In such circumstances, international law recognizes a right to self-determination and a right to secession. And when powerful nations back a people’s demand for sovereignty, such as in Kosovo, they get it.

TGTE strategy is to work with all existing local, national and international Tamil organizations in the Diaspora, and to create a power centre for diplomacy with all governments possible. It also seeks to work in partnership with Tamil leadership inside Sri Lanka but has not been able to establish ties, at least not officially, given the belligerent nature of the S.L. government.

The advisors’ reported on January 2010. They said that a transnational government is “rationalized on the lack of political space for the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka to articulate their political aspirations and realize their right to self-determination and exercise their sovereignty.”

They devised an elaborate democratic procedure to elect delegates where Tamils live in the Diaspora, in order to shape a Transnational Constitutional Assembly, appoint a cabinet, and draft a constitution. One of the main provisions in a constitution will assure the special rights of Muslim Tamils, “who seek their identity based on Islamic religious faith” and are Tamil-speaking people.

The report also recommended a monitoring body to protect the guiding principles and ensure that the Transnational Government “does not act in a manner contrary to the Guiding Principles”: 

 

1. Commitment to achieve Eelam, an independent, sovereign State—nationhood, homeland and right to self-determination.
2. Tamil Eelam will be a secular state.
3. TGTE shall assist in establishing health facilities in the homeland, homes and refuges for those affected by the war; promote cultural activities stressing Eelam Tamil distinctiveness. Much of this work will have to be done indirectly as the TGTE cannot be in Sri Lanka.
4. Promote education in the homeland.
5. Promote economic welfare.
6. Conduct foreign relations through lobbying.
7. Seek prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
8. Protect the equality of women and all Tamils.
9. Provide welfare of families of martyrs, former combatants and families affected by the war. One practical project is to establish monuments for martyrs in the Diaspora since their memorials and graves have been destroyed by the Sri Lankan government.

The advisors established procedures to elect 115 Elected Representatives (ER) by direct ballot where there are contests—otherwise the sole candidate for an area automatically became an ER—in the main population centers (16 countries), and 20 Delegates to represent countries or regions where conducting elections is not feasible because of small or diffuse Tamil populations, or there exists difficulty of access. Some Delegates could be non-Eelam Tamils coming from India, primarily.

The numbers of ER and Delegates is proportional to the numbers of Tamils. For instance, Canada has the largest number, 25, to represent about a quarter million Tamils, followed by the UK with 20, for some 200,000 Tamils.

Those wishing to vote in the TGTE Constituent Assembly must be 17 years old or older and connected to Eelam Tamil culture by descent, marriage or adoption.

In the spring of 2010, elections were held in 12 countries. In some cases, the proposed candidate met no competition and so there was no election. The fact that only about 5% of the Diaspora, around 35-40,000, voted does not indicate a lack of enthusiasm since in some cases there was no need for an election. Nevertheless, participation was lower than hoped for.

Fifty-six of the 89 ER and Delegates elected gathered, in Philadelphia, to officially form the Transnational Constituent Assembly, on May 17-19, 2010. Not all countries or regions had held elections. Their spots will be filled in time.

On June 17, following the first sitting of the Assembly of the TGTE, Rudrakumaran wrote the following in a news release.
“The fact that the first session took place in Philadelphia at the same site where the US Declaration of Independence was promulgated and the US Constitution was drafted symbolized, to the world, our passion for freedom. While the Government of Sri Lanka proclaimed that [it] crushed the Tamils’ struggle for freedom…we demonstrated our thirst for freedom to the world through the setting up of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam. The manner in which we linked elected members of TGTE situated at venues in London and Geneva…portends the transnational character of the struggle we intend to take further.

The first session of the Assembly saw the election of an interim executive committee along with several action committees in order to address the immediate concerns until the time a formal constitution of the TGTE is drafted and ratified.”

The TGTE Assembly met again between September 20 and October 1, in the United Nations Plaza Hotel, New York City. Representatives in N.Y. were joined via teleconference by others from London and Paris. They ratified its Constitution.

“The opening plenary was addressed by former U.S. Attorney General Mr. Ramsey Clark, Deputy Chief Minister of Penang (Malaysia) Professor Ramasamy, Professor David L. Philips from Columbia University and who also served as UN and U.S. State Department adviser, and Mr. Ali Beydoun, Executive Director of UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic of the American University’s Washington College of Law. UNROW recently published a report on Sri Lanka War Crimes which was submitted to the UN.

After the opening session the Assembly turned to the challenging task of discussing the draft constitution. They debated and settled on a parliamentary model. The Parliament decided that the head of the government would be the Prime Minister. They also chose to create three Deputy Prime Minister posts. The Deputy Prime Ministers will be joined in the cabinet by seven other ministers.

The TGTE Parliament will have a bicameral legislature. It will consist of the Parliament of elected representatives and the Senate. The Senate will serve as an advisory body as well as provide expertise. The Parliament also codified the recall mechanism of the elected members.

After the Assembly ratified the constitution, and unanimously elected Mr. Pon Balarajan from Canada as the Speaker of the Parliament, and Ms. Suganya Puthirasigamany from Switzerland as the Deputy Speaker. The Parliament unanimously elected Mr. Visvanathan Rudrakumaran as the first Prime Minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam.

On November 3, the TGTE announced its first cabinet. Of the 10 ministers and 10 deputy ministers, five are women. The Secretariat is in Geneva. The ministries are: finance; welfare; education-culture-health; internal affairs; information; political & foreign affairs; welfare of women, children & elders; economic affairs-environment & development; investigation of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes; and IDPs, Refugees and POWs.

The cabinet meets every 14 days. It will be issuing national membership cards and a quarterly journal, plus an international website.

On the foreign relations front, the TGTE feel a victory for its recognition by being sent an invitation from the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) leadership to be official guests of the new nation-in-formation, the Republic of Southern Sudan, in the July 2011 inaugurating ceremony.

In another area of rebellion and repression, the TGTE called upon the United Nations to protect Libyan civilians, as well as their own people. On February 25, 2011, this statement was issued:

Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) today urged the United Nations not to fail in protecting Libyan civilians like it failed to protect Sri Lankan civilians in 2009, when around 60,000 Tamil civilians were killed. The failure of the international community to take concrete actions to protect civilians in Sri Lanka has given the green light to regimes around the world that they can also massacre civilians without any fear of consequences.

What we are witnessing today in Libya is the result of indifference the international community exhibited during the massacre in Sri Lanka and not brining Sri Lankan leaders to face war crimes charges”, said Political and Foreign Minister of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, Mr. Thanikasalam Thayaparan.

UN should take immediate steps to bring Sri Lanka leaders to Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes to show its resolve to hold those committing mass killings.

Conclusion

Among the TGTE challenges and weaknesses, which I see and have discussed somewhat with key participants, are:

1) The need to raise a treasury while avoiding the historic problem of Diaspora contributions being associated with the armed struggle of the Tigers, seen by many Tamils as having succumbed to acts of terrorism and, of course, being condemned as terrorists by many of the governments that TGTE is trying to persuade to assist it. So, it is the most active members who are paying for travel and other expenses. For now, they will not ask Tamils for money, in general. Perhaps some NGOs and grass roots groups might raise money. They must be careful about choosing their NGOs, as many are paid for by governments with special political interests—NGO imperialists, some call them.

2) TGTE must be careful about how it conducts its lobbying with governments of the “international community”, a common reference to the US and its big capitalist allies. This is a reference to what I raised earlier regarding the Global Tamil Forum. In this context, it is noted that while the SPLM has a legitimate demand for a separate state, it allowed itself to be supported economically, militarily and politically by the United States.

3) While practically every Tamil in the Diaspora still wants a sovereign nation inside the Sri Lanka island, there are strategic and tactical differences. The TGTE takes up where the LTTE ended but by using non-violent tactics. Not all in the Diaspora have yet admitted that the LTTE will not return, or that another armed struggle is impossible or unnecessary. Most GTF members support the TGTE, as do many in the CETE. But some activists wait in the background before deciding to cooperate with the TGTE; a few are against it.

While Lathan Suntharalingam is skeptical, he did help organize a Country Working Group and an election for the TGTE in Switzerland.

“We supported the election, in April 2010, for delegates to the Constitutional Assembly. I am a bit confused about it, though. I wish more action. The TGTE needs more time. I see us getting well together in two to three years.”

4) Finally, how can the TGTE become a true representative for the Tamils in Sri Lanka? How can it get feedback and backing from this frightened and suffering population? I see a related problem. All ministers are scholars or businessmen while most Tamils at home and in the Diaspora are workers. This too has to be adjusted as the credibility and trust people hold towards the government improves over time.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) introduced the new policy on Tamils who seek political asylum in Canada on the grounds that although the refugee board adjudicators are not forced to follow the new guidelines, for the IRB such notes “are offered to members as models of sound reasoning that may be adopted in appropriate circumstances.”  This is really a frightening decision of the IRB as it demonstrates that the Canadian government led by Stephen Harper has made such a hasty decision without knowing what is really happening on the ground in the Tamils areas in Sri Lanka.

The new policy, no doubt, could affect refugee claimants who arrived in Vancouver in 2009 and 2010 aboard the Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea.  The 76 Tamils who arrived in 2009 applied for refugee status, but the refugee board has not taken any action on their files.  The 492 Tamil refugees who arrived last year have applied for political asylum, but their cases are also pending.  It is worth mentioning that one-fourth of the refugees who arrived last year have been detained in detention centres in British Columbia and two of the asylum seekers have been branded as being affiliated to the militant LTTE.

Canada wants precedence to reject Tamils’ claims for refugee status

In this context, the case cited in the new IRB policy involved a 25-year-old Tamil male from Sri Lanka. It is worth mentioning that this youth arrived in Canada by air.  This particular claimant had told the refugee board that he had been, and would be, persecuted by the Sri Lankan army, government officials, and paramilitary agents associated with the Sri Lankan government if he returned to Sri Lanka.

The claimant also told the board that he was arrested by Sri Lankan forces in 2006, interrogated, hit in the stomach and pushed against a wall. He moved to a different location with a friend soon afterwards, but was detected by government forces the next year. He said his friend was eventually executed. The claimant fled to Malaysia in 2007 before arriving in Canada in 2009.

The IRB tribunal rejected his refugee claim in November. It was cited in the persuasive decision four weeks later on December 17, 2010.  The ruling said: “The claimant is not a person in need of protection in that his removal to Sri Lanka would not subject him personally to a risk to his life.”

The IRB said: “The reasons cite the documentary evidence which relates to changes that took place in Sri Lanka recently and conclude with a finding that the changes are meaningful and durable and that the claimant’s fear of persecution based on his particular social group, perceived political opinion and nationality is not well founded.”

How does Canada not know what is happening?

It is unfortunate that Canada employs dozens of diplomats in Sri Lanka at the Canadian High Commission in Colombo who do not know the ground reality in the North and East of Sri Lanka, which are the traditional homeland of Tamils where over 150,000 Sri Lankan armed forces have been deployed despite that the government claiming that it has crushed the Tamil Tigers in May 2009.  The situation worsens by the day. The Sri Lankan government has been deploying more and more armed forces into Tamil villages to build new military residences with China’s assistance.

Another shocking story is that the Sri Lankan army is going to be deployed on the islets off the shores of Jaffna where already the Sri Lankan naval bases and the paramilitaries supporting the government have been put up.  The Canadian High Commissioner, along with senior officials, paid several visits to the Tamil areas after the LTTE silenced their guns in 2009.  It is shocking evidence that the Canadian High Commissioner and senior officials who are being paid from Canadian tax-payers money have not updated the ground reality in the North and East of Sri Lanka where human rights abuses are on the rise daily.

Kidnapping for ransom, murder, rape, robbery, and disappearances are increasing in various places in the North and East, especially Jaffna, in spite of it being a military garrison. There is not a day that passes without a report on crime. Many events can be cited to demonstrate the current situation in Tamil areas.  There are many untold stories taking place despite the fact that many people fail to report to the police or any other officials due to the fear that they will be prosecuted by the armed forces who are wandering around the streets of Tamil villages, towns, and cities with military uniform and arms. Even President Rajapaksa, whose agents commit these crimes, has stated publicly, while in Jaffna, that these criminals underground would not show their heads anymore.

A few of the shocking events are: A Hindu priest was shot dead, using a gun owned by the military, for performing rites for tsunami victims. A government education officer was shot dead because he objected to the national anthem being sung in Sinhala only in Jaffna. An environmentalist was murdered for exposing a Sri Lankan minister and India’s favourite, Douglas Devananda, for making millions of rupees by removing sand and causing environmental damage. So the list goes on.  It is indeed frustrating that Canada falls victim to the Sri Lankan government’s false propaganda.

Senior government officials acknowledge law and order worsen

The Government Agent of Jaffna, Ms Imelda Sukumar, the principal civil representative of the government in Jaffna, spoke to media personnel when they raised questions about the law and order in Jaffna, suggesting the police should be replaced by the military, as if Jaffna is not militarized enough.  It is surprising that over 150,000 Sri Lankan armed forces are wandering in the streets of North and East, but the irresponsible statement of Sukumar demonstrates that the law and order cannot be returned soon.  She claims that more armed forces should be deployed to return the areas to normalcy.

Sukumar, for reasons well known to her, shifted the blame on to another government agency instead of holding the government wholly responsible for the complete breakdown of the justice system and the collapse of law and order in Jaffna.  Jaffna is a veritable jungle, a mini police State where State terrorism remains.

The residents in northern Jaffna and Vavuniya were advised by two senior Police superintendents in leaflets, widely distributed, to wear only imitation jewellery and take extra steps to protect their homes. They were advised not to leave their door keys hidden under door rugs or flower pots, but to have a spare key if another family member needed one. When leaving home, lock the doors properly and inform the neighbours about their departure. They were told not to travel alone when wearing gold jewellery, as criminals may trick and rob their jewellery.

The people were told to beware of strangers or strange vehicles coming to their areas and to note down the numbers and other details. This is just a usual story to hoodwink them to show that robbery is the motive for such crimes and to sidetrack the issue from the real situation and the political and racist undertones.

Unnumbered white van kidnapping is a common occurrence. Once they come in a group armed with guns, there is nothing anyone can do about it.  No unnumbered vehicle is permitted to move around in any civilized country, let alone a militarized area, such as Jaffna. So it is the security forces that have to do the prevention and not unarmed civilians.

Parents were advised not to send children out of their homes alone. The question is how do the parents go about their work if they have to follow their children to school?

The police also advised people to number the valuable goods at home or label them and to do the same for electric equipment, motor bikes, and so forth.

The police have also advised the residents to keep their doors and windows closed, even during the day time if there is only one person in the house. At night, they are advised to make sure the doors and windows are closed and to keep a bulb switched on.

The public was told that if any member of the defence force comes for inspection, they should ask for their official identity cards before opening the door and ensure they are accompanied by a police officer from the area. This is a guaranteed recipe for violence and death, as most of the uniformed personal are thugs and they themselves commit the robbery. Moreover they carry false identity cards with government patronage.

Shop owners have been advised to leave a light on outside their shops after their closure and to keep someone inside the shop. The police say the people have a right to protect their lives and property in such instances. If the criminals attempt to flee, they have a right to take them into custody and then inform the village officer or the police.

What logic!  How do unarmed civilians arrest fully-armed criminals? All the above recommendations can be carried out only by the police as they are the only ones empowered by the law to do so. They are also paid to do their job.

This is Sri Lanka’s version of maintaining ‘law and order’.  One of Wikileak’s revelations was that the American Ambassador, Patricia A. Butenis, was of the view that the para-military groups were given the liberty to raise their own funds by whatever means — kidnapping, robbery, prostitution, and child-trafficking — as the government was no longer able to finance their maintenance. The military has also joined in this multi-million rupee business, so how could the police act?

Crime is a money making business for the armed forces. Moreover, the best means of silencing people who oppose government policies is to eliminate them. Only the international community can get the Tamils of Sri Lanka out of this culture of impunity by imposing sanctions.  The US and EU, who have awoken to the realities of the situation, may be willing to do so, but India and China will continue to support Rajapaksa and Company of brothers and close relatives.

The current situation in the Tamil homeland shows that there is no protection for the Tamils whatsoever. They are exposed to the worst of crimes. The human rights situation has gotten worse.  When the LTTE was in action militarily, the enemies thought a second before conducting any violation against the Tamils, but after the LTTE entered into ceasefire agreement with the Sri Lankan government in 2002 with the facilitation of Norwegian government, the atrocities of Sri Lankan armed forces ran rampant against Tamils.  With the complete silence of the LTTE guns, human rights abuses have worsened.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board’s (IRB) new policy is dangerous and violates its own Charter and the international convention.  Unless the Tamil Canadians wake up and rise to the level where they can exert pressure upon the Canadian government to intervene in altering the new policy introduced by the IRB, many other countries will follow suit with the Canadian policy not to acknowledge the Tamils who are lacking protection in Sri Lanka and will help to deteriorate the efforts of countries which are taking steps to bring the perpetrators of the war crimes to book.

It has contributed to a Sinhalese Buddhist ultra-nationalism that is now fully embedded and institutionalised as state policy. A policy which justifies dehumanising non-Sinhalese; i.e., Tamils, should doing so be necessary to preserve and propagate the dharma-Buddhist doctrine. Furthermore, it legitimises ethnocentrism and militarism as a means to enforce that ethos.

An underlying tenet of the Mahavamsa ideology is the belief that Sri Lanka is an island exclusive to the Sinhalese majority. It insists that only a Sinhalese Buddhist culture exists (or ought to exist) in Sri Lanka, which suggests that the only valid ethnic identity is a Sinhalese Buddhist identity. This has served as a mandate for a litany of injustice, cultural annihilation and human rights atrocities against the Tamil nation.

The Noble Eightfold Path is one of the principal teachings of the Buddha. It is described as the way leading to the end of suffering. It is often represented by means of the dharma wheel, with the eight elements of the path.

Meena Kandasamy’s poem, the second in the Victims Without A Voice campaign, brings to conscience the stark contrast of Sinhalese Buddhist extremism, vis-à-vis ‘the middle way’. It exposes the façade of its ideology, and adds voice to crimes of genocide against Eelam Tamils.

– 1Voice

The Noble Eightfold Path

This is the middle way, this is the eightfold path
This is the way to the end of suffering.

Right view

Right view is the forerunner of the entire path.
Right view provides the right practice.
Right view leads to a virtuous life.
Right view comes at the end of the path.
Right view requires you to know
that the dying always look up to the sky
and therefore get ready to shell hospitals.

Right intention

Birth is suffering, aging is suffering,
Sickness is suffering, death is suffering,
Sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief
and despair are suffering,
Association with the unpleasant is suffering,
Separation from the pleasant is suffering,
Not to get what one wants is suffering.
For the instant cessation of their suffering
Right intention requires the carpet bombing
Of the fleeing masses.

Right speech

Right speech is about the absence of wrong speech.
Abstain from falsehood, abstain from slander,
Abstain from harsh speech, abstain from idle chatter.
Speech can break lives and start wars,
so it is best to pull out of the peace talks.

Right action

Right action means refraining from unwholesome deeds
that occur with the body as their main means
of expression. Do not take life,
Do not take what is not given,
Do not indulge in sexual misconduct.
The celibate Buddha and his monks
never spilled any semen and it is our bounden duty
to make up for that by raping every woman in sight.

Right livelihood

The Buddha mentions five kinds of livelihood
which bring harm to others that must be avoided.
The first tells one to avoid dealing in weapons
so please get India and China to gift those toys.

Right effort

Right effort requires a wholesome form of energy.
Dispelling dullness calls for a special effort
to arouse energy through the visualization
of a brilliant ball of light or reflection on death.
For desire, a remedy of general application
is meditation on impermanence to knock away
the underlying property of clinging.
To get rid of dullness let light into the lives
of your enemies through luminous bombs
and to get rid of their desire for one another
bulldoze their bunkers and this will be the last time
they cling to each other.

Right mindfulness

The first step in right mindfulness involves
the contemplation of the body and the last step
in the mindfulness of the body involves a series
of cemetery meditations which necessitates dreaming
of death and decomposition of the human body.
Meditate on the mass graves in Mullivaaikaal and Chemmani.

Right concentration

Right concentration implies seclusion
from sensual pleasures and reining in the unruly mind.
Right concentration is achieved through training
so work hard to estimate the exact amount of napalm
Or white phosphorous for sky-showers
To grant nirvana to the Tamil people,
For blessed are they who get to breathe
The Laughing Buddha’s Laughing Gas.

Background

The constitution of 1978, enacted by a government headed by J.R.Jayawardene of the United National Party (UNP), created an Executive President who wielded almost absolute power. As Jayawardene (who became the first occupant of the post) boasted, he had the power to do anything other than change a man into a woman or vice versa. The dire consequences of this enormous concentration of power became evident very soon, with assaults and murders of trade unionists and the sacking of tens of thousands of striking workers, a rigged and violent referendum in 1982, and escalating attacks on Tamils, culminating in the massacres of 1983. Like the 1972 Constitution, the 1978 Constitution affirmed Sinhala as the only official language and the special place of Buddhism.

The systematic violation of human rights and destruction of democratic space resulted in a civil war waged by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the North and East, and a Sinhalese insurgency of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in the rest of the country. Under Jayawardene and his successor, Ranasinghe Premadasa, tens of thousands of both Tamils and Sinhalese were tortured and killed by the state. Presidential immunity meant that they could not be prosecuted for any of the ghastly crimes committed during their regimes so long as they were in power. The only provision that saved this dispensation from being an out-and-out dictatorship was the limitation of the presidency to two six-year terms. In other words, at the end of twelve years, the president would be out of power and susceptible to prosecution for crimes committed while in power.

The Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 was followed by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, under pressure from India. This declared that Tamil ‘shall also be an official language’ of Sri Lanka, with English being a link language. It established Provincial Councils in all the provinces, and provided for the merger of two or three adjoining provinces to form a single administrative unit. This provided constitutional validity to the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces which had been agreed in the Indo-Lanka Accord, with the proviso that a referendum in the Eastern Province would be held within a year. Various powers were devolved to the provincial councils in the Provincial Council List, and a parliamentary bill on any subject in the list had to be referred to all the provincial councils for their agreement before it could be passed.

The Thirteenth Amendment fell between two stools. It hardly needs to be said that it failed to satisfy the demand of the LTTE for a separate state. But both Tamil and Sinhalese moderates noted that the exact division of powers between the centre and provinces was not made clear, there was no subject over which the provincial councils could exercise exclusive jurisdiction, and even the devolved powers could arbitrarily be controlled, reduced or abolished by the centre acting at the behest of the president. For Sinhala nationalists, on the contrary, the amendment gave too much power to the merged Northeastern Province, aiding and abetting Tamil separatists.

The UNP was ousted from power in the parliamentary elections of August 1994, with a narrow victory for the People’s Alliance, which included the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) and a few others. This was followed by the landslide victory of Chandrika Kumaratunga in the presidential election in November. Kumaratunga’s platform was one of peace with justice for Tamils and a restoration of democracy. In pursuance of the first objective, a ceasefire with the LTTE was declared in January 1995, and peace talks were begun. In pursuance of both, various democratic rights and liberties like freedom of expression and trade union rights were restored in the parts of the country under government rule, and a process aimed at enacting a new constitution inaugurating greater devolution to the provincial councils was initiated.

The peace process ended and war resumed in April 1995, when the LTTE broke the ceasefire by attacking the Sri Lanka Navy. However, efforts to bring about constitutional change continued. The 1995 proposals were unprecedented in their recognition of Tamil grievances and aspirations, and were welcomed by both Tamil moderates and Sinhalese progressives. For example, they deleted articles in the constitution that entrenched the unitary character of the state, abolished the concurrent list that created ambiguity in the division of powers between the centre and provinces, and emphasised the plural character of Sri Lanka. Sinhala nationalists were predictably unhappy with the draft. Under pressure from them, some of the progressive features were left out, while regressive features were either introduced or taken over from the 1978 constitution by the time the proposals were introduced in parliament in 1997. The LTTE rejected the proposals out of hand, and in 1999 murdered Tamil politician and lawyer Neelan Tiruchelvam, who had worked on drafting it. In 2005, it succeeded in killing Lakshman Kadirgamar, the other Tamil politician and lawyer who had backed the draft constitution.

Discussions continued, and by 2000, after Kumaratunga had survived an LTTE assassination attempt with the loss of an eye and had begun her second term as president in 1999, the proposals included abolition of the executive presidency. A problem faced by the Kumaratunga administration was that the proposals, being a substantive change in the constitution, were required by the 1978 Constitution to be passed by a two-thirds majority in parliament as well as a majority in a referendum, which meant that the support of the largest opposition party, the UNP, was critical. The promise of such support was held out, but it never materialised. When the draft was presented to parliament in 2000, shortly before parliamentary elections were due, the UNP led by Ranil Wickremesinghe howled it down rather than presenting any coherent amendments or arguments against it. Thus an attempt to abolish the executive presidency came to nothing despite strong popular support for it.

However, in a rare moment of consensus the Seventeenth Amendment, which curtailed the powers of the executive president substantially, was passed unanimously in 2001. This amendment, drafted by the Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA) and championed by the JVP which had abandoned armed struggle and entered parliament, provided for the appointment of an independent Constitutional Council of ten people, in which the majority of members would be ‘persons of eminence and integrity who have distinguished themselves in public life and who are not members of any political party’ and would include at least three persons representing the interests of minority communities. No person could be appointed to or removed from the following Commissions except on a recommendation of the Council: the Election Commission, Public Services Commission, National Police Commission, Human Rights Commission, Finance Commission, Delimitation Commission, and Permanent Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption. Further, no person could be appointed to the following offices without the approval of the Council: the Chief Justice and judges of the Supreme Court, President and judges of the Court of Appeal, members of the Judicial Services Commission other than the chairman, Attorney-General, Auditor-General, Inspector-General of Police, Ombudsman and Secretary-General of Parliament. The powers, functions and duties of the Election Commission included prohibiting the use of state property to promote or prevent the elction of any candidate, party or independent group, and the power to appoint a Competent Authority to take over the management of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Authority and Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (state TV) should they contravene its guidelines. Thus the president’s sweeping powers to control all these posts and functions was withdrawn during Kumaratunga’s presidency, although she proved incapable of abolishing the executive presidency itself as she had promised in her 1999 manifesto.

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s First Term

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s manifesto for the presidential elections of November 2005, ‘Mahinda Chinthanaya’, also promised to abolish the executive presidency. Thus his election as president can be understood as a mandate from the electorate to carry out this constitutional change. In May 2006, an All-Party Representative Committee (APRC) was constituted with the task of preparing proposals for a new constitution, and a panel of sixteen experts was appointed to assist it. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), at that time seen as the parliamentary voice of the LTTE, was not included. The proposals were supposed to constitute a political solution to the ethnic conflict as well as strengthen democracy in a more general sense. The panel was unable to come to a consensus, but by December a multi-ethnic majority of eleven members presented a report that was widely hailed by progressives of all communities as being a major step forward.

Subsequently, Chairman of the APRC Tissa Vitharana of the LSSP produced an amalgam of the two reports which relied heavily on the Majority Report, and each chapter of the proposals was discussed with a view to arriving at a consensus. It soon became evident, however, that President Rajapaksa and his party, the SLFP, were determined to sabotage the process, producing nonsensical and reactionary proposals that were guaranteed to be rejected by progressives of all communities. The UNP too failed to come up with any constructive suggestions, and instead dropped out of the committee. A final report prepared by the Chairman on the basis of discussions in 128 meetings was presented to the president in 2009. The draft included the abolition of the executive presidency and substantial devolution of power to provincial councils, but did not see the light of day until July 2010, when two members of the APRC, R.Yogarajan and M.Nizam Kariapper, released it to the public.

Rajapaksa’s lack of interest in proposals for a more democratic constitution was underscored by his attitude to the Seventeenth Amendment. The three-year terms of members of the Constitutional Council expired in 2005, but he failed to appoint people to fill the vacancies as required by the 17th Amendment. Consequently the Council ceased to function, and new appointments to the various posts and commissions that were supposed to be carried out with its recommendation or approval were carried out unilaterally by the president instead.

The OPA protested in the strongest possible terms, pointing out that one of the most obnoxious misuses of presidential power ‘is the practice of appointing or promoting relatives, friends, business associates and even those with strong criminal connections to positions of authority and fiscal responsibility. Another is the undervaluing and disposal of the Country’s assets to cronies and rogue businessmen. The third is the collection of enormous bribes connected with the award of major tenders of various kinds, including arms and other military purchases. Misemploying government resources, including the media, to distort electoral processes is a fourth substantial domain of malfeasance. The resulting lack of anything resembling good governance has had a destructive effect in every sphere of national life.’ They complained, ‘It is deplorable that the President prefers not to honour the very Constitution that he promised to uphold when he took his oath of office… The continued violation of the 17th Amendment has destroyed all semblance of democracy, good governance and respect for the Rule of Law. It is time that President Rajapakse reflects on his actions and those of his government, and their long-term effect on the national institutions of this country. He needs to pull us back forthwith from the brink over which we are poised to descend precipitously into lawless dictatorship.’

The regime’s failure to engage constructively with the APRC process helped to strengthen the LTTE, since its refusal to carry out or even contribute to a process of political reform would have convinced Tamils in LTTE-held territory that they had nothing to hope for and a great deal to fear if they fell into government hands. This allowed the LTTE to take around 300,000 Tamil civilians hostage in 2009, which, given the regime’s determination to wipe out the LTTE at any cost, resulted in massive civilian casualties at the end of the war. In a sense the Vanni Tamils were proved right in their distrust of the government, because they were detained en masse after the end of the war in internment camps, a procedure that could arguably be characterised as a crime against humanity according to the definition of the International Criminal Court, since it involved ‘severe deprivation of physical liberty’ and ‘severe deprivation of fundamental rights’ of a civilian population for months on end.

The end of the war two years before presidential elections were due allowed ample time for President Rajapaksa to withdraw war-time curbs on democratic rights, demilitarise, carry out a public debate on the APRC proposals, amend them as required, and abolish the executive presidency as he had promised. Instead, he plunged into preparations for a presidential election, in the expectation that post-war euphoria amongst the majority of Sinhalese would give him a huge majority over his main rival, Wickremesinghe. To his consternation, army general and war hero Sarath Fonseka announced his retirement from the army and candidacy in the presidential election, supported by most of the opposition parties as the common candidate of the Democratic National Alliance (DNA). The regime went into overdrive to defeat him, using state resources and media to campaign for the incumbent and circulate rumours that Fonseka was a tyrant, a traitor, and ineligible to stand for election, assaulting, killing or forcibly disappearing journalists who failed to fall in line, and attacking – in some cases with lethal force – opposition election rallies.

After the election was held on 26 January 2010, the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), a civil society group, confirmed that many Internally Displaced Persons were deprived of their franchise while people who had died or left the country remained on the voting lists, and that counting agents of opposition candidates were chased away from the counting centres while unauthorised persons were allowed to enter. The results, instead of initially being announced at the counting centres as usual, were announced only after being centralised; demands by CaFFE that carbon copies of the results at each counting centre be submitted for inspection were refused, giving rise to suspicions of fraud in the counting process. In a despairing address to the public when announcing the election results, Election Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake complained that his guidelines to the state media had been ignored, many state institutions had operated in a manner not befitting state organisations, his team of presiding officers and assistant election commissioners had been harassed in several areas, and under the circumstances he could not ensure the safety of even a single ballot box.

Despite these irregularities, Fonseka polled 4.17 million votes against Rajapaksa’s 6 million. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested and threatened with court martial and possible execution. While in remand, he won a seat in the parliamentary elections of April 2010 and was able to attend and participate in sittings. Although the serious charges meriting a death sentence were dropped for lack of evidence, a military court appointed by Rajapaksa convicted him of meddling in politics while in uniform and of relatively trivial corruption charges, stripped him of his rank, medals, pension and parliamentary seat, and sentenced him to three years in jail. According to Fonseka’s daughter Apsara, the defence lawyers were not allowed to present their statements, call their witnesses, or even be present at his trials, and the Asian Human Rights Commission compared them to Stalin’s Moscow trials. The irregularity of the proceedings and vindictiveness of the punishment, given both rampant corruption and political dabbling by many others in the armed forces, make it obvious that Fonseka’s real crime was standing for election against Rajapaksa. The coalition headed by Rajapaksa, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), won the 2010 parliamentary elections, but fell short of the two-thirds majority required to carry out constitutional change.

Who is to Blame?

This is the context in which the Eighteenth Amendment was rushed through as an urgent bill. The bill sought to bring about two changes to the constitution: nullify the Seventeenth Amendment by replacing the Constitutional Council with a toothless Parliamentary Council, and abolish the two-term limit on the presidency. This would allow the president to appoint people to all the positions and posts mentioned in the 17th amendment constitutionally, and ensure that he could remain president for life (with lifelong immunity) by manipulating elections and making nonsense of the independence of the judiciary. Why was it so urgent? Owing to a convoluted constitutional amendment introduced by Jayawardene, Rajapaksa would not even begin his second term until November 2010, so what was the urgency to decide that he could stand for a third term?

There seem to have been three compulsions. One, his waning popularity would mean that the longer he waited, the more difficult it would become to pass such an amendment. Two, rushing the amendment through parliament without a public debate would forestall objections. (It all took place within ten days; petitioners at the Supreme Court, who argued that as an amendment which affected both fundamental rights and powers devolved to the provincial councils it should have been subjected to a referendum and sent to the provincial councils for prior approval, were given the text of the amendment only after their plea began; the Supreme Court itself was given the text only the previous day, despite which it ruled (contrary to earlier rulings) that a two-thirds majority in parliament was sufficient; and MPs were given the text only after the debate began, one day before their votes were to be cast.) The third probable reason is that Jayawardene is reported to have contemplated such an amendment towards the end of his second term, but by then, Premadasa was waiting in the wings to replace him, and would not agree to it. So this could well be a move on Rajapaksa’s part to pre-empt bids by other members of his party – or even his family – to replace him. In the process, of course, his 2005 election pledge to abolish the executive presidency was thrown to the winds.

There is no doubt that the primary responsibility for this travesty of democracy lies with Rajapaksa and his party. But they lacked a two-thirds majority, and could not have pushed through the amendment without many accomplices. As a member of Jayawardene’s and Premadasa’s governments, opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe participated in the horrors they perpetrated, including the anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983 and the torture and extrajudicial killings of Sinhalese in the late 1980s. As leader of the opposition, he sabotaged the constitutional proposal of 2000 (which would have made the 18th Amendment impossible if it had gone through), and played a negative role in the APRC process. He has been criticised for being absent at the debate on the 18th Amendment instead of arguing and voting against it, but what could he possibly have said that would not have sounded hypocritical? The UNP’s failure to stand for anything but a desire for power has meant a steady haemorrhage of defectors to the ruling alliance where the real power lies, and they helped to push the amendment through.

Then there was the LTTE. Prabhakaran’s stubborn refusal to consider anything other than an exclusively Tamil totalitarian state in the areas it controlled detached the issue of justice for Tamils from the goal of democracy for all, where it rightfully belonged. This blocked attempts to push through a democratic solution to the civil war and abolish the executive presidency in the decade from 1994 onwards, when Sinhala nationalism was in abeyance. And the return to war and terrorist attacks helped to stoke Sinhala nationalist sentiments and legitimise the ruthless drive to exterminate the LTTE as well as the anti-democratic measures taken before and after the end of the war.

Other accomplices included the Supreme Court judges who allowed the amendment to be rushed through, politicians from minority parties who voted for it, and politicians from the Socialist Alliance who also voted for it, despite the fact that the Politburo and Central Committee of the LSSP (led by Tissa Vitharana) and Democratic Left Front (DLF, led by Vasudeva Nanayakkara) had decided to abstain. One is reminded of Stanley Kramer’s 1961 film ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’, which tells the story of the trial of four German judges guilty of complicity with the Nazi regime. One of them, Ernst Janning, was once a champion of justice, yet played a major role in turning the German legal system into an instrument of Nazism. How could these eminent and apparently decent men have been complicit in the ghastly atrocities committed by the Nazi regime? The mystery is solved only when Janning makes a statement, showing how actions which at first seemed trivial and innocuous – like swearing an oath of allegiance to the Nazis – led to deeper and deeper entanglement with the regime. Even when the full horror of Hitler’s agenda became clear to them, they justified staying at their posts with the argument that they were trying to prevent matters from getting even worse. Of course, that turned out to be a delusion. What really could have prevented matters from getting worse would have been clear opposition to the fascist transformation of the state and society, but that was the course they did not take.

Are the majority of Sinhalese people complicit in turning Sri Lanka into a dictatorship? Two days before the amendment was passed, liberal commentator and peace activist Jehan Perera asked community leaders in various parts of the country what they thought of it, and they replied that they did not know enough about it to have an opinion. He also got the impression that they were afraid of voicing opposition. This account rings true. If judges of the Supreme Court and parliamentarians did not get the text of the amendment until the last minute, how could ordinary people in the provinces know what it contained? And if they had seen war hero Sarath Fonseka incarcerated and threatened with death for opposing the regime, wouldn’t they fear that the same or worse could happen to them? In both 1999 and 2005, the Sinhalese majority voted massively for presidential candidates who promised to abolish the executive presidency. In 2010, a large part of the 4.17 million votes for Fonseka were cast in the fear that if Rajapaksa came to power, he would become a dictator: a fear that proved only too well-founded. Millions more did not vote for either of the main contenders, believing that Fonseka could turn out to be as bad as Rajapaksa. They either cast their votes for candidates who could not hope to win or abstained, resulting in an abnormally low voter turnout. If protest votes and abstentions are added up, they come to a substantial majority who were opposed to dictatorship.

Seeds of Hope

Sri Lanka may now be a dictatorship, but it does not follow that the aspiration for democracy among its people is dead. There was a chorus of protest against the 18th Amendment and the manner in which it was being passed from the Civil Rights Movement, Organisation of Professional Associations, Bar Association and law students, Centre for Policy Alternatives, National Peace Council, eminent academics and intellectuals, religious leaders, trade unionists, media persons, and many other concerned citizens. In parliament, it was opposed by the DNA (now reduced to the JVP, Sarath Fonseka and two others) and the TNA, despite the vulnerable position of both; thanks to first-time TNA MP M.A.Sumanthiran’s well-argued and eloquent speech in parliament, objections to the 18th Amendment were actually voiced in the debate and went on record. The leader of the New Left Front, Vikramabahu Karunaratne, called on people to wear black in protest against the amendment. Nineteen LSSP and DLF Poliburo and Central Committee members condemned the decision of the executive committee of the Socialist Alliance to vote in favour of the18th amendment ignoring their decision not to participate in the voting, and called upon all progressive forces to oppose the 18th Amendment and fight against the establishment of an authoritarian state by united action with all who stood against this menace.

Whether these protests die down or grow, making use of the remaining democratic space before it is shut down, depends on many things. It is an irony that the only parties defending democracy in parliament were the JVP and TNA, which have both espoused decidedly undemocratic politics in the past. In the circumstances, all freedom-loving people have good reason to be grateful to them. The JVP has distanced itself from armed struggle, which is a positive development, but unless its leaders and Sarath Fonseka abandon their Sinhala nationalism, they will not be able to carry forward the struggle for democracy. On the other side, the TNA has distanced itself from the goal of Tamil Eelam, which is a major step forward, but unless it also abandons its residual Tamil nationalism, its capacity to fight for democracy will be limited. Finally, the capacity of dissident leftists of the LSSP and DLF to act as a rallying point for all those opposing the descent into authoritarianism would depend on their ability to distance themselves from elements in their own parties who are wedded to the very forces that are driving the country into totalitarianism. There is potential for a powerful democracy movement. Only time will tell whether it will materialise.

The New Zealand Supreme Court decision came after a Tamil respondent, whose name is being kept confidential (born in 1956 in Velvettiturai of northern Sri Lanka), responded to the Attorney-General who was the appellant challenging the Appeal Court decision, which stated that the respondent had the right to seek refugee status in New Zealand, but the Crown was contending that the respondent was a member of the LTTE and he carried weapons and ammunition for the LTTE to fight against the Sri Lankan armed forces.

Earlier, two other cases were rejected and they were deported. However, the Tamil respondent challenged in the Appeal Court and later the Supreme Court, and in fact, this case is now seen as a test case where the New Zealand Supreme Court sees the LTTE as a political organization and that they had the right to fight for right of self-determination. In essence, the LTTE had the right to defend themselves from the majority as that majority launched genocidal war against Tamil minority on the island.

The respondent is an innocent Tamil

The respondent gave details as to how he left Sri Lanka in 1981 to go to sea. He was initially based in the Middle East, working in engine rooms first as an oiler and then as a third assistant engineer in the Persian Gulf. He spent brief periods in Sri Lanka in 1986 for personal reasons and returned in 1989 for his marriage where he remained for six months. At the end of 1989, he took up a position as fourth engineer on a container ship sailing between Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. He returned to Velvettiturai in April 1990 to be with his wife for the birth of their first child and remained in Sri Lanka for two years.

The respondent said that in June 1992, he was contacted by an employment agent about an opportunity to work as Chief Engineer on a vessel owned by a Thai company. He was not told its name. He travelled to Trang where he met the ship’s agent, and then to Phuket where, on 5 July 1992, he boarded the Yahata, a cargo vessel with a total crew of nine. For the next six months the vessel worked routes in South Asia travelling to ports in Thailand and Singapore.

The respondent told the Authority that he did not know the nature of the cargo during these voyages. He said he had little interaction with other crew members and knew nothing about them other than that most came from Velvettiturai, which is a fishing port, and at that time, a centre of commercial and maritime contacts for the LTTE. He also said he did not know that, as is established to have been the case, most of the vessel’s crew were members of or sympathetic to the LTTE.

On 4 January 1993, the Yahata departed Phuket with the respondent on board. He said he had no knowledge of the cargo, which he had observed, comprised of packets and barrels when it was loaded from a trawler. During loading, 10 extra people joined the ship. Soon afterwards, the respondent said, he was advised that the Yahata was an LTTE ship. He wanted to leave but was told he could not do so until the vessel reached Sri Lanka. He learned that the 10 persons who had boarded were from the LTTE, one of whom was Krishnakumar Sathasivam, alias Kittu, who had been the LTTE’s second-in-command until being injured during hostilities in Sri Lanka. The respondent acknowledged that at the time he knew who Kittu was.

India’s drama exposed

During the Yahata’s voyage to Sri Lanka, when the vessel was some 440 nautical miles off Chennai, the Master told the respondent that the vessel had reached its destination. The engines were stopped. The vessel drifted for about 10 hours without displaying its national flag and while displaying “not under command” lights. An Indian coastguard vessel approached and sought to board the Yahata for verification purposes. The Master warned the coastguard that the Yahata was carrying 110 tonnes of explosives and dire consequences would follow if any attempt were made to board her. The Yahata then tried to flee and was chased for two and a half hours, when the Master agreed to proceed to Chennai. Near that port, the Yahata was surrounded by vessels of the Indian navy and dropped its anchors.

The respondent said that Kittu informed the crew members that the Indian navy had agreed that they would be repatriated to Sri Lanka. On January 16, 1993, the LTTE members who were on board bombed the vessel, killing ten of them including Kittu. Nine crew jumped into the sea. The Indian navy captured and placed them in custody.

The case was heard for 37 days, and dragged on for three years. Thirty-four witnesses for the prosecution, mostly navy personnel, were interrogated. On the court’s directive, the navy salvaged the remains of the ship and claimed to have retrieved rocket-propelling guns and other arms, but the navy did not submit the gunnery records or communication tapes of the ship to the court, even during in camera sessions. Fearing that the case against the accused was not proceeding in favour of the prosecution, the Additional Solicitor General of India, T.S. Tulsi, was specially requisitioned to marshal additional points in defense of the prosecution in the case. The Indian government, having itself instituted proceedings under the TADA, invoked the jurisdiction of the court, then contended that the court had no jurisdiction to inquire into what happened on the high seas.

Tulsi submitted that, though the vessel was registered under the name MV Yahata, it was changed in the high seas, because the vessel was engaged in clandestine activities. He contended that the moment the vessel changed its name, it had lost its nationality. Also, the crew did not hoist the flag of its nationality and did not have necessary papers. When the Indian navy wanted to know its call-sign, the crew gave a wrong call-signal and it was clear that the vessel was stateless, he said. Such a vessel had no rights under the international law, he contended.

Quoting international law on piracy, Tulsi said the master of the vessel was not in control of the vessel, but it was Kittu and he was communicating with the other vessels in the vicinity. A pirate ship could be seized and the Indian navy had the right to seize this vessel, and contended that, if hostile boarding was resisted, they had the right to capture the vessel. But the Indian navy personnel did not board the vessel, because of humanitarian considerations and they feared that the men on board might consume cyanide capsules. But later, they had no alternative but to resort to hostile boarding as a logical conclusion, he submitted.

The TADA court judge, P. Lakshman Reddy, rejected the submissions of the Prosecution as well as the charge of carrying explosives against the crew, and held that the Navy and the investigating agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Special Investigating Team, had failed to prove their charges against the crew of the MV Ahat (Yahata).

The Judge said there was no case under the TADA Act against the accused, as they were brought forcibly into the Indian waters and also, there was no evidence of any offence. He agreed with the defence argument that the Coast Guard ship was not justified in intercepting MV Ahat, when it was in international waters and when the accused had revealed that the ship was registered in Singapore and was flying the Honduran flag. Dissatisfied with the judgment of the Trial Court, the Prosecution appealed to the Indian Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court upheld the Trial Court’s finding and ordered the release of the accused.

The judge directed the Commissioner of Police of Visakhapatnam to hand all the nine crew, including its captain, Jayachandran. Other crew members– Satkunalingham, V. Krishnamoorthy, K Nayakam, S. Sivarasa, S. Indralingham, S. Balakrishnan and T. Mohan– were handed over to the appropriate government, and the crew managed to reach their South-east Asian destination.

New Zealand Supreme Court decision a historic one

After the respondent was released from custody and permitted to leave India for Singapore in August 2001, he obtained a New Zealand visitor’s visa and arrived in New Zealand on 13 September 2001, where he was issued with a visitor’s permit. His wife and children also secured visitors’ visas and arrived in New Zealand on 24 December 2001. On that day, the respondent filed his refugee status application. His wife also made an application on 18 January 2002.

The respondent application was rejected and the case went on for years. The hearing in front of the Supreme Court came in front of Elias C.J., Blanchard, Tipping, McGrath and JJ. Anderson on June 24, 2010, and the verdict was given on August 27 in favour of the respondent. The court delivered the judgment while dismissing the government’s appeal seeking rejection of the refugee status of the respondent.

The court said in its judgment: “At all relevant times the Tamil Tigers was an organisation having the goals of self-determination for Tamils and securing an independent Tamil state in northeast Sri Lanka. The principal objective was to induce the government of Sri Lanka to concede such political change. These characteristics made the Tamil Tigers a political organisation notwithstanding its use, at times, of proscribed methods of advancing its cause. That much is not in dispute.”

It further said: “The appeal is dismissed. The respondent’s application for recognition of refugee status is remitted to the Refugee Status Appeals Authority for consideration in accordance with the Court of Appeal’s order. Costs are reserved and counsel may submit memoranda if necessary.”

The Crown argued in the Supreme Court that the respondent’s involvement in the voyage made him complicit in the atrocities committed by the Tamil Tigers, so that he had committed crimes against humanity as an accomplice. As well, his involvement in the sinking of the vessel was a serious non-political crime. The Crown’s submission was that each aspect of his conduct disqualified him from being recognised as a refugee under the Refugee Convention and New Zealand law.

The Supreme Court has decided that it was not shown that the respondent’s supportive activities were actually linked to any atrocities committed by the LTTE. This was because the armaments which he helped transport did not reach the LTTE as they went down with the ship. Accordingly, it was not established that any crime against humanity had been committed to which the respondent was an accomplice. Furthermore, any crime committed in relation to the sinking of the vessel was of a political nature which did not disqualify the respondent from holding refugee status under the Convention.
The Supreme Court referred the respondent’s application for refugee status back to the Appeals Authority for consideration of whether he meets the general requirements of the Convention and New Zealand law to be recognised as a refugee.

The decision by the Court is really fascinating, and is a precedent for other countries to follow suit because many countries are unjustly concluding that all militants are together with citizens and bystanders or coworkers. There are some movements by minorities which are fighting to safeguard their peoples from genocide and crimes against humanity by oppressive regimes, so these movements should be considered freedom fighters. These fighters do not get any benefits, but they sacrifice their lives for the liberation of their nation, and these fighters should not be branded as terrorists. All sections that fight for self determination for their people and against oppression for liberation should not be regarded terrorists.

The New Zealand Supreme Court decision is a historic one, and it should be taken as a precedent in all countries practising Common Law. If the New Zealand Tamils, numbering less than 10,000 people, can educate the New Zealand judges about the sufferings of Tamils in Sri Lanka, then why not the hundreds of thousands living in other western countries such as in England, Canada, Australia and the U.S and others. The decision in New Zealand should be taken as a test case in all other countries which practice Common Law in order to seek justice for the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

A poetry campaign, Victims Without A Voice, is launched this week to raise global awareness and consciousness of this humanitarian tragedy.

More than fifty thousand ethnic Tamils were massacred to death in Northern Sri Lanka between January to May 2009. Over 300,000 have been imprisoned in detention camps. Thousands more are disappeared, displaced and exiled from their traditional homeland.

In its aftermath, after more than one year still mothers walk miles to look for their lost children, while mother-to-be walk post to post looking for their husbands, while in orphanages children without parents keep watching the gates for their parents’ arrival. While thousands kept behind barbed wires in detention centres, access to people’s ancestral homes are denied while the colonising army set up camps and check posts all over the territory.

A nation gets destroyed without any trace while good-will nations behave as though they need moral steroids to speak out. In the continued silence of the international community, gets silenced a nation’s call for justice, because they are victims without voices.

*****

Like the last cries of a herd of sheep,
Facing cruel cull amidst baying wolves,
Stood thousands of Tamils facing slaughter
Among murderous army with cynical laughter;
Gleeful of ensuing massacre of innocent lives.
Skyward, echoed around walls of power, yells
Of protest and plea for mercy of thousands.
No power on earth moved-so perished thousands.
Silenced by the very silence of flawed conscience
Of moral high landers and so born us -
The Victims without voices.

Beyond massacre, mass graves and genocide,
Beneath false surface of normalcy, besides ecocide,
Wombs of yesterday walk in search of off springs,
Mums-to-be reach post to post in search of husbands.
Barbed wires weep at those detained behind them.
Curbed villagers scorn at schemes which deny their homes.
Kids many that defied death in the murderous onslaught,
Sit in orphanages, a lot in shock, rest in mental drought.
Sky much our agony, so little known of this tragedy
Because, we are the – The Victims without voices.

A nation being decimated and destroyed,
While nations of goodwill seem to need steroid
To break their silence and speak for us – silent victims.
A community of people pushed to extinction
While people of conscience lack moral conviction
To break their silence and speak for us – silent victims
In these civil and morally defunct valleys perish we -
The Victims without voices.

Last week a human cargo ship, the MV Sun Sea, brought 492 Tamil refugee claimants to Vancouver Island.

In the first two-thirds of his article on the editorial page Times Colonist writer Lorne Gunter presented the history of oppression the Tamils have faced from the Sinhalese majority.¹ In the last one-third of the article Gunter wrote, “Against this backdrop, I might ordinarily argue for acceptance” of the Tamils to Canada.

He even conceded, “Many of the refugees might well have valid refugee claims.”

But Gunter would send all these oppressed Tamils back, including the valid refugees² among them.

Why?

Gunter states that Tamils resisted their oppression with violence. He claims Tamil Tigers extorted money to support their violent resistance to violent Sinhalese oppression. He worries that Tamil Tigers may be behind the human smuggling.

In the befuddling “logic” of Gunter, if members of your group have committed violence, then all members are tarnished by the violence. It does not matter if you used violence in self-defense against violence. This violates the fourth Geneva Convention which holds collective punishment to be a war crime. In other words, Gunter advocates a war crime against a people who suffered under an oppressive Sinhalese regime in Sri Lanka. This is what passes for editorials in the Times Colonist.

Valid Tamil refugees must be punished for alleged extortion by other Tamils.

Canada’s history is tarnished by rejecting boats of Jewish refugees escaping Nazi oppression during World War II.³ Does Gunter agree that Canada did right by rejecting these Jewish asylum seekers?

BC history is also blacken by the 1914 Komagata Maru “incident” with its hundreds of Sikhs seeking entry to Canada. The ship was forced back to India where the Sikhs were met with lethal violence. Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper apologized in 2008, but Sikhs were unsatisfied with the apology.⁴

Gunter would repeat all these historical instances of insouciance for the plight of Others.

As justification, Gunter ends his piece, “At the end of the day, it will be too hard to tell the good guys from the bad … And the risk of guessing wrong is too great for Canada.”

In other words, by default all the Tamils are considered guilty as terrorists in Gunter’s mind.⁵ There is no presumption of innocence until proven guilty as required under Canadian law. As for guessing wrong … there is again the bizarre “logic” of Gunter that sending back the Tamils, “valid refugees” or not, is presumably guessing right!? So why is it a “guess”?

Where would Gunter send them? To, what he writes, “deplorable Sri Lankan detention camps, where torture and summary executions are thought to be common.”

The immorality of the Gunter/Times Colonist position is stark.

How will Canadians display their humanity?

Canada has the unenviable history of being spawned through a genocide against the First Nations of the land. That a country might again turn its back on a people fleeing violence back in their home country does not do it proud. Gunter would send them back to face possible massacres that he acknowledges. Gunter either does not know his Canadian history, or he wishes nonetheless to repeat the grave errors.

Such a column is revelatory of the Times Colonist. Is it any wonder that readers are turning away from corporate media in droves?

It is important to be aware of what the various media outlets present as news and opinion, but I’ll try and resist any masochistic impulses to leaf through my parents’s local newspaper and stick with independent media.

1. Lorne Gunter, “Sadly, the boat Tamils should be sent back,” Times Colonist, 17 August 2010: A12.
2. I do not hold any humans — refugees or immigrants — to be “invalid” or “illegitimate,” although there is an argument for some exceptions; e.g., those who have been found guilty of major crimes in a demonstrably fair legal system. See NOII-Vancouver, “Canada: Stop Jailing and Deporting Refugees! Let Them Stay!” The Dominion Weblog, 17 August 2010.
3. See “Jews not welcome in wartime Canada,” CBC Digital Archives, 6 October 1982.
4. The Canadian Press, “Sikhs unhappy with PM’s Komagata Maru apology,” CTV, 3 August 2008.
5. Gunter does not distinguish between freedom fighters and terrorists.

Thousands of victims went abroad abandoning their homeland and their way of life, making up the critical mass of the Tamil Diasporas now scattered the world over. The atrocities upon them had a profound, lasting, and often a ripple effect on their lives, breaking up their family structures and their ethereal foundations. Very soon will come a time when a Tamil child in Denmark will not be able to communicate with their first cousin in England for Danish would be the only language that they could speak.

The term “reconciliation” used in calling the new commission; namely, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, designed to deflect the allegations of war crimes and genocide by sections of the international community, is a misnomer just as much as its motives are fraudulent. However, the commission affords an opportunity to apologists of Sri Lankan war crimes and the racist war, like Akashi from Japan and others who frequently enjoy the lavish hospitality of the Sri Lankan government, to hang on to it in defence of its war crimes and human rights abuses. Indeed, Akashi would be familiar with the manner that the Japanese treated their prisoners of war during the Second World War but certainly not the abhorrent massacres of non-combatant civilians who were citizens of his own country, if there were any, or, for that matter, in any other country. We are glad that the term “Truth” is not part of what the commission would be called as originally intended for the Sri Lankan State is incapable of the truth.

After Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948 no conciliatory measures were taken by the Sinhala leadership to treat the Tamils as an integral part of a Sri Lankan nation. Guided by xenophobic fears, considerations of racism, and unfounded mistrust, the Sinhala body politic, through its majoritarian politics offering the semblance of democracy, went on to alienate the Tamil people not only through discrimination but also by the use of periodic violence against them, emanating even from parliamentary debate inciting violence against them. Every effort of conciliation between responsible Sinhalese and Tamil leaderships was thwarted by violence engineered by the Sinhala polity unleashed on the Tamil people forcing them to abandon any hope of conciliation thus rendering the need in the minds of the Tamils by the 1970s that they should revert to being a separate nation distinguished by their culture, status quo ante 1833.

What is now happening in the north and the east in reality are a far cry from any reconciliation! The atrocities, the political, economic and cultural oppression of the Tamil people by the military — not permitting the Tamils to resettle in their homes on the pretext of the lack of water facilities and electricity and the need to de-mine their own homes are not without the blessings of the Rajapakse establishment.

The deliberate naming of streets and villages only in the Sinhalese language is not without Rajapakse’s knowledge. The increasing militarization of the north and the east ruled over as a police State by the military amounts only to adding insult to an already devastated and traumatized people claimed to have been “liberated”, trying to retrace their bearings and heal their own wounds. This does not in any way help in the reconciliation process.

Instances of rape by the military, abductions and disappearances keep mounting. Almost 10,000 suspected militants taken away from the IDP camps are said to have been summarily executed with no trace remaining. We are often told of youth being rehabilitated while they are, in fact, persons who have had nothing to do with the LTTE militancy arrested willy-nilly and released.

These are a recipe for the crystallisation of greater hatred for the Government and the Sinhala polity making the conviction for a separate Tamil State and self determination more resolute. The Tamil nation is a secular society as opposed to an ethno-religious entity, embracing all religions but for some strange reason no Tamil is a Buddhist unless one had had aspirations of being the prime minister. To create newly illuminated and glaring Buddhist temples and statues of Lord Buddha like those of Venus de Milo the Aphrodite of the Greek Milos to make a point of triumphalism in the midst of destruction and desolation of the homeless Tamil people and their meager habitation amounts not only to humiliating them but also prostituting the greatest philosopher, the noble Lord Buddha, and his teachings to make a point of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism. Lord Buddha was neither a Sinhalese nor a Sri Lankan.

It is by an accident of history that Sri Lanka became predominantly Buddhist because the Mauryan king Asoka of India became a Buddhist with the view to expiating his sins of the killing of soldiers on both sides in a war and sending his emissaries to the Sri Lankan king, who was a Tamil, to spread the message of the Buddha. It is not anything like Sri Lanka becoming predominantly Sikh in the present context!

It is said that the Reconciliation commission is to inquire into the causes that led to terrorism, the lessons to be learnt from this, and the path to reconciliation. Even an eighth grade civics student will tell you that that the main cause that led to “Tamil terrorism” was reaction to the terrorism, periodically and systematically unleashed on the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan State, the inequalities, the disregard for their traditional homelands and discrimination. If one refuses to learn from this, then you are not anywhere near the path of reconciliation but only earning their mistrust if that is of any concern.

No mention anywhere is made of the role of the Sri Lankan State and the Sinhala body politic in progressively alienating the Tamil people, giving the impression that it it was all their doing.

The credentials of the commission are, itself, suspect. The Commission is to be headed by the former attorney general whose record in the area of administration of justice when it comes to Tamil issues is far too dubious for any credence to be attached to the commission. He was largely responsible for impeding the course of justice in the special Presidential commission, another sham, appointed to inquire into the wanton killing of 18 Tamils working for the French INGO by the Special Task Force of the military and the killing of the 5 Tamil university students by the security forces in the east of Sri Lanka, making a mockery also of the committee of internationally eminent persons appointed to oversee the working of this commission. They, it would be recalled, disbanded themselves in frustration.

Also, we are informed that as a state counsel he played a major role in preventing further action into the massacre of more than 50 Tamil remand prisoners suspected of being LTTE persons awaiting a judicial inquiry, tortured and bludgeoned to death by some “patriotic” Sinhalese prisoners, released for this purpose, who were also inmates of the Welikade prison the principal State prison in Sri Lanka, during the 1983 State sponsored Pogrom against the Tamils. Rajapakse could not have got a better chairperson.

The best that Mahinda Rajapakse can do to help in the reconciliation process is to abstain from shedding crocodile tears in public, internationally and locally, on the present plight and the misery of the Tamil people which only angers them, rendering any spirit of reconciliation increasingly impossible. It would be unwise to underestimate the intelligence of the Tamil people even in their present state of mind.

While many responses to Hirschberg’s slander have focused on the dimension of personal integrity, what is more important than truffle fries is Hirschberg’s attempt to discredit M.I.A.’s radical politics. M.I.A.’s upbringing as a Sri Lankan Tamil with personal connections to the Tamil national liberation struggle (her father was a leader of Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students) has made speaking out against the Sri Lankan government’s persecution of the Tamil people central to her music and art. In the midst of the Sri Lankan government’s recent military campaign to crush the Tamil Tigers (after a civil war that has lasted 26 years), M.I.A. rightly used her public platform to speak out against the Sri Lankan government’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocents and forced 260,000 Tamils into government detention centers.

Hirschberg’s attempts to discredit M.I.A. relies on quotes from the biased Ahilan Kadirgamar (a liberal apologist for the Sri Lankan government) while ignoring reports from numerous prominent human rights organizations and journalists. Kadirgamar is quoted as saying “What happened in Sri Lanka was not a genocide. To not be honest about that or the Tigers does more damage than good. It doesn’t help the cause of justice.” Hirschberg places emphasis on atrocities committed by the Tamil Tigers and fails to roundly condemn the Sri Lankan government, let alone look into what caused the conflict in the first place.

The Tamil people have long been subjected to oppression by the Sri Lankan government and dominant Sinhalese nationality. The Tamil Tigers, despite their tactics, were one of the last secular groups fighting for national liberation. When Hirschberg writes that “Unity holds no allure for Maya – she thrives on conflict, real or imagined,” she is mocking what makes M.I.A.’s message radically different than most political music today. M.I.A.’s music embraces the antagonism between the world’s slum population and the dominant power structure. In the case of the Tamil people, the only answer to this is to struggle against the Sri Lankan government for national liberation. Moreover, to call this conflict “real or imagined” is a disgusting insult to the thousands who have lost their lives in it. In Hirschberg’s article, M.I.A. rightly criticizes Bono, saying “I’m tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.’ I’d rather say, ‘Give war a chance.’” For Hirschberg and the New York Times, the meaningless and ineffectual charity of Bono is acceptable, while the resistance embraced by M.I.A. is out of the acceptable bounds of public discourse.

Hirschberg also takes aim at M.I.A.’s recent video of her new song “Born Free”, directed by Romain Gavras. The video shows masked military men whose only insignia is an American flag on their uniforms barging into housing project apartments, beating residents, rounding up red-haired white youth, taking them into a desert, and shooting them. Hirschberg calls it “exploitative and hollow”, “designed to be banned on YouTube”, and “at best, politically naïve.” Given the recent passage of a law in Arizona legalizing racial profiling of Mexicans, Obama’s ordering of the National Guard to the US-Mexico border, and the recent US Border Patrol killing of a 15-year-old Mexican boy, one has to ask Hirschberg how the “Born Free” video is anything but a dramatic depiction of the present reality for immigrants in Western democracies?

Besides mocking M.I.A.’s politics as naïve and unintelligent, Hirschberg also calls them knowingly manipulative (this internal contradiction to her argument is, in itself, further evidence of Hirschberg’s brand of manipulative journalism). Hirschberg uses phrases such as “while you’re under the sway of the beat, she’s rapping ‘You wanna win a war / Like P.L.O. I don’t surrender.’” and “Like a trained politician, she stays on message.” to paint this picture of manipulation, as though M.I.A. were enticing listeners with her music and sneaking in her radical politics. Yet M.I.A. has always been upfront about her radical politics, from her album art depicting tigers (a symbol of the Tamil struggle) and third world guerrillas, to her transparent lyrics, to her statements in the media (when they are reported accurately). Far from a hidden agenda, M.I.A. has struggled to get people to listen, explaining in Hirschberg’s article, “The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here’s your opportunity to help.’ And no one did.”

Hirschberg takes these claims of manipulation further in painting M.I.A. as using radical statements and provocative actions for personal gain. Hirschberg treats all of M.I.A.’s bold acts, from performing at the Grammy’s while nine months pregnant, to a photo shoot in a housing project wearing Givenchy gold jewelry to point out the obscene differences in wealth, to her fashion style of using radical political imagery as mere publicity stunts to garner attention rather than substantive artistry. Hirschberg concludes that “It’s hard to know if she believes everything she says or if she knows that a loud noise will always attract a crowd.” This belittling of M.I.A.’s words and actions allows Hirschberg to make sweeping refutations of M.I.A.’s politics without any substantive argument.

While failing to substantively deal with M.I.A.’s radical politics, Hirschberg portrays her as hypocritical for having a “luxe lifestyle” while standing with the world’s oppressed. Hirschberg consistently juxtaposes M.I.A.’s serious statements with her own commentary about the expensive truffle fries, olive bread, and wine M.I.A. was having during the interview in Beverly Hills. M.I.A. has since released her own recording of the interview, in which Hirschberg can be clearly heard telling M.I.A. to get whatever she wants since the NY Times is paying, and even suggesting the fancy fries she criticizes M.I.A. for eating.

Besides this outright journalistic entrapment, Hirschberg also mocks M.I.A.’s claims of political repression (which include death threats against her baby because of her support for the Tamil struggle, government tapping of her phones, and her US visa being denied), and ridicules her move to a nice house in Brentwood, California. First, it must be pointed out that there is a lengthy history of government repression of artists in the United States for their political views, and Hirschberg completely ignores this history as well as the implications of speaking out on behalf of the Tamil people (many who have done so in Sri Lanka have disappeared). Second, what defines whether a radical artist has sold out is not their choice of where to live or their (necessary) functioning within the wealthy world of the entertainment industry, but whether they continue to speak out against injustice, including at personal risk.

M.I.A. has continued to espouse her radical politics after her success, with the consequences of public attacks, censorship, and government repression. Perhaps what is most hypocritical about Hirschberg’s personal attacks on M.I.A. is the fact that without her success and fame there would be no one speaking out about the Sri Lankan government’s massacre of Tamils in a way that reaches a mainstream audience. This is in large part due to the fact that media such as the New York Times have refused to run any substantive coverage of the Sri Lankan government’s actions or fulfilled their journalistic obligation to send reporters into the conflict zone. Without M.I.A., there are little avenues for the voices and stories of the Tamil people to reach outside of Sri Lankan government detention centers.

Hirschberg has written a manipulative slander against M.I.A. and has failed to address what has made M.I.A.’s music innovative and her politics truly radical in a postmodern culture that deflates antagonism and absorbs original creative efforts. M.I.A.’s music stands out as a successful fusion of various rhythms from different parts of the world into a coherent and distinct form of dance music with a raw energy derived from its do-it-yourself production process and the influence of rebellious American hip-hop. M.I.A.’s politics stand out as embracing the oppressed people residing in the shantytowns of the third world and ghettos of Western nations, their antagonism with the dominant power relations in the world, and the violent resistance this gives rise to, in contrast to the relativism, identity politics, and liberal multi-culturalism that dominate progressive politics today. It is this radical stand that Hirschberg and the New York Times find unacceptable.