BETA

When looking at the current situation in the Tamil Northeast, an observer will find Armed Forces of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) occupying Tamil land and oppressing the local population. This occupation and oppression has been festering for almost thirty years now. Combined with ethnically-exclusive colonies built on stolen Tamil land, and ethnically-segregated road networks, where many routes can only be accessed by the Sinhalese settlers.

Barbed wired and land mined security zones surround Tamil towns and villages, not only cutting them off from one another, but also cutting off farmers from their lands, children from their schools, patients from their hospitals and workers from their jobs.

Sinhalese Forces control all of the Tamils’ openings to the outside world, stifling not only Tamils’ freedom of movement, but also their culture, education, economy and trade.

Sinhalese Armed Forces are regularly unleashed on civilian populations in Tamil Northeast, murdering thousands and killing innocent children with complete impunity.

The Sri Lankan government has allies who are unabashed fascists who openly and regularly call for ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Tamils as a solution to the conflict.

The GOSL continues to deny thousands of Tamils their legal right to return to their own homes from which they were ethnically cleansed in the last thirty years or so in the name of high security zones.

All of the aforementioned crimes by GOSL constitute clear violations of the EU Neighbourhood Policy terms under which EU neighbours get preferential access to EU markets and a slew of other benefits and perks.

The EU regularly uses its economic and diplomatic influence to try and get countries to desist from carrying out racist policies. It makes trade deals dependent on improvements in human, labour and minority rights. It has made Turkey’s accession to the EU dependent on Turkey’s human rights record, and has stopped Austria from bringing Jorg Haider into the government.

Thus we, the Tamil Expatriate Community expect the same treatment when it comes to the GOSL. Far from taking any action to try to pressure GOSL to stop its crimes against Tamils, the EU has cowardly chosen a policy of rewarding GOSL’s transgressions with more carrots, and GOSL continues to enjoy extremely generous benefits from its relationship with European countries, even being sold arms by many of them.

The tragic aspect of Europe’s policy with regard to Tamils today is not just that is practically indistinguishable from the policy of the diehard GOSL’s friends such as the US or Japan, but that it comes bundled with great self-righteousness and an unshakable belief that it is not only the correct policy, but is also vastly morally superior to anything anyone else is doing.

The financial aid to the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in the Tamil Northeast provided by Europe is the major rationale supporting this smugness.

As the Europeans continue to do nothing to stop GOSL from destroying the livelihood of the Tamil people, they take out their cheque books and assuage their conscience by providing money to these NGOs.

Here is a small microcosm of how this madness works: A Tamil town has a GOSL Army high security zone built surrounding it from all sides, making it impossible for previously prosperous farmers to access their land, patients to reach their doctors and children to reach their schools. Naturally, the town is devastated. That’s when Europeans send in their conscience-assuaging, smugness-propping aid “experts” to “save” the Tamil town.

In this process the EU relieves GOSL from having to deal with the consequences of its crimes. They provide the farmers with food instead of the food they could have produced themselves, and proceed with projects to teach Tamils “alternative industries”, “new business models”, “good local governance”, “participatory development”, “creative educational techniques” and countless other meaningless prattle that the Tamils would gladly give up for having the GOSL’s military occupation removed, a free homeland and some sense of normalcy bestowed on their lives.

Naturally, these projects have a short shelf-life; the funding soon dries up, the “experts” leave, but the GOSL Army high security zones remain, the livelihood of a whole town is devastated, and peace is even more distant.

This combination of criminal politics combined with generous futile charity is what drives Tamils insane.

Some European citizens have a good understanding of the Sri Lankan conflict and would like to see a better policy and a just solution. Countless Europeans spend a lot of time and money in helping Tamils.

There are many sincere and honest European politicians who have opposed these criminal politics combined with generous futile charity policies. No one doubts the sincerity of many of those who genuinely want to improve the lives of Tamils, and the expatriate Tamil Community is very grateful to them. But a combination of indifference on the part of many and malice on the part of the leaders kow-towing to the GOSL produces this criminal policy.

Europeans have to recognize that the only way things will improve is not through charity, but proper, principled and sustained political action.

True, Europe has shown some principled and humanist action in their foreign policy in many countries. They may give more aid, send more peacekeepers and broker more peace deals than the others, and they have certainly improved a lot in the way they deal with the world over the last few decades.

But whatever Europe does, its complicity in the abhorrent oppression of Tamils will remain to blight any claims it has to moral authority. After all, you are only as moral as your least moral action.