BETA

The anti-Tamil war in Sri Lanka is getting bloodier by the day. The Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) carries on with its human rights abuses and war crimes.

The international community has rejected GOSL a place in the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council. Rightly so!

War with Tamils? Peace with Tamils? A big military operation against the Tamil North? Elections for the Tamil East? Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) discusses these questions without irony, as if they were equivalent options. Like a person in a showroom making a choice between two cars.

And nobody powerful or influential within GOSL cries out: War is the height of stupidity!

Carl von Clausewitz, the renowned military theorist, famously said that war is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means. Meaning: war is there to serve policy and is useless when it does not.

What policies did the anti-Tamil wars in the last thirty years serve the GOSL?

Ninety-four years ago, World War I broke out. The immediate cause was the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent by a Serbian student. The first attempt on the main street had failed, the assassins had already given up hope when one of them came across the victim again, by sheer accident, and killed him. After this almost accidental killing many millions of human beings lost their lives in the following four years.

The assassination served, of course, only as a pretext. Every one of the belligerent nations had political and economic interests that pushed it into the war. But did the war really serve those interests? The results suggest the opposite: three mighty empires – the Russian, German, and Austrian – collapsed; France lost its standing as a world power beyond all hope of recovery; the British Empire was mortally wounded.

On May 10th the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) will conduct an election for the Eastern Provincial Council. It is investing its last political rupees in this gamble hence working hard to win it by any means.

The opposition especially the United National Party complains bitterly about intimidation and violence against them. UNP parliamentarian Laxman Kiriyelle has accused the paramilitaries for involvement in distributing blank polling cards and warned that the GOSL is preparing for a large scale election rigging.

In an interview with a state-run television station, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s younger brother and the Defence Secretary has called on the government to ban independent media that publish “harmful” stories. He has described journalists who criticise the war effort as traitors.

The Army Commander has also called people who criticise the military as traitors.

Tamil people in the East are living in fear of intimidation and threat says Campaign for Free and Fair Election (CAFFE), a civil society organisation.

In the meantime President Rajapakse has suspended Parliament sessions for a month.

This is how the current affairs in Sri Lanka is unfolding.

While the world is anxiously looking for solutions for the “silent tsunami” of food crisis, the ruling elite in Sri Lanka threatens and intimidates journalists, civilians and opposition parties.

Pathetic isn’t it?

Tamil East used to be the rice bowl of Sri Lanka. Tamils used to be the majority now they are in the minority.

Last week the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka celebrated its sixtieth independence day. The ruling elite lead by the four Rajapakse brothers kicked off this celebration by displaying military hardware along Colombo's sea front promenade and explaining its war effort to the Sinhalese people through exhibitions of military hardware in the South.

During this show of military might the city of Colombo was closed off to civilian traffic and the majority of Colombo residents stayed indoors. Even mobile telephone text message service (SMS) was suspended by the regime due to “security reasons”.  

The President of Sri Lanka Mr Rajapakse made a militaristic speech. He described “those who kill the Sinhala people by the thousands” as terrorists and said that the “challenge bestowed upon us by history is the defeat of terrorism”.

He warned against the behaviour of  “lamenting and sighing, heaping blame on politicians, while looking at and envying the progress made by other countries” as treacherous and a betrayal of the Sri Lankan motherland.

He claimed that the international community approved Sri Lanka’s human rights record and good governance thus he has “been able to obtain and use aid that is beneficial to the development of the country” while inspecting an impressive military parade, which featured Chinese made multi-barrel rocket launchers, armoured personnel carriers and artillery pieces, Israeli-built gun boats and Russian MiG-27 fighter planes.

During this celebration Sri Lankan President claimed Sri Lanka as an “example to the world” and a liberal democracy. He magnanimously proposed a political solution to Sri Lanka’s “terrorist problem” i.e. provincial level devolved “administration closer to the people within the framework of our Constitution”.

Is Sri Lanka really a liberal democracy?

On the 2nd of January 2006 five young Tamils were killed and two were wounded in the Tamil East. They were all students and on holiday. At the time of the killing they were in a Sri Lankan Army (SLA) run high security zone. Thus the local community blamed the Sri Lankan security forces for this war crime. The Sri Lankan institutions denied this and a cover up was organised.

On the 5th of August the same year fifteen young Tamils who were working for the French humanitarian organisation, Action Contre la Faim (ACF) were shot and killed in a SLA controlled area. Local Tamil community and the International ceasefire monitors, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) blamed the SLA for the massacre. The then SLMM head Ulf Henricsson, called these killings a "committed act of assassination" and "one of the most serious recent crimes against humanitarian aid workers worldwide."

Again Sri Lankan institutions denied this and a cover up was organised.

Since ACF, an international Non Governmental Organisation and the SLMM got involved in the second massacre it became a headache for the Sri Lankan President.

Thus he ordered a Commission of Inquiry (COI) promising transparency and justice. By doing so he tried to make his anti Tamil war related human rights violations into a law and order problem.
 
For months no one heard of anything from the COI.

Again the ACF and others complained.

Later a body called the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) was asked by the international community to observe and comment on the COI actions.

Two weeks ago the Sri Lankan Air Force carried out the assassination of Mr Thamilselvan. He was the chief peace negotiator who represented the Tamils. Most Tamils agree that his killing was a targeted decapitation act by the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL).

Last week the Sri Lankan President presented his budget. He allocated more than twenty percent of his budget to war. During the presentation he vowed to ‘completely eradicate terrorism’ and dubbed his war as purely ‘humanitarian’.

While he was uttering these words a huge military onslaught was underway in the Tamil North. This was beaten back by the concerted effort of the Tamil fighters.

Thus political observers, both inside Sri Lanka and outside, predict doom and gloom in the coming years.
 
We, in the Tamil Diaspora are not so excited about these predictions. Simply because the doom and gloom scenario has been there in the Tamil Homeland since Mr Rajapakse and his brothers took control of the levers of power in Colombo. Our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters have been living in this nightmare for more than two years now.

But still they successfully resist all the efforts of the Sri Lankan government’s pacification programmes. This resistance was evident in the way our people celebrated one of our famous son’s life.

‘Humanitarian’ War & War for Peace

Pro GOSL pundits and the Sinhalese press are wishing an overwhelming success for Mr Rajapakse’s ‘humanitarian’ war strategy. They dream about crumbling Tamil resistance and a dictated peace. They predict a war in the Northern front with no strings attached and a historical victory for the Sinhalese.

After a glorious fact finding mission to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Louise Arbour, described the killings, disappearances, forceful evictions and land grabbings of the Tamils by the Sri Lankan Government, as ‘alarming’ and called for UN-Government cooperation to address the problem.

Her simplistic statement has disappointed us, the Tamils. We wonder why the UN is so insensitive to the suffering of our people.

Maybe we would better understand if we examined the history of the international community’s behaviour towards those weak and oppressed.
 
A few years ago, there was a man who was both intelligent and ambitious who lived in a beautiful country, a blessed one. His people were cultured but they mistrusted and oppressed the minorities.
 
He was from a privileged back ground. He studied hard and became a lawyer and in his youth he joined a political party. His direct style and advocacy of nationalism appealed to his people. He travelled to many towns and villages to hear the grievances of his people living there. Nationalist rhetoric, and his profile, was further heightened by media coverage and rallies organised by his supporters.

The international media described him as a strong man.

He organised mass rallies and used the media to promote his nationalist agenda. His popularity climbed. Within a few months he won a presidential election as the most popular candidate and became the president of his country.

He immediately acted to oppose the movement for autonomy of the minorities living in the country and to subvert the multiparty system. He broke down the opposition parties and used legal loopholes to curtail existing local power modalities.

The international community continued to ignore his actions and considered it an internal matter.

The Sri Lankan nation state is only for the Sinhalese, more specifically Sinhalese Buddhists. The foundation for this ideal was seeded in the minds of the Sinhalese well before the dawn of independence by their democratically elected politicians. If you are a non-Sinhalese-Buddhist you may live in Sri Lanka but without equal rights! That was the subtle message then.

The first democratically elected government of independent Sri Lanka was led by D.S Senanayake, an England trained lawyer. This government initiated Sinhala domination straight away by various mechanisms, both legal and illegal.

It withdrew citizenship rights of hundreds of thousands of Tamils because their great grandfathers were not born in Sri Lanka. Most of these so called Tamils of Indian origin lived in the central part of Sri Lanka. By doing so in one stroke it reduced parliamentary representation of Tamils in the newly independent Sri Lanka.

The Northeast of Sri Lanka is the historical homeland and Tamils were the majority community there when Sri Lanka was granted freedom by the UK. They understood what would be in store for them in an independent Sri Lanka dominated by the majority Sinhalese. Thus they organised themselves accordingly and resisted the government peacefully. Their peaceful protests were ignored.

The Sinhalese politicians wanted to make the Tamils politically, economically and culturally impotent thus decided to make the Tamils a minority in their own land. In order to do so they started Sinhalese only state-sponsored colonisations of Gal Oya and Amparai in the Tamil East and Padaviya in the Tamil North. The bulk of these Sinhala colonists were convicted criminals and they were backed by the army and the police. Within a short period they violently drove out the local Tamils who had lived in these areas for generations. This was the beginning of the making Tamils a minority in their own land policy.

Last week the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) decided to ‘liberate’ some more Tamils through yet another ‘humanitarian mission’ using bombs and shells. This time this privilege was given to the Tamils living in the Musali region of Mannar.

This costal region, consisting of twenty or so small fishing hamlets, is a war destroyed community trying to stay afloat, by shallow water fishing off their coastal areas. During the last two years they have been economically deprived by fishing restrictions, but were left alone without the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) camps and check points.  

The GOSL systematically destroyed these people in the eighties and nineties like it did all over the Tamil Northeast. SLA camps and check points dotted this region too. They strangled the people in every possible way. By doing so the GOSL tried its best to pacify them, but failed miserably.

After the Ceasefire Agreement of 2001 the people of this region, both Tamils and Moslems, were trying their best to make a peaceful existence without harming anyone.

Most of the international aid workers know these people well, as they have worked with them since the Ceasefire.

This is the community GOSL ‘liberated’ last week. As usual, they were bombarded and shot at during this ‘liberation’. When people tried to run away to sanctuaries such as churches they were ambushed by SLA’s Deep Penetration Unit (DPU). After one of these ambushes, the highly decomposed bodies of two children were identified by the local people. These two children were among the twelve civilian victims killed in one DPU attack. They were a four year old girl Puvisuvetha and a four year old boy Rehushan Selvakumar.

Almost two years after His Highness M.Rajapakse – President of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL), Czar of Vakarai, Emperor of Thoppigala, democratiser of the Tamils, etc., etc. – launched his "War for Peace".  The International Community (IC) has a new pastime. A ’positive and frank’ discussion with the GOSL they say. And this discussion is all about ‘access to humanitarian work’.

In the mean time the GOSL is carrying on with its murderous war augmented by policies of divide and rule. It has been using international aid money to train and arm its murderous armed forces, the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission blamed for the murders of aid workers. While the opposition parties in Colombo claim that the war has not been executed at full throttle, they could engineer Tamil divisions much better than the GOSL etc.

Unbelievable you may say.

Tamils have been informing the IC about their demand for equal rights and the violent replies they have been getting from the GOSL ever since. After all these efforts, in 2007, their right to self determination has been reduced to their right to aid and charity by the IC.

What is appalling about these ‘positive and frank’ discussions is that just as the Tamils are as far as ever from having a peaceful resolution to their demand of self determination the IC and the GOSL are indulging in a fantasy. In this necrophilic fantasy, Tamils have a safe and secure peace and the next step is the development of their economic and civic well being by giving them aid.

Is the IC totally blind you may ask.

Indeed, when the GOSL wants to destroy the Tamil nation, it tries its best to make the IC blind first.

Obviously, there is no peace in Tamil Northeast, and there may never be one within the next few years.

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.

Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo. The German Wehrmacht won World War II. The United States won in Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Zealots won against the Romans, and Sri Lankan President Rajapakse has won the War against Tamils.

You didn't know that?

Well, on the 19th of  July 2007 a ‘prestigious’ national event ‘Negenahira Navodaya’ (eastern resurgence in Sinhalese Language) was held at the Independence Square, Colombo with President Rajapaksa presiding as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. This ceremony has marked the comprehensive victory and the liberation of the Tamil East from the Tamil Tigers and felicitated the victorious Sri Lanka Armed Forces who had contributed to this ‘humanitarian’ effort, according to the Sri Lankan regime. Symbolising the triumphant completion of the operations, the Armed Forces Chiefs have presented a  ‘sannasa’ (parchment in Sinhala Language) at this victory ceremony to President Rajapaksa, who thereafter proclaimed the defeat of Tamil Nation.

A Tamil journalist described the event as ‘the regime is planning a “victory” celebration in a conquisitadorial spirit. Just as Chandrika Kumaratunga had Anuruddha Ratwatte ceremonially deliver “Yapa Patuna” to her, Mahinda Rajapakse wants “Naginahira” to be handed over symbolically amid pomp and pageantry. Such types of ceremonies were reserved for extraneous conquests during medieval times.’

For us, the Tamil Expatriates, this celebration of war and these medieval victory ceremonies remind us of the Sinhalese racism and why our people are still fighting.

A few days ago a bomb exploded in downtown Colombo. It targeted the Sri Lankan Army’s Special Forces. This explosion occurred on a busy main road during the evening rush hour, killing eight civilian bystanders and wounding more than twenty others, including six Army troopers. The majority of the victims were Sinhalese.

Within minutes of this sad and deplorable incident, the Sri Lankan Government and Sinhalese media blamed the Tamils for this crime.

Hence following this attack the Tamil populated neighbourhoods in Colombo were cordoned and swept by security forces. A large number of Tamil civilians were arrested for interrogation. Their crime? Well, they were all Tamils.

In the mean time the Secretary General of the Secretariat for Co-ordinating Peace Process in Sri Lanka (SCOPP) described the blast as a deliberate attack to cause civilian unrest in the Sinhalese South. What he really meant was that the angry Sinhalese may run amok and start a Rwanda like killing spree of Tamils. After all they did kill more than two thousand Tamil civilians in the infamous July 1983, didn’t they?

The official news portal of the Sri Lankan Government pleaded with the Sinhalese to keep calm, without giving vent to their anger and to look after the minorities.

Sinhalese Press urged readers to restrain from any violence towards those Tamils living among them.

For the Government in Colombo the violence that occurred was a god sent. Suddenly it could divert all international attention from the Tamil Northeast. It could augment its argument regarding its ‘war on terror’ and carry on with its inhumane war on Tamils.

Nowadays the Sri Lankan President, Mr Rajapakse is a proud man. Within a couple of years he has captured power for the Sinhalese, engineered the 4th Eelam War, bankrupted the main opposition, the United National Party, and most importantly convinced the international community of the importance of frog marching the Tamils to a half-baked solution at the point of a gun. On top of these he is almost succeeding in hiding his regime’s human rights abuses from the world in the name of war on terror while presenting him as a peace loving Buddhist.

In a perfectly calculated spin Mr Rajapakse told Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) should lay down arms and come for peace talks. Otherwise, he was willing to hold peace talks while fighting terrorism; he was to have further said.

In the meantime Mr Rajapakse is openly subjugating the Tamil East in military, economic and political spheres. More than half of the entire Eastern Tamils live as refugees. They are not active economically. Their children do not get a decent education. No independent Tamil newspaper is allowed there. Paramilitary allies of the Sri Lankan armed forces have threatened the democratically elected Tamil parliamentarians by death thus stopping them from visiting their constituencies. And so the Eastern Tamil population is systematically being isolated, both physically and politically by Mr Rajapakse. By doing so he is trying to break the Tamil’s political will to resist him.

At the same time very silently state sponsored Sinhalese settlement programmes are at full swing in the newly captured Tamil lands of the East in the name of high security zones.

Life in Tamil Northeast has become unbearable for most of its inhabitants. Daily bombings, killings, arbitrary arrests and disappearances carry on as they have been since Mr Rajapakse and his brothers took over power in Colombo.

Night time strafing, shelling and bombing are nothing new for the Tamils of Northeast. The majority of them do not have the luxury of electricity and running water etc which most southern Sri Lankans take for granted. Thus all night uninterrupted cricket watching on big screens in stereo sound, in your nearest refugee camp in order to cheer cricket teams is an absurd claim.

Electricity getting cut off in the middle of the night is an unpleasant experience for most of us. Having to wake up from your well earned sleep in the middle of the night to the sound of gun fire must be terrifying. Watching young soldier boys firing wildly  is a scary sight. Unable to answer your tearful children’s anxious questions thus unable to reassure them, in your own home, is something most of us would never like to experience. Hiding under furniture while your life is in mortal danger from aerial bombardment must be petrifying. Thus for the cosmopolitan and affluent Colomboites last Saturday night must have been a nasty and unfortunate one, one has to agree.

It seems that Mr Rajapakse is so generous, he is so egalitarian, that he is making even his beloved Colomboites experience what ever he has asked the hapless Tamils of Northeast to experience day in day out.
Hiding under furniture while your life in mortal danger from aerial bombardment is a petrifying experience
As all these are happening in the name of freedom, democracy, good governance etc one has to be sure about the agreement of the international community with Mr Rajapakse’s regime.