Indo-US competition reflecting on Tamil affairs is as old as the independence of Ceylon in 1948.

India sacrificed Tamil interests by accepting the citizenship act of 1949 and by signing Nehru-Kotalawela Pact, in order to woo the pro-US Sinhala leaders of the UNP towards India’s Non-Alignment agenda. The first pawns of the power competition were the Tamils of Indian origin.

After 1956, SWRD Bandaranayake’s ‘Sinhala Only’, the subsequent pogrom against Tamils in 1958, Srimao’s political oppressions of early 1960s and the Republican constitution of 1972 declaring Sri Lanka a Sinhala-Buddhist country, were all tolerated by India’s ‘anti-imperialist’ or ‘non-alignment’ paradigm that was essentially directed against the USA.

The pre-emptions attempted through Banda-Chelva pact and later by US backed Dudley government’s district councils were alternately thwarted by the opposition friendly to one or the other power.

Pro-US, JR government coming to power in 1977 and its ‘out of the region’ economic policies made Indira Gandhi’s India to support the Tamil cause for the first time. The US-backed pre-emption of the district councils in 1981 failed due to its pathetic inadequacy and rising Tamil militancy.

The two pogroms of the US-backed UNP government in 1977 and 1983, and its policy of addressing the national question with a ‘terrorism’ paradigm, were used by India to design a controlled militant strategy in the name of Eezham Tamils.

Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and the changed global balance of power in 1985, abruptly ended the original Indian design.

* * *

The US-USSR Cold War ended, but the Indo-US competition exploiting the national question in the island of Sri Lanka continued in subtle ways.

Despite a favourable military situation to India, the USA encouraging JR to play the card of giving Trincomalee to it, made Rajiv’s India to stop at the half-baked 13th Amendment in 1987. The anger of Tamils turned against India with the subsequent development of India militarily imposing the hoodwink solution.

The US-backed Norwegian peace process failed by its inherent non-genuineness, but according to what was implied in Norway’s evaluation of the peace process last month, India was decisively responsible for the ‘Asian Model’ that ended the war in genocide.

According to WikiLeaks documents, the USA initiated the gang-up of countries, including India, against the LTTE, but India vetoed a joint demarche with the US on any model of post-war settlement.

Speaking in Chennai during the war, the then US Ambassador in Colombo, Robert Blake wanted a ‘strategic partnership’ with India. But a few days before the genocidal end of the war, the US Pacific Commander returning from a visit to New Delhi, said that there wouldn’t be any more impediments for India and China to conduct joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. The sarcasm in the statement was evident later.

After the war, when the US-led countries initiated the war crimes paradigm to patch up their failure and crimes, India repeatedly aligned with China, Russia and Pakistan to defeat the move in all international forums. Despite a resolution in the Tamil Nadu State assembly, India openly shielded Colombo’s war crimes in the Commonwealth.

In July this year, the retiring Indian foreign secretary and ambassador-designate to the USA, Nirupama Menon Rao, categorically said that India had to be directly involved in resolving the situation in the island, and it should be within the region, avoiding any third party’s involvement.

* * *

Writing in The Hindu, October this year, former US ambassadors Teresita and Howard Schaffer, said, “The U.S. and India have always had a harder time working together in the multilateral arena than they do bilaterally and the United Nations has been especially tough.”

India and the US have worked most closely together on thematic issues, but “when it comes to country-specific issues, however, US-India interaction at the UN is more difficult.” The former US ambassadors said in the article “India & U.S. at U.N.: a complicated dance.”

“How do things look nine months after India joined the Security Council for a two-year term? Finding ways to work together has been a challenge for both countries,” they commented on the current Indo-US relationship.

The ambassadors didn’t touch the point on Eezham Tamils and Sri Lanka, but were referring to Syria, Libya and Palestine.

“India has decades of practice in building support in the Non-Aligned Movement […] Working in coalition with the U.S. is a more unfamiliar pursuit,” they further observed.

Meanwhile, reading a paper in April 2006, at a seminar at Zurich, organized by Western donor-oriented Tamil outfit Centre for Just Peace and Democracy and Europe-based Burghof Foundation, Dr Karen Parker said that in her view “the U.S. interests in Sri Lanka pose the most serious barrier to the establishing of a just peace in Sri Lanka.”

“The U.S. substantial interests in Sri Lanka result from its plans greatly to expand its role and power in Asia. First of all Sri Lanka has airfields, such as in Palaly, that could provide highly useful bases for the U.S. airpower. In addition, Sri Lanka has several deep-water ports that would be very useful for basing U.S. naval forces,” she said.

“U.S. interest in Trincomalee harbor, for example, was a major factor in the direct involvement of India in Sri Lanka beginning in 1987, as is apparent by the letter of annexure to the Indo-Sri Lanka accord of that year in which the Prime Minister of India stated that no action would take place in Trincomalee that was against the interests of India,” Karen Parker observed.

“Current discussions of widening the Palk Straights to allow large vessels to pass through are disturbing in light of U.S. interests. Other U.S. interests in Sri Lanka are its natural resources, such as titanium, and the potential for the exploitation of natural gas and petroleum. Most of the land and resources coveted by the U.S. lie in the traditional Tamil areas,” she further observed.

* * *

From the sequence of events from 1948 to 2011, any one could see how the Indo-US competition was the real bedrock-impediment for any righteous and lasting solution to the national question in the island.

The competition not only reflected in the two Sinhala political parties that alternately stood in the way of any solutions, but also within the Tamil politics as well. Tamils should not think that examples were confined to Varatharaja Perumal or Amirthalingam in one shade and AJ Wilson, Neelan Thiruchelvam and Lakshman Kadirgamar in the other shade. The Indo-US competition existed within the Tamil militancy from its inception. It also operated within the monolithic LTTE, even though Pirapaharan’s LTTE tried its best to uphold the Tamil national cause above the power interests.

If competing India and the US have any consensus over the island, that exists only in saving the Sri Lankan state, whatever oppressive or genocidal it is, because both want an agent state and want to eat the cake in full. The consensus reflected in both saving the state from the Sinhala insurgency of the JVP too, whether during the SLFP regime or UNP regime.

In the past, after every pogrom against Tamils in the island, from the section of the Sinhala elite that backed the pogrom to the street hawkers in Colombo used to call the Tamils to come back without fear, saying everything is now OK. No wonder it is repeated from the side of the Sinhala elite, but now we have the international street hawkers, New Delhi and Washington, calling Tamils to come forward with ‘reconciliation’ to save the genocidal state.

Apart from this ‘consensus’, Indo-US competition continues unabated both within Sinhala as well as Tamil polity in the post-war scenario.

Even after contributing to the genocide, both the powers, showing all kinds of intimidations or lures, expect the Tamil polity to take their respective sides. They don’t want Tamils to talk about genocide, not that seeing the truth will affect reconciliation between Tamils and Sinhalese but it will affect the reconciliation between them and Tamils.

Any astute Tamil political observer, who could keep the eyes open around him or her, could see how frantically both the competing powers try to perceptibly and imperceptibly gang-up Tamil polity through long-operating intelligence outfits, foundations, funds and ‘silent’ working groups. Who is who and where is one are immaterial here. The individuals involved are not important, but grasping the dangerous phenomenon is more important.

The deviating tactics of the competing powers once again deceive Tamils, their fighting spirit is blunted, they do not know against which impediment they should actually wage their struggle, and they run after the mirages set by the powers.

The past record should tell us that siding with one of the competing powers or opposing one at the instance of the other is not going to bring in lasting solutions. Tamils should realise that the forces in question would have operated in the same way even if Tamils had achieved independence in the war. Whether in success or in failure, intelligent political preparedness of the nation is of utmost importance.

* * *

Grasping the unending competition of India and the USA, the Sinhala polity for long was grooming the China card.

However, the China card shown by India or the USA to Tamils as an excuse in the past was not real. It was a smokescreen to their competition. But China in reality has now come into the region, as a direct consequence of the failure of India and the USA in resolving the national question dodged by their competition.

If not for the war that had put the credibility of India and the USA to shambles, China wouldn’t have had the confidence and space to come into this part of the Indian Ocean.

Both the Sinhala polity and Eezham Tamil polity, in their own ways, have taken their revenge on long-blighting India and the USA.

The Eezham war and the entry of China has its telling effects on many others in the Asia Pacific region too, who either tagged behind the USA or India, blindly supported genocidal Sri Lanka.

An Indian military commander swore a couple of days back that India would build a base in South China Sea in retaliation of China’s base in Seychelles.

The USA this week has taken efforts to strengthen its base in Singapore and Philippines, apart from its military presence in Darwin in Australia and around 70,000 US troupes in Japan.

The Establishments in Australia, Japan and in the South China Sea countries, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore were blindly supporting Colombo’s war that has brought in the Chinese to the scene.

Not only the Establishments in the Asia-Pacific, but some Islamic countries also supported the anti-humanity war of Colombo, thinking that they contribute to anti-US polity. They had their turn of seeing Sri Lankan-model-inspired action.

As China’s entry into the region has become a reality, Tamils should seriously consider the positive aspects of the phenomenon. They should explore avenues – if needed even effective non-cooperation – in persuading India and the USA to deliver the righteous political justice long due to the nation of Eezham Tamils.

There is an inherent lacuna in Tamil polity compared to the Sinhala polity that was using all avenues.

* * *

The Sinhalese elite may brag about the success of their international ‘diplomacy’ that was always preoccupied with the Tamil question ever since independence or even before that. But they paid for it by getting a military regime.

If unchecked, the option that would be preferred by the powers in competition is obvious: The SL military will be competitively nurtured forever by the powers to shield their crimes, to facilitate their entry into the island, and to serve as a security service to their interests.

All the while, the existence of such a military will be justified to the dominant Sinhala nation, by continuing the Tamil question unresolved on one hand, and by tacitly approving the genocidal orientation of the ethnically Sinhalese military on the other hand.

The way out for the Sinhala nation is to concede the independence of the nation of Eezham Tamils and then to work for a genuine reconciliation, getting rid of the military and the preying powers.

Genuine reconciliation comes from peoples of parity. Sinhalese settling in the North and East or building Buddhist stupas there won’t be issues at all, when nations in the island have sovereignty in their countries.

The ‘reconciliation’ that comes from the USA and India and chanted by the militarised state in the island is only ‘reconciliation’ of the oppressed with the oppressors.

If the ruling elements of the Sinhala nation is continued to be incapable of conceiving what is reconciliation, and if the competition of the powers also is continued to be deceitful in delivering justice, then the democratic and mass struggle of the Tamils may have to be widened to include the Tamils of Tamil Nadu too, against the military-colonial state in the island and its competing god fathers outside. Such a struggle should be in partnership with the Sinhalese, aiming for their liberation too from the militarised state.

The capacity development of the grassroot in Tamil Nadu in coming out of the shackles of the elite sitting on it and the Eezham Tamil diaspora coming out of its subservience in political thinking are crucial in this respect.

Genuine voices have started coming from the Eezham Tamils in the island facing untold suffering and suffocation. The diaspora and Tamil Nadu should get the cue.

Mobilising a concerted and genuine people’s struggle against the real impediment ie., convincing the competing powers to acknowledge the self-determination of the genocide affected Eezham Tamils, is more important than chasing a mirage in Geneva in next March.

“I do not see any possible solution to the ethnic conflict immediately, unless extraneous pressure, inland or foreign, compels the powers that be to relent. This applies to both the government as well as the opposition. Majority community parties are not interested in any solution and want to maintain the supremacy of the majority community through their language and religion. Except for a handful of persons like Dr. Wickramabahu Karunaratne, Mr.Weliamuna and a few others the majority of Sinhala masses do not want a solution, “ Justice Wigneswaran said in the interview to Daily Mirror’s Ayesha Zuhair on Thursday.

The following are further elucidations of Justice Wigneswaran on his point:

Let me explain why I make such a sweeping statement.

Around 1919, the Sinhalese leaders found that unless they made their request for territorial representation unanimously the British were not going to grant their request. So they approached Sir P. Arunachalam, gave him written undertaking that a seat would be reserved for the Tamils in Colombo, and requested him to talk to the Jaffna Association, which preferred communal representation to territorial representation.

In the cause of creating a well-knit united Ceylonese polity he was able to get the Jaffna Association to consent to territorial representation. He had implicit trust in the Sinhalese leaders.

The request to the Queen was thereafter unanimous and the 1921 Constitution granted their request for territorial representation. Once the supremacy of the majority community was ensured in the Legislature the Sinhalese leaders Sir James Peiris and E.J.Samarawickreme retracted.

A seat for Tamils in Colombo was refused. The reason they gave was significant. Apart from saying that they were not bound by their written promise since they no longer held the offices they earlier held when promising, they also said “You Tamils are yourselves the majority in your two provinces. Why should you have seats in Colombo?”

This meant they recognised the individuality of the Ceylonese Tamil Community who had occupied the two provinces, North and East, from pre-historic times.

It was such recognition that made S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike passing out from the Oxford University to recommend a federal constitution for Ceylon. The Tamils did not accept this idea favourably since they were scattered throughout the island while being rooted in the North and East and were doing well.

Thereafter the majority community made use of the whip-hand they had got by virtue of the legal instrument of territorial representation, to discriminate against the minorities especially the Tamils. Under the Donoughmore Constitution the numerical strength of the majority community led to the formation of the Pan Sinhala Cabinet.

After the Pan Sinhala Government of the 1930s we see them depriving the franchise of the Up Country Tamils in the 1940s. Then in the 1950s the Sinhala Only Act deprived many Tamils of their government jobs. Early 1970s saw standardisation in education, which deprived many Tamils of their higher education.

Throughout this period the state was colonising areas traditionally Tamil speaking with outsiders without giving first preference to the people of those areas. The demography of the two provinces traditionally Tamil speaking was being calculatedly changed. The 1972 and 1978 Constitutions centralised power in the hands of the majority community. Now there is de facto Army rule in the North and East.

Should there be not civilian over-sight in these areas? Does not democracy mean civilian management of local areas? How long is the military going to stay in the North and East? Forever?

For all this, the Soulbury Constitution of 1947 was secular. It did not indicate a unitary structure. It had an inclusive approach. It recognised the multi-ethnic nature of our society and inserted the all-important provision of Section 29.

Our 1972 Constitution, which had no mandate to change the 1947 Constitution and no participation from the elected representatives of the Tamils of North and East, got rid of Section 29, giving no akin provision instead, made Buddhism State Religion and approved of the Sinhala Only Act earlier passed thus ushering in officially the supremacy of the majority community.

Having got so far do you mean to say any Government of the majority community would consent to settle the issues of the minorities? They would want the minorities to creep around the stem if they wanted any succour and that too, individual favours. Look at our budget. Highest for the military. After the war, is it human security that needs precedence or state security? What has prevented the State from granting the legitimate expectations of the people of the North and East that they be allowed to look after their affairs undisturbed by outside forces? Root causes, which gave rise to violence among the Tamil youth, still remain unattended to.

None of the Political Settlements reached with the leaders of the Tamils have been given effect to. Bandaranaike – Chelvanayagam Pact, Dudley Senanayake-Chelvanayagam Pact, Regional Councils’ Legislation under J.R. Jayewardene have been abrogated.

The present President, if I remember right in January 2010, gave an assurance to the Prime Minister of India that he would work along the lines of the Thirteenth Amendment plus. The Thirteenth Amendment is a dead letter today.

Now tell me Ayesha! Do you think any majority community based Government, with a history such as this, would consent to grant rights to the Tamil-speaking people, unless internationally or locally pressured,” Justice Wigneswaran asked.

* * *

In answering a question “What exactly does the Tamil community want,” Justice Wigneswaran said it is “simple”.

“The Tamil-speaking people want to look after their affairs themselves. In legal terminology that is the right of self-determination.”

“They want to be governed in the North and East in their language. They want to go back to the land of their forefathers from temporary living quarters provided by whomsoever. They want their security, law and order to be in the hands of their siblings and progeny not in the hands of outsiders.”

“They want their lands and properties to be administered by themselves; not by outsiders. They want to elect their own representatives without being dictated to by outside agencies, military power or financial power or administrative power.”

“They need to preserve their language, culture, religions and their way of life without outsiders building statues and vihares in their midst with military might.” They need to be freed from mercenaries amongst their midst who plunder and rob at the instigation of outside agencies.”

“All these are not rights which the Tamil speaking people have concocted for themselves. Any people who have certain identities of their own are entitled to ask for self-determination in terms of the international covenants,” the former Supreme Court Judge said.

“Unlike when we were young, many Sinhalese have forgotten or have been made to forget the fact that Tamils occupied this country even before the birth of the Sinhalese language. Their progeny in the North and East are therefore entitled to their unfettered individuality,” he observed.

As a model of political solution he favoured a federal constitution. “Separation is what Prabhakaran asked. Federalism is what the non-violent Chelvanayagam asked,” he said.

After becoming completely hopeless in a 30 years struggle for federal solution, Chelvanayagam decided to call for independent Tamil Eelam in 1976. Prabhakaran's LTTE with local genius achieved a de facto military and territorial parity to address the issue. But ‘internal pressure’ by indigenous efforts was not acceptable to the outside powers, whose competition to keep the issue regional or international, jointly and deliberately tilted the balance, commented a Tamil political analyst in the island.

Justice Wigneswaran’s interview has to be read in between the lines to realise that unless there is internationally recognized parity between the nations in the island, no solutions are going to come. The 13th Amendment is not a beginning but a failed pre-emption, the political analyst commented further.

Full text of the articles by Mr. Karthick RM follows:

Misplaced Loyalties: ‘Pink Left’ Countries and Sri Lanka

The informal discussion held in Geneva on the 21st of September regarding Canada’s proposal to debate the outcome of Sri Lanka’s ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’ (LLRC) was revealing on the position of various countries that participated.

First and foremost, to even give legitimacy to the LLRC, a sham commission set up by a racist state in order to show that it cares for the people it has butchered and enslaved, is a fundamentally flawed proposition.

This is but part of the agenda of certain western powers to initiate a discussion on Sri Lanka that focuses solely on human rights violations in Sri Lanka without taking into account the political demands of the Eelam Tamil people, have token prosecutions and token devolutions of powers, and maybe, a regime change without disturbing status-quo of the majoritarian political structure of the Sri Lankan state.

The hidden logic is that such a process will whitewash the crimes of elements within their own polity who encouraged Sri Lanka’s campaign of state terror. Countries like India, Pakistan, China and Russia - who have openly supported the genocide of the Eelam Tamils - were hostile to even these token gestures, probably apprehensive of a possible exposure of their direct involvement and/or a questioning of their own treatment of national liberation struggles and people’s movements in their territories. And there were countries like Cuba who whole heartedly backed Sri Lanka under the argument of ‘anti-imperialism’.

Cuba and Venezuela (not to mention countries like Iran and Gaddafi’s Libya), who indeed are anti-American, have also stood by the Colombo regime in their war on the Tamil people.

But the question radicals need to ask is whether they are genuinely anti-imperialist, that is, whether they promote a dialogue among movements of the oppressed peoples of the world, as a progressive left movement is meant to.

If anti-west/anti-Americanism should be the only criteria for gauging standards of a revolutionary movement, then the Taliban should be the most progressive outfit in the world. But if progressiveness should be gauged by, in Che Guevara’s own words, “indignation at injustice anywhere in the world” and a political solidarity with emancipatory liberation struggles, then the ‘pink left’ countries like Cuba and Venezuela fail pathetically.

James Petras points out how, despite claims to ‘anti-imperialism’ Chavez betrayed solidarity with radical movements in order to consolidate his own regime’s economic interests, giving the example of Venezuala’s arrest and deportation of activists affiliated to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in order to placate an ally in a murderous Colombia.

It is the creed of Robert Blake, the US Assistant Secretary of State who gave Colombo full support to execute its genocide of Tamils by means of war against the LTTE, who are also responsible for providing extensive funding to reactionary regimes like that of Colombia to brutally crush movements of indigenous people, popular classes and peasantry like those led by FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) by similar means.

It was no coincidence then that after the military defeat of the LTTE, military think-tanks and pro-state intellectuals in Colombia started considering the Sri Lanka model as an effective way of crushing radical movements in their territory in a similar fashion. Now, by endorsing a genocidal Colombo, these pink left countries are directly endorsing the war on indigenous peoples, nationalities and progressive movements in countries like Colombia, Peru, Turkey, India etc - this is the only logical conclusion that their sad arguments can lead to.

Petras has also pointed out in the article earlier referred how Stalin’s deals with Hitler were a strategic disaster for the people of Soviet Union. But how much ever the then Soviet regime could be criticized for such arrangements of convenience, at no point did the Soviets endorse Nazism as a philosophy or hail Hitler in his military successes against other nations.

No communist justified the atrocities of Nazism by pointing out atrocities of, say, French colonialism. For example, Aime Cesaire, a trenchant critic of colonialism, constantly criticized the hypocrisies of the colonial powers that denounced fascism but committed atrocities in their colonies - but that did not lead him to endorse Nazi brutalities.

The argument of Hitler, which was as cruel as it was ridiculous, that critics of Nazi violence were unjustified because even the colonial powers have been brutal, was treated as a farce by all progressive leftists and rightly so.

A progressive does not have the option of choosing between and justifying farces that dehumanize people. But the Cuban leadership seems to have exercised that option…

A darling intellectual in these countries is Sri Lankan diplomat Dayan Jayatilleka who campaigned amongst these so-called anti-west countries that the war on the Tamil people was an ‘anti-imperialist struggle’ - his counterparts in the west did a campaign that the war on the Tamil people was a ‘war on terror’.

Jayatilleka, a self-proclaimed leftist, is one who believes that the Sinhalese are an ancient civilization like the Mayans, who may be threatened to extinction by a global Tamil conspiracy and thus, they need to be militarily strong and colonize the lands of the Eelam Tamils - failing to do so will lead to “the North converted into another Kashmir“, he argues.

A Tamil intellectual remarked that when one reads Jayatilleka one gets the feeling a Jew would get should she flip through Mein Kampf, only that Jayatilleka (mis)quotes Marxists to justify a racist polity.

Those on the Indian left are all too familiar with how writings of Marx and Lenin were twisted by the revisionist clique of CPM to justify implementation of neo-liberal policies in Bengal and Kerala, to quell popular protests in Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh, and to vilify national liberation struggles both at India and abroad. But one is yet to hear (the author seeks to be corrected if mistaken) a CPM intellectual stooping to such levels of calculated absurdity that is generally associated with unapologetic communalists like the Subramaniam Swamys of India. An apologist of fascist violence parading under a leftist façade, with abstract slogans of anti-Americanism, showering praises on the likes of Deng Xiaoping and Vladimir Putin, Jayatilleka won allies among the pink left in Latin America.

On the other hand, Viraj Mendis, an activist of the Sinhala radical left who is in exile for resolutely standing by the struggle of Eelam Tamils, points out the confluence of world powers in backing a despotic Sri Lanka and its genocidal campaign.

“The process of Genocide is continuing here too. It is happening inside these buildings here in Geneva.” he said, addressing a Pongu Tamil rally.

In Geneva, the representative of Cuba supported Sri Lanka with the argument that “If you want to engage in this kind of ID why don’t you prepare a decision for a dialogue on detention centre in Guantanamo or bombing of NATO in Iraq, Afghanistan?”

By supporting a Sri Lankan state, whose nationalism is based on a native variant of Nazi concepts of blut (Sinhala racial-cultural supremacy), lebensraum (the living space required for the superior race) and which completed its anschluss (forcible annexation) of the areas of Tamil Eelam in May 2009 accompanied by what can only called as a campaign of wanton pillage, rape and murder, countries like Cuba turn out to be ethically and politically no better than the imperialists they claim to oppose.

By justifying and endorsing a successful genocide like what happened in Mullivaikaal under the name of opposing atrocities in Iraq or Afghanistan, these countries are not aiding the people whom they claim to support by any stretch of imagination.

If a banana republic like Sri Lanka that executed one of the worst mass murders in South Asia with the aid of several world powers is allowed to walk free, what will act as a deterrent for much stronger countries that hold similar intentions towards similar struggles?

The Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan had recently warned Kurdish civilians that unless they differentiate themselves from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), “they are also doomed to pay the price”. He was one of the leaders of state to congratulate Sri Lanka on its ‘successful war on terror’ and the Turkish government has also upheld the Lankan model for dealing with the PKK (partisans to the PKK goal, who have also extended solidarity to the Eelam struggle in a true spirit of internationalism, were also apprehensive of this possibility). Now, what does the ‘socialist’ Cuba convey to the PKK and the Kurds by its endorsement of the Sri Lankan solution?

The regimes in Cuba and Venezuela not only appear as what a Tamil leftist described as “clowns in the arena of left politics”, they end up as political opportunists by supporting mass murderers and despots like Rajapaksa who virulently implement neo-liberal policies in deed, but put up a sham ‘anti-Americanism’ in words.

Maybe the radical left or whatever is left of it in Cuba should reread Lenin who said that “Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and, consequently, not only introduce full equality of nations but also realise the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination i.e. the right to free political separation.” Maybe that would restore the red color to the pink left governments of Latin America and enable them to look at a fascist Sri Lanka and the Tamil Eelam struggle that is fighting against it differently.

Genuine anti-imperialism does not lie in mere abstract anti-American/anti-west sloganeering. In the wake of a ‘post-national world’ discourse framed by apologists of multi-national capitalism and equally regressive capitalist-bureaucratic models as upheld by states like Turkey, China and Russia - both aiding the logic of genocidal states like Sri Lanka, anti-imperialism in concrete requires solidarity with national liberation struggles and their progressive representatives. Anything else is mere social-opportunism that can only promote a world-wide strengthening of forces of reaction. And then history will not absolve the pink left states, but condemn them to its dustbins.

Full text of the article by Mr. Kusal Perera, published in The Sunday Leader on 25 September 2011, follows:

The Irony Of A Putrefied “South” In Patriotic Garb

Some one asked, what the Ceypetco brand logo means. Another said, in school, they used to show that logo in a big, white, circular plate hung on a tall post in the petrol shed opposite college, to those classmates who used to go behind teachers expecting favour and say, “that’s what you are…” A nude person, running with a torch. The other said, “well, I wouldn’t comment about the South then.”

“South” in Sri Lankan politics have come to denote the Sinhala society, as against that of the North and  the Tamil people. For over three decades, Sri Lanka was basically that “South”. Politics in the South was “national” politics. Trade unions became wholly Sinhala sans the plantations and all national State functions in content, was Sinhala. Traders’ associations in big cities and towns turned out as Sinhala traders’ associations, though without the adjective “Sinhala”. In fact there emerged a business chamber of young men, who very consciously kept their COYLE, restricted to “Lankans”, but Sinhalese.

Most surveys, most data collected and most projections were based on figures and statistics limited to that part of the country, which left out the North and a good part of the East. In most tables of data and statistics, it is the footnote that said, “North and East not included”. Yet they were “national” for this bifurcated Sri Lanka. The South and its Sinhala polity talked of themselves as Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans. Those who opposed the war, but still wanted to be part of the warring Sinhala ideology, thus said the common meeting point of all Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people is the “Sri Lankan” identity.

This “Sri Lankan” identity, which is essentially a Southern Sinhala identity, was what the JVP and the UNP was comfortable with, when this Rajapaksa regime raised the Sinhala identity,  against LTTE “terrorism” that in its extension was and still is, anti Tamil. The succumbing of all “national” political parties, but rooted only in the South, therefore chipped in with their political impotency for what this post war South is now facing and would have to live through in the future.

First is that, with no Opposition ready to socialise a dissenting view, the war was accepted whole heartedly and allowed by this South, with the sterile slogan “terrorism first – poverty next” forced on society with Sinhala patriotism. That was explained as essential for post-war Sri Lanka to be “developed” as a democratic country, after “terrorism” is eliminated. The war over for two years, what is the Sinhala balance sheet like, in the South for the South?

What is the present scale of promised development? Is this, what was promised for Sri Lanka, when the President addressed the nation on May 19, 2009? Whatever was said is still believed by the South, while Sri Lanka is turned into a “paradise of plunder”. Everyone’s robbing in this government, say almost everyone. But, not the Rajapaksas. They simply loot and plunder, making all corruption, SME’s. Land has become their most sought after deals. Thus the hyped publicity for “tourism promotion”. With an economy that is greedily tied and knotted to China, there can be no tourism development here, other than mega frauds that China is known to have taken everywhere they went.

What economic growth is it that Sri Lankans can devour, regardless of what Cabraal wishes to taste? The minimum monthly salary in the private sector is just Rs. 7,750 and a graduate teacher who starts with only Rs. 14,300 this year,  will have to slog till 2041 to top Rs. 30,000.  Average per capita income per month in the rural sector, according to the 2009/2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey of the Census and Statistics Department, is Rs. 8,916, while it is only Rs. 5,782 in the Estate sector. Their mean expenditure, or what they actually need to live a human life, is 29,423 for the rural sector and Rs. 23,988 for the Estate sector. This is post-war Rajapaksa development in Sri Lanka.

Looting that makes midgets out of corruption, keeps grabing land in Colombo around and along Beira lake, Galle face sea front and military headquarters, while plans are afoot to clear as much land as possible in the city with relocation of “under served settlers” and cleaning up “unauthorised” structures in Fort and Pettah areas. The irony is, its not the Colombo Municipal Council nor the Urban Development Authority that talk of city development. It’s the Defence Secretary. He unveiled his own “plan” to develop Colombo as the government’s plan, addressing a group of US businessmen, end March, this year. And he promises, no evictions would be done, with the Colombo mayoral candidate from the UPFA openly canvassed as his favourite.

There is also looting of land in Kalpitiya, Katana, Mirijjawila and Arugambay, for supposed tourism development. There are tracks of large land wasted over fancy, projects in Sinharaja, at the cost of devastating a world heritage. Knuckles, another environmentally sensitive habitat and the Somawathiya national park are already under threat of being logged and ruined for big money.

Where is law and order? Where is justice? There is no sense of shame in what they do, no independence of the judiciary allowed. Duminda and Kathriarachchi who were implicated in two different criminal cases, were cleansed with such ease, the former Chief Justice was compelled to note there was an error in how they were dealt with. Duminda is now the supervisory MP for the Defence Ministry, regardless of all that and much more. The former CJ ended up as the latest “consultant” to the President. Mervyn continues as a minister after all his thuggery, still goes about with his goons, claims he is doling out justice by resorting to the most crudest and ugliest violations of law, but is blessed by Buddhist monks as well.

What is “democracy” here now? Emergency is replaced with more teeth given to continued repression with a PTA that in a democracy would not be a law. The Rajapaksa regime is to enact more legal provisions to continue with the all repressive powers it had under emergency regulations, with State politicising in plenty. This is anyway a police that is always threatened for life when escorting “notorious, under world thugs” to search for hidden weapons and grenades and then turn up in courts to say the “notorious thug” was killed in self defence. The Courts would have heard this same story over and over again, but sees nothing wrong in it. So is this South, happy a “thug” is no more, never mind the law.

While the law is such, a gazette notification on August 29, allows establishment of STF camps in every district, adding onto police stations there is, any way. There is also the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that repealed the 17th Amendment, which allowed some form of independence to important appointments to State positions and departments, that have to be outside politics. Family politics and nepotism has turned all State affairs, quite alien to society and even the major political party in the UPFA that provided the rural base for this regime to continue in power, the SLFP, is now a total outsider in the Rajapaksa government. A government voted by the people and hijacked by a family.

Its not only politics, but also economics that is tampered with, by the defence establishment.  While most land in Colombo are looted with the strength of the military kept on the streets and with new tales about a “LTTE rump”, running the North-East under the security forces is not mere “occupation” as TNA would wish to say. Its also getting into business, as most who travel up North would say.

The military getting into business was no safe transformation in Pakistan. There the civilian government has no say over most what happens even within their own borders. While PM Gilani was unaware Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan close to one of the top defence centres, the Pakistani ISI is accused of keeping Osama there, on their own terms. It is a fact in Pakistan that no elected government could have the freedom to run the country, without military dictates and often approvals. They have their own money to run their own vehicles the way they wish and thus the power that no elected government could veto.

Here the defence Sec promises stability for the business community, promises to restore the Muslim mosque raised to the ground by a Sinhala mob led by a Buddhist monk with no police inquiry or arrest for such a dastardly criminal act, sends over the navy with shooting orders to disperse the protesting Negambo fisher families over seaplanes landing in the lagoon from which they eke out their living and deploys the military in the FTZ after the workers protested against a forced pension fund on them. The South also accepts former security forces commanders replacing foreign service personnel in most diplomatic postings.

Is this what the Sinhala South asked for, in accepting a war that eliminated the LTTE? Is this the democracy and development the Sinhala South wants and is happy about? Obvious it is they don’t have the will to see and accept anything different and better. This is the crisis both the UNP and the JVP is presently facing. Both these political parties, very strictly Sinhala political parties, can not and does not want to leave their Sinhala identity in challenging this regime. Challenging this regime with a Sinhala identity is impossible, with a State that is now wholly Sinhalised and is firmly controlled with the defence establishment entrenched in politics and economics.

What the UNP and the JVP that are falling apart with internal rivalry do not want to accept is in fact the only alternate platform for the South as well. The South, even in a selfish attempt in getting out of this socio political putrefaction, has only one option and that is to stand for total accountability of governance and re democratising of society. That needs a further strengthened and a better implemented 13th Amendment and a new 17th Amendment that would repeal the 18th Amendment to begin with. It needs to accept that de-militarising of and democracy for  the North and East, would in effect democratise the South as well. Will the South stand up to it, or will it continue to run like the “Ceypetco” man?

Full tex of the address by Dr. Jude Lal Fernando, a lectuerer at the Irish School of Ecumenics of the Trinity College and a member of the Irish Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka (IFPSL), follows:

Mullivaikal: The moment of deep sorrow and courage

Today, we mourn from the very depths of our hearts the deaths of thousands of Tamils who were killed in Mullivaikal as well as in other places. Who are they? They are our beautiful children, our courageous young sons and daughters, beloved parents and grandparents whose burial grounds we do not know.

On this day, as a Sinhalese, let me remember not only the physical deaths of thousands of Tamils, but also the moral and spiritual death of the Sinhala nation to which I belong, a nation that has been built on the unknown graveyards of many thousands of my Tamil sisters and brothers.

As Martin Luther King lamented over his own American nation during the war against the people of Vietnam; a nation which spends on warfare and not on healthcare, welfare and education of its people is spiritually and morally doomed.

Mullivaikal does not mark the end of Tamil aspiration for nationhood, homeland and self-determination, but it marks another defeat of humanity.

Anybody who has a conscience among the Sinhalese and in the international community needs to know that Vanni massacre of Tamils questions our humanity rather than the project of Tamil Eelam.

Therefore, Mullivaikal is a historical moment in the dawn of the twentyfirst century that highly questions the humanity of this so called global village.

This is the fundamental moral truth about Vanni massacre of Tamils.

What is the political truth about Mullivaikal?

Mullivaikal is the climax of the brutality of the Sri Lankan state which was first created by the British colonial rule and rebuilt again and again by every Sinhala ruling party after the so called independence in 1948.

Are the Sinhalese unaware of the massacre of the Tamils for the last 60 years?

Are they unaware of the massacre of the Tamils in 1983 and 2009?

In 1983, the massacre was carried out by the unofficial thugs of the Sri Lankan state. In 2009, it was carried out by the official military of the same state with the full support of every major power in the international community.

The Sinhala nation is aware of the massacres. If so as human beings how do they justify such brutality of the state? They justify it by playing the role of victimhood saying that it is they who were attacked and that they have a right to defend themselves as a state. Is that all? No, they go further claiming a moral obligation to conduct a humanitarian war to protect the Tamils from the LTTE. The same arguments can be seen when the USA argues for its invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and when Israel argues for invasion of Palestine.

Therefore, it is not right to say that the Sinhala nation does not know the massacres, but they cannot know because they have justified the massacres wholeheartedly in the name of the Sri Lankan state.

Didn’t the UN and the international community know about? Is it a mistake from their part not to reveal the truth about the massacres? No, it is not a mistake, it is a deliberate action taken by them to protect the Sri Lankan state. Therefore, their omission is not an error or a mistake, but a part of the crime against the Tamil people.

Therefore, to say that it was a war without witnesses is untrue. The whole diplomatic community knew about the crimes. Even wikileaks cables alone provide unbreakable evidence to prove that every powerful nation knew how the slaughtering progressed.

It is the same international community that says now ‘yes, there are war crimes and crimes against humanity... and the Tamils are the victims’. Has any new discovery been made? No discovery has been newly made. There is no problem in saying this, this is what has to be said and what should be said, but what does the international community led by the major powers in the world want now by saying this? They want a group of helpless victims who begin to depend on them to find answers. These so called ‘ helpless victims’, the Tamils, resisted as a people to domination of the Sri Lankan state without depending on any major power for sixty years. It was their great resistance that brought about the 2002 peace process which was internationally recognised. By siding with the Sri Lankan state and working politically, diplomatically and militarily to destroy the Tamil resistance, and the 2002 peace process, now the international community says, ‘Tamils are the victims’!

Let me say one thing. It is true that the Tamils had to face the first genocidal massacre of the 21st century, but this should not lead to a sense of helpless victimhood where the very forces who are responsible are seen to be saviours by the Tamils.

It is the Tamil people who should decide what their future course of action should be. Let me echo the words of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and many others who led the oppressed peoples. The path to justice can never be stopped as long as people are determined to walk the long walk to freedom...

It is the paradox in the Sri Lankan history, that while the Sinhala nation celebrates the 2600 anniversary of Lord Buddha’s Enlightenment the Tamils also have to remember the massacre of their loved ones on the 18th of May this year. The most nonviolent preaching of Lord Buddha expressed compassion not only to every human being on earth but also to every creature, this preaching radically challenged and transformed kingdoms and societies promoting justice and peaceful coexistence in Asia. Could the Sinhala nation celebrate that Great Human Being’s Enlightenment by lighting millions of lamps while the Sri Lankan state does not permit the Tamil people to light a single candle in the Tamil homeland remembering their dear ones who were killed in Vanni?

This paradox or irony is a shame on every human, moral and religious value we cherish. It is against the eternal dharma of Lord Buddha and every other founder of great ethical and religious traditions.

By allowing the Sri Lankan state to oppress the Tamil people the Sinhala society has established a regime that destroys every form of democratic dissent. By building a prison for the Tamils, the Sinhalese have made their own chains. Let those who have ears listen, eyes see, tongues speak out!

Finally, this day is not only a day of mourning for the Tamil people, but it is also a day of remembrance of courage of so many thousands of my Tamil brothers and sisters who upheld the dream of a dignified life until the last breath of their lives.

Let that courage be our inspiration, so that our mourning will not end in a sense of helpless victimhood, but reinvigorate us to walk the journey towards the goal of justice, dignity and freedom as a people.