A Tamil view of Sri Lanka’s mounting racial violence

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 45

A Tamil view of Sri Lanka’s mounting racial violence

For more than a decade life in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has been marked by increasing violence between the country’s Singhalese majority and its Tamil minority. This year, something close to a race war has developed in this Commonwealth country. On June 10 “The Press” printed an article by two Sri Lankans living in Invercargill. The authors argued that the Sri Lankan Govenment had made several attempts to negotiate with Tamil rebels, but that the terrorists were not interested in a peaceful solution to the country’s problems. Mr Ganesalingam Nellailingam, an engineer from Sri Lanka who now lives in Wellington, has written to challenge assertions about the war in Sri Lanka. He writes: “ ‘Time,’ magazine, in a cover story on Sri Lanka (June 9, 1986) stands in sharp contrast to the skewed views presented by two Sri Lankans in ‘The Press’ of June 10. “They say Tamils have full political rights in Sri Lanka, claiming that there are 20 Tamil seats in the Parliament. However, most of these seats have been vacant for nearly three years as is evident from ‘Time’s’ comments: ‘ln the 1977 Parliamentary elections, the Tamil United Liberation Front (T.U.L.F.) swept to victory in all 14 seats in the north and four out of 12 in the east giving the T.U.L.F. 18 of 168 seats in Parliament.’ After the 1983 riots which, ‘Time’ says, Tamils still refer to as the Holocaust, ‘All T.U.L.F. M.P.s were forced out of Parliament when they refused to take an anti-separatist oath.’ “The Sri Lankans con-

elude their letter: ‘The Government has Initiated several attempts to negotiate, but the terrorists are not Interested in a peaceful settlement’ ‘Time’ says in this context ‘Foreign ambassadors and close associates often come away from a conversation with President Jayawardene convinced that he will take steps to end the violence, only to find him doing quite the opposite.’ ‘The judgment of ‘The Economist’ (May 30) on this is even more damning: ‘President Jayawardene and the hawks in his Cabinet have aborted every embryonic peace move. They are making a mistake.’ Evidently, even the raising of the twin bogeys of Marxism and terrorism by the Sri Lankans has clearly failed to cloud the views of these internationally reputed Western journals. "The Sri Lankans’ jugglery with percentages and their remaining credibility can easily be destroyed per the Parliamentary Human Rights Group’s February, 1985, report on Sri Lanka to the House of Commons which cites 1981 census figures of Sri Lanka. It would suffice here to expose one mistake. More than 850,000 Tamils (5.6 per cent of the 15 million population) in the plantations have been excluded in claiming that Tamils are only 13 per cent of the population, but they have been counted to Claim that more than a million Tamils live outside the north and east.

“When considering that the Sri Lankans omitted to say that the Muslims in the north and east are all Tamil-speaking, the Sri Lankans’ claim about Muslim opposition to Tamil Eelam, simply con-

firms a consistency in presenting disinformation. The following comments will establish that Tamil Eelam is not only justified but imperative, inevitable, and imminent as well. • Sri Lanka as a unitary State is an aberration of British colonialism. Tamil and Singhalese States independently existed for many centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1505. • Three successive European powers — the Portuguese, Dutch, and British — administered the two nations as seperate colonies until 1833. • Proclamation of the Republic of Sri Lanka in 1972, without Tamil participation, was an usurpation of Tamil sovereignty. © Tamil sovereignty, lost to the Portuguese in 1505, reverted to the Tamils in 1972 when the British abandoned their dominion over Ceylon. ® Tamils gave an overwhelming mandate for Tamil Eelam in the 1977 General Elections, the last held in Sri Lanka. ® International law, approved by the United Nations in 1970, restricts claim of territorial integrity to States possessed of Governments representing all people of the territory without distinction as to race, creed or colour. The I.C.J. report on the 1983 riots said, ‘The Government can keep the country united only if it represents the entire population and gave equal protection to all, not only to the Singhalese majority.’ © Tamil Eelam is the expression of the Tamils’ inalienable right to selfdetermination, a universally accepted tenet. Tamils of Eelam are indeed a nation by virtue of having their own distinctive language, religion, and culture. Tamils continue to occupy a well defined

geographic territory for well over two millennia in spite of deliberate colonisation by Sri Lankan regimes in the last four decades. • The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims: ‘Whereas if man is not to be compelled to resort to violence, as a last resort, human rights shall be protected by rule of law.’ The I. C. J., in a 1984 report, characterised the Prevention of Terrorism Act, a permanent law in Sri Lanka, as an ugly blot on the Statute Books of any civilised society. Many other independent reports have also confirmed that not even the right to life of Tamils is protected by law in Sri Lanka. ® The debacle of the much-heralded assault of Jaffna last month is indicative that the Sri Lankan Army’s days in Tamil homelands are numbered. ‘Frontline’, India’s national magazine, described this operation as a military and political misadventure. O President Jayawardene himself admits the existence of a de facto Tamil Eelam in the Jaffna peninsula. All that stands in the way of its becoming de jure are the remaining

Army camps in the peninsula, under siege for more than a year, and the lack of Indian recognition. • The Indian Prime Minister, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, will not be able to resist for long the rising tide of Indian opinion in favour of Tamil Eelam in the face of the mounting toll of Tamil civilian deaths in Sri Lanka’s genocidal war on Tamils. ® The ‘Time’ cover story is indicative of a growing groundswell of world opinion against Sri Lanka’s war against its Tamil population. • In his plea for Western military aid, President Jayawardene said that without direct military aid the partition of the island will be inevitable. ® The Tamil Eelam liberation struggle not only has the total support of the Tamils in Sri Lanka but the full backing of 50 million Tamils in India and widespread support among 700 million Indians as weil. • Since history has a habit of repeating itself and Hitler’s genocide of the Jews led to the rebirth of Israel, President Jayawardene’s onslaught on Tamils can only result in the restoration of Tamil Eelam.”