Sri Lanka: Time For International Public Protests

On September 10, 2008, the Sri Lankan Air Force dropped 16 bombs on Kilinochchi town, the administrative centre of the Tamil North, doing extensive damage to civilian property. A major massacre of civilians is to follow, as certainly as day follows night. The clear intention of the Sinhalese-dominated Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL), is to crush Tamil resistance, under the guise of "eliminating terrorism". If this means committing genocide of the Tamil people, a ruthless bunch that has the temerity to call itself a "Government", is more than prepared to do so.
Genocide has to be done with no witnesses. So the GOSL ordered the UN agencies and all humanitarian groups, to leave the Tamil North, saying that their safety could no longer be guaranteed.

 A gutless UN

On September 9, 2008, the GOSL ordered all aid agencies (including the UN agencies) to get out of the "northern war zone" and take their equipment with them. UN agencies have been delivering food and medical aid to nearly 160,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs) ie refugees, in the Vanni (the Tamil area just south of the Jaffna Peninsula.

There are 13 aid groups in the region, providing emergency food aid, clean water and sanitation to some 200,000 people living in refugee camps and under trees in this area.

In an astounding act of irresponsibility, the UN and all agencies except ICRC (Red Cross), decided to cave into this State terrorism. The UN, more than any other body, must be held responsible.

On September 10, the UN issued a statement in New York that the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon expressed his “deep concern” over the grave human rights consequences for civilians. The Statement said:

“In light of the [Sri Lankan] Government’s request for the relocation of UN humanitarian staff in affected areas, he (Ban Ki-moon) reminds all concerned of their responsibility to take active steps to ensure the safety and freedom of movement of civilians, allowing humanitarian organisations to do their work in safety, as well as to reach persons affected by the fighting who need humanitarian assistance.”

It went on. "The Secretary-General reminds all concerned of their obligations under international humanitarian law, especially in regard to the principle of proportionality and the selection of targets,"

It was a violation of the Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Article 3 “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security”.

I am sure that a quarter of a million people in the area and a million concerned people outside Sri Lanka, not only shared the UN Secretary General’s “deep concern”, but have also lost what little faith they had in the UN.

As word got around, thousands of IDPs gathered (September 12) in front of the UNHCR (High Commission for Refugees) office in Kilinochchi, pleading with the UN and International NGOs (no-government organizations), not to leave.

The Executive Director of the Australian Council for International Development, Paul O’Callaghan, told Radio Australia:

"This situation is likely to become a bloodbath in the next several weeks."

"Apart from the direct military conflict, we would expect that many, many will die or be in extreme circumstances if humanitarian workers are not able to access this area."

"It was an extreme [humanitarian] situation even before the decision by the government to exclude foreign aid workers."

Despite the pleadings of the civilians and concern expressed by aid workers, UN agencies and international relief organizations, which included Oxfam, Save the Children, World Vision, Danish Refugee Council, Internal Organisation of Migration, and ZOA (an international NGO, operating in more than 10 countries worldwide, supporting (former) refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees and others who are affected by conflict or natural disasters), started to pull out. To their eternal credit, Internation Committee of the Rde Cross (ICRC) decided to stay. The civilians were left in the hands of God (and the Red Cross).

Sri Lanka’s response

Rajiva Wijesinha, the head of the Sri Lankan so-called ‘Peace Secretariat”, and Secretary, of (what jokingly the GOSL calls) the “Human Rights Ministry”, responded as one would expect from a true Sinhala patriot:

“Since there have been hardly any civilian casualties during the recent offensives in Sri Lanka…….“It is to be hoped that he (Ban Ki-Moon) will study the Sri Lankan situation carefully in the future. Perhaps, with knowledge there will come wisdom...”

What? ” ‘hardly any casualties”? Where has he been all these months? Perhaps too often out of the country. While ignorance is bliss, contrived ignorance is patriotism. If that is so, a patriot he surely is.

The next statement “with knowledge there will be wisdom” is much more serious. This is a down right insult, an insult to the UN Secretary General.

Consider this. Here is an unknown character from some tin-pot dictatorship, that has just been thrown out of the UN Human Rights Council for violating human rights, insulting the UN Secretary General. It is mind-boggling. President Rajapakse has two options –

to back his man or sack him. .

On September 20, 2008, Sri Lanka's Ministry of ‘Defence’ instructed the Sri Lanka Army not to allow humanitarian convoys to the Internally Displaced Persons in the Kilinochchi district (Vanni) with food provided under the United Nations World Food Programme. Presumably this is "punishment" for the people of this district for not "obeying" its instruction to leave the area.

The de facto State of Tamil Eelam

Many have asked me, “What are the Tamil Tigers doing about this?” My answer is, “Never mind the Tigers, what are you doing about it?

There are a million expatriate Tamils scattered all over the world. What are they doing about this serious situation?

What is being destroyed is the de facto State of Tamil Eelam, built by Tamils in the North, with significant help from the expatriate Tamils, both financial and physical. It is this that the GOSL is now about to destroy and reduce to dust..

Those who are unaware of the functioning of this State, should read Professor Kristian Stokke, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo who spent an year studying the set-up.. It was published in the Third World Quarterly in 2006, and reproduced in full in Nadesan Satyendra’s outstanding website, tamilnation.

Titled, “Building the Tamil Eelam State. Emerging State institutions and forms of governance in LTTE controlled areas in Sri Lanka”, it details the functioning of the Tamil Eelam State. It is this outstanding achievement by the Tamils that the GOSL and its murderous Armed Forces are destroying. They are destoying what they have not built – the infrastructure in the de facto State of Tamil Eelam,

The functioning of the State of Tamil Eelam stands in striking contrast to the dysfunction of the chaotic, corrupt, and despotic, Sinhala State in the South where 4 brothers control 75% of the budget of the country, where nothing can be done without a bribe, where hooligans and thugs are now part of governance, where the Police are reportedly the most corrupt in the world, where law and order have broken down, the media merely act as a mouthpiece for the government (or are silenced), where even the independence of the judiciary has been lost, where ‘disappearances’, arrests and detention without charge or trial occur on a daily basis, and one man, President Rajapakse, and his brothers (two of them American citizens), do what they like. As does another American, Sarath Fonseka, the Army General. Their day of reckoning on a charge of Genocide, might come.

The determination to smash the Tamil areas is nothing but State terrorism and vandalism. We, in the international community, do not have the power to prevent this, but we do have the power to protest, and this we must.

Not a scrap of this State terrorism appears in the international media. As a result, the international community is completely unaware of what the Sri Lankan ‘government’ is doing to its own people, of all ethnic groups, especially the Tamils in the North and East. It is up to us in the international community, to see that what goes on behind the closed and censored doors of Sri Lanka is bought to the attention of the international community (IC).

By “the international community” I do not mean foreign governments. Most Governments have very well informed Embassies in Colombo and know full well what is going on in the Tamil North and East. There is simply no point in telling them what they know, even better than we do.

Those who need to be apprised of the situation are the people, the ordinary decent people in the world, who would baulk at this criminal activity by a so-called ‘elected Government’, in a “Democratic Socialist Republic”, as Sri Lanka likes to call itself.

The War

What is going on is not just a war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but a war against the Tamil people, to crush them into accepting Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. Multiethnic, multilingual, multireligious, multicultural Sri Lanka is being made, by military might, courtesy of foreign governments, into a monoethnic, monolingual, monoreligious, monocultural State.

A succession of Sinhalese-dominated Governments have faced a problem in the creation of this Sinhala-Buddhist nation. What can be done with the Tamils, some 18% of the population, most of whom are not Buddhists?

The options available to the GOSL are:-

1.To drive Tamils out of the country. One million already have been, but there are more

2.To make them into ‘non-people’ eg by denying them effective political representation. That is being done,

3 To replace them with Sinhalese from the South - "sinhalisation" of the Tamil areas. That is being done (and has been for more than 50 years, now at an accelerated pace

4 To kill them i.e. commit "Genocide". That is now in progress.

Genocide

Genocide is defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide , as an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Genocide has nothing to do with numbers killed, it is the intention and the act(s) to achieve this intention, which are what are needed to constitute genocide. The intention of a succession of Sinhalese-dominated governments, is abundantly clear - to wipe out the Tamils. This started with the massacre of some 3,000 Tamils in Colombo and the Sinhalese South in 1983, and has continued, currently at an alarming rate.

There are many ways to commit genocide, you can:

* Murder them – shoot, bomb, shell or just massacre them.

* Starve them.

* Withhold essential medicines and let them die.

* Prevent of survival activity eg fishing and agriculture.

* Destroy markets, homes, hospitals, schools and businesses.

Once the intention is there, the ways to commit genocide are endless.

All of these the GOSL has done. It is therefore guilty of genocide. All those who are responsible from the President, who is also the Minister of Defence and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and those down the "line of command" who are responsible, have to be charged, sooner or later. Charged with Genocide. The evidence is already overwhelming, and more, much more, is coming...

Suicide bombers

The Tamil Tigers do not need to ‘make’ suicide bombers out of young Tamils– the Sri Lankan Government and its Armed Forces do it for them. Here is the Booker Prize winner, Indian author and activist, Arundhati Roy :in “The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire. (The italics are mine):-

“Young Palestinians (Tamils) who cannot contain their anger turn themselves into human bombs and haunt Israel’s (Sri Lanka’s) streets, blowing themselves up, killing ordinary people.”

“Suicide bombing is an act of individual despair, not a revolutionary tactic”

“The world is called upon to condemn suicide bombers, but can we ignore the long road they have journeyed on before they arrived at their destination?”

A Separate Tamil State, Eelam

The Tamils in the North and East do not need to ask for a separate State, Eelam. The brutality of the Sinhala regime unleashed on the people of this area, has done it for them. The strongest case for Eelam, is what is going on right now. The Sinhala regime has left the Tamils with no other option. It is ironic that the greater the attempted destruction of Tamil Eelam, the greater will be the need for it. Sinhala extremism is the father of Tamil Eelam.

It is also ironic that the greater the ‘victory’ won by the GOSL, the weaker it will be. The more the Tamils are crushed, the greater will be the resistance. It is an outcome that a very stupid Government and even more stupid people who elect these fools, are too stupid to see. They will, in time, when they find that it is a pyrrhic ‘victory’. A regime drunk with (military) power, is simply unable to see the ‘big picture’.

I have always believed that an evil regime, given enough rope will hang itself, given enough time will destroy itself. This is not a postulate but a historical fact. Those who do not know history, are destined to repeat it.

Two wars

As I have said in the Information dvds on Sri Lanka which I recorded and released to counter the disinformation campaign of the GOSL, there are two wars going on in Sri Lanka. One is the war between the Sinhala-dominated Sri Lankan "Government" against the Tamil people to crush them into submission – to accept Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation.

The other is a less known "war" between the USA – India – China for the control of the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean is not the largest ocean on this planet but is, by far, the busiest. Countries around the Indian Ocean produce 40% of the world’s oil. 70% of the world’s oil shipments and 50% the world’s container cargo, go across this Ocean.

100 years ago, the US Admiral Alfred Maher rightly said, “Whoever controls the Indian Ocean, dominates Asia” .The control of this strategic Ocean is the ‘big game’.

Instead of the “USA” one could put “USA-EU-Israel”, instead of “China” one could put “China-Japan-Korea”. What India offers and gives (by way of the supply of war-material to the GOSL), Pakistan will offer more. (and vice versa). Iran has now got into the act. It is the disastrous effects of these international geopolitical games for vested international gains, that we see in Sri Lanka. The human cost - the deaths of thousands of Tamil civilians (some 75,000 to date), is of little or no interest to those who supply the weapons to the Sinhala government to kill its own people.

India has its own (double) game – to make love to the GOSL, lest it gets too close to China (it already is) and Pakistan.. At the same time, to pretend to support the Sri Lankan Tamils to keep Tamilnadu, with some 50 million Indian Tamils, happy. (The current Indian government is in power, courtesy of TamilNadu). So we have the Indian Government ‘expressing concern’ at the violation of human rights of the Tamil people and simultaneously supplying the GOSL with the necessary military assistance to violate those human rights about which India has hypocritically expressed “grave concern”.

It is a despicable game played by the so-called ‘regional power’. Power also carries responsibility. If this is not delivered, then it is an abuse of power – which the Indian Government is guilty of where a major conflict is raging on its doorstep, with some 75,000 dead, a million refugees, 130,000 of them in Tamilnadu, and a gross violation of human rights, acknowledged by the international community on May 21 2008. There is no denying India’s responsibility since it it is the country that can stop this outrageous situation immediately. It has clearly no intention of doing so, for reasons that do not bring credit to a country that produced the likes of Mahatma Gandhi.

The necessary action

The only “Court of Appeal” we have left, is an Appeal to the international community. To use the media to achieve this is impossible. The international media are simply not interested. Was there a single sentence in any of the main-stream media in any country, when the GOSL bombed 400 orphans in the Sencholai orphanage? No. There was not a word, nor will there be. To expect otherwise is to distance oneself from reality.

If the media are not within our reach, which is certainly the situation, the only way we can draw attention to the escalating human rights violations in Sri Lanka, now with features of Genocide of the Tamil people, is by getting on to the streets. If a million Sri Lankan Tamils across the world, took to the streets, it will make a difference.

I recently addressed a meeting of expatriate Tamils in Toronto on the Pongu Tamil event (2008). 75,000 people turned up. I appreciate that a meeting of such large numbers is only possible in a place like Canada there are some 300,000 Tamils. But I simply refuse to believe that much smaller numbers in protests across the world will make no difference. What I am appealing for is a show of ‘International People Power’ – about the only thing that will stop the murderous agenda of President Mahinda Rajapakse and his Sinhala-Buddhist extremists and his ruthless Sinhala (99%) Armed Forces from smashing the Tamilks in the North and East of Sri Lanka.

Economic sanctions is a possibility, but only a remote possibility because of the international games I have just described. What military aid the USA, Canada, EU and others refuse to supply, China will be only too willing to supply to safeguard its “String of Pearls” (the oil and trade route from the Middle East to China). Sri Lanka, is one of the “pearls’. That is why the Chinese have offered to build a harbour in Hambantota in the Sinhala South, and do any number of other ‘projects’.. China could not give a damn if the battle tanks it supplies are used to smash the Tamil areas. Israel could not give a damn if the Kfir jets it supplies (powered by American General Electric engines), are used to bomb the Tamil people.

The GOSL is flat broke. Here is a summary released in July 2008 by Dr Harsha de Silva, an economist (a Sinhalese), in Colombo:

Government Revenue Rs 750 billion
Repayment of Loans and Interest Rs 580 billion
Balance Rs 170 billion
Allocation for ‘Defence’ Rs 170 billion
Balance 0
Options to pay public sector workers (excluding Armed Forces and Police)and other welfare payments are:
* Print money. The Central Bank, with his hand-picked Governor, is part of the government, and does what it is told - to hell with monetary policy or responsibility.
* Borrow more (internally or externally) at commercial rates
*Tax the hell out of people – already struggling with an escalating cost of living

Half the serious budget deficit, much of it because of a massive allocation for ‘defence’ (US$1.5 billion this year), to defend the country from its own citizens, is financed by loans and grants from foreign countries. It is this that enables the GOSL to continue this unnecessary war.

Inflation currently 29% - is the highest in Asia. To complain about it or question the outrageous allocation for ‘defence’, is treason, traitors who should be lock up Neither charge nor trial are necessary, in the Democratic Socialist Republic, fast becoming a Fascist Dictatorship.

Most misled people

A revolt in the Sinhala South, caused by the escalating dost of living, is coming – but may not be soon enough to save the Tamils from annihilation or the country from bankruptcy...

To target the Sinhalese, the most misled people in Sri Lanka, and tell them that they are being taken for a ride, is urgent.

To block the supply of money to that irresponsible regime in Colombo, is urgent. This is why it is crucial to block the EU GSP+ facility for Sri Lanka (duty concession for goods from Sri Lanka to EU countries, which is dependent on their human rights record). This is coming up for renewal in October 2008, with a decision by the EU in December 2008). This simply must be blocked. The fact that Sri Lanka has, on May 21, 2008, been thrown out of the UN Human Rights Council for its abysmal record on human rights violations, and the fact that the situation has got worse, much worse, since then, should help. If the GSP + facility is removed, it might put the necessary economic pressure on the Government to abandon this murderous attempt at a military ‘solution’ and force a return to the negotiating table.

Worldwide protests is a possibility. I urge the expatriate Tamils (now more than a million), and those who support the struggle of the Tamil people to live with equality, dignity, and safety, in the country of their birth, for that is what this ‘war’ is all about, to come out in their thousands in a series of mass protests launched across the world, to stop the murderous regime in Sri Lanka from destroying the Tamil areas.

I urge the “Sleeping Tamils’, as I call them, to wake up, and ‘get involved’. This can be as simple a job as apprising their non-Sri Lankan friends, of the atrocities being committed by the GOSL. It is for this purpose that I have released a series of dvds on the rapidly deteriorating in Sri Lanka. All you need is to get a copy and show it to your neighbours, church groups etc.. Get them to contact their MP, Congressman or Senator and ask what their Government is doing to stop this outrageous situation. Get them to contact their media and ask why none of this has been aired. This is far more effective than individual Tamils (or others concerned with this serious situation) trying to lobby these people. I have been down this road many times over the past 25 years and know what I am talking about.

What prevents action?

Fear. With the exception of the Tamil militants (a relatively recent entity), the Tamils have been, and still are, a frightened people. Fearlessness is not one of their virtues. This has been so since the dawn of Independence (1948), and well before that. I asked my Tamil wife why this should be so. ”Because the Tamils are excellent Government servants. Tell them to jump, and they will ask “How high, Sir?” When in British colonial times, they ended letters with “Your Obedient Servant”, they actually meant it –literally. You Sinhalese wrote the same thing but meant not a word of it. To question authority is not in Tamil genes. That is why they were so sought after by the colonial British. As a Sinhalese you will find this difficult to comprehend”. Yes, I find it “difficult to comprehend”.

In fact, I have had this difficulty all the way back to 1948, .when as a 16 year old boy I watched with amazement what the Tamils would tolerate under the repressive Sinhala regime that had taken over the country from the repression of the colonial British.

I watched with dismay, the futile Gandhi-style non-violent protests by Tamil ‘leaders’ from 1956, being broken up by Government-sponsored Sinhalese hoodlums with monotonous regularity. Non-violent protests do not work against a ruthless regime as anyone in Idi Amin’s Uganda, among many others, will testify. As Mao Zeding rightls said in one of his early quotes, Power flows through the barrel of a gun,, and later, War is a continuation of Politics.

This finally dawned on the Tamils, and in 1972, came the Tamil militant youths. They put a spine in the backs of spineless people. For the first time, the very first time in the recent history of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, the Tamils (or rather, the Tamil youths) stood up and challenged the right of the Sinhala Government to do what it was doing. For the first time, the Sinhala government had to look at the Tamils and their problems. Until then, the Tamils were just a joke.

As I have said in numerous addresses over the past three decades, it was the Tamil militants who forced the GOSL to the negotiating table. Had it not been for them, the Tamils would have been under the table, picking up the crumbs thrown at them by the Sinhala masters sitting at the table.

The expatriate Tamil community was happy to support the Tamil militant struggle from a distance, and that too if they were pushed to do so, but not do anything to put themselves at risk.

They failed to act when the brutal Sinhala regime in Colombo, used (or abused) its powers (and exploited the critical geographical position of Sri Lanka astride the Indian Ocean), and ‘made love’ to foreign powers to ban the Liberation struggle of the Tamil people’ as ‘nothing but terrorism’ This got a marked boost post-9/11.

Expatriate Tamil were criminalized. The word “Tamil” became synonymous with “Tamil terrorists”. The expatriate Tamil community was not prepared to challenge this – this same old problem of not being prepared to challenge ‘authority’. Rather than stand up and challenge this nonsense, they dug bunkers and got into them. The few brave souls who stood up were demonised, arrested as ‘terrorists’, intimidated, harassed and silenced. Some are in jail, or heading for jail, on some absurd charges.

As the monstrously brutal regime in Colombo began to really get going to crush Tamil resistance, the expatriate Tamils got even deeper into their bunker. It is ironic that today, as Kfir jets circle the Tamil North, bombing the hell out of Tamil people and crushing everything that can be crushed, the Tamil people in the area are getting out of their bunkers to challenge the GOSL, while the expatriate Tamils, facing no such danger, are climbing deeper into their bunkers!

The best example of this occurred just yesterday. I will not give you the details, just the gist. A very powerful group of expatriate Tamils in a very powerful country, arranged a meeting, “to discuss the draconian laws and repression of the Tamil people, misrepresentation of the struggle for freedom, criminalizing the Tamils under anti-terror laws in Sri Lanka and abroad, criminalizing the Tamil diaspora under anti-terrorist laws in UK, Canada and European countries.” I was invited to speak

Then came a second email. Would I include "brutal oppression of freedom struggle by the state legislation". I said “No problem”.

I cancelled my patients (which I could financially ill afford to do), and booked my passage. I was about to confirm my flight when I had an email (just 24 hours ago), “We are all worried about the future of Tamils. I have been asked to put on hold all activities. Please delay your booking” I cancelled my flight. I asked for clarification. “I have been asked” by whom? On what grounds? Please reply – urgent. I have had no reply.

Consider this. Here is a Sinhalese, who has nothing to gain from getting involved in this struggle, who has put his medical practice on hold, and is about to travel 23 hours (economy class, I might add), to take whatever risks there are (and with Sinhalese hoodlums around, there are risks), to address an important meeting in a major country at a time when the Tamil people are facing their biggest crisis ever. And what do his Tamil hosts do? Cancel the meeting.

Am I annoyed? No. Am I disappointed? No. Then what are my feelings? A sense of satisfaction that my assessment of the expatriate Tamils is correct. And that intimidation by a bunch of racist hoodlums, both in Sri Lanka, and abroad, works. The ‘spine’ put into Tamil backs by the Tamil militants, has all but collapsed..

That is why, after more than half a century, the Tamils are still struggling for a place (the traditional areas of habitation of the Tamil people), where they can live with equality, dignity, safety and safety, which is what this struggle has been all about

Protest now

It is time for the expatriate Tamil community and those, such as myself, non-Tamils, who support the cause of the Tamil people, to get on to the streets all over the world, and protest. Not in some obscure park, but out in the streets, in busy shopping malls, and the like. Objective? To be seen, so that people will ask, “What is it all about?” Then tell them. For the sake of a brutalized people, I urge you to put your cowardice aside., and protest. Protest now, tomorrow might be too late for the Tamils of the North and East of Sri Lanka. Protest now, or watch the Genocide of the Tamil people. The choice is yours.

Genocide of the Tamil minority

January 23, 2009 -- There is a humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil minority in the island’s north and east are facing annihilation at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated government. 

This article will deal with the current crisis, with the more fundamental problem of the legacy left by colonial British rule (1796-1948) dealt with in later articles. These colonial administrative structures will need to be reversed of there is ever to be peace or prosperity in Sri Lanka.

I am a Sinhalese, from the majority community, not from the brutalised Tamil minority. I quit Sri Lanka in 1976.

Who runs that country is of no concern to me, as long as it is run without serious violations of human rights. Sri Lanka was tossed out of the UN Human Rights Council in May last year due to its human rights record, and the drift of a democracy to a fascist politico-military dictatorship, none of which have been publicised internationally.

Current problem

The ethno-religious mix of Sri Lanka, with 20 million people, consists of ethnic Sinhalese (74%), Tamils (18%) in two groups (ethnic Tamils, 12.5%, and the plantation, or Indian, Tamils, 5.5%) and Moors (6.5%).

The ethnic Sinhalese and the ethnic Tamils have been in the country for at least 2500 years — the Tamils for probably much longer, given the proximity of Sri Lanka to south India from where the ethnic Tamils came.

The plantation Tamils are descendants of indentured labourers brought to the country by the British in the mid-1850s to work in the tea plantations in the central hills. The Moors are descendants of Arab traders from the 13th-15th century.

The ethnic conflict is between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the ethnic Tamils. The Sinhalese speak an Indoaryan language, Sinhalese, while the Tamils a Dravidian language, Tamil. The Moors are mainly Tamil-speaking but many are bilingual.

To add a religious dimension to an already existing ethno-linguistic one, the Sinhalese are Buddhist (70%) and the Tamils are Hindus. About 7% of each group have been converted to Christianity by Westerners. The Moors are mostly Muslims.

Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multireligious, multilingual and multicultural country. Despite this, the Sinhala-Buddhist majority claim that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala-Buddhist country.

The main proponents of this ethno-religious chauvinism are, firstly, the Buddhist monks who claim that Buddha on his death bed nominated Sri Lanka to be the custodian of his teaching, and secondly Sinhalese politicians across the entire political spectrum who have done so to gain the political support of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority to get into or remain in power.

The major Sinhalese political parties have competed with each other to discriminate against the Tamils in language, education and employment with the clear intention of getting the Sinhalese vote.

A third proponent is the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese). The head of the Sri Lankan army stated in an interview in September last year: “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese …”

The real danger is that while the ethno-religious bigots among the Buddhist clergy and the Sinhalese political opportunists are not in a position to deliver an exclusively Sinhala-Buddhist nation, the Sri Lankan army — equipped and supported by countries such as the US, China, India, Pakistan, Britain and Israel, for their own geopolitical/economic gains — do have that capacity.

If this means committing genocide against the Tamil people, the politico-military junta, which has the temerity to call itself the “Government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri lanka”, is more than willing to do so.

Problem of ethnic cleansing

There are four options to achieve an exclusively Sinaha-Buddhist Sri Lanka.

1. Drive them out of the country. Although 1.3 million have already been driven out, there are still 2 million left.

2. Make them “non-people”, ie: internal refugees. Currently, there are 500,000 Tamil civilians living in refugee camps in the Tamil north and east or have fled into the jungles in the north to escape Sri Lankan army bombing. There are also 200,000 Tamil refugees in south India.

On November 19, Amnesty International USA, in a publication titled Sri Lanka government must act now to protect 300,000 displaced persons, stated: “In September 2008, the Sri Lankan government ordered the United Nations (UN) and non-government aid-workers to leave the region (the Tamil North). The government then assumed total responsibility for ensuring the needs of the civilian population affected by the hostilities are met.”

On December 23, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) came out with a 49-page report entitled Besieged, Displaced, and Detained. The Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka’s Vanni Region, which detailed the Sri Lankan government’s responsibility for the plight of 230,000 to 300,000 displaced people in the Vanni (northern) conflict zone.

It documents that thousands of Tamils fleeing the fighting in the north are trapped by the government and are being denied basic provisions.

Brad Adams, HRW Asia Director, one of the people who wrote this report, said: “To add insult to injury, people who manage to flee the fighting end up being held indefinitely in army-run prison camps.” He went on to make the situation abundantly clear: “The government’s ’welfare centers’ for civilians fleeing the Wanni are just badly disguised prisons.”

3. Make them “disappear”. Today, Sri Lanka leads the world in “involuntary disappearances”. On November 24, HRW published report entitled Sri Lanka: Human Rights Situation Deteriorating in the East in which Adams stated: “The Sri Lankan government says that the ‘liberated’ East is an example of democracy in action and a model for areas recaptured from the LTTE. But killings and abductions are rife, and there is total impunity for horrific acts.”

4. Kill them — i.e. commit genocide. “Genocide” is defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as “an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. Genocide has nothing to do with numbers killed, it is the intention and the act(s) to achieve this intention that defines it.

Bombing, shelling and shooting are not the only ways to kill. One could starve them, withhold essential medicines, prevent survival activity (e.g. fishing and agriculture), destroy businesses, markets, homes, hospitals and schools. Once the intention is there, the ways to achieve genocide are endless.

There are also different types of genocide. I have called these, “educational genocide”, “cultural genocide”, “economic genocide” and “religious genocide” — defined as the intention, backed by the act, of destroying in whole or part the education, culture or economy and religion of an ethnic group.

The Sri Lankan government is guilty of all of these.

A war on Tamils

The “war” that is going on in Sri Lanka is a liberation struggle of the Tamil people for their right to self-determination, which would enable them to exist with equality, dignity and safety in the area of historical habitation of the Tamil people — the north and the east of Sri Lanka.

This war could not continue without foreign aid going to the Sri Lankan government. Without this aid, Sri Lanka would be forced to the negotiating table. Imperialism today takes the form of foreign aid.

No discussion of what is going on in Sri lanka is complete without a comment on the question of suicide bombings and child soldiers, issues used to demonise Tamil resistance to the Sri Lankan regime.

Suicide bombings have been a hallmark of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in its decades-long armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state. The latter has used and promoted extreme violence in its attempt to enforce Sinhalese (the majority ethnic group) domination on the island.

I will quote the Booker prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy in her book The Ordinary Persons Guide to Empire. Substitute Sri Lanka for Israel and Tamil for Palestinian.

“Young Palestinians who cannot contain their anger turn themselves into human bombs and haunt Israel’s streets, blowing themselves up, killing ordinary people. Suicide bombing is an act of individual despair, not a revolutionary tactic.

“The world is called upon to condemn suicide bombers, but can we ignore the long road they have journeyed on before they arrived at their destination?”

The psychology of the suicide bomber is: “You shot my father, raped and killed my mother, hanged my brother, tortured and killed my sister. I have nothing left. When I decide to leave this planet, I will take you with me.”

Also, the LTTE has, for years, recruited children as fighters. What is new is that there are several recent reports that the Sri Lankan army is doing the same thing.

Allan Rock is a Canadian diplomat working with the United Nations sent to Sri Lanka in 2006, who issued a report that confirmed that the LTTE was recruiting child soldiers.

He also stated that Tamil paramilitary groups working with the Sri Lankan army were doing the same thing, conscripting child soldiers in the eastern province.

A December 2 report by the US-based Human Rights Watch stated that the leaders of the Tamil paramilitary groups working with the Sri Lankan regime, one of them recently appointed a member of parliament by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, “have been implicated in serious human rights abuses … The abuses included abducting large numbers of children and forcing them to serve as soldiers … Escapees often must go into hiding to prevent being abducted again. In some instances, their families have faced pressure to give a ’replacement’ child soldier to the group.”

International interests

Violations of human rights can no longer be considered an “internal affair” of that country. That is why the world got involved in the issue of apartheid in South Africa (indisputably an “internal affair” of that country).

Sri Lanka cannot say it is not our business. It is.

These “internal affairs” cause refugees that seek safe havens in other countries such as Australia. Tamil civilians brutilised by the Sri Lankan regime contact “people smugglers”, are put into leaking boats that sink off the Australian coast, or arrive here to be locked up as criminals.

Rather than creating inhumane ways of dealing with these people, the source of the problem, the human rights violations in Sri Lanka, must be addressed.

What is more, all conflicts come to an end. The conflict in East Timor did come to an end, as has the conflict in Ireland and so many others. The Sri Lankan conflict will come to an end in five years, 10, or longer. It might do so with Sri Lanka reduced to a shell, as East Timor was.

The rebuilding of Sri Lanka when the conflict is over will fall on the “international community” (as it did with East Timor). To prevent this catastrophe, action must be taken.

It is not appreciated that there are two conflicts in Sri Lanka.

First, between the Sri Lankan regime and the Tamil people to force the Tamil people to accept Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation.

Second, between the US, India and China for control of the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean is not the largest ocean on this planet, but by far, the busiest. Forty per cent of the world’s population is in countries around the Indian Ocean. Seventy percent of the world’s oil shipments, and 50% of the world’s container cargo, travel across this ocean.

As US admiral Alfred Maher commented 100 years ago, “Whoever controls the Indian Ocean, dominates Asia”.

This international “war” is a peculiar one. These interests compete with each other to control the Indian Ocean, and cooperate with each other to prevent a solution to the problem in Sri Lanka. Just as oil is the problem in the Middle East, the geographical position of Sri Lanka, astride the Indian Ocean, is the problem in Sri Lanka.

The “prize” is Trincomalee, the fourth largest natural harbour in the world, in the Tamil north-east. Trincomalee remaining in the hands of a corrupt Sinhalese regime in Colombo is a better option to it falling into the hands of an independent Tamil state.

To negotiate with a corrupt regime is a far easier task than negotiating with the much more disciplined Tamils.

China has a special interest in safeguarding its crucial oil supply from the Middle East, which passes just below Sri Lanka.

India has a special interest in preventing any other power from “interfering” (even if this means solving a problem) in its “area of control”.

For India to get a foothold in Sri Lanka is crucial. That would be easier to achieve with a corrupt, disorganised, despotic regime in Colombo, than with an independent Tamil state.

What has to be done

International human rights monitors must be admitted into Sri Lanka, now. Tomorrow might be too late for the Tamils.

Sri Lankan disinformation that the problem is “Tamil terrorism” must be exposed. The problem is Sinhala-Buddhist ethno-religious chauvinism and state terrorism aimed at turning Sri Lanka into a Sinhala-Buddhist nation.

I have DVDs that set this out in detail, which I have donated to the Socialist Alliance in Australia.

Sri Lanka must be isolated, as was apartheid South Africa. Economic sanctions should be imposed. We should stop buying Sri Lankan goods. A boycott should target tourism and point to the blood-stained beaches of Sri Lanka. Trade union action to stop handling goods, to and from Sri Lanka, should be implemented.

Public protests need to be organised internationally.

We should pressure our governments to force Sri Lanka to the negotiating table and to make clear that a military “solution” to the Tamil question is not acceptable.

Brian Senewiratne                                                    brisbane, Australia

Assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge

I write to record my sense of outrage at the murder of this outstandingly brave man who has done so much to expose that which a succession of governments have been trying to conceal. It is clear that the politico-military junta that has the temerity to call itself a Government will stop at nothing.

It is time for the Sinhalese in the south to hit the streets and bring Colombo to a halt and make it ungovernable. That is the only way to bring an end to this tyrannical regime which is even worse than the regime of my cousin, Chandrika Kumaratunga. I thought her regime was terrible. When one of her senior ministers said that it was time to take out an Editor or two, and she took no action against him, she was setting a very dangerous precedent.  I did not realise that the regime to follow was worse, much worse.

In the (dozen) DVDs I have recorded and distributed internationally, I said that "Today it is the Tamils, tomorrow it will be the Sinhalese." The murder of Lasantha, shows that tomorrow has arrived. It is not a coincidence that with the Media Minister taking over on January 1, 2009, a week later an independent TV station is extensively damaged, and three days later the Editor of one of the few credible newspapers is murdered.

In the numerous addresses on Sri Lanka I have given across the world in the past 25 years, I have repeatedly quoted Pastor Niemollers famous poem describing the dangers of political inactivity: "First they came for the Communists, I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist, Then they came for the Jews, I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me."

I am calling on my fellow Sinhalese to get out on the streets in their thousands until this barbaric regime running (or rather, ruining) Sri Lanka, comes to an end, and the country is saved from a fascist dictatorship and a Failed State. If this is done, Lasantha would not have died in vain

I write as a Christian, albeit a non-church going one (for reasons too complicated and probably irrelevant to go into here). Those interested in this can go to tamilcanadian.com, sangam.org, or tamilnation.com, type my name in the 'search box' and scroll down the 50 + articles I have written. Find the two letters I wrote to the Head of my Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and you will know why I stand where I do. You will also find my letter to the Roman Catholic Bishop in Colombo. 


There is another letter which I am sending the Pope which will appear at the same sites in a few days. I have invited His Holiness to visit his flock in the concentration camps in Sri Lanka, and on the asylum-seekers boat off Merak, and held without charge or trial in the numerous prisons outside Sri Lanka. If he believes what is in the Bible, they are all God’s children, even those who believe in a different God. 


What is going on with the Tamil refugees in the Sri Lankan North and East, and now on the asylum-seeker boats off Indonesia, and in the numerous hell-holes in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and my own country Australia, is not a Christian or non-Christian problem, nor is it a Sinhalese or a Tamil problem but a problem in Human Rights. 


I have stressed this in the dozen DVDs I have recorded and distributed world-wide and which are still available for those who want them. 


A number of emails have recently come my way asking for prayers for the refugees, asylum-seekers etc. As I said in a talk, a sermon I you like, that I was invited to deliver in the Elim Church in Auckland last March (which has been recorded is in dvd, ), "Prayer without action is dead". I said this in the clearest possible language to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the letters I have referred to, and just a few weeks ago here in Brisbane when I was asked to address a group of Church goers. 


I did the same when asked to deliver the sermon in St Paul’s Cathedral, Kandy, Sri Lanka, on St Luke's Day (St Luke was a physician and it was conventional for a doctor to take the service and another to deliver the sermon). I said: 


"anyone can come to church and recite prayers and hymns parrot-fashion, but that real Christianity had to go beyond that.” 
I said that I expected them to stand up in public and condemn what my aunt, Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike, and her goons were doing to the Plantation Tamils, who were dying on the streets in Kandy, and were being transported by me to my ward in the General Hospital Kandy so that they could die with dignity, love and care". If those in the congregation could not, or would not, do that, then all their Church-going was a meaningless ritual. All this is in a booklet called "What I have taught and learnt in Sri Lanka. The musings of a senile teacher" I do have a few copies of this still available if you are interested. 


To get back to the Merak asylum seekers, the situation is getting more serious by the day. Some 240 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers are in a boat tied up in Merak, held there at the request of Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, Rudd, whom I know personally (he is my Federal member of parliament). He is a Christian and a ‘Church-goer’. May I say that it is a most ‘unChrist-like’ Christian who disregards the “When I was homeless you took me in”, provision, when the people in need of a home have a brown skin. 


May I quote the Holy Koran to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a retired general, the President of Indonesia, and a Muslim, as Barak Obama did in his Cairo speech: 


“The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Koran also says that whoever saves a person is as if he has saved all mankind” 


This is particularly important now that there has been the unnecessary death of a 29 year old, whose only crime was that he was born a Tamil. He was seeking refuge from a barbaric and murderous regime in Sri Lanka, and died because of a refusal of the Indonesian military authorities to allow medical help, and when they finally agreed to allow this, to the Indonesian doctors to administer minimally acceptable medical care. 


Those responsible for the violation of basic human rights, and the UN Refugee Convention (which Kevin Rudd’s country has signed), must be held accountable, just as those in Sri Lanka responsible for the atrocities in the North and East of that country, must be held accountable for what happened in 2009. 


All this will be dealt with in a series of articles calling for action which I will publish in the coming weeks. 


Right now, we are being carried away by "Christmas" which really has nothing to do with Christianity but a commercialized 'event' sponsored by big business to rake in money, lots of it. This is not to say that the Birth of Christ should not be celebrated (not that there is any evidence that Christ was, in fact, born on the 25th of December, anymore than there is evidence that Buddha on his death-bed declared that Lanka would be the custodian of his teaching, as the ‘Mahavamsa’ – the ‘Great Chronicle’- claims it was). Just for the record, my mother was a devout Buddhist and I went to the Buddhist temple in Attanagalla with her on full-moon days, and to the Anglican Church with my father (and my mother), on Sundays. 


Be that as it may, I think the spirit of Christianity, of doing the right thing rather than the easy thing, must go beyond Christmas. 


There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends all nations and peoples, be they white or brown or black, be they Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or atheist. It is a belief that is not new, but has beat in the hearts of billions of people across the world for thousands of years. This is what is means to share the world in the brief time we spend on this earth. This is what it means to be a human being. 


In this spirit, I would urge you to get involved from tomorrow (Christmas Day 2009), to commit yourself to getting involved in addressing some of the outrageous things that are going on in many parts of the world, not least to the helpless Tamil people in the North and East of Sri Lanka, and now in the dreadful refugee camps, essentially prisons, in many countries. 


Brian Senewiratne                                                  Brisbane, Australia