Brian Senewiratne respods to a silly question - "What if we had won the war?"

If by 'we' you mean Tamils, then your question is not relevant. The Tamils have won the war, in that for the first time in history, at least in recent history, it has been very firmly established beyond any doubt, that there is no alternative to Eelam. For this, you have Rajapaksa and Fonseka to thank. When Eelam is finally established, which I have no doubt that it will be, these  two characters who should have a statue erected at the entrance to Tamil Eelam “These are the two 'patriotic' (or idiotic) Sinhalese who made his possible." You can also erect a statue of my uncle SWRD Bandaranaike which reads “This is the fellow who divided Ceylon in 1956 and made Eelam an absolute necessity”  If there is room, which I guess there will be, and you are feeling generous, you can erect a statue of my aunt Sirima with “This is the dimbat who introduced so-called “standardization of Marks” and precipitated the armed struggle”, and if there is more room, you can slip in a statue of my cousin Chandrika, with “This is the woman who failed to get into Medicine (and thank God for that), threw away the only opportunity of undoing what her bloody parents had done, which would have prevented Eelam".

Then you can have a statue of that wonderful cartoon I drew when I was last in the US to address the Illnakai Tamil Sangam AGM as the Chief Guest. It was a cartoon I am immensely proud of. It shows a chariot drawn by 4 bulls (there are such ‘chariots – my father had one in our estate in Veyangoda to transport coconuts). The front two bulls (conventio

nally the real ‘he’ bulls,) being Gotabhaya Rjapakse and Sarath Fonseka. Behind them the 2 lesser bulls, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Palitha Kohonne – the latter being the one who perfected Nazi Goebell’s “big Lie’- that if a lie is outrageous enough and repeated enough times, it will be believed, not least by the one who uttered it).

But I digress. To get back to my cart - in the cart are cheering Tamils waving flags, the flags of Tamileelam (which I will be delighted to design for before I die) – it will be based on the Chakravarthi the Buddhist symbol of Peace), and on the road is a sign several feet tall, with a clear arrow “ 5 km to Tamil Eelam”

I would gladly have drawn this fantastic cartoon and I did too, but I left it at some joker’s house (I think it was in New Jersey ), or was I Boston?  which I hope will be returned to me. If not, one of you talented people (and there are hundreds of thousands in the Tamil community, I know it because I have trained more than 500 of them as doctors when I was in Peradeniya), will draw one for me and send it to the sangam, or tamilcanadian or wherever, acknowledging that this is non-copyright, ie it acan and must be copied, but that the idea came from a senile Sinhalese who no longer can draw.

I think Ill put a piece on the net that this is NOT the time to say “if we had done this or that” but to say, “This is the moment, the moment which we waited for, with a complete cretin as President, a country that is bankrupt and heading for a failed State, THIS is the moment to strike”. By strike, I don’t mean with rockets and bombs, but with something MUCH more powerful and lethal, a TOTAL economic boycott and an isolation of this dreadful regime, to bring it to it senses. It can be done, it must be down, and it will be done. Of that I am as certain as I was in 1959 when I led a debate in my school, “This House affirms that The Apartheid regime in South Africa can and must be dismantled”. I led the debate, and won. Many years later when that dreadful regime collapsed, I modestly said “I told you so”.

Incidentally, it was in 1942, when I was only 10 years old, I crossed the ‘great divide’ as I headed for Jaffna for the first time. I told the two in the back seat “Until this area is separated from the South, this area will never develop”. My mother, the sister of one of the finest Marxists Sri Lanka has ever produced, muttered something about ‘I suppose that is the voice of your uncle speaking’. I said “It has nothing to do with Marxism or my uncle, but mush to do with the practical consequences of the Colebrooke-Cameron ‘Reforms’ of 1833 which learnt in my history class last month”. I thought so then, I think so, even more so, now. THAT is why I have campaigned for the cause of the Tamil people to live with equality, dignity and safety, (and now to live at all) in the area of historical habitation of the tamil people. That is what the struggle is all about. That the struggle will succeed, I have not the slightest doubtnymore than I I had a doubt that the East Timor struggle against a far less brutal regime ( Indonesia ) will succeed. All tin-pot fascist regimes do. Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin are the classic examples. More are lining up behind them to collapse. Leading them in the line-up are the likes of Mahinda Rajapaksa.

My dream of being the Foundation Professor of Medicine in the University of Tamil Eelam might not come true, but that such a University will be established, I have not the slightest doubt. When it is, I will hail (from Hell or where ever), “I told you so’

The most disastrous thing you can do right now, is to lose hope at a time when the politico-military fascist dictatorship that has the temerity to call itself a ‘Government’ is reeling, as mass-murderer confronts mass-murderer in the Presidential elections 26 Jan 2010 to pick ‘The mass Murderer par excellence”  aka President of Sri Lanka.