An Appeal to Prime Minister Hon. John Howard and Hon. Members of Houses of Parliament, Australia

Prime Minister Hon. John Howard
and Hon. Members of Houses of Parliament,
Canberra.


An Appeal to prevent a civil war in Sri Lanka


Dear Mr Howard and Parliamentarians,


Concerned people from the Sri Lankan Tamil Community (and others) are meeting outside Parliament on Monday 29.5.06 to draw your attention, and seek your support, to prevent the restart of armed hostilities in Sri Lanka. Due to unfortunate circumstances beyond my control, I am unable to be there.


I am a Sinhalese from the majority (74%) community in Sri Lanka and not from the persecuted Tamil minority (18%), which has been facing serious problems at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) for many years. I am a doctor of Medicine and my only interest is humanitarian, not political.


It is of no concern to me as to who runs Sri Lanka as long as it is run without discrimination of a section of the population and the violation of their human rights, including and especially, the right to life. Amnesty International (AI) and other Human Rights groups with international credibility have documented, in a series of publications in the past three decades, the serious violation of human rights to which the Tamil community has been subjected to in Sri Lanka.


This has included mass arrests, detention without charge or trial, ‘disappearances’ of thousands while in Army custody (Sri Lanka had the second highest incidence of involuntary ‘ disappearances’ in the world), murder, torture and rape of Tamil civilians by the Armed Forces and bombing and shelling of the Tamil North by their own Government Forces.


In just one area Chemmani, some 900 civilians held in Army custody without charge or trial ‘disappeared’, their bodies being later found in mass graves. Under mounting international pressure, an exhumation was carried out in the presence of an AI representative and an Australian Forensic Scientist.


Unbelievably, the Army Brigadier General in charge of this area was later sent to Australia as Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner. I urged my cousin, the then President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, not to do so at least until his responsibility for this atrocity was clarified. I was not accusing him of killing anyone but when 900 people in the custody of his Armed Forces ‘disappear’, he must be held accountable.


An investigation by Channel 9 into this atrocity was screened in this country. The Australian Forensic Scientist testified that those who were exhumed showed signs of torture and the AI representative, who also appeared on the program, expressed ‘concern’ at the appointment.


I came to Canberra and presented my concerns to your Department of Foreign Affairs. Despite this, Australia decided to accept this person as a Diplomat. The Tamil community in Australia was outraged. Mr Howard, you may not see it this way, but this was a downright insult to the Sri Lankan Tamils, a slap in the face by their Government. I know the hurt that I felt as a Sinhalese, despite the fact that I had not lost members of my family at the hands of the Armed Forces under the command of the Brigadier General.

Let me move away from Sri Lankans and see what non-Sri Lankan Australians have reported. Let us take our own Lawasia, the Law Association for Asia and the Pacific, centred here in Australia. Patricia Hyndman, the then Secretary of Lawasia’s Human Rights Standing Committee, after her visit to Sri Lanka, gave me a copy of her report on “Democracy in Peril”. This is what she said:

“There was a general consensus that within Sri Lanka today the Tamils do not have the protection of the rule of law, that the Sri Lankan government presents itself as a democracy under crisis, and that neither the government, nor its friends abroad, appreciate the serious inroads on democracy which have been made by the legislative, administrative and military measures which are being taken.

Mr. Howard, as a lawyer yourself, you simply cannot ignore this.

The bottom line of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is systematic and progressive discrimination of the Tamil minority by a succession of Sinhalese-dominated Governments over the past 58 years. This discrimination (in employment, job opportunities, education, the use of their language (Tamil) and the developmental neglect of the areas they live in) has been carried out by every Sinhalese political party to get the support (and votes) of the majority Sinhalese, to get into or remain in power.


A series of completely non-violent protests by the democratically elected representatives of the Tamil people were met by Government-sponsored Sinhalese hoodlum violence and the violence of the Police (95% Sinhalese), and the Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese). Several ‘Pacts’ to address the legitimate grievances of the Tamils, were unilaterally abrogated by a succession of Sri Lankan Governments, under pressure from Sinhalese extremists and political opportunists who envisage multiethnic, multi-religious, multicultural, Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. If this is the perception, which is even enshrined in the 1972 and all subsequent Constitutions, then there is no alternative to the establishment of a separate Tamil State, Eelam.


In 1977, at the last credible General Elections, the Tamil people, unable to cope with the extensive violation of their human rights, voted overwhelmingly for the establishment of a separate Tamil State, in the area live in (North and East).


With their elected representatives (Tamil) getting nowhere with non-violent protests, Tamil youths, in 1972, took up arms to force the GOSL to accede to the wishes of their people.


The Tamil Tigers are not the cause of the problem but the result. The cause of the problem is anti-Tamil discrimination by a succession of Sri Lankan Governments and the failure of the democratic process to address the entirely justifiable demands of the Tamil minority. These ‘demands’ are that they be allowed to live with equality, dignity, safety and without discrimination in the country of their birth, and to develop the neglected area they live in.


After the ‘9/11’ events in New York and America’s ‘fight against terrorism’, the GOSL has portrayed the Sri Lankan problem as a “fight against terrorism” to get the necessary arms to fight its own people.


It must be appreciated that the extensive bombing and destruction of the Tamil North (Jaffna has more than a million civilians) cannot be a “fight against terrorism”. It is a Government fighting its own people – the Tamils, who are simply asking that they be allowed to live in peace.


After 18 years of one of the bloodiest and most destructive ethnic conflicts in South Asia, the loss of some 65,000 lives mainly Tamil civilians, and serious effects on the economy of the country, in December 2001, with the election of the United National Party (UNP) Government, the Tamil Tigers unilaterally declared a cease-fire. The Government quickly reciprocated and since February 2002 there has been no fighting.


The Tamil Tigers and the GOSL sat down to Peace Talks but with the GOSL dragging its feet in implementing the Agreements entered into, the Talks were suspended.


With the defeat of the UNP and the re-election of Chandrika Kumatunga’s SLFP, now under President Rajapakse, and supported by extreme Sinhala chauvinists and political opportunists, the chance of any reasonable offer being made to the Tamils for a devolution of power seems remote. Unless there is massive international pressure on the GOSL to come up with reasonable offers to the Tamils that will address their underlying problems, war will be inevitable.


To simply ban the Tamil Tigers as “terrorists” is clearly an exercise in futility. The Tamil Tigers are the only group negotiating for justice for the Tamils. Countries that simply ban them are opting out of facilitating a negotiated settlement to the conflict.


Australia has a large expatriate Tamil community. Some have come here as refugees, others are here by choice. However they came, they have made a significant contribution to this country over many years. Australia has an obligation to support their just request for the Australian Government to put pressure on the GOSL to see that there is ‘Peace with Justice’ for the Tamils and prevent the return to war and a decimation of what is left of their homeland in the North and East.


The question has been asked whether a civil war in another country is our business. Yes it is. Internal conflicts have an external dimension. While it is true that it is the people of Sri Lanka who will have to decide their future, we in the international community have a duty, if not a right, to voice our opinion since we, not just the Sri Lankans, may have to pay the price for chaos in Sri Lanka


1. Major human rights violations in a country are no longer considered an “internal affair” of that country, eg the international condemnation of apartheid in South Africa, what Indonesia was doing in East Timor, the barbarism in Rwanda. Sri Lanka cannot claim that the extensive suffering of the Tamil people in the North and East, and the suffering of the poor Sinhala rural youths shedding their blood fighting this unnecessary war, is out of bounds to comment from the international community


2. Chaos in one country results in a fall-out in other countries. As Sri Lanka disintegrates, refugees contact the nearest ‘people smuggler’, pay huge sums of money and get into leaky tin boxes which sink off the Australian coast. Damage is done to the image of Australia as a caring country. If the astronomically increasing world-wide problem of refugees is to be addressed, countries such as Australia, Canada, US and the European countries, to name just a few, will have to focus on the source rather than try to put up inhuman shutters. So, Sri Lanka’s problems become our problems, and we have a right, indeed an obligation, to “interfere”.


3. When the destruction ends, the task of rebuilding the country, both the North and East, and even the South which is in a poverty crisis, falls on the international community. A good example is East Timor. We watched and we waited for years while the murderous regime in Jakarta systematically raped East Timor reducing it to a mere shell. It will take 50 years to rebuild East Timor and we, the tax-payers, may well end up paying for this. We have a right to try and prevent another devastation which is already far advanced in the North and East of Sri Lanka and will soon engulf the country unless something is done.


We in the international community, whether ex-Sri Lankans or non-Sri Lankans, have the right to ask the hard questions and exert the necessary pressure, to bring sense to a senseless situation as a country, once the “Pearl of the Indian Ocean”, changes to the new “Killing Fields of Asia”, a country once with a bright future, turns into a country with no future.


Australia has a particular responsibility to try and prevent the restart of a highly destructive war in a country “in its sphere of interest and influence”. It simply cannot dismiss it as someone else’s problem or “terrorism”. What is at stake is a serious humanitarian issue and an extensive abuse of human rights with a consequent fallout on Australia, and serious consequences both to the Tamil North and East and the Sinhalese South in Sri Lanka.


I enclose a copy of a letter I wrote last week to the British Prime Minister which sets out Britain’s specific responsibility. 

Letter to UK Prime Minister on the Critical Situation in Sri Lanka

Honourable Tony Blair
Prime Minister, UK
10 Downing Street
London


Dear Mr Blair,


I am writing as the Patron of the Campaign for Truth and Justice which was formed when I visited London in March 2006. I am expressing my concerns at what is going on in Sri Lanka, not only in the Tamil North and East, but also in the Sinhalese South.


I am a Sinhalese from the majority community. I am not a member of the persecuted Tamil minority which has been facing serious problems at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Government. My only interest is humanitarian, not political. I am a doctor of Medicine trained in your country (Cambridge University and London University). I spent some 15 years in Britain and know the British people well. I am quite certain that if they know the facts, as distinct from Sri Lankan Government propaganda, they will be outraged.


Although Sri Lanka has had half a century to sort out its problems, the basic problem was created by the British during 150 years of Colonial occupation (1796-1948). If Britain was the cause of the problem, Britain must also play a significant role in its solution. Unfortunately, this is not so. On the contrary, Britain is becoming part of the problem, indeed aggravating it and making it unsolvable.


I am not going to detail Sri Lanka’s colonial or post-colonial history – a subject on which I have addressed several meetings in your country, which included one on the Abuse of Democracy in Sri Lanka, a copy of which I will be happy to send you. Here I will deal with just a few points relevant to the current situation.


1. Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was never a single entity. It consisted of three separate Kingdoms (Nations) for hundreds of years, a Jaffna (Tamil) Kingdom in the north, a Kandyan (Sinhalese) Kingdom in the centre and a Kotte (Sinhalese) Kingdom in the south. It was the British who, in 1833 (the Colebrooke-Cameron ‘reforms’, so-called), ‘unified’ the country for the administrative convenience of the colonial power. It was not merely a ‘unification’ but a centralisation of power, including developmental power, in the Sinhalese South and later, in Sinhalese political hands.


2. This colonial ‘experiment’ has failed (as it has in Malaya, India, and numerous other former colonial countries). While the failure in Malaya and India has been corrected (with the splitting of Malaya into Malaysia and Singapore (I might add that Singapore is one thirtieth the size of Sri Lanka), and India into Pakistan and India), the documented failure in Sri Lanka has not been corrected. It is this that has led to the disastrous civil war which has decimated Sri Lanka in the past two decades and is threatening the future and very survival of the country.


3. There has been a serious and very deliberate developmental neglect of the Tamil areas in the North and East at the hands of a succession of Sinhalese-dominated Governments since Independence.


In addition to developmental neglect, there has been serious and progressive discrimination of the Tamil minority in the use of their language (Tamil), education, job opportunities and even the right to exist, at the hands of every Sinhalese-dominated Government since Independence 58 years ago. This has been done by almost every Sinhalese political party for political gain – some 74% of the voters being Sinhalese.


4. A series of peaceful protests by the Tamils over three decades have been unsuccessful in getting the Sinhalese-government to address these problems. Peaceful Tamil protests have been crushed by armed force unleashed on the Tamils by the State (the Police and the Armed Forces), and Sinhalese hoodlums sponsored by the State.


A series of Pacts between Sinhalese political leaders and Tamil leaders have been unilaterally abrogated by the Sinhalese leaders in the face of virulent opposition by Sinhalese extremists and political opportunists who envisage multicultural, multireligious and multi-ethnic Sri Lanka, as a Sinhala – Buddhist nation. It is, in fact, the declared policy (even enshrined in the Constitution) to make Sri Lanka into a Sinhala- Buddhist Nation. If that is the policy (and it is), then there is no option to the establishment of a separate Tamil State, Eelam. Eelam is not the creation of the Tamils but of Sinhala ethno-religious extremism and chauvinism.


5. With the documented failure over three decades of peaceful protests to achieve anything, and the crushing of peaceful protests by armed force of the State, in the 1970s Tamil youths decided to exert the necessary pressure by taking up arms. The Tamil Tigers are not the cause of the problem but the result. The ‘cause’ has been Sinhalese anti-Tamil discrimination for political gain.


6. Faced with progressive discrimination, the Tamil people in the North and East voted overwhelmingly in the 1977 General Elections for a separate Tamil State, Eelam. It is not the Tamil Tigers who have asked for a division of the county, but the Tamil people, and for very good reasons. There is no evidence that the Tamil people have changed their mind in the past 30 years. On the contrary, the extensive violation of human rights to which the Tamil people have been subjected by Sinhalese governments and the Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese), has increased their resolve to free themselves from the ruthless regime which has the temerity to call itself their “Government”.


7. The violence of the Sinhala-dominated government unleashed on the Tamils over the past three decades is genocidal, as defined in Humanitarian Law and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (which was signed by the Sri Lankan Government). There is prima facie evidence, at the very least, that what the Sri Lankan Government is unleashing on the Tamils is Genocide. I will be making a Submission to the UN Human Rights Commission on this, a copy will be sent to the EU.


8. Britain and several other countries have exacerbated the problem by supplying weapons to one side (the Sri Lankan Government) and demonising and banning/restricting the movement, of the other (the Tamil Tigers). It is foreign-supplied bombs and shells, and foreign-supplied helicopters, bombers and multi-barrelled guns that have decimated the Tamil people, their lives, their homes and their property. What is being conducted is not just a war against the Tamil Tigers but a war against the Tamil people in the North and East to force them to accept a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. This ‘war’ now has genocidal characteristics. If this is being supported by the British Government (which it is), the British people must know about it.


9. I cannot see that banning one side to Peace negotiations (the Tamil Tigers), makes any sense. Countries that have taken this senseless decision (which, incidentally, Sri Lanka has not!), have opted out of assisting with peace negotiations. What these silly decisions do is to strengthen the hand of Sinhalese ethno-religious chauvinists and political opportunists in Sri Lanka, which makes the job of the Sri Lankan Government that much more difficult, in already difficult political negotiations. This is breathtaking international irresponsibility.


10. The Sri Lankan Government claims that the problem is “Tamil terrorism”. Any government’s condemnation of terror is credible only if it shows itself to be responsive to reasonable, closely argued, persistent, non-violent dissent. No Sinhala government since Independence in 1948 has been responsive to the reasonable demands of the Tamil people who form 12.5% of the country, and more than 90% of those in the North and East.

11. If negotiations are abandoned and Sri Lanka returns to war (as demanded by Sinhala extremists), it will be the economic end of that country, to say nothing of the destruction of Tamil lives and property in the North and East, and the lives of poor rural Sinhalese youths who ‘volunteer’ to join the Sri Lankan Armed Forces for their economic survival in poverty-ridden villages. This conflict has already cost some 64,000 lives (most of them Tamil civilians) and extensive damage to Tamil property. If war breaks out again, Britain and others might be able to sell more weapons (to both sides) but will have a case to answer for the destruction of Sri Lanka.


12. The Campaign for Truth and Justice, of which I am the Patron, is having a public meeting in Trafalgar Square in London on 21 May 2006. I am asking that this letter be circulated for signature by those who support the simple request that the Tamil people in the North and East of Sri Lanka be freed to live their lives with equality, safety, dignity and without discrimination and be allowed to develop the area in which they live. This will mean that the Tamil people must be freed from a brutal, irresponsible, and uncaring regime that has the gall to call itself their “Government”. An Australian politician who has never been to Sri Lanka added “…. you mean the Government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Excuse me while I laugh.” That summed it up admirably.

Sri Lanka bombs its own People (Assisted by Israel, USA, UK, Pakistan, India, and China)

This is not an Appeal, nor a Plea – humanitarian or otherwise. It is to apprise foreign Governments, the international media, religious leaders, NGOs, leaders of civic society and people outside Sri Lanka, of what is going on in that country. It is NOT a request for help or intervention. I am merely presenting the facts to the outside world and my sympathy to a devastated people in Trincomalee.


1. On 25 April 2006 a female suicide bomber dressed as a pregnant woman was ‘visiting’ the Sri Lankan Army hospital in the Army Headquarters in Colombo. This is in one of the heavily-guarded and most secured “High Security Zones” in the island. She could not have got to where she was (outside the Army hospital) without “inside help” ie from a member(s) of the Armed Forces (almost 100% Sinhalese). 


2. She waited for the Army Commander, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, and threw herself in front of his limousine, detonating the explosives strapped on her. Five of his body guards on heavily armed motorcycles were killed, as were three others. Fonseka was injured but survived. 


3. I am not going to speculate on the identity of the female suicide bomber. The claim, as always, is that she was from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). If she was, to get to where she stood, she would have needed to have some very ‘close connections’ with the Security Forces, a possible but unlikely scenario. The alternative possibility is that she could equally well have been from a Sinhalese extremist group that has been urging the President Mahinda Rajapakse to take a hard (or harder) line, abandon the Ceasefire, return to ‘war’ and ‘smash’ the LTTE.


4. I will not elaborate on the highly questionable human rights record of Fonseka when he was the Commander of the Sri Lankan ‘Security Forces’ in Jaffna in the Tamil North a decade ago.Hundreds of Tamil civilians held in custody without charge or trial 'disappeared' – their tortured bodies later found in mass graves It was one of his own Army soldiers who, under oath, in the Supreme Court in Colombo, showed where the mass graves were located, adding that some were alive when buried. An exhumation with international observers, including Amnesty International, confirmed that the victims had been tortured and killed. I am not accusing Fonseka of killing anyone. However, the victims were in his custody and he is answerable. He could not have been unaware of what was going on.


That said, I condemn all killings or attempted killings – deserved or not. 


5. Within hours of the explosion in Colombo, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces launched air and artillery attacks in Trincomalee in the East – some 150km away. The speed at which this occurred leaves not the slightest doubt that it was pre-planned.


6. Seven Tamil villages near Trincomalee were indiscriminately bombed and shelled. Israeli-built Kfir war planes made 5 ‘visits’ dropping scores of bombs on civilian targets while the Sri Lankan Navy shelled the area from gun boats which fortuitously ‘happened to be’ off the coast. Between 6.30pm and 8pm on 25 April 2006, some 96 naval shells landed in just one area alone. Air strikes continued the next day.


7. The civilian population were unable to run for safety as shells came in from sea and land, and bombs were dropped from the air. Thousands (I don’t think anyone sat and counted them) fled the area dragging their elderly, the sick and children. The Santhosam Children’s Home which cared for over 40 orphaned children (ex-Tsusami which devastated the area) suffered a direct hit by a Kfir bomb. The rationale is that small ‘Tigers’ become big ones. ‘Take them out’ early – ‘preemptive action’, if you like. The Transit Camp for Tsunami - affected refugees was shelled. What the Tsunami could not achieve, the GOSL would try. Is there any other explanation? It was not ‘collateral damage’. It was deliberate and calculated. The number of casualties is unknown at the time of writing but cannot be inconsiderable. It makes little difference whether it was 10 or 1000. It is dangerous to quantify human life and suffering. It devalues human life.


8. There are no hospitals in this area and the two medical centres are staffed only by visiting doctors and nurses. They have been unable to get to these centres because of road blocks set up by the Army. 

Attack on Fonseka

9. The reaction of the Sri Lankan Government, the “Free World”(!), and even Amnesty International, is interesting.Dr Palitha Kohonna, Director General of the Peace Secretariat, now turned War Secretariat of the GOSL, admitted using the Armed Forces against civilian Tamil villages, justifying it as a “retaliatory measure”. He says that the air strikes and shelling should not be counted as a violation of the Cease-fire Agreement (signed by the GOSL and the Tamil Tigers) but a “fair reply” to the bomb blast in Colombo earlier in the day. Condoning the attacks on Sampur and adjoining villages, Kohonna called the attack by the State Forces as “justifiable”.


10. President Mahinda Rajapakse, who on several occasions has declared himself a “man of peace”, addressed the Nation on TV just 4 hours after the bombing. He praised the military for “patience and restraint”. Not a word of sympathy for the Tamil civilians (whose President he is) whose lives have been shattered by the bombing and shelling. 


His Defense spokesman Kaheliya Rambukwelle declared “There is no duration or limits on defence matters”. It is unclear who the aggressor was to mount this ‘defence’. Since the villages were attacked, one can only assume that unarmed villagers in Trincomalee were attacking Sri Lanka and the Government was taking “defensive action”.


11. The Sinhalese political opportunists in the so-called ‘Marxist’ Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) – no strangers to terrorism, who support President Rajapakse and sustain his party in Parliament, called for all parties to support Rajapakse “for the defense of the motherland against terrorism”.


These are the ‘patriots’ who brought the Sri Lankan government to its knees in1971, and repeated it in 1988. They assassinated the charismatic husband of Chandrika Kumaratunga (later President) because he posed too great a political threat to them, President J.R. Jayawardene’s sister-in-law, Dr Gladys Jayawardene (whose only ‘crime’ was that she, as Head of the Pharmaceutical Corporation, imported drugs at a reasonable price from India), Professor Stanley Wijesundera, the unassuming Vice Chancellor of Colombo University (because they did not believe in tertiary education), and scores of other academics and leading citizens, in addition to wrecking the agricultural infrastructure in Sri Lanka.


What is interesting is that despite these acts of frank terrorism, the Sri Lankan Government did not use Kfir bombers to bomb the Sinhalese villagers in the South from which the JVP came. That is the difference between being a Sinhalese and a Tamil in Sri Lanka.


12. If the devastated Tamil people were looking for sympathy from the alternative Sinhalese party, now in Opposition, the United National Party, they got none. After meeting with President Rajapakse (from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party), the UNP Deputy Secretary-General Tissa Atanayake warned, “If the Peace Process is to be fruitful, the LTTE should take immediate action to control their violent actions” (emphasis mine).


13. The international response to the GOSL outrage in Trincomalee has been predictable. The US, EU, Japan and India have condemned the suicide bombing in Colombo and called on both sides to adhere to the ceasefire and return to negotiations! The Indian Government convened its Crisis Management Group on the second day of the bombing and sent additional warships to the Palk Straits between India and Sri Lanka - presumably to help the Sri Lankan Navy if they ran into problems shelling the unarmed Tamil villagers.


In Washington, the US assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Richard Boucher stated “It is regrettable that the Tamil Tigers have decided to restart the war instead of restarting the peace process. We are in touch with Governments around the world to bring to bear whatever pressure we can on the Tamil Tigers to abandon this course of action and to look for ways that we can support the Government in coping with the threat”. With unusual modesty, the US has played down the support already given to the GOSL by way of a massive supply of arms, some of which rained down on the people in Trincomalee.


There was no response from Israel nor a request for thanks for supplying the Kfir bombers or the Mossad agents who ‘helped’ to train the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.


The response of Amnesty International was pathetic - an appeal “to the parties to take all possible measures to minimize harm to civilians and adhere to human rights and international humanitarian law, which prohibit murder or violence to those taking no active part in hostilities” . The fact that the GOSL has openly flouted human rights and humanitarian law, apparently does not call for an outright condemnation. The recently deceased Peter Benensen, the visionary founder of AI whom I knew, must be turning in his grave.


14. The Sri Lankan government must be held accountable for this outrage, which is certainly not the first. So must those who supply weapons to this irresponsible regime who use these weapons against their own citizens. Sri Lanka does not make Kfir bombers, multi-barrel guns or rockets. Those who supply these have a case to answer.


15. A number of NGOs and others have appealed to the international community which has responded in the way I have indicated. It has been a slap in the face for these devastated people. I am not going to hurt these people again by appealing for help from an international community steeped in hypocrisy. The only ‘crime’ that these people have committed is to be born Tamil. They pay for a crime they did not commit in a world where no one cares. Presumably Tamil lives in Sri Lanka are not real lives, Tamil suffering not real suffering.


16. I have met some of the people in the villages that have now been flattened. It was in 1952 when as a young Zoology student, I was hiking in this area. Unable to find a place to sleep, we decided to sleep under a tree. Some young men woke us up at midnight and asked us what we were doing. We explained that we had decided to spend a few days there. They insisted that we move into their huts (they moved out) and then proceeded to feed us for the duration of our stay.


I hope that some of these young men were not among the disabled and old men who were dragged to safety from the bombing. All I want these kind and hospitable people to know is that the young Sinhalese boy whom they befriended and protected from snakes and the pouring rain 50 years ago, sheds his tears while they shed their blood at the hands of a brutal, barbaric and irresponsible regime which has the temerity to call itself their “Government’.

Peace Talks that Have Gone Nowhere

The closing statement by the Norwegian Minister of International Development on 23.2.2006 in Geneva at the end of the first round of talks on the implementation of the Ceasefire, is about the weakest statement I have read.

1. “The GOSL and the LTTE are committed to respecting and upholding the Ceasefire Agreement”.

To “respect” an agreement is to heed it, to “uphold” it is to maintain or confirm it. Neither word indicates the need to implement the Agreement (which is what the Conference was all about). If this was a serious attempt to address the problem, the wording should have been, “The GOSL and the LTTE are committed to implement the Ceasefire Agreement”. The GOSL , in its opening statement, said that it wanted “to express our views in a frank and forthright manner, rather than make vague and ambiguous statements that would serve no useful purpose…” Well, this is a vague and ambiguous statement, if ever there was one.

The GOSL has committed itself to respect and uphold the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). Yet, the Leader of the GOSL team, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva opened his statement by saying that “The Ceasefire Agreement……..is contrary to our Constitution and law” i.e. the CFA is illegal and violates the Constitution. So, the GOSL has agreed to respect and uphold an Agreement, which is illegal and unconstitutional! If the Conference was to continue, commonsense required that the statement made by the Minister should have been withdrawn publicly. It was for the Chair to insist that this be withdrawn but it was not done. There was the absurd situation of discussing the implementation of an Agreement which one Party had declared was unconstitutional and illegal.

2. “The GOSL and the LTTE are committed…to ensure that there will be no intimidation, acts of violence, abductions or killings”.

Given that these problems have reached epidemic proportions all over the country, including the Sinhala South, especially Colombo, there will have to be an extensive monitoring group. The existing Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) functioning only in the North and East, can hardly be described as an ‘extensive monitoring group’. It has been little more than a “note-keeping mission”, if that. It is not possibly for the SLMM to be more than that, given the area to be covered and the resources available. So, the problem of ensuring that there will be no intimidation, acts of violence etc are just words with no meaning. The words have been used without any appreciation of the realities on the ground.

3. “The LTTE is committed to taking all necessary measures to ensure that there will be no acts of violence against the security forces and police”.

If there are alleged incidents, can we have an international investigative team whom both sides can trust, to establish that the LTTE was responsible? The SLMM is no substitute for a proper investigating team – they simply do not have the expertise (or the resources).

4. “The GOSL is committed… to ensure that no armed group or persons other than the Government security forces will carry arms or conduct armed operations”.

Who are these nameless “armed groups”? The LTTE in its opening statement listed five major paramilitary groups operating in the Northeast and Colombo as the “ the Karuna group, EPDP group, PLOTE group, EPRLF (Varaithar) group and a Muslim group called Jihad group.”

Has the GOSL committed itself to ensure that all these armed groups are disarmed, or is it going to be some or none (loopholes being left wide open to enable one or all of them to slip out and continue to carry arms, perhaps under a different name, or claim that they are outside the CFA? Who will monitor this? It cannot be the SLMM because they neither have the staff, facilities or ability to do so, being stretched to the limit as they are. Moreover, the SLMM has no presence in Colombo where these groups are known to operate.

It is of interest (indeed amusing) that the Spiegel Magazine interviewed President Rajapakse just a day before the Talks, on 21 February 2006, in Colombo, about these paramilitary groups and ‘Karuna’ (the renegade from the LTTE). Rajapakse’s response was incredible: “I would like to make one thing clear. My government knows nothing about such paramilitaries or even Karuna ……..Still, my government is committed to disarm such groups and we have already begun to do so”

So, here we have a President who claims to know nothing about the armed groups in his country but is already disarming them! It has come to the point of absurdity. – President Rajapakse playing a significant role in this.

The GOSL team to the Conference was sent by the President. The team has committed the GOSL to disarm armed groups, which the President says his government knows nothing about! What if the GOSL team returns in eight weeks and says that their President says he knows nothing about these armed groups and therefore they must be non-existent?

5. “The GOSL and the LTTE discussed all issues concerning the welfare of children in the North East….’

“Discussing”, they can do for ever – but what are they committed to do by way of addressing the problem of nearly a quarter of a million homeless/orphan children in numerous refugee camps as a consequence of the war and the tsunami? Or does the problem end with a “discussion”?

Where the Conference failed.

The Conference was all about the implementation of the CFA and returning the conflict zone to normalcy. In an earlier paper, “Talks, Talks and more Talks”, in the section titled, Improving the living conditions of the inhabitants in the area of conflict in the Tamil North and East,“ I spelt out what had to be done. Not one of these urgent measures was mentioned in the Closing Statement. I do not know whether they were discussed. If they were, then it should have made it to the Closing Statement.

If they were not discussed, one wonders what was, in the two days of talks. There was a great deal of time spent by the GOSL team running a commercial for President Rajapakse, the Mahinda Chintanaya, what a fine democratic record Sri Lanka had, how “mindful” the Government was of “the respective rights of the ethnic and religious groupings” etc. If all this (or even a fraction of it) were true, there would have been no conflict and no need for a CFA.

I have just had a report that at the end of the Conference when the Norwegian facilitators were drafting a joint statement, the Government delegation spent no less than three hours quibbling about one word, “Agreement”. They objected to the opening paragraph which referred to the Ceasefire Agreement and wanted the word “Agreement” left out! The President (and his two brothers) in Colombo at the end of the telephone from Geneva refused to approve the word which would imply that the CFA was valid. (I thought the Government delegation and the LTTE delegation had agreed to the validity of the CFA. If the GOSL had not accepted it, the LTTE would have walked out). Here they were, once again going over the same ground. After three hours of nonsensical delay, the GOSL backed down. The Government hard line stance was to appease the Sinhala extremists in their camp back home, and their backdown was when they realized that this would spell the end of the Conference and the declaration of war.

Instead of this claptrap and time wasting, what was needed was to address the pressing needs of the civilian population in the war ravaged, then tsunami-devastated, North and East.

If a commercial on President Rajapkse had to be delivered – I can see no reason why this was necessary – and there was no time to address the key issues, then the Conference should have been extended. One way or another, the Conference should have concluded with some definite commitment and a specified time frame to return civilian life to normalcy. Let me state the urgently needed actions yet again.

1. The immediate withdrawal of all restrictions on fishing. Minister de Silva could have called his President in Sri Lanka and got him to call the Navy Commander who was there in the team and tell him that the Navy must comply because, “I am the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces”.

2. There should have been a directive that if the Sri Lanka Army could not be moved out of Jaffna for “Security” reasons (whose security is unclear), then the Army had to be moved out of the most productive lands which are now in the ‘High Security Zone’. There is plenty of waste land in the Peninsula (which I know well). The Army can do whatever they are doing in this area, but to quit agricultural land, which is one of the main sources of income (indeed, of survival) of the civilian population, is mandatory and urgent. This was not done.

3. All schools and places of worship must be returned for civilian use with immediate effect – not at some distant unspecified time.

4. The harassment of the civilian population in the North and East must stop if the area is to return to normalcy. This has to be monitored carefully and if the SLMM has not got the numbers or the power, then it has to be doubled or trebled, and given that power.

5. The Tsunami relief arrangement, P-TOMS must be implemented at once – whatever the JHU and the JVP think or do. The GOSL team, in their opening statement, boasted, “…..it is the first time in the history of this conflict that such a consensus (among all Parties) has been reached”. Well, the JHU and JVP are part of the Government and if Rajapakse, with the sweeping powers he has, really wanted to fix the problem, the JHU and JVP are not in a position to defy him. If they obstruct him and bring the Government down, then Rajapakse is in a position to call another election and put it to the Sinhala people that he tried to seek an “honourable peace” but his efforts were sabotaged by the JVP and JHU.
Can the LTTE be blamed for this lapse?

Can the LTTE be blamed for not having these issues addressed? Yes, they can be blamed because that is the reason why they went for a Conference to address the implementation of the CFA. Of paramount importance was to return the North and East to normalcy.

However, the ‘mitigating circumstances’ is that the LTTE had nailed the GOSL on some crucial issues (accepting the validity of the CFA and the disarming of the paramilitaries) and further ‘nailing’ would have made it impossible for the Government team to return home. They would have been lynched. Balasingham, a shrewd negotiator, perhaps felt that it could be better left for a later date.

Some nonsense claimed by the GOSL team.

The GOSL team did talk some arrant nonsense. I will site just a few.

The democracy of Sri Lanka.

The opening statement of the GOSL team leader, Nimal Siripala de Silva, refers to Sri Lanka as being “one of Asia’s most long-standing democracies. The people have enjoyed universal franchise since 1931”.

He is referring to a country where in 1948, 1,000,000, yes, one million, Plantation Tamils were disenfranchised and decitizenised in one of the worst acts of political savagery in the civilized (or even uncivilized) world.

This is the country where in 1972, the Constitution, which had a specific section (Section 29) which prohibited discrimination of any community, was scrapped and a new Constitution enacted which did not contain a similar clause. This essential safeguard for the protection of minorities was scrapped by the former leader of President Rajapakse’s own party – Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike, who had the temerity to change the name of the country from Ceylon to the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka!

This is a country where in 1977, Prime Minister J.R.Jayawardene from the other side of the Sinhala political divide, installed an Executive Presidency and then promoted himself to the position giving himself absolute and sweeping powers, reducing Parliament to a rubber stamp and the Prime Minister to a clerk. Sri Lanka is only a little short of a Presidential dictatorship and President Rajapakse, who has these powers, should know that. So should his Ministers, including the one who spoke this nonsense.

A car after it and its passengers are set alight by  a Sinhalese mob July 1983 

 This is the country where in 1983 some 3,000 Tamil civilians in the Sinhala South were butchered and their homes and businesses burnt by government sponsored Sinhalese hoodlums, for no reason other than that they were Tamils. Were they “democratically butchered”?

There is no purpose in going on with this abysmal history of a blatant abuse of democracy in Sri Lanka which I have dealt with extensively in a separate publication. For the GOSL delegation, attending a Conference to discuss the implementation of the CFA, to boast about democracy in Sri Lanka, is a bit rich.

The problem of Law and order

Minister Nimal de Silva rambled on about ‘ the Government of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s commitment to maintaining law and order ….in every part of the country” and his administration “initiating a program that extensively cracked down on organized criminals, underworld gangs, armed groups and narcotic dealers”. This is loose talk and vagueness which he decried at the start of his presentation. Whom is he referring to? The most notorious underworld gangs and organized criminals are in the Presidential Security Division (PSD) that ‘looked after’ President Chandrika Kumaratunga and presumably now looks after President Rajapakse. This has nothing to do with the CFA. The murders by the PSD and their underworld associates who were responsible for the murder of the Tamil political leader Kumar Ponnambalam, among many others, has nothing to do with “undermining the ceasefire”.

The President certainly has a problem with gangsters and underworld characters in Colombo, but it is a problem of the making of Sinhala politicians who have institutionalized violence as a means of governance. It dates back to President J.R.Jayawardene (1977) whose armed thugs terrorized the Sinhala South from 1977 to 1994. President Kumaratunga’s PSD took over. The GOSL team does not need to wail about this in an international arena.

A fresh approach

The Minister Nimal de Silva in his opening statement stressed, “Let me at this stage assure all, that it is the desire of H.E.President Rajapakse to look at issues from a fresh perspective……”

There was no evidence at the Conference that it was a “fresh approach”. In fact, it was the same old approach. The GOSL arrived in the Chateau de Bossey with a large number of government-sponsored demonstrators and the jingoistic Sri Lankan media. This is not “a fresh approach” but a well-worn one of trying to apply pressure on the participants using orchestrated demonstrations and the partisan media.

I am about to address some Parliamentarians in Europe on the serious problems facing Sri Lanka. I have been promised a similar welcome by the well-organised Sinhala ‘patriots’ in Europe.

President Rajapakse’s real agenda

The assumption that President Rajapakse genuinely wanted to fix the problem may not necessarily be correct. If he did, he would not have gone into a coalition with ethno-religious Sinhala extremists in the JVP and JHU. He could, of course, have done that just to get into power, as S.W.R.D Bandaranaike did in 1956 when he solicited, and got, the support of the most extreme of the Sinhala extremists in Sri Lanka, sections of the Buddhist clergy (one of whom later assassinated him).

Rajapakse’s eye might not be on solving the ethnic problem but on the Local Government elections due on 30 March 2006. If he can claim in the Sinhala South that he has succeeded in bringing the Tamil Tigers to the Conference table which the UNP from the other side of the Sinhala political divide could not do (the CFA not withstanding), and prevent an almost certain war with economic ruin and the prospect of Sinhala youths returning in body-bags, he hopes he can eat into the voter base of the JVP whose policies would have most certainly resulted in war.

This game will be over on 30 March 2006. It might result in the GOSL adopting a more reasonable posture after this. Time will tell.

The next round

The next round of talks is scheduled for 19-21 April 2006, also in Geneva. After the ‘difficulties’ the GOSL team had at the February Talks, President Rajapakse would be well advised to get some competent negotiators – approaching the UNP Opposition, if necessary, for help e.g. a loan of some of the negotiators they sent for the 2002 Peace Talks. It would be better to do this than to send pathetically inexperienced people. At least the cartoonists will not be able to have a field day.

What happened in Geneva was presented with accuracy by a cartoon in the Daily Mirror of 25 February 2006 titled “President remote controls Geneva talks”. It shows Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva at the batting crease, bat in hand and mobile phone in the other. Anton Balasingham is speeding in with the ball. The Minister in a state of obvious panic, calls President Rajapakse, “He is trying to send another bouncer! What can I do sir?” That just about sums up the Conference.

It is important to look at Sri Lanka’s serious economic state and the impending disaster if the CFA is not implemented and war breaks out.

The Sri Lankan Economy

The downturn in the Sri Lankan economy has been catastrophic. The ranking of Sri Lanka by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has dropped from 63 (out of 101 countries) in 2004, to 73 (out of 104) in 2005 and now (2006) to 98 (out of 117 countries). The economy has been described by the WEF as “very poor” and is currently on par with Albania and Rwanda. A ranking of 98 out of 117 countries does not leave too many countries in a worse economic mess than Sri Lanka. The deterioration in the economic rating is due to poor macro-economic stability, the poor quality of its state sector and the deteriorating security situation. Of these, the major factor since the middle of last year (2005) has been the possibility of the armed conflict restarting. If the conflict restarts, Sri Lanka would almost certainly be looking at bankruptcy.

President Rajapakse could well be out of his depth in this area but he is the one who is running the country and has an obligation to appreciate this critical situation.

Sending a disastrously inexperienced team of negotiators to a Conference that will determine whether there will be war or peace in Sri Lanka is utterly irresponsibility. At the conclusion of the Talks, in an interview given to the only Sri Lankan newspaper worth reading, the ‘Sunday Leader’, Anton Balasingham, the leader of the LTTE team, had this to say “I said, the moment you claim that the CFA is incorrect, then you are coming out of the CFA. That means you are giving two weeks notice for the resumption of hostilities. You better think very carefully, I said”. He went on, “So they (GOSL team) kept quiet” – which is perhaps the most intelligent thing the GOSL team did in the two days. Had they continued to be ‘advised’ by the ‘legal expert’ they took with them, who had passed his ‘use-by-date’, the LTTE would have walked out of the Talks and there would have been war “in two weeks”.  

Dr.Brian Senewiratne                                                                Australia

The THAMOTHERAM funeral. A Sinhala Tribute

Last week a Sinhalese thought it appropriate to fly half way round the world to attend the funeral of a Tamil, Jeyam Thamotheram, whose funeral took place in the Methodist Church, Hammersmith, London, on 4 November 2005. The Church was packed to capacity but from my perspective the highlights were the tributes paid by two exceptional Sinhalese – Adrian Wijemanne and Neville Jayaweera. The 30-hour flight seemed well worthwhile.

Rev Roger Dunlop detailed the unbelievable achievements of an extraordinary person. The first Tribute was from “Siva”, Subramanium Sivanayagam, the finest Tamil journalist, indeed Journalist of any ethnic group, that Ceylon has ever produced. It was a very personal tribute from a close friend read by Mr Sithamparapillai. I will not focus on Siva’s contribution because I am sure it will be published elsewhere. The next was from the irreplaceable Adrian Wijemanne read by myself, and the third by a relative, Dr.Karuna Alagaratnam.

This was followed by the cremation, attended by just the family. After lunch followed the many tributes from relatives, friends and representatives of the numerous organizations that Jeyam founded. I will deal with just two of these tributes because of the importance of the message, which should be heard by all, the Sinhalese in particular.

The Adrian Wijemanne Tribute.

Before I read Adrian’s Tribute, I thanked the Thamotheram family for honouring me by asking me to deliver it. Before I did so, I briefly introduced Adrian, not that he needed an introduction. I described him as a great Sinhalese whose shoelaces I was not worthy to untie. While my contribution to the Tamil struggle for justice, equality and dignity were based on emotion, Adrian’s was based on irrefutable facts, presented and argued with the precision of a brilliant lawyer (which he was not). Here is what he wrote:-

“I met Mr Thamotheram, for the very first time, in June 1994. It was at a meeting of the International Tamil Foundation to which he invited me. Within minutes of meeting, he made me feel as if I had met a long lost friend. He had a gift for friendship. It was a gift that survived the pain and trauma that our two nations were suffering in the throes of war at that time.

Soon our friendship ripened for our concerns were identical – peace and good neighbourliness between our two nations on the island which both of us regarded as our spiritual home in which we had been nurtured and in which the bones of our ancestors lay buried. We got to first name terms very soon – I called him Jeyam and we spoke on the ‘phone with each other nearly every day.

Inevitably our perceptions of the future of our two nations differed. Mine more pessimistic and shorter term than his. He had a longer term hope of eventual amity and peace. He was wiser and more humane than I and he had the advantage of moral integrity which the Sinhala people (myself included) had sacrificed to their eternal discredit. These differences did nothing to cloud our friendship which thrived as the years went by. Never a cross word passed between us and our families drew closer together. I had the advantage of knowing at first hand what a cultured, middle class, Tamil gentleman of the early decades of the last century was like. Jayam was its perfect exemplar.

The ravages of time made short work of all our hopes; the future takes dimensions unforeseen. Nevertheless as human beings we project values of eternal relevance however translated into reality of time and tide. Jayam stood steadfastly for the hope some day, even in the very distant future, our two nations would live on the island, in their own political configurations, not only in peace and good neighbourliness but even more importantly in friendship. He knew and personified the healing grace of friendship” Adrian Wijemanne

I could not have possibly delivered it as well as Adrian would have, having had no sleep for some 30 hours did not help. Just 24 hours later, Adrian was admitted to hospital with a severe pain in his back. I fear he has crushed a spinal vertebra from the relentless myeloma which I know he has. I pray for his recovery, it is about as much as is left to do.

The Neville Jayaweera Tribute.

I had not met Mr Jayaweera until I arrived in the Church. Years ago, he had been the G.A (Government Agent) in Jaffna. His address at the funeral was worth travelling 15,000 km to hear. Here is what he said:-

“Madame Malar Thamotheram, members of the Tharmotheram family and friends.

In the course of several tributes paid to the memory of Jeyam during the Church service, all speakers have referred to his many and varied endowments and achievements. Therefore, during the few minutes allocated to me to speak from this platform I will not go over that ground again. Rather, as a member of the Sinhala community, I want to dwell on an aspect of Jeyam's life which, for obvious reasons, other speakers preferred not to dwell on.

Like many others seated in this audience, Jeyam was a victim of the injustices heaped on the Tamil people by my own community. When I think of how Jeyam's career, and indeed the lives of thousands of other Tamil brethren, had been thwarted and terminated through discrimination practised against Tamil people over decades, I feel a deep shame and contrition. If Jeyam can hear me from wherever he is now I can only ask him to forgive me as a member of the Sinhala community and indeed to find it in his Christian heart to forgive the whole Sinhala community for the wrongs they have inflicted upon the Tamil people”. (I might add that Neville is a Buddhist)

“As I look around me in this very hall, I can see many other brilliant Tamil mathematicians, engineers, accountants, doctors and other professionals, all of whose services and skills are desperately need back in Sri Lanka. So then, why are they here rather than there? Why is it that a Sri Lanka, a country so desperately in need of skills and talents for nation building, squandering all these precious assets in foreign lands? When will Sri Lanka ever realise, if it ever will, that only the termination of its discriminatory policies will attract these skills and talents back to serve the country of their birth?

Fifty seven years after Independence Sri Lanka is still only a state, a state comprised of two warring nations. When will it be able to transcend the divisions that have plagued it for so long and emerge as a single nation? It was Jeyam's undying hope and prayer that some day it will.

As you have heard many speakers say, Jeyam was a brilliant mathematician, one of a galaxy of brilliant students of mathematics who came out of Hartley College Jaffna, among whom was Prof. C.J. Eliezer who went on the become Professor of Mathematics in the Colombo University, (I might add that he was the youngest Dean the Faculty of Science has ever had and the only Ceylonese I know of. who was invited to work with Einstein), but himself had to pursue his career abroad because of discriminatory policies perpetrated upon his fellow Tamils. Jeyam could have pursued a career in the prestigious Ceylon Civil Service, but instead opted for the far nobler vocation of teaching. Many leading secondary schools in then Ceylon sought to employ him as their mathematics teacher but, as a practising Methodist Christian, he opted to serve in Ceylon's premier Methodist institution, Wesley College. However, when in the fullness of time it was Jeyam's turn to be appointed Principal, the discriminatory policies which by that time were in full bloom, took toll again and he was denied what was his legitimate right. Those who knew Jeyam and who were acquainted with the rights and wrongs of the situation were aghast and outraged. Jeyam resigned his job as a teacher at Wesley, opted out of the profession, and after a short stint with the British Council (I think) in Colombo, he migrated to the UK.

However, a man so richly endowed by God would not let his many skills and attributes wither on the vine. In the UK, Jeyam went on to pioneer many institutions and activities to improve the prospects and the quality of life of the Tamil diaspora who were by the mid 70s growing into a steady stream. You have already heard several speakers pay tribute to Jeyam's qualities as an institution builder, as a pioneer and as a leader of the Tamil people.

It would not be an exaggeration to say of Jeyam that he was to the Tamil Diaspora, in the UK as well as in other countries, what Martin Luther King had been to the black people in the USA of the 1960s. Jeyam was deeply hurt but was neither embittered nor discouraged. He had felt the searing pains and carried the scars of injustice, but would not allow himself to be deterred from his vision. Like Martin Luther King, Jeyam had caught a larger vision. To the very end he believed that it is still possible for all the communities who comprise the fabric of Sri Lanka, the Sinhala, the Tamils, the Moors and the Burghers and all religions, to live in peace and amity and without recourse to war. He hoped and prayed that the discriminatory policies followed by successive governments of Sri Lanka would be turned around and that wisdom and reason would triumph over injustice, bitterness and conflict.

Whether Jeyam's dream will ever be realised, and whether the Tamil people of Sri Lanka will ever gain the Promised Land, remains an open question. Notwithstanding, it is the measure of Jeyam's greatness and his quality as an exceptional human being, that despite all the evidence to the contrary he continued to the end to believe in his vision.

May his vision be realised in full and may his Soul Rest in Peace.

While condoling with the Tharmotheram family I thank them again for the privilege of allowing me to speak on this platform.” Neville Jayaweera

I could barely retain my seat, the urge being overwhelming to rise to my feet and applaud. I could then have said that Neville Jayaweera got a ‘standing ovation’ which he richly deserved.

When it was my turn to speak, I could say nothing, it had all been said much moré eloquently by Siva, Adrian and Neville. All I could do was to say that I was proud to identify myself as a Sinhalese at a time when there is little to be proud of in being one. I feel much less isolated to know that people of integrity and honour such as Adrian and Neville who had not sacrificed their ‘moral integrity’, as Adrian so accurately stated.

In my heart I have always had a yearning to do what Neville had just done so touchingly – to say “Sorry” to the Tamil people. As I said in one of my earliest publications on Sri Lanka The July 1983 Massacre. Unanswered Questions which was quoted by Sivanayagam in his recent monumental work Sri Lanka:Witness to History,

“It would be too revolting and unprofitable to recount details of the acts of barbarism committed by Sinhalese mobs. All that the author, a full-blooded Sinhalese, can say is that for the first time he has felt ashamed to be a Sinhalese. It is not that one identifies oneself with the hooligan mobs, but there inevitably is a collective responsibility for the behaviour of one’s countrymen – hooligan, barbarian or civilized. He who watches while a fellow human being has his limbs cut off, belly slit open, petrol poured on and burnt to death, is only marginally less guilty than he who does it. In the General Hospital, Colombo, desperately ill Tamil patients had their intravenous infusions disconnected and were thrown out of wards because they were Tamils. Tamil doctors had to take refuge in toilets to avoid assault”. What I said so long ago (1983) it is what Adrian Wijemanne refers to when he speaks of the Sinhala people sacrificing their moral integrity to their eternal discredit.

In a covering letter I have just received from Ivan Pedropillai who was the ‘Master of Ceremonies’ in the post-lunch presentations , he says

“ Neville Jayaweera's text is concise but also carries a resounding message to his misguided compatriots that unity and prosperity in a modern State can only be built on equality under the law without distinction of race, caste or creed.

Take the United Kingdom, where the Scots represent about 10% of the population and yet hold many of the senior Cabinet portfolios as well as senior positions in industry. This is not an issue here at all as it works on meritocracy. The West is able to make these strides in economic and social development because a man's race, tribe or religion is just private and personal and he is not judged by it.

When the electorate in Sri Lanka is mature enough to leave religion and race
out of politics and when there are multi-ethnic secular parties in the country shorn of corruption, we shall again have a prosperous land. As long as the Sinhalese, the Tamils and the Muslims have their own parties, and when rabble-rousers can play on the baser emotions of the unsophisticated electors, there will continue to be the bane and the stain of racial politics in the country. Brave people like you and Neville have to run the gauntlet of vicious racists on all sides to restrain the country from
continuing with its grim slide into the fate of Hades”.

I am so very glad I decided to go all the way to the UK, not only to farewell an incredible gentleman but because I was also able to meet and hear some extraordinary human beings who give me hope that there is a future, contrary to what it appears to be.

Brian Senewiratne Brisbane, Australia 8.11.2005

C.J.T.Thamotheram: an End of an Era

This is not an obituary, since I am not qualified to write one. It is just a note of thanks from a Sinhalese to a great Tamil for all he has done for the Tamil cause over a very long time. He is one of the unsung heroes of the Tamil struggle. It is a struggle for justice and freedom from Sinhala oppression which has gone on for such a long time and at a terrible cost to Tamil lives, property and the complete destruction of the Tamil areas. What is unrecognized is the damage done to the much-treasured and closely knit family unit which means so much to people of Jeyam’s generation. People of that generation (and even later ones) have paid a terrible, but unrecognized, price in terms of social disruption, indeed ‘social decimation’, as a result of the violence unleashed on the Tamils by a succession of Sinhala Governments since 1956, and more so since 1983. The Thamotherams have made a major contribution to education in Jaffna. Jeyam’s father was the Principal of a very famous school, Hartley College, a Methodist mission school founded in 1838 and was, in fact the first non-white Principal of any school in Jaffna. Among the many famous people coming out of that school was the brilliant Prof.C.J.Elizer who actually worked with Albert Einstein! Later Jeyam himself joined the staff of that school, making a significant contribution to education in Jaffna. He emigrated to Britain many years ago. Unlike so many of his vintage who, having left Sri Lanka, have sat on their hands doing nothing other than hallucinating about the future, Jeyam acted in his own inimitable way. He made an enormous contribution which is largely unrecognized because of the nature of the man. A quiet unassuming, self-effacing man, modest almost to a fault, Jeyam had a vision of what expatriate Tamils could do in a positive way. He founded, among other things, the first Tamil School in the UK, the Tamil Times and the International Tamil Foundation. A few years ago he telephoned me in the early hours of the morning (!) in Australia, to say that he thought it important to get together a group if international writers to highlight the problems faced by the Tamils, would I join the group? That was typically Jeyam, his mind ever active, thinking what more he could do to further the Tamil cause. I gather that he also had the largest list of Tamils in the UK and their addresses. It was the Sri Lankan concept of an ‘extended family’ being applied on an international scale! In October 1981 he founded the monthly Tamil Times which was to be the voice of the Tamil expatriate community. This is the only journal run by Tamils that has been published uninterrupted since its inception more than two decades ago. It is most unfortunate that the founder of this journal had to distance himself from his brain-child. As another great Tamil, S.Sivanayagam, put it in his recently published monumental work, Sri Lanka: Witness to History, the Tamil Times “changed hands midway and subsequently changed direction as well….. it was thought to be, by a wide spectrum of Tamil expatriates, no longer capable of speaking up for an oppressed Tamil nation with any conviction or courage”. When I discussed this with Jeyam at our last meeting a couple of years ago, I could see his eyes brimming with tears and could sense his disappointment and sadness. I first met this extraordinary man in 1984 when I was campaigning to draw international attention to the genocidal massacre of Tamil civilians in the Sri Lankan South whose only crime was that they were where they were. They had every right to be where they were since they and generations of their ancestors had made a major contribution to the development and prosperity of the Sinhala South, Colombo in particular. Jeyam had extensive contacts with British parliamentarians, especially in the House of Lords, and kept them informed of what the Tamils in Ceylon were going through. Among them were Dame Judith Hart and Lord Avebury, the latter being the author of the first of a series of damming Amnesty International Reports on human rights violations in Ceylon that first drew international attention to the magnitude of the problem in that country. These are not people whom you can readily see. When I went to London to lobby them and ask for their help to apprise the international community of what went on behind the censored doors of the Sri Lankan Government, all I had to do was to mention that I was “a friend of Jeyam Thamotheram”. In 1991 I had a call from the International Tamil Foundation inviting me as their guest speaker to address their annual sessions on The Abuse of Democracy in Sri Lanka. I thought it was completely crazy to go more than 15,000 km for a luncheon meeting. I was then told that Mr Thamotheram had specifically asked that I be invited. I was on my way. In the packed hall, the man who was responsible for the ITF itself and should have been on the podium, unobtrusively sat in the corridor. That was the nature of the man. I am sure that the scores of people who passed him had no idea of who he was and what he had done for the Tamil cause. After the meeting he suggested that we drive up to Cambridge to see a man who makes me proud to call myself a Sinhalese – Jeyam’s long-standing friend Adrian Wijemanne who has made such a major contribution to the struggle of the Tamil people. The next day we were on our way to see Adrian, who was too ill to come down to London for the meeting. The historic photograph of that meeting is in Sivanayagam’s book. I met C.J.T once more 2 years later, also at the annual ITF meeting, this one addressed by Gajan Ponnambalam MP. I was there as a visitor who had just ‘dropped in’. Jeyam would have none of it. He insisted that I take a place on the podium and make a contribution to the meeting. That was typically Jeyam. When I heard that he had passed away, I said that I was going for his funeral? What, all the way to England? “Yes”, I said, “I want to say that I was there”. He will be cremated in London on 4.11.05, the end of an extraordinary life. When God made Jeyam Thamotheram he must have thrown away the mould. It was my privilege to have been associated with this great man. A fitting tribute to him would be to work towards the goal which Jeyam had devoted the later years of his life – a Tamil homeland where Tamils can live in safety and without discrimination and domination by the brutal and racist regime in Colombo. Dr.Brian Senewiratne                                                      Australia

Mahinda Rajapakse - the Road to Disaster

The manifesto of Mahinda Rajapakse, presidential candidate of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), is an endorsement that a leopard (Sinhala political leaders) does not change its spots (the supremacy of the Sinhalese). It is instructive to know that despite the loss of more than 65,000 lives, a devastation of the country and serious questions about its future, the thinking of Sinhalese politicians has not changed. If such people are elected to power, neither has the thinking of the Sinhalese majority changed. It is not “instructive” for us, who have known this for years, but it is instructive for the international community which is still hallucinating that there is a genuine desire of the Sinhala leadership to reach a political settlement with the Tamil ‘minority’.

Rajapakse’s manifesto titled “Mahinda Chintana” (Mahinda’s thoughts) in the setting of agreements signed by him with so-called Marxists” (read political opportunists) in the JVP, and the extreme Sinhala chauvinists among the politically active Buddhist clergy (the JHU), is the clearest indication that the concept of multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious Sri Lanka as a Sinhala-Buddhist nation, is alive and well. If that is the score, there is no alternative to the establishment of a Tamil Nation, Tamil Eelam.

In other pronouncements of “Mahinda’s thoughts”, he has said that the ongoing Ceasefire Agreement between the government and the LTTE will have to be ‘revised’ i.e. scrapped. The concept of self determination for the Tamils will have to be abandoned and with it, Federalism as a basis of a negotiated settlement. Mr Rajapakse does not seem to realise that the bottom line in the struggle to free the Tamil people from Sinhalese domination is the right of a people to self-determination. He should note that it is this same right of self-determination that enabled his ancestors to free themselves from British domination. By rejecting this right, he is effectively closing the door to a negotiated settlement.

Rajapakse’s ‘thoughts’ and their inevitable consequence (war) is reminiscent of another Sinhala political ‘leader’ J.R.Jayawardene, from the other side of the Sinhala political divide, the UNP. In the wake of the 1977 post-election massacre of Tamils, the newly elected Prime Minister Jayawardene told the devastated Tamils “If you want a fight, let there be a fight”, and went on to attribute this to the Sinhala people - “It is not what I am saying. The people of Sri Lanka say that”. Perhaps we should ask the people of Sri Lanka whether they did say “that”.

The comparison between Jayawardene (UNP) and Rajapakse (SLFP, now in an expanded group the UPFA), is important. What it means is that Sinhala politicians from the Green or Blue (and now even the Red) camp, are the same. They are Sinhala chauvinists with whom the Tamils cannot negotiate. That is not pessimism, it is realism based on historical fact.

Since Rajapakse has effectively closed the door to a negotiated settlement that will accommodate the aspirations of the Tamil people, he leaves no alternative to the Tamils other than to achieve this by force. If Rajapakse (and his bedfellows in the JVP and JHU) want war, (and it seems so), then war is what will occur – now or in the not-too-distant future. If/when it does, it will be a war for which Rajapakse will be responsible making. Let us be clear about that. Let this be made known to the International community, in particular the crucial aid-givers who are the Godfathers who enable the Sri Lankan government to buy the necessary weapons to destroy part of the population of that country.

The manifesto is replete with glorious words : “I am dedicated to building a ….just state…..”. What? Another “Just State”? I thought Jayawardene built one in 1977 when his election campaign promised a “dharmista” (just and righteous) society. When demagoguery was replaced by realpolitic in 1983, it meant the genocidal massacre of some 3,000 Tamil civilians in the Sinhala South. This was presumably was a pre-requisite to the establishment of a ‘Just” Sinhala nation. Jayawardene, by then the self-appointed President, told Ian Ward of the London Daily Telegraph “I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people now…..Now we cannot think of them, nor about their lives or their opinion about us”. These are the Sinhala ‘leaders’ with whom the Tamils are expected to negotiate.

Rajapakse dedicates himself to achieving an undivided country. If that is so, a prerequisite would be the removal of the Constitutional provision which effectively spells out a Sinhala-Buddhist nation. Will he do that? Not likely.

He goes on to ensure that the people will be free to practise their respective religions. Well, they already can do this - give or take the burning of many Christian churches, and the destruction of even more Hindu temples, some filled with refugees. However, the fact remains that the people have been free to practise their religions. Rajapakse need not “dedicate” himself to this. What he has to do is to ensure that the Tamil people can live with equality, dignity and safety in the country of their birth and this, Rajapakse he has carefully avoided mentioning.

He also carefully avoids mentioning anything about addressing corruption - just as well, after dipping into the Tsunami funds to the tune of Rs.83 million (which he graciously returned in an attempt to avoid being prosecuted for fraud!). If the Sinhala people want crooks as their leaders, that is their problem. Why saddle the Tamil people with such leaders.

When Rajapakse “dedicates” himself to moulding a new Sri Lanka and creating a “prosperous peaceful country”, he will have to front up to some basic realities.

1. The Tamil people in the North and East have long since realised that they can never expect a fair deal under a unitary set-up where administrative and developmental power are entrenched in the hands of the numerically superior Sinhalese majority. If the deciding factor is the mere counting of heads and not equality of all its citizens, then a change is mandatory. A manifestation of this realization is the overwhelming mandate the Tamil people in the North and East gave their parliamentarians in 1977 to pursue the establishment of a Separate Tamil State. The brutality unleashed on these people (civilians) by a succession of Sinhala governments since 1977, in a determined attempt to crush them, has only hardened their resolve. So when Mr.Rajapakse “dedicates himself” to ensuring an undivided country, he is living in fantasy-land.

2. The Tamils have, in fact, established a Separate State in the Wanni which has its own administration, its own police, legal system and military. What is more, it seems to be far less corrupt and a far more efficient and organized administration than anything the Sinhala South has had for a quarter of a century or more. When the Sinhala South and their politicians finally wake up, they will find to their astonishment that a Tamil State has been functioning for years. What is left is for the Sinhala South to accept this reality and not fool themselves that a denial will make the reality of a Tamil State go away. It will not.

As for Mr Rajapakse and the Sinhala extremists and political opportunists in the JVP and JHU, they can hallucinate about an undivided country. If they plunge the country into war, they will be held responsible by the Sinhala people (whom they claim to represent) and the international community. He will also have to explain to the Sinhalese people why the bodies of rural youths, who will be called up to fight this war, are returning in body-bags.

What of the other side of the political divide - Ranil Wickremesinghe and his UNP? What if he becomes the next President? The Tamils do not need imagine that there will be a fundamental change. As I have said, a leopard does not change its spots. In 1983, when the Tamils were being butchered in Colombo, it was a young Minister in Jayawardene’s government who appeared on TV to say that Tamil businessmen deserved what they got. The Tamils would do well to identify that person. It is also worth remembering that after half a dozen non-productive Peace Talks and no peace–dividend for the Tamil people, the LTTE decided to abandon further peace talks “for the time being”, because Ranil Wickremesinghe (and his UNP) were dragging their feet in the implementation of what was agreed to.

What of the possibility of a so-called “National Government” (Wickremesinghe’s UNP and the Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga SLFP)? It is merely the amalgamation of two parties that have, for years, adopted more and more anti-Tamil measures to win the electoral support of the Sinhala majority. It was a combination of similar people who, in 1948, disenfranchised a million Plantation Tamils in one of the worst acts of political savagery the world has known. So let us not have any illusions that a “National Government” (read National Sinhala Government) is the answer.

The upcoming election is to elect a Sinhala President and that is a problem for the Sinhala people. It is not a problem for the Tamils. If the Sinhala people want crooks who may have had their hand in the Tsunami till as their President, that is their problem. If they want hoodlums who have wrecked the South in armed uprisings (in 1971 and again in 1989) with the murder of thousands of civilians who included University professors, leading professionals and charismatic Sinhala leaders such as President Kumaratunga’s husband, and an extensive destruction of infrastructure which included much-needed agricultural equipment, which be described as “the vandalisation of a country”, that is a choice for the Sinhalese. If they want Buddhist “monks” who are more comfortable preaching violence than the doctrine of Buddha, that is a problem for the Buddhists.

The Tamils have a problem. This is to develop the area under their control and carry this forward. The role of the international community is to assist this commendable activity. It is the role of the expatriate Tamil community to stop dreaming about a Tamil State and help in its building.

Dr. Brian Senewiratne                                                                 AUSTRALIA