My Thanks to those in Canada and USA

After all the generous comments about me and ‘awards’, it is time to thank all those who helped me during my visit to the US and Canada in October 2006. It was the most gratifying ‘mission’ I have been on, in the past three decades that I have been campaigning for the cause of the Tamil people.

Ilankai Tamil Sangam

It all started when the Sangam invited me to address the 29th Annual General Meeting on October 14, 2006.

I am not the first Sinhalese to be so honoured. The late Adrian Wijemanne was the Chief Guest in 1997. His keynote address, “Amity, not Unity” , is even more relevant today than it was a decade ago. It sets out the historical basis on which we can confidently predict the final outcome of the liberation struggle of the Tamil people – the establishment of a separate State, Eelam.

My stance has been as a humanitarian and someone who opposes injustice (as was Adrian’s) – indeed a series of injustices - done to the Tamil people by a succession of Sinhalese Governments over half a century.

I accepted the invitation for two reasons, despite compelling reasons why I should be in Brisbane. Firstly, it was an honour for me, a Sinhalese, to be invited to address a major event on the US Tamil calendar. Secondly, with the restart of hostilities despite a so-called Ceasefire, the expatriate Tamil community was losing hope and was confused, if not despondent, and it was imperative to clarify the situation and call for action, not despondency.

In view of some damaging comments made by foreign politicians and others from outside Sri Lanka, and the serious consequences these have had in that country, there was a need to apprise these people, of what was going on in that country which is very different from Sri Lankan Government propaganda.

I suggested to Sangam that in addition to speaking at the AGM, I should address public meetings in other parts of the US and Canada and see whoever should be seen to apprise them of what was going on in Sri Lanka. The timing was unfortunate in that it was three weeks before the US mid-term elections and politicians were more concerned about getting themselves elected than in the slaughter of Tamils in some distant land which had no oil.

I greatly appreciate the Executive of Sangam for making this visit possible.

The AGM

The AGM was divided into three parts – the morning which was medical (doctors got ‘Brownie ‘points for attending), the afternoon was political (the story that Sri Lankans got de-merit points from the GOSL for attending this is untrue), and the evening, a dinner and social. I had the fortune (? misfortune) of having to address all three.

The entire meeting (medical, political and social) seems to have been organized by Tammy Sriharan, the non-Sri Lankan wife of the President of Tamil Sangam, Sri Haran. Never have I seen someone so obsessed with ‘getting it right’. To say that anyone is indispensable could be challenged. What cannot be challenged is that this meeting would not have been the success it was, without the 110% effort put in by Tammy. At a personal level, I have nothing but gratitude for the scores of telephone calls she made to me in Australia and all round the US and Canada, arranging all the crazy things I wanted to do, and what others wanted me to do, with multiple changes at minimal notice.

The morning session

This was organized and chaired by Dr Karunyan Arulanantham, a long-time campaigner for the Tamil cause, with special interests in refugees and the delivery of medical services to people who do not exist in the eyes of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL).

There were some outstanding papers, the best by Dr Yasodha Natkunam, the daughter of one of the finest cardio-thoracic surgeons that Sri Lanka has produced but could not retain, like so many others. Yaso is famous in her own right and Natkunam is in danger of being referred to as ‘Yaso’s father’.

Yaso is a Consultant Pathologist in the US who has spent time in the North of Sri Lanka setting up pathology services. Having gone down this road in 1968 – trying to set up a clinical research laboratory in Kandy, starting from ‘ground-zero’, and with maximum obstruction from ‘above’, I could appreciate the problems she faced and the way she handled them. Her address must be made available on a DVD.

While experts in their field (Gastroenterologists, Endocrinologists, Psychiatrists, Pathologists, and others) spoke on subjects in their specialty, I, a Physician, spoke on Post-Traumatic Depression, which was not in my area of expertise and in which I have no special interest or training. I simply set out my experience over 30 years in Australia, dealing with supposedly ‘medical’ problems, but which turned out to be related to, or precipitated by, events in Sri Lanka.

I was introduced by Professor Sriharan, one of the finest brains that Sri Lanka has ever produced (and lost, like so many others). The loss of Sriharan was serious. He is a Colombo graduate, adopted by Kandy (when I was there). I had no part to play in his training although he made out that I had. He ended up as the first Professor of Medicine in Jaffna, and then lost to the UK. When I heard of his tragic loss, I said that Sri Lanka did not deserve someone like him.

I am obviously not going to evaluate my talk. All I will say is that a single generous comment by Dr N. Balasubramanium, a Pathologist from New York, gave me enough encouragement to have this talk put on a DVD and made available. Unfortunately the recording was not great in that while it is possible to see (and hear) me, the more important slides cannot be seen. This will have to be rectified but might take a few of weeks.

The afternoon session

A book release A Path to Purposeful Living – The validity and relevance of Thirukkural to modern times by the author, V.P.Palam, was followed by the political talks.

1. Humanitarian Law and Self-determination by Karen Parker JD.

Karen is a Los Angeles-based human rights lawyer specializing in armed conflict (humanitarian) law and human rights. She has represented non-governmental organizations at the United Nations, and has addressed the armed conflict in Sri Lanka since 1983. She has presented more than 30 written and oral statements to the UN on the application of humanitarian law to the armed conflict in Sri Lanka and on the situation of the Tamils. She has submitted testimony on the conflict to US Congress, and at the Parliaments in France, Australia, United Kingdom, and other countries. Much of what she said has been published, on the net and elsewhere.

2. Genocide of the Tamils, A Failed State and possible Solutions by me

I set out the evidence for genocide of the Tamil people by the GOSL and introduced the concept of ‘economic genocide’, ‘educational genocide’ and ‘cultural genocide’, being the deliberate destruction of the economy, education and culture of a specific ethnic group. I will put this on the net.

Sri Lanka satisfies the criteria for a ‘Failed State’. To claim that it is not is deception. This too will be on the net, although it is already well documented.

As for solutions, I presented the reasons why a separate Tamil State (and a separate Sinhala State) was the only possible solution today. I will put an expanded version on the net.

3. Politics of Relief: Humanitarian work in NorthEastern Sri Lanka by Nimmi Gowrinathan

Nimmi is a PhD student in UCLA. She has spent some time in Sri Lanka and presented the ground realities of relief – very different from the false propaganda of the GOSL. This was an excellent paper which needs wide dissemination to show the international community what the Tamil people in the North and East are going through.

The formal session ended with Karen Parker conducting a Workshop: The War – Critical issues there and here.

The evening social

This was very well patronized with more than 300 people (or so it appeared to me), turning up. The Grand Ballroom of the Marriott Hotel, New Jersey, was packed.

Sadena Thevarajah and Prem Jayanthan from the Tamil Youth Organisation spoke on Getting Youth Involved. This is an important problem since it is the youth who will have to take the baton from us.

Nimmi Gowrinathan repeated her experience in humanitarian work since the audience was larger.

I spoke on Why I stand where I do. It was a social gathering and I was asked to keep the diners amused. Unfortunately, I am not a comedian, nor did I think the situation back home warranted amusement. I thought that informing people was more important than amusing them. However, I did go over the nonsense in the Mahavamsa which produced the necessary amusement. I pointed out that I was a member of the Lion race, a direct descendent from a Lion mating with an oversexed Princess. It had to be true, it is in the Mahavamsa.

I was simply repeating what that outstanding Tamil journalist, S.Sivanayagam, has written in The Pen and the Gun, to which he invited me to write a Foreword. When I told him that it will be the kiss of death for the book, his defiant response was, If people will not buy the book because you wrote the Foreword, damn them. That was Siva.

The Lion story belatedly reminds me of an event in 1956. Bandaranaike was presenting his infamousSinhala Only Act. Protesting Tamil MPs were being mauled outside Parliament by Sinhalese hoodlums. The MPs entered Parliament, bleeding and bandaged, to roars of laughter and jeers, “Wounds of War”, from the Sinhalese MPs. Dr E.M.V.Naganathan, not a man to be intimidated, muttered something like, “When the Tamil Tiger rises, the Sinhala Lion will go with its tail between its legs.” I wish the prophetic gentleman was there to see it ‘come to pass’.

I will put the more important parts of my address on the net.

I ended my address raising an imaginary glass in two toasts. The first was to two remarkable women, neither of them Sri Lankans, whom I had met for the first time 48 hours earlier – Avis Sri Jayantha who runs the Sangam website, and Tammy Sriharan, whom I have already referred to.

I was able to see staff from the US Senate, House of Representatives, the United Nations section on the Prevention of Genocide, the renowned newspaper, Washington Post, and Human Rights Watch (which, incidentally, has a higher standing in the USA than Amnesty International).

During my talk I think Tammy was still running around, I doubt if she heard my toast to her. She is of Irish background, with a colour in keeping with her genetics. There she was in a yellow saree, looking as Tamil as they come. Had someone put some dark stripes on that saree, she could have been a Tiger, as I have been called many times – indeed a Tamil Tiger Terrorist. Incidentally, if I am one, so are the Bandaranaikes since my father comes from that clan.

Tammy makes the best Thosai I have ever eaten, a sad reflection on my Tamil wife. The second toast was to ‘Eelam’ which will come despite the best efforts of the Sinhala leadership, present, past and future, to prevent it. They, and the Sinhala extremists, can delay but not, in any way,prevent it. History, as set out by Adrian Wijemanne a decade ago at a similar meeting, will not have it otherwise.

A passing word about Avis’ husband, the brilliant Dr Sri Sri Jayantha. now with IBM. When Sri Lanka loses people like him (and many others like him), it is game, set and match. If they did not have to leave Sri Lanka, that country would have been a leader in Asia – an ‘Asian Tiger’, if you pardon the pun. Hopefully they will return, albeit on an intermittent basis, to Tamil Eelam, when it moves fromde facto to de jure.

Finally, a Vote of Thanks by the President of llankai Tamil Sangam, the no-nonsense Sri Haran, who impressed me greatly.

This was followed by music and dance, Classical Fusion, they called it, presented by Selvi Chandranathan and her students. It was pretty loud, perhaps my ears are too old to cope with a lot of vibration. I sloped off to bed at 2 am, not quite sure whether it was 2am (USA), 5pm (Brisbane), or neither.

At breakfast, in a touching gesture, Karen and I were presented with honour-plaques. I did not see what Karen’s read. Mine was:-

An “International crusader” for Human Rights and Dignity all over the World and Promoter of Justice for All

I thought it was an exaggeration but I appreciated the stress on ‘Justice’. That is precisely what I want – justice for the people of Sri Lanka, and that is what is being denied to them by a succession of Sri Lankan Governments.

My plaque was presented by a former medical registrar of mine. He was disarmingly honest when he said, “I did not like Dr Senewiratne when I worked for him. Nothing I could do was right”. It is probably a sentiment shared by many others who do not have the honesty to say so.

Thanks to Sri Haran, I was able to see Wakeley Paul in his home. He was too unwell to come for the meeting. I suspect Wakeley had more than a little to do with the invitation to me to address the AGM. He is a fine soul, totally committed to the Tamil cause. I was most upset to see him so unwell, but every time I veered towards his medical problems, he veered away! I was delighted to hear later that he was miraculously on the mend. I’d like to believe that it was the therapeutic effect of my visit, but I think the medicines is on are more likely to be responsible. He had better be around to usher in Tamil Eelam, for which he has been campaigning for so many years and with such dedication.

Wakeley, named after the famous British surgeon, Sir Cecil Wakeley, is the son of one of the most famous and finest Professors of Surgery that Sri Lanka has ever had, Professor Milroy Paul (‘Polo’ to his students). Milroy Paul must surely be turning in his grave when he sees what has become of his beloved Department of Surgery which was, for many years, one of the best in the world and one that has trained so many top Sri Lankan surgeons. I came all the way from Cambridge, just to go on one of his teaching rounds.

Washington

From New York, it was a drive to Washington – my ‘chauffeur’, Dr Saba Kulatungam, Cardiologist, and his wife, Dr Mano (Navaratnam), a former student of mine. We discussed everything from Buddhism to Eelam. In Washington, ‘home’ was with Arichandran, ex-World Bank, and a life-long friend. It was Arichandran’s father, Dr K.Kanagaratnam, who first invited my family to Jaffna in the 1940s. It was on this trip that I, a 14 year old boy, told his parents, “Until this area is separated from the South, this area will never develop”. It was an early call for Eelam and recognition that development, or its lack, was the crucial issue. Until that is addressed, there will be no Peace in Sri Lanka.

When Sinhala patriots decided to burn Arichandran’s home and very nearly his entire family in July 1983, they were depriving Sri Lanka of a competent accountant and a gifted tennis player at the top of the pile. That is Sinhala ‘patriotism’.

Arichandran showed me a book, Ramanathan of Ceylon – the life of Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan. With generosity typical of his family, he said, “Nothing would please me more than to present this book to you, but it was given to me by my father”. This extraordinary book, published in some backyard in Jaffna, needs to be reprinted. It has invaluable references to Tamils standing up for the Sinhala leaders, falsely accused and imprisoned by the British in the 1915 anti-Muslim riots. Anagarika Dharmapala, (1864-1933), the Buddhist revivalist, praised Ramanathan, Solicitor-General, for getting them freed. He says:

“The day that you (Ramanathan) are taken away from Ceylon, from that day there will be none to defend the poor, neglected Singhalese. They are a doomed people with none to guide and protect them. Unhappy Singhalese!”

Dharmapala, who, before his Buddhist-slanted name-change, was a Don Carolis, son of the well-known furniture maker. I hope he will return to Sri Lanka from wherever he is, and see the damage done by yellow-robed hoodlums and political opportunists, as a result of his ‘activities’.

Toronto

From Washington, I got to Toronto to address more meetings, a radio and TV interview, ducking out to Boston while I was there. The biggest was a dinner organised by the Tamil Canadian Congress, chaired by Fr. Dr Joseph Chandrakanthan, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Bioethics, University of Toronto. I have known him for two decades, from the time he was studying theology in Ottawa. He is an articulate and forceful speaker who would have ‘disappeared’ had he been in Jaffna, as his brother priests have done.

My address to the huge audience has been recorded and will be available on DVD. It sure was comprehensive, but at the cost of intolerable hunger inflicted by me on those who had paid dearly for food that did not seem to appear (because of the length of my address).

There was ‘audience participation’ in a big way, one of my former students appreciating the stance I took on ‘ragging’, which in Sri Lanka is a form of sadism which merits criminal prosecution (one student broke her spine and later died).

At long last, access to food was possible. Then came yet another ‘Award’. It read:

For Your Tireless Contribution in Upholding Justice and Human Rights”.

Again, I appreciated the reference to ‘Justice’.

I did remind them that an ‘award’ was unnecessary since most of the problems in Sri Lanka came from my relatives, the Bandaranaikes. I can think of no other family in any other country that has been responsible for wrecking a country and turning it from one with a bright future to one with no future.

Much as I appreciated the ‘Award’, I had to admit that I valued another ‘Award’ more. This was a T-shirt I was given many years ago which reads, ”I support Tamil Eelam”. On it is a map of Sri Lanka with almost half the island shaded to indicate ‘Eelam’! Why not? There will be quantitatively less of a “Failed Sinhala State”.

I was delighted that the ‘Award’ was presented by Dr Sri Bavan Sri Skandarajah, whose guest I was in Toronto. Bavan and his highly committed and talented wife, Usha, (who wrote that undeserved ‘Ode’ to me, and the much more appropriate Maveerar poem), could not have been more helpful. They took me to see a wonderful lady, the wife of my friend Joseph Pararajasingham. She was still devastated after the outrageous murder of that fine man on Christmas Day 2005. Joseph and Sugunam have stayed in my home in Brisbane (where I taught him to make ‘godamba roti’).

Bavan and Usha did everything for me, including repairing my shoes which, like Sri Lanka, had fallen apart, but which, unlike the latter, was readily fixed. They put their lives on hold for the duration of my visit. I addressed two meetings of University students in the University of Toronto (campus in Toronto and Scarborough). This is an important area to develop – getting the students involved. The audience participation indicated the level of interest of these young people, many of whom had never been to Sri Lanka and whose only connection was their name. It is crucial to take this forward and build a ‘Federation of Tamil Students’ across the world and link them up with those in Jaffna (who are facing some terrible problems at the moment).

I barely made it to a Radio interview on CTR (Canadian Tamil Radio) conducted by Wijey Kulathungam. It went on for double the allocated time because of questions and comments from the listeners.

I was delighted to be able to reach out to ‘ordinary’ Tamils through this Radio program, an activity which I think is crucial and which I hope will be the primary focus, when I next go to Toronto (or elsewhere).

The radio interview was preceded by an excellent interview on television (TVi – Tamil Vision Int.) superbly conducted by the articulate Vijay Thamil Priyan. It was a wide ranging interview which is available on DVD and should be re-broadcast in other countries. I will be glad to send anyone a copy.

I was delighted to meet two totally dedicated young men, ‘Danton’ and the outstanding Esan Satkunarajah whose enthusiasm and commitment know no bounds. No one among the younger Tamils has impressed me more than these young men. It was great encouragement to me to meet them. I was deeply moved by an account on Sangam of my time in Toronto.

Boston

Boston is home to a longstanding friend of mine, Sri Srithilliampalam whose contribution to the Tamil cause in the US has been substantial. Sri is a remarkable fellow who has contacts (to this very day) in the US State Department and in Boston. It was he who was responsible for the famous Massachusetts Resolution passed in 1979 – which rocked the J.R.Jayawardene Government. It was an outright condemnation of the Sri Lanka Government and a declaration of “Eelam Day” – 22_ndMay. It was passed by the Massachusetts State Legislature – an unprecedented act by any State in the US. Sri went on to celebrate this and raised the “Eelam Flag” in Boston in 1981. To this very day, his car (as old as himself) carries a number plate ‘EELAM 1’.

I addressed a meeting of Tamils in Boston on 22 November 2006. It was regrettable that significant numbers did not show up because of senseless in-fighting among Tamils. This self-destructive activity must stop. We are fighting one of the most brutal and ruthless regimes Sri Lanka has ever had. At a time such as this (for that matter, at any time), it is outrageous that expatriate Tamils should fight each other over issues which are, at the most, trivial.

From Boston, back to Toronto and then to the West Coast.

San Francisco

A meeting of expatriate Tamils was organized in San Jose by Tom Fernando (a Tamil, despite his name) married to my ‘adopted Tamil daughter’ and student, Dr Christine Edwards from Kayts. I have never been to San Francisco without staying with the Fernandos in Sacramento (and never will). However, chaos on the flights to San Francisco left me no option but a hotel – much to the distress of Christine and Tom.

The meeting in the San Francisco Bay area was organised by the Tamils of Northern California, whose President is SivaRaja Swaminathan. The work of getting the meeting together fell on Vimal Rajagopal, Amaran Wijay and, of course, Tom Fernanado. Here are quiet, dedicated people who work in the background doing the hard yards, while we get the applause.

Donald Gnanakone came all the way from Los Angeles for the meeting. He has written more than anyone I know of, on the Tamil struggle. My computer had to be fitted with a larger hard disc to cope with his emails. How he does it, beats me. One can think what one wants about his writings, but what cannot be in doubt is his commitment to the Tamil cause. It is absolute.

That night, I left for my second home - Lancaster in Southern California.

Lancaster

Here live expatriate Tamils who put their money where their mouth is. Dr Karunyan and Dr.Inpam Arulanantham, Dr and Mrs Shan Sunder, my Tamil brother Dr Moorthy, Kandiah Perinpanathan, and the silent, totally committed, Harichandra (Hari), and others.

Hari is the living example of a truism, “If you want something done, pick the busiest person and ask him to do it”. For all things in Lancaster, I pick Hari and it is done. This included driving all the way from Lancaster to pick me up from Los Angeles airport at midnight and driving back, then feeding me, and then discussing what practical things we can do in the present crisis, and what can be done to move the issue to the next level. The Lancaster Tamils have an invigorating effect on me which is impossible to describe.

The public meeting in Lancaster (actually Burbank), was chaired by Karunyan. The comments I made about Professor Sriharan, apply to Karunyan in full measure. Sri Lanka was too engulfed in anti-Tamil racism to enable Karunyan (an endocrinologist), and Inpam (a pathologist), to make their contribution to Sri Lanka.

I dealt with the problem of a lack of information – people, in particular non-Sri Lankans, simply not knowing what is going on in that country. The suggestion I made was to produce a ‘Basic Information’ 45 minute video, setting out, especially for non-Sri Lankans, what the conflict is all about. This is imperative if the GOSL disinformation campaign is to be countered. It has to assume zero knowledge of Sri Lanka. Starting from some basic information on the geography, and regional climatic differences, it has to go on to administrative problems, the centralization of power in Colombo by the colonial British, the developmental neglect of the Tamil areas, the handing over of the country to a Government that will always be Sinhalese-dominated, the discrimination of the Tamil ‘minority, non-violent protests by the Tamils, futile Pacts abrogated unilaterally by the GOSL, the failure of the democratic process to deliver justice to the Tamils, the inevitable resort to an armed struggle to free the Tamil people from Sinhala-domination and discrimination, and the response of the GOSL, a decimation of the Tamil civilian population and the area they live in, and now, to a genocide of the Tamil people and a humanitarian crisis. I said that I will be glad to make this ‘Information video’.

The highlight of the meeting, from my perspective, was a question by 7 year old Neelan Nanda Ganshan, “If all the people are Sri Lankans, why are they fighting?” If I could, I’d abduct that boy and adopt him. Here is a leader-in-the-making and a thinker.

Addressing Neelan’s question as best as I could, I said that my cousin, Chandrika Kumaratunga, when she was President, in an interview in South African radio, said that the Tamils were asking for a part of Sri Lanka and, hold your breath, “They are not even the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka”. Alas for her abysmal lack of knowledge – or is it history being re-written in line with Sinhala ethnic chauvinism – the cause of the ‘fight’.

It was then time to head off to Los Angeles for the flight back, but not before a final hug at the airport. Professor Reggie Edgerton and his wife Monica were there for a momentary hug. Reggie was one of the outstanding Americans from the famous UCLA to come to Kandy and work with me on the health of the Plantation Tamils. He was disturbed to hear that the contents of that beautiful research laboratory, the only clinical research laboratory in Sri Lanka, built by me on a personal grant from the Nuffield Foundation, was smashed by hoodlums for no obvious reason. A senseless act, but what in Sri Lanka is not?

For those who were in Peradeniya, 1966-1976, there is booklet by me What I have taught and learnt in Sri Lanka. The musing of a senile teacher. This is what I presented to former students at a reunion in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. I had lost the floppy disc, but have now found it. I guess Sangam is not the place to publish this, but I will be glad to send it to anyone by email. It is worth a read. It will take you back to Kandy. I arrived in Brisbane just in time to start my Medical Clinic – 15 minutes late.

Was the effort worthwhile? I do not know, time will tell. The purpose of this article is not to evaluate success or failure but to thank the many people, some whose names I cannot even remember, for enabling me to do what I set out to do – “wake up the sleeping Tamils”, and inform those who do not know, or do not want to know, about the suffering of the Tamil people, now a humanitarian crisis, and to convince everybody of the absolute need for Tamil Eelam.

The three messages I wanted to leave were:-

1. Don’t be intimidated, don’t be afraid. To make expatriate Tamils fearful, is the name of the game, in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. It is a carefully crafted strategy between the GOSL and these governments. If you cave in and become frightened, they win. No one is asking you to do anything illegal. If helping our people in the North and East, abandoned by their Government, indeed brutalized by their Government, is illegal, challenge it we should, challenge it we must. No Government which claims to be democratic and civilized can penalize people for helping civilians facing decimation at the hands of a brutal and barbaric Government.
Unjust laws should be challenged, even broken. The British Raj declared that Indians should not make salt. Mahatma Gandhi challenged it, went on his famous ‘salt-march’, and made salt. India got its Independence and prospered, and the British Empire collapsed.
2. No humanitarian organization e.g. the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) has been banned in any country. The humanitarian needs, including the massive problem of refugees in the North and East is being addressed by the TRO – a recognized and registered NGO – and the recipient of an award by ex-President Kumaratunga. The freezing of the TRO bank account in Sri Lanka is illegal and is being challenged in the Supreme Court. With the abysmal level to which the justice system in Sri Lanka has sunk, it may be necessary to take this to an International Court since it affects the lives of thousands. The blocking of funds of the TRO will not be upheld in any Court outside Sri Lanka. It might not even be in Sri Lanka.
3. This is a struggle we cannot lose. In fact, Eelam is already established and functioning well, as documented by Professor Kristian Stokke, University of Oslo, who worked in the de facto State of Tamil Eelam. His extensive paper is on the net (eelamnation.org), and has been published in an international journal. A de facto State will move to a de jure State as surely as day follows night. We have the overwhelming force of history behind us to point the way to the future. The future will be a separate Tamil State (and a separate Sinhala State). Of that, let there be no doubt. Thanks to the Mahavamsa!


Brian Senewiratne                                           Briabane, Australia     

The Future of Tamil Parliamentarians in Sri Lanka: The murder of Parliamentarian Raviraj

On 10 November 2006, yet another leading Tamil Member of the Sri Lankan Parliament was gunned down in Colombo by a supposedly ‘unknown’ gunman. This is a new Sri Lankan term which is synonymous with ‘The Armed Forces and their Paramilitaries who do their dirty work’. There are no ‘unknown gunmen’ as such.


Nadarajah Raviraj (44), Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian for Jaffna district, one of only a few Tamil MPs who could voice, in English, the suffering of the Tamil people in the North and East, was assassinated in broad daylight in the heart of Colombo, in full view of scores of people.


The man

Even at the cost of making this article too long, it is crucial to detail the record of the man, since it is these educated, articulate, outspoken, Tamils, future leaders of the Tamil people, who are being specifically targetted by the murderous Sinhalese regime in Colombo. Raviraj is not the first, nor will he be the last, unless the full weight of international public opinion is brought to bear on the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL).

Raviraj, born in 1962 in Jaffna (Chavakachcheri), was educated in one of the famous mission schools in Jaffna, St. John’s College. Embarking on a legal career, he became an Attorney at Law in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 1987. He practiced in the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court, both in the Tamil Northeast and the Sinhalese South. His law firm, Raviraj & Associates, specialised in dealing with cases involving the most repressive and notorious legislations in Sri Lanka - the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and Emergency Regulations.

He also worked for some 10 years as a human rights lawyer in Colombo’s “Home for Human Rights”, which I have strongly supported. Raviraj joined the then main Tamil political party, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), in 1987. His ability was such that he rapidly rose in the Party, appointed to the Central Committee in 1990, legal advisor in 1998, the political bureau in 2000, and the following year becoming the Party’s Administrative Secretary. In 2001 he became the Mayor of Jaffna. In the 2001 General Elections, he was elected to Parliament as the MP for Jaffna District, and re-elected in 2004.
There is not the slightest doubt that Raviraj was leadership material. He had a major role to play in Tamil politics in Sri Lanka. Therein lay his problem and the imperative ‘need’ for the GOSL and the Armed Forces to ‘take him out’.


He had a major interest in conflict resolution (a crying need in that war-ravaged country) and participated in workshops hosted by the Institute of Federation in Switzerland, the Conrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany and the Peace Institute in Austria, among many others.

With a marked deterioration in the human rights situation in Sri Lanka in 2006, Raviraj worked with Sinhalese and Tamils in the Civil Monitoring Committee, monitoring extrajudicial killings, abductions and disappearances, ‘activities’ which have been extensively documented by Amnesty International and every international human rights group in the world.


My meeting with him
I met Raviraj some years ago when he was visiting Melbourne, Australia. He and I addressed a public meeting in Melbourne on the situation in Sri Lanka. After my address, I noticed that he was one of the first in the audience to rise to his feet and applaud.


At the end of the meeting, he told me that he had never heard a Sinhalese speak the way I did, adding, “What makes you do it?” Before I could reply, someone whispered, “He is Edmund Samarakkody’s nephew”. (He was my mother’s brother, a lawyer like Raviraj and one of his ‘heroes’, and was one of a very few Sinhalese who had campaigned for Tamil rights over some four decades). The enlightened Raviraj smiled, and said, “That explains it. It must be genetic”!


We spent the rest of the evening discussing the struggle of the Tamil people for justice, and the developing chaos in the Sinhalese South. We have been friends ever since. He has often telephoned me from Sri Lanka to ask when I would come and visit him there.


The background to the murder

Since early 2006, the Armed Forces of the GOSL have been targeting the Tamil areas – Trincomalee in the East, Mannar in the North West, and parts of the Jaffna Peninsula. The Indiscriminate bombing and shelling of these areas have caused a major humanitarian disaster, with civilians fleeing the conflict zone, adding to the monumental refugee problem caused by the December 2004 Tsunami which caused such serious damage in the Northeast and East. The numbers involved were massive - some 200,000 refugees (“Internally Displaced People” – IDPs), mainly Tamil civilians and a lesser number of Muslims.


The movement of these people and their numbers are on the UNHCR website (1). As can be seen, the number of IDPs in the Batticaloa District alone, as of 31 October 2006, was 55,126.At the northern part of the Batticaloa district is a village, Vaharai, north of which is a densely populated coastal hamlet, Kathiraveli, where several thousand IDPs sought shelter. On 8 November 2006, the GOSL decided to bomb a school in Kathiraveli where the refugees were accommodated. Some 65 civilians were killed and more than 125 injured. With limited medical facilities, more are likely to die of their injuries.


UN Ambassador prevented from visiting the scene

In what can be only described as unbelievable highhandedness, Ambassador Allan Rock was prevented by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces from visiting the site of the bombing. Ambassador Rock is Special Advisor to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for children in armed conflict. He is currently visiting the island to study the situation first hand and report to the Special Representative. On his schedule, drawn well ahead of the bombing by the GOSL, was a visit to Vaharai.After being kept waiting for several hours, when the Ambassador was finally allowed to proceed, he had less than half an hour to discuss what had happened with the affected people.

International condemnation

There has been widespread international condemnation of this outrageous bombing of refugees by the GOSL and its military. Important though this is, it is not enough to prevent more atrocities. Amnesty International (AI)
AI, released an immediate Report on 8 November 2006 (ASA 37/032/2006)

'”Amnesty International is appalled that the military should attack a camp for displaced people - these were civilians who had already been forced from their homes because of the conflict. Amnesty International condemns all attacks on civilians and is particularly saddened and shocked to see such a large-scale attack on civilians' just days after the government's announcement of its Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses”..

The Nordic Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission statement: Helen Olafsdottir, spokeswoman for Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission:-


"Our monitors saw there were no military installations in the camp area, so we would certainly like some answers from the military regarding the nature and reasons of this attack,"


The International Committee of the Red Cross


The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in a press release the day after the bombing, deplored the tragic loss of life and injury to civilians resulting from the Wednesday shelling of the densely populated area of Kathiraveli, a coastal hamlet north of Vaharai, where several thousand internally displaced people had sought shelter.


The Sri Lankan Government response
The response of the GOSL is so absurd as to be hardly worth recording.


“While we regret this whole episode, we also say that national security is utmost and it has to be maintained, and as such defensive action by the authorities is something that is inevitable," said Keheliya Rambukwella, Defence spokesman and a Minister in the Rajapakse Government, whose ‘explanations’ of this (and other recent atrocities, in particular the recent GOSL bombing of an orphanage in the Tamil area has been beyond comprehension). They are not ‘explanations’ but downright lies – in ordinary English. They are lies that have been exposed by international observers who visited the orphanage soon after the bombing.


Tamil parliamentarians protest
On 9 November 2006, some 15 MPs, Raviraj included, from the main Tamil political party, the Tamil national Alliance (TNA) protested opposite the United Nations Colombo office, calling for the UN to pressure the GOSL to prevent such attacks. A memorandum signed by the MPs was submitted to the Secretary General UN and to the head of the UN children’s Fund through the Colombo UN office. Raviraj is 2nd from the left carrying the banner “UNHCR, UNICEF why are you SILENT?”


The assassination of Raviraj
The following morning (10.11.06) Raviraj had returned to the residence of MPs at Manning Town, Narahenpitiya in Colombo, after an early TV interview . He was driving to his office with his body-guard sitting next to him.


A motorcycle with a pillion rider approached his official land cruiser. The pillion-rider carrying a bag, got off the cycle, walked across the road and emptied the entire magazine of the automatic rifle which was in the bag. He dropped the bag with the gun (a T-56), got back on the cycle and sped off. All this was in full view of dozens of people.


Raviraj was critically injured and died shortly after (9.20 am) in Colombo’s National Hospital. His bodyguard was dead on arrival at the hospital.


The ‘efficiency’ of the Sri Lankan media.
As anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Sri Lanka knows, things do not move too fast in Sri Lanka. This was the exception. The Media Centre for National Security of the Ministry of Defence, National Security, Law and Order. lost no time. Just 17 minutes after Raviraj was pronounced dead, it proclaimed “Parliamentarian Raviraj shot dead”.


An Inquiry

President Mahinda Rajapakse has instructed Inspector - General of Police Victor Perera to conduct a speedy probe into the killing. Rajapakse has also initiated steps to bring in Scotland Yard detectives from Britain to assist in the investigation.
A top Police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Police, if allowed to function independently, could “crack ” the case easily. “We don’t need Scotland Yard. We can do it but will we be allowed to do so”? He asked. There are no prizes for guessing the answer.

I might add that an Inquiry, with or without Scotland Yard, is an exercise in futility. When
Tamil Parliamentarian Joseph Pararajasingham was gunned down in Church a year ago, in front of hundreds of worshippers, the assassin was identified and the details supplied to President Rajapakse by TNA Parliamentarians, including Raviraj. No action has been taken.


As for Scotland Yard, when expatriate Tamils offered to finance the cost of getting Scotland Yard to Sri Lanka to investigate the murder of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, the GOSL refused the offer. The murder remains unresolved before the Supreme Court. The reason is that the evidence points in an entirely different direction to what the GOSL (and the International Community) claim – the Tamil Tigers


The Sri Lankan Opposition response to the murder
Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the Opposition and head of the United National Party said,


“Within a year of parliamentarian Joseph Pararajasingham’s assassination, Raviraj has been killed. This is a threat to democracy. We strongly condemn this cowardly act and urge the government to take legal actions to bring the killers to justice besides providing adequate security measures to Tamil parliamentarians”.


It is of interest that Wickremesinghe’s UNP has just (12 October 2006) signed a MoU with Rajapakshe's Sri Lanka Freedom Party. If Wickremesinghe was as concerned as he says he is, he could have done a little more than ‘urge’ the government – his recent bed-fellow. The very least the Opposition could do at the cold-blooded murder of a fellow parliamentarian, indeed a member of the Opposition, was to censure the Government and demand the resignation of those responsible for the conduct of the Armed Forces. Would they do it? Of course, they will not. “Urge’ is about as far as they will go.


The National Peace Council of Sri Lanka
“We are also greatly grieved at, and condemn, the callous assassination of Nadarajah Raviraj, Member of Parliament for Jaffna District, who was killed in Colombo along with his bodyguard. It was only the day before that he had been in the forefront of a protest demonstration in front of the United Nations Office in Colombo about the humanitarian crisis in the country. Next week he was scheduled to participate in a public event organized by the National Peace Council and other civic organizations that sought a public dialogue on peace between political and religious leaders. Raviraj was always prepared to engage with like and unlike-minded persons inside and outside Parliament with dignity and with great courage”
.
United States of America ‘deplores’ the murder
There was a refreshing departure from the pro-Government partisan stance the USA has adopted for years. A statement from the US embassy in Colombo:


“The United States deplores the assassination on November 10 of Mr Nadarajah Raviraj, member of the Sri Lankan Parliament. We express our deepest sympathy for this loss to the family of Mr.Raviraj, to his parliamentary colleagues and the people of Sri Lanka who have been unjustly robbed of his energy and talent.


It is critical that crimes such as the murder of Nadarajah Raviraj not go unpunished. We urge the government to begin an immediate investigation into the circumstances of his killing and to find, arrest and prosecute those responsible on the most urgent basis”


Neither “deploring” not “urging” are enough. Unless there are some real consequences, the GOSL will simply laugh, and then it will be ‘business as usual’.


Not the only outstanding Tamil to be assassinated
As I have said, Joseph Pararajasingham MP for Batticaloa was gunned down by one of the paramilitary murderers who the Armed Forces use to do their dirty work. He was assassinated in a Church in Batticaloa on Christmas Day last year. I met his charming wife only two weeks ago, and she showed me the extensive injuries she had sustained when she was shot at the same time as her husband. She is very lucky to have survived.


Para’s murder was preceded by that of the murder, in Colombo, of another Tamil politician, the charismatic and outspoken Kumar Ponnampalam, who was the Leader of the Tamil Congress and a Presidential candidate.


Ex-Tamil MP, Chandra Nehru Ariyanayagam, left the planet the same way.


A dozen Tamil reporters, newsmen and others, have been ‘eliminated’. The best known, and perhaps the greatest loss to the Tamil people, was the murder in Colombo, of the brilliant far-sighted Taraki Sivaram who had an exceptional knowledge of the problems facing the Tamil people, the geo-politics and geo-strategies.


It is not a coincidence that all these people were all highly articulate, knowledgeable and able to forcefully present to the international community, the terrible suffering of the Tamil people. What we see is a deliberate well thought-out plan to prevent the outside world from appreciating the plight of the Tamil people.


Next in the line
The next to go, as sure as day follows night, will be Kumar Ponnambalam’s son, the outspoken and articulate lawyer, Gajan, a leading MP in the TNA. After Gajan, will go the lesser Tamil mortals. Once the articulate Tamils are ‘removed’, the Sinhalese regime will mop up the articulate Sinhalese, the likes of Kumar  Rupesinghe. Then will follow Victor Ivan, the Editor of the challenging Sinhalese newspaper, Ravaya, followed by the lesser mortals among the Sinhalese.


What will be left are the Rajapakses (all three of them), the Weerawamsas in the so-called Marxist Party, the Buddhist Clergy. and other Sinhalese extremists. Sri Lanka will then truly be a Sinhala Buddhist Nation as envisaged in the 1972 Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka, later to be styled the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka!


The future of Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka.
The question that must arise is, “What is the future of the Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka?” They have one of two options – to join the Government and survive, or not to join the Government and be assassinated.


What about representing the Tamil people? Representing them where? It cannot be in the Sri Lankan Parliament because for decades, if not longer, it has been a Sinhala Parliament concerned about the Sinhalese people. One Sinhalese ‘leader’ (for want of a better word), President J.R.Jayawardene, in an interview given to Ian Ward of the London Daily Telegraph, on 11 July 1983, days before the attempted genocide of the Tamils in Colombo said,


“I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people now….Now we cannot think of them, not about their lives or of their opinion about us”.


The quote usually ends here, but Jayawardene said something more,


“The more you put pressure in the North, the happier the Sinhala people will be here…really, if I starve the Tamils out, (which his successor, Mahinda Rajapakse, from the other side of the Sinhala political divide is doing right now), the Sinhala people will be happy”.


The Tamils are mentioned in this Sinhala Parliament only when it is time to renew Emergency Regulations, not because there is an ‘Emergency’ but because these repressive Regulations, adopted from Apartheid South Africa, can be used, and are widely used, to intimidate, harass and murder Tamils, with no questions asked. As is the answer to all problems in Sri Lanka, these repressive Regulations are necessary. “because of the continuing problem with terrorism”. The real terrorism is that generated by these Regulations.


Quit
In an earlier version of this article, I suggested that the 22 Tamil MPs should review their position and consider quitting Parliament rather than provide a degree of legitimacy to an irresponsible, ruthless and barbaric regime that masquerades as a ‘Government’. There are, however, problems with this. It is quite conceivable that the Government will simply appoint one of their Tamil stooges, even Karuna, who has been responsible for so many murders and recent abductions of Tamil businessmen in Colombo for ransom, and appoint them as MPs (with 3 votes from the ‘Tamil voters’). It has happened before.


If the Tamil MPs are to remain in Parliament, and survive, the responsibility will be with the International Community, to unleash the entire weight of public opinion on the GOSL There must be some real consequences for the GOSL. Unfortunately, despite the recent ‘condemnations’, by foreign governments, human rights groups and NGOs, I doubt if there will be the necessary sustained pressure on the GOSL or the ‘real consequences’ I have referred to. So, ‘the fate of Raviraj’ awaits many more.


Déjà vu


Sri Lankans must have a sense of déjà vu, as the murderous regime of President Mahinda Rajapakse, complete with ‘white vans’ which pick up those destined for life outside this planet, appear. They must surely think that President Ranasinghe Premadasa’s regime, the most murderous regime that Sri Lanka has ever known, has been ‘reborn’ in true Sri Lankan Buddhist style.

1. There are two ways to get to this important website


a) The simplest is to go to http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/srilanka/  ,
go down to “IDP movement trends between Districts Sri Lanka – on at 31st October 2006” and click on that.


b) The direct access is a very long web address
http://www.unhcr.lk/statistcs/docs/SummaryofDisplacement-7April-23Oct06.pdf 

Brian Senewiratne                                                     Brisbane, Australia 

In the path of Adrian Wijemanne

Mr Sivakumaran, President of the ETA of Victoria, Ranee Eliezer, ladies and gentlemen,

I appreciate your invitation to me to speak at this ‘Anjali’ to celebrate the life of an extraordinary man, Adrian Wijemanne, who was such a strong supporter of the cause of the Tamil people to live with equality, dignity and safety in the country of their birth. I am particularly grateful to Ranee, the widow of an outstanding Tamil, the late Prof. C.J.Eliezer. At 85, Ranee is still a live-wire and the driving force behind this meeting, and much more. She has been a pain-in-the neck, harassing people to get this meeting off the ground. My gratitude and sympathy to Murugesu Paramanathan who copped the harassment and simply had to organise this, if only to get Ranee off his back. My thanks to the ETA for sponsoring this meeting”. My thanks to all of you who have braved the usual Melbourne weather to turn up in such large numbers to fill this huge hall. It is a fitting response of a grateful community to a truly great man.
  

Adrian was, like me, a Sinhalese who has, for many years, campaigned for the cause of the Tamil people. There are some similarities between the two of us but also some enormous differences which will become apparent as we go along. In following “the Path of Adrian”, I am not referring to myself. I invite all of you, to follow the enlightened path blazed by Adrian.

Adrian is a hard act to follow, mainly because of his knowledge of history which he used so effectively in predicting the future and pointing to the direction from which peace will come to Sri Lanka. It is this historical perspective which will be missed so much, as the Government of Sri Lanka tries to swim against the tide of history.  

About the man...

Adrian Wijemanne was born on 29 May 1925 to one of the leading Sinhalese families in Kalutara, just south of Colombo. 

Royal College and the Ceylon University 

He entered Royal College, one of the great schools (then and now) in Colombo. It is the 3^rd oldest school in the island (Ceylon, as it then was, and still should be), founded in 1835 by an amazing British Governor, Robert Wilmot Horton. This famous boys-school has produced some outstanding people - a Prime Minister, Chief Justice, Attorney General and many others who held key positions in government service, industry and commerce. To balance things it also produced the first Executive President of Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka’s first dictator ! Of the distinguished ones that Royal College has produced, if the totality of the product is considered, Adrian Wijemanne was the best. The motto of the school, initially called the Hill St Academy, and later renamed Royal College, says it all - “Disce aut Discede” (learn or depart). The school now has more than 5,500 students! 

After a brilliant career in this outstanding school, he entered the University of Ceylon to read European History, Indian History and Ceylon History. That was the background that set this man apart - and with which he was able to make such a forceful contribution to the Tamil struggle. 

Government service 

In 1947 (age 22) he passed the most elite examination in Ceylon, the then “Ceylon Civil Service”, which enabled him, if he chose, to put the magic ‘CCS’ after his name. He went on to work in Government service, holding several important positions in the Ministry of Lands and Irrigation. In the last five years of his 11 year stint, he was the Deputy Land Commissioner. 

Quitting Ceylon 

During Sirima Bandaranaike’s first Government in the early 1960s, unable to cope with the emerging political interference, indiscipline and anti-Tamil discrimination, he opted for early retirement. After a short stint in the private sector in Colombo,  he left Ceylon to join the World Council of Churches, as the Head of the Development Board in Geneva, moving later to Amsterdam (and becoming a Dutch citizen). He retired in the early 1990s, to move to England with his wife Chitra, to be close to their daughter Shevanthi
. 

refugee camp in Trincomalee in 2006

Before I go on with Adrian’s life, can I change focus and ask you to look at the situation in Sri Lanka since Adrian. Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans, Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims have left the country. Many Tamils have left because of the intolerable violation of human rights they faced. The others have left for the same reason that Adrian did. Sri Lanka, both the Sinhalese South and the Tamil North-East, cannot afford this massive drain of able people. Unless the current problems, which are not only the ethnic problem but serious problems in governance, are addressed, the country will be depleted of people with talent and ability. An “unwinnable and unending war” as Adrian put it, will result in bankruptcy (as occurred in Ethiopia), a total destruction of infrastructure (as in East Timor – the poorest nation on earth), or a ‘failed State’ (such as Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Ivory Coast). Adrian’s ‘mission’ and ‘vision’ was to try and prevent Sri Lanka going down this suicidal pathway. 

Involvement in Ethnic conflict 

It was after he retired that Adrian immersed himself completely in the devastating ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Government and the ‘minority’ Tamils. He was one of a handful of Sinhalese in the whole world to support the entirely justifiable cause of the Tamil people. He was the only Sinhalese to publicly state, not once, but many times, the absolute need for a Separate Tamil State, Eelam (and a Separate Sinhalese State), so that the two nations could develop separately and, perhaps Confederate later, once each State has developed to its full potential. Such development is impossible unless the on-going military conflict is brought to an end. Adrian’s major contribution was the common sense and reason, backed by historical precedent, that he advocated so convincingly. 

Publications 

From 1990-2001, the publications poured out. He lectured widely in the USA, Canada and Europe and, in 1996 published his ‘opus magnum’, War and Peace, in post-colonial Ceylon 1948-1991. This essential book for anyone interested in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, he dedicated to his wife, in typical Adrian-fashion. “To Chitra my wife whose relentless opposition to this entire project and uncompromising rejection of every salient point herein have dispelled any lingering doubt as to the need, the urgent need, for this book”. This resonates with me. I know the feeling. 

I would strongly suggest, with permission from Chitra Wijemanne and their daughter Shevanthi Roser, that these publications be translated into Sinhalese and made available in Sri Lanka, a country which has rejected every point that Adrian has made. Adrian found it impossible to get a single article published in Sri Lanka. He was considered such a threat that even after his death, it was not possible to get published an obituary of a man who has written more sense on the ethnic conflict than anyone I know. 

Sri Lankans are the losers, not Adrian or his enormous ‘fan-club’ abroad. I doubt if any publisher in that Democratic Socialist Republic will be willing to take the risk of publishing a Sinhala translation of Adrian’s book or his invaluable articles. However, I will try.   

Myeloma and death 

In 2001 Adrian was diagnosed with myeloma, a type of bone marrow cancer which often produces intolerable pain and is usually fatal. His life-long friend, another fine Sinhalese, Neville Jayaweera, records Adrian’s last days.

 “I saw him as he lay dying in hospital a few days before he passed away, but even then, though in intolerable pain,  he was lamenting not his illness but the folly of Sri Lankan leaders in failing even belatedly to face up to the reality of the crisis facing the country. Two days after I saw him he went into a coma and within another two days, on the 22^nd July (2006) passed away. He was 81.” 

My contact...

I knew of Adrian Wijemanne for a long time but actually met him only in June 2001 when I spoke on The Abuse of Democracy in Sri Lanka, to the International Tamil Foundation, London, which Adrian had addressed twice. He was too ill to come down to London for the meeting and I drove up to Cambridge to visit him and his charming wife in their modest apartment. Adrian had been an inspiration to me for years. Despite all his fame and achievements (in the 1990s the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva gave him a hearing in his personal capacity, an unprecedented act for a UN body), he was a soft spoken, quiet man, willing more to listen than to talk. When he did, his brilliance, conviction, sincerity and integrity were obvious. His parting words to me were, “I am leaving this in your hands. Don’t give up, it is a cause that every decent human being should support, irrespective of the cost.” 

What did he believe in, why and at what cost?....  

Adrian believed in the cause of the Tamil people because he felt it was a just cause and it was the right thing to do. He supported the Tamil people in their attempt to free themselves from Sinhalese domination and discrimination. He simply loathed injustice and oppression and supported, not only the struggles of the Tamils but also of the Bosnians, the Palestinians, the Chechnyans, and other militant groups, struggling to free their people form domination, This he did undeterred by the cost – which, where his Sri Lankan involvement was concerned, was not insignificant. Sinhalese ‘patriots’ (read extremists) ridiculed, abused and demonised him, sent him ‘hate mail’, threatened him with bodily harm and even death if he even set foot in Sri Lanka.  

The Christian Worker 

This is a quarterly ‘Left-of-centre’ and supposedly ‘Christian’ journal in Colombo, which I had supported financially at no small cost. I helped out with a substantial donation of money I did not have, when the Journal faced closure. When I told the Manager of Christian Worker that I was going to see Adrian, he asked, “Why do you want to see that Tamil Tiger Terrorist?”. It clearly demonstrates that the Church in the Sinhalese South is more Sinhalese than Christian. When I told this to Adrian, the devout Christian and formerly of the World Council of Churches, he said with a quiet smile, “Are you surprised?”  Frankly, I was - ‘shattered’ would be a better word. And all my money, spent, nay squandered, to support a racist journal, no different from those of the gentlemen in yellow robes who defame the teaching of Buddha. 

Advice to me. 

When I was being subjected to threats similar to that endured by Adrian for years, I called him from Australia. His response was typical; “Brian, this should be a tremendous encouragement to you. It means that you are hitting where it hurts. If all that these thugs can do is to threaten and abuse you, they cannot have answers to the questions you raise or a case to defend. I would say that it is far better to be treated the way you are than to be ignored.” Adrian certainly had a point, as he usually had.
  

What would he have wanted?... 

When I was asked to speak, as I was, at the funeral of Adrian’s close friend, C.J.T Thamotharam, the doyen of Tamils in the UK, I asked myself, “What would he have wanted me to say?” Neither of them would have wanted me to boast about, or even list, their achievements. They would have wanted me to address the current problems that are destroying Sri Lanka and setting it on a course to be a Failed State.  

Unfortunately, there are now so many that if I deal with these, even briefly, we will be here till dawn. The best I can do is to circulate a couple of pages with the problems listed. Perhaps we can have a meeting in the not too distant future where these critical issues can be discussed and, what is more important, take the necessary action to address them.  In the time available today, all I can do is to briefly mention a few:  

1.       Involvement, support, and unity 

Get involved. 

I ask you, urge you, implore you, to get involved and support the cause of the Tamil people. The struggle of the Tamil people is to free themselves from the murderous, racist and irresponsible regime in the Sri Lankan South which claims to be the Government of Sri Lanka. I do not want to exaggerate or be melodramatic, but the Tamil people in the North and East, are facing the most serious problem they have faced in their 2,500 years of recorded history. It is genocide of the Tamil people that masquerades as “A war on Tamil Terrorism”, conducted by the Sinhalese Government and supported by many foreign countries for their own geo-political or economic gain.  

Ask yourself the question – why did you come to this country? Most of you came because of the violation of your human rights in Sri Lanka. That is what we are asking for your help to address. 

Take a stand 

This is not an issue where you can have no opinion. You have either to support a repressive regime or an oppressed people. If you support the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) – that’s fine, you can support them and justify why you do so. If you support an oppressed people, quite literally facing annihilation by Israeli built KFir bombers, multi-barrel rocket propelled grenades, murder and starvation, then you will have to support them right now. Tomorrow may be too late. The ‘body-count’ so far, (12/9/06), is 848 Tamil civilians killed in just the last nine months since Rajapakse was elected President. The number is escalating.  

Men, women and children are being targeted, for no reason other than that they are Tamils. They are being targeted deliberately, not accidentally. This is not ‘collateral damage’ in a war between the GOSL and the Tamil Tigers. This is intended, deliberate, cold-blooded murder. It is a genocidal killing of Tamils that is occurring despite a supposed Cease-Fire Agreement.  

I remind you again that, like Adrian, I am a Sinhalese. So, here is a Sinhalese imploring Tamils to come to the rescue of Tamil people. I cannot think of anything more absurd. Actually it is not absurd – I am urging you to get involved, not speaking as a Sinhalese but as a human being (as did Adrian), at the killing of other human beings who happen to be Tamils. 

Do what? 

Get involved in what way? Contact any of us who are actively campaigning for the Tamil people and we will tell you what you can do. I will be releasing a detailed document on this very subject of involvement when I address the AGM of the Sangam in New York on 14.10.06. I doubt whether we can wait that long. I urge you to act now – tomorrow may be too late.  

Divisions in expatriate Tamils 

I started by asking you, urging you and imploring you, to get involved. Can I once again ask, urge and implore you again, this time to stop this baffling in-fighting, rivalry and similar nonsense that is so rampant among expatriate Tamils the world over. Sometime ago I delivered the same talk thrice in one day to Tamil groups only a few hundred metres apart in London.“Why could you not come for the meeting I addressed a few hours ago just down the road?” “Oh! Brian, you do not understand this, but that group is different from our group, and we don’t have much to do with them”.  No, I don’t understand it, because it is nonsense which, by definition, does not make sense. 

Here we are, fighting one of the most barbaric, ruthless and irresponsible Governments in the world, which is trying to crush an entire Nation, the Tamil nation, and what are our ‘troops’ doing? Fighting amongst themselves! I find this incredible. but then, I am a Sinhalese and not a Tamil. Let’s give the Sinhalese credit where credit is due. There may be half a dozen different Sinhalese groups (and there are), but when it comes to fighting the Tamils, there is only one group whose commonality is being virulently anti-Tamil.. 

May I implore you to stop this nonsense which is only weakening our struggle. The struggle is difficult enough without it being made more difficult by ‘sabotage from within’.  

2.       Escalating Human Rights Violations 

Escalating situation 

There is an escalation of violations of human rights of Tamil civilians committed by the Sinhalese (99.9%) Armed Forces, escalating because the International Community (IC) of which you are part of, is doing nothing. It is this silence by the IC, this failure to condemn, this reluctance to hold the GOSL and its Armed Forces responsible, which is giving the green light to the Armed Forces and the GOSL to do as they want. In sporting terms, it is “open season” for Tamil killing. They are there to be shot at, bombed, tortured or annihilated. By your silence, you are becoming part of the problem instead of contributing to its solution. 

There is an Army of Occupation in the Tamil North and the East, behaving as one, doing as they please, with no questions asked and no accountability demanded, not by the GOSL, not by you, the International Community or anyone else.  

No point documenting 

There is no point in Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch and all these human rights monitors, filling up reams and reams of paper. We know the problem; we do not need any further documentation. We need to take the necessaryaction to stop this. Writing letters (polite ones at that, as AI suggests), to the President and the Army Commander is of little use. AI has written letters to these people for three decades, and the violations of human rights has escalated! It demands a change of strategy. The current strategy is as effective as writing letters (polite or otherwise) to Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Hitler, or any of your favourite villains. 

HR violations by LTTE 

You might point to human rights violations by the Tamil Tigers. They must be condemned but it is the Government of Sri Lanka which has signed the Human Rights Conventions, and given international undertakings to safeguard the human rights ofall its citizens. The Tamils, believe it or not, are citizens of that country.

Adrian addressed this over and over again. His Sinhalese friend Neville Jayaweera put this better than I can,

“ Wijemanne held very strong views on the subject of terror and terrorism.... Terror is terror by whomsoever inflicted and he held that state terror was in fact more reprehensible because it had unlimited access to sophisticated technology and could easily cloak evil in the vestments of legality and legitimacy. He often cited the USA, the UK, France and the Soviet Union throughout their histories, and Germany and Japan during WW2, as classic perpetrators of state terror and claimed that more often than not, it is the state that casts the first stone and that non-state terror is invariably a last resort response by an underclass, driven to extreme frustration by the intransigence of the state”.  

Oppression of Tamil people by LTTE 

So also the oppression of the Tamil people by the LTTE. Adrian pointed out that recourse to repression has been a feature of every liberation struggle in history, whether class based or nationalistic. He believed that when Tamil Eelam is achieved, the Tamil people freed and Tamil society stabilised, the need for repression will disappear, as will the culture of violence. Once again putting the full weight of his knowledge of history to back this up, he cited the oppression of civilians in liberation struggles in Kenya, Algeria, Cyprus and Ireland. It is this historical perspective that has been lost with the death of Adrian Wijemanne.  That is why he is irreplaceable. 

 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. The Government of Sri Lanka is a signatory to this international Convention. Genocide has nothing to do with numbers killed, it is the intentionand the act(s) to achieve this intention. 

The question of Genocide of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka was raised in 1983, when 3,000 Tamil civilians in Colombo were massacred for no reason other than that they were Tamils. Since then there have been several Tamil killings of a genocidal nature. These have escalated in the past few months. 

There are several ways to achieve genocide - it can be murder, starvation, the withholding of essential medicines, the prevention of any activity that enables people to live etc. Once the intention is there, the methods that can be adopted to achieve the desired goal are endless.  

I am introducing a new concept of different types of genocide - ‘Educational genocide’, ‘cultural genocide’, ‘economic genocide’, which I define as the intention, backed by the act, of “destroying in whole or part the education, culture or economy of a national, ethnic, racial or geographic group”. The GOSL is guilty of all these. 

       As I have said at the beginning of this article, what I said on genocide and the serious violations of Human Rights that is currently escalating, will be transferred to the publication of the talk in Sydney inaugurating the new group “Australians for Human Rights’ Here I will do no more than briefly list out the headings. 

       a)   Genocide by murder and massacres

  b)  Genocide by starvation. Blocking the food supply to Jaffna and preventing agriculture by declaring the best   agricultural lands as “High Security Zones”, and seriously interfering with fishing off the North and East coasts.

c)  Genocide by blocking the only help (medical, refugee, housing etc) available to the Tamils in the North and      East. The murder of International NGOs and the freezing of Tamil Refugee Rehabilitation funds.  

d)  Economic genocide by the destruction of all economic activity of the Tamils in the North and abduction of Tamil businessmen in the North and South..

e)  Educational genocide  by the destruction of education of Tamils in the North.  

f)   Cultural genocide by the deprivation of education and the destruction, not once, but twice, of the Jaffna public library..

3.  Stopping the outside world from knowing what is going on in the Tamil areas. 

1.       Effective media censorship in Colombo – the Patriotic Act to come shortly, which will completely block news except ‘news’ released  by the GOSL.

2.       Killing of Tamil politicians who are articulate e.g. Joseph Pararajasingham.

3.       Killing Tamil journalists.

4.       Smashing Tamil newspaper offices – both in Colombo and in Jaffna. 

4. The Bombing of Kilinochchi 

Bombing by the GOSL of the administrative centre of Tamil Vanni (i.e. Kilinochchi) may result in retaliatory attacks on the administrative centre of the Sinhalese South (Colombo). If this happens, the GOSL cannot complain, it is a problem of its own making.              

 5. Solutions 

I will deal with this in some detail in my address at the Sangam AGM in New York in mid October 2006, and in other addresses in Canada over the next six weeks which will be published on the net.  

There is a solution to the problem in Sri Lanka, as there is to every conflict in the many theatres of war currently in full-swing across the world. Attempting to militarily crush a people is not an answer, it will not provide a solution – indeed it will increase the resolve of the oppressed. History is replete with examples. 

In Sri Lanka, a solution must involve dismantling a British colonial construct that has clearly failed. The solution must involve freeing the Tamil people from Sinhalese domination and by taking the keys for development out of Sinhalese hands and putting them in the hands of those in the developmentally neglected Tamil North and East.  

It is this absolute need to separate the Tamil nation from the Sinhalese nation which is the only way to ensure development of both nations, that Adrian has stressed in innumerable articles. Again using the unmatched power of his knowledge of history, he has given example after example of liberation movements in the last century, succeeding in establishing the liberation of their people despite overwhelming military and manpower superiority of the State being challenged.  

The Tamils will have a Separate Tamil State (and the Sinhalese a Separate Sinhalese State). The GOSL can delay this at the cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. They can delay it, but in no way alter the result. Adrian explains the well-known truism that “history repeats itself”. Concluding his exceptionally brilliant address to the International Tamil Foundation in June 1994:- 

“I will conclude by saying that history does not repeat itself in any mechanical or predetermined manner. It only points the way in which mankind deals with similar problems in widely differing contexts. In the case of nationalist guerrilla wars of secession the finger of history points unmistakably to only one direction from which peace has, and can come – separation into two states”. 

6. What can we do? 

What can we, in the international community do? I have set this out in detail in the Souvenir to be released at the Sangam AGM on 16 October 2006 after which it will be on the net. In essence, it will be to:- 

1 Pressure the GOSL to come up with an offer that

                                   a) Addresses the problems faced by the Tamil people

                                   b) Addresses the problem of the development of the Tamil areas 

             2. Recognise and address the serious violations of Human Rights by the SL Armed Forces and the    Government which has signed the UN Human Rights Convention thereby giving an international undertaking to protect the human rights of all its citizens, including the Tamils.  

7. Undertakings by me 

I will give three undertakings, one at the request of Adrian. 

1. To continue to challenge the right of the Sinhalese regime to oppress the Tamil people and deny them the right to exist with equality, dignity and safety in the country of their birth, and to deny them the right to develop the much-neglected area they live in. If that makes me a ‘Tamil Tiger Terrorist’ or a Sinhalese ‘traitor’, so be it. So was labelled a much more illustrious son of Sri Lanka whom we honour today. 

2. To collect and publish all the writings of Adrian Wijemanne and, if possible, get them translated into Sinhala so that the seriously misled Sinhalese people can see that there are alternatives to war which will actually benefit them as much as the Tamils. 

3. To try and organise an annual “Adrian Wijemanne Oration” for people of honesty, decency, integrity and vision, (I’d even add ‘patriotism’), to talk the sort of sense that Adrian has talked and published with such conviction and zeal. 

Brian Senewiratne                                                                Australia