How a Diaspora Killing it's own - David Blacker.

As the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) grinds inexorably towards certain defeat for the self-proclaimed representatives of the Tamil nation, there seems to be no great fanfare, no glorious last stands. This revolution dies not with a bang, but with whimpers and cowardice. And lies.

For a year the Tamil diaspora, spread from Tamil Nadu to Toronto, watched with disbelief as the the Sri Lankan infantry divisions cut the Tiger formations to pieces, hammering them back into a tiny pocket close to Mullaitivu on the island’s north-eastern coast. Now, as the world watches, a mortally wounded Tiger cowers behind the very people it claims to defend, mauling them as it dies.

As the pace of the offensive slows down in the heavily populated Mullaitivu district, the Tamil diaspora has finally found its voice, and a cause worthy of its outrage — the Tamil population of the Wanni, trapped in the fighting and suffering horribly. They lack everything human beings have a right to expect — food, shelter, clothing, security, life itself. If anything is worthy of our attention, it is these people, held hostage by their proclaimed protectors, forced to face the guns and tanks of the SL army in the hope that if enough of them are killed or maimed, the world might save the LTTE.

The diaspora, organised and spurred by LTTE front organisations, chants its mantra of concentration camps and Sri Lankan government genocide of the Tamils, ignoring the fact that it is the LTTE, and not the government, that is holding the Wanni Tamils in these inhuman conditions. And like all human catastrophies, this one too, has spawned its celebrity hangers-on. First, Sri Lankan-born British rapper MIA, and now at the eleventh hour, Booker Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy. These two individuals more or less represent the two strongest tones of voice we hear calling for a cessation of the Sri Lankan military offensive against the Tigers.

MIA largely chooses to ignore all reality in favour of an LTTE-created one in which hundreds of thousands of Tamils have died at the hands of a million-strong Sinhalese army which is gassing, raping and torturing its way through the Wanni, while the valiant Tamil freedom fighters stand aside as the silent victims.