'Our Holocaust and the impossibility of peace in Sri Lanka'

'Our Holocaust and the impossibility of peace in Sri Lanka'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 May 2009, 04:17 GMT]
“It is self-evident that the close scrutiny of the international community, the pleas and pointed warnings by powerful states and the disgust of the world has not impressed a Sinhala state, polity and people drunk with racism,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper said this week. “It is inescapable that whatever the international community does, the Sinhala state will continue to pose an existential threat to the Tamil people, unless we are protected by our own borders and security forces.” The paper added, “[meanwhile] contrary to Sinhala expectations, Tamil militancy will remain central to Sri Lanka’s future. As the LTTE, which has transformed itself – yet again – for a new kind of war, bluntly put it last month: as long as the Tamils are oppressed, ‘Sri Lanka will never be able to live in peace’.”

That this is a racist war is not a secret. I would not go so far as to use the word genocide, but it would not surprise me to see it used in future international legal action against the government. At any rate, the government itself has plastered the countryside with enormous placards lauding the military with the slogan, in Sinhala, the language of the Sinhalese majority to which I too, belong, stating: "Soldiers, our race salutes you!" Not "the people", not "the country", but the race. And all these placards exhibit the stated provenance of the Ministry of Defence or other government institutions. Interestingly, none of these hoardings are in Tamil, the language of the people the government claims it is seeking to liberate.

Is it not ridiculous for a Government that promotes race hatred and race killings to look at us and call us 'terrorists'?

Is it not ridiculous for a Government that promotes race hatred and race killings to look at us and call us 'terrorists'? While on the one hand celebrations were going on to mark '50 years of Parliamentary democracy', (in 1981) Tamil members of the same Parliament were subject to mid night arrest and the house of one Member of Parliament was set on fire. These are not acts that you can do in a civilised world and then hold your head high. You talk of terrorism and robbery. Has this country seen anything to compare with the state terrorism and the race hate carried out with state weaponry? We have even heard of influential Sri Lanka government politicians terrorising people with revolvers!

 We are honest fighters belonging to an organization that is struggling to liberate a people.

To those noble souls who keep on prating "terrorism, terrorism" we have something to say. Did you not get frightened of terrorism when hundreds of Tamils were massacred in cold blood, when racist hate spread like fire in this country of yours? Did terrorism mean nothing to you when Tamil women were raped? When cultural treasures were set on fire? When hundreds and hundreds of Tamil homes were looted? Why in 1977 alone 400 Tamils lost their lives reddening the sky above with their splattered blood - did you not see any terrorism then? Did your thoughts and feelings become deadened when it concerned Tamil lives and Tamil property or are your minds unable to conceive the very idea of Tamil suffering?..

"Selvarajah Yogachandran, popularly known as Kuttimuni, a nominated member of the Sri Lankan Parliament...,one of the 52 prisoners killed in the maximum security Welikade prison in Colombo two weeks ago, (on July 25) was forced to kneel in his cell, where he was under solitary confinement, by his assailants and ordered to pray to them. When he refused, he was taunted by his tormentors about his last wish, when he was sentenced to death. He had willed that his eyes be donated to some one so that at least that person would see an independent Tamil Eelam. The assailants then gouged his eyes...He was then stabbed to death and his testicles were wrenched from his body. This was confirmed by one of the doctors who had conducted the postmortem of the first group of 35 prisoners." (Madras Hindu, 10 August 1983)

"The emergence of a martyr... facilitates patriotism and nationalism: if people feel that someone with whom they identify themselves has been killed, tortured, or otherwise deprived of some value, their indignation is likely to be great and perhaps long enduring..." - Leonard W.Doob: Patriotism and Nationalism, Yale University Press, 1964