In their petty geopolitical and corporate interests, India and the West have created a Frankenstein monster of a state in Sri Lanka that disgraces the whole world. What fears them now is this monster in its frenzies making their labours lost in the island. This is what impels them to tell the victims to reconcile, not to anger the monster and not to say genocide even when it takes place for decades. A general excuse they come out with is that the present world has no appetite for new nation states. Colombo makes the best use of this weakness. No justifiable norm of polity could be seen in why India and the West should labour so hard to uphold a united Sri Lanka and to appease it beyond all limits, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
Full text of the article from the commentator follows:
A prominent diplomat of a power that invented and indiscriminately pursued the paradigm ‘war on terror’ in the entire world, after around two thousand of its people got killed in a single attack, is privately advising some members of the Tamil diaspora to avoid highly charged terms like ‘genocide’ and ‘Nazi-style conditions’ in Sri Lanka to advocate constructively with the Sri Lanka government and the UN. “People in the government and the UN will assume there is no point in engaging you as your mind is already made up,” he says.
Sri Lanka’s foreign secretary and permanent representative to UN, Palitha Kohona explicitly explained the point saying “there isn’t one instance where a winner of a war has been tried before a Tribunal. They have always been set up for losers.”
A few days ago, an article appeared in Tamil in a literary journal of Tamil Nadu substantiated at length, Kohona’s stand. What is conspicuous about the article, apart from the fact that it made abetters of Colombo ‘vindicated’, is its vantage and thrust aimed at capturing the political course of the diaspora. Inferences in the article indicate its origins in the diaspora and not in Vanni.
When there was a long standing demand that the Tamil Nadu state assembly should inspire the world by recognising the national aspirations of Eezham Tamils, and when there should have been no ‘obstacles’ to it as the LTTE excuse was crushed, Karunanidhi government not only chose to openly nullify Eezham Tamil nation, but has gone to the extent of even erasing the word ‘Eezham’ in public places.
Mr. Karunanidhi reportedly told someone who met him that erasing the word Eezham had been the work of ‘central’ agencies. But people believe that Centre has now assigned the task of political subjugation of the question of Eezham Tamils to Karunanidhi. Some obsolete laws of the state have been re-asserted now, aiming against voices supporting the national cause of Eezham Tamils in Tamil Nadu.
Mahinda Rajapaksa set the orchestration sometime back by a draft legislation banning ethnic-orientated political parties in the island and by compelling to EPDP to abandon its identity in the municipal elections in Jaffna.
What is clearly and repeatedly demonstrated by all the Establishments is that the war they commonly waged for varying reasons was not against the LTTE, but against the national aspirations of Eezham Tamils in the island. If not so, their responses should have been different now.
In a negative way they all have recognised the validity of Eezham Tamil nationalism and the global significance of the question. War on terror was a camouflage as there was no moral justification to reject a long-due liberation.
All their intense and aggressive current manoeuvres only show that the war has not been ‘won’.
But there is no camouflage for the aggressors and abetters now. So the war of the guilty ones now, shielding behind states and the tag of ‘winners,’ is to use all possible ways – coaxing, lure, money, divide, pressure, coercion and subjugation, to make Tamils on their own give up national aspirations and accept all blame onto themselves.
Colombo is never ashamed of its ‘naked’ chauvinism and will not be at rest until all traces of Tamil identity are erased from the island. Already it has started saying political solution is unnecessary as it is successful in ’emptying’ Tamil homeland. In its incurable paranoia this self-proclaimed ‘super power’ is not going to stop with the island. Tamil Nadu and India are the immediate ones going to reap the consequences for the policies followed by them.
Drunk with diplomatic and military victories, Palitha Kohona has formally declared war on Eezham Tamil diaspora, last week. This is going to be waged by diplomatic missions being militarized now. Besides all kinds of acts of subversion by these missions, no diaspora member may able to visit kith and kin in the prisons and open prisons in the island without first getting screened by these missions and for that purpose sacrificing freedom of expression or playing stooges.
In their petty geopolitical and corporate interests, India and the West have created a Frankenstein monster of a state in Sri Lanka that disgraces the whole world. China and Pakistan have only made use of the situation.
What fears them now is this monster in its frenzies making their labours lost in the island. This is what impels them to tell the victims to reconcile, not to anger the monster and not to say genocide even when it takes place for decades. A general excuse they come out with is that the present world has no appetite for new nation states. Had it been some other context the song would have been different.
Colombo makes the best use of this weakness.
No justifiable norm of polity could be seen in why India and the West should labour so hard to uphold a united Sri Lanka and to appease it beyond all limits.
What so ever, how the diaspora is going to comprehend the situation and is going to respond are of paramount importance.
In any such situation there will be always a section of collaborators, citing the immediate plight of people or as Kohona has said, citing “job opportunities, children going to school” etc. Even though there is no history that collaboration with aggression ever produced positive results, let there be no qualms if this section could make anything durable. It is for them to prove to the people.
But the vast majority, who wants to be true to their aspirations, have a historic duty in organising themselves politically without playing in the hands of calculated detractors of Eezham Tamil nationalism and in demonstrating their will power for what they want.
International equations are not going to be the same always, but Tamils need the voice strong to negotiate when changes take place. Strength of any form is what always recognised.
What to do and how to do it democratically have been discussed in many articles appeared in TamilNet, even though being democratic in struggle is not going to keep Tamils away from the wrath of the Sri Lankan state.
The diaspora, which was able to draw all the people to streets for demonstrations, can always do it. It will not fit enough to be a nation if it doesn’t achieve it. If the old generation is disillusioned and if they can’t conceive ways to stand upright, let them not deviate the cause, but concentrate on other activities of developing the nation and leave the matter to the younger generation.
It is detractor’s argument that political organisation in the diaspora for Tamil independence in the island would affect the rhetoric ‘resettlement, rehabilitation and reconstruction.’ On the contrary, it is the political challenge that can expedite any meaningful remedy to the present plight of people. Moreover, collaboration is not going to have any say on the Three Rs as they are going to be determined only by the designs and interests of the aggressors and multi national corporations.
There is no need to tell genuine rehabilitation begins from psychological rehabilitation. After all what has happened, it can come to Eezham Tamils only when their national aspirations are recognised and fulfilled.
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