Tamil émigrés follow the election campaign with jaundiced eyes
IN THE dingy back office of a Sri Lankan grocery shop in Harrow, north-west London, sales assistants pore over a Tamil newspaper, while a customer says he is going home to follow events on the internet. Having watched from afar as the Sri Lankan army crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009, British Tamils are again transfixed by a campaign on the island—this time for an election. On January 26th the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, will seek to capitalise on his military victory at a presidential poll called nearly two years earlier than it need have been.
The news, however, has been mostly grim for the 1m or so members of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. Most supported the rebels and the independent state for which they battled. As the Tigers were defeated, thousands of Tamils were killed. Now, the choice is between two candidates: Mr Rajapaksa, who launched the final bloody phase of the war; and Sarath Fonseka, who led the army that waged it.
For Tamils that constitutes a dispiriting contest. Both candidates are Sinhalese nationalists; neither seems likely to hurry towards the national reconciliation they have promised. But with the Sinhalese vote apparently closely split between Mr Rajapaksa and Mr Fonseka, Tamils, who constitute only 12% of the population, may have the deciding say. In Sri Lanka the Tamil National Alliance, once seen as a proxy for the Tigers, has announced its backing for Mr Fonseka, as the only way to thwart Mr Rajapaksa. Many Tamil émigrés say they grudgingly support that decision. Without votes, however, they can do little to sway the outcome.
They were not always so powerless. Until May, when the war was won and lost, the Tamil diaspora, which accounts for one-quarter of Sri Lankan Tamils and has large populations in Canada, Britain, America and Australia, exerted huge power back home. By financing the rebels—to the tune of $300m a year by some estimates—overseas Tamils sustained a well-armed guerrilla force, which by the end had even a primitive air force able to bombard the main city, Colombo.
The Tigers’ overseas network flourished after many Tamils fled their homeland in the 1980s. It controlled many aspects of diaspora life, including schools and temples. In Tamil-populated areas such as Harrow, the Tigers’ defeat is sharply felt. Stories abound of humble shopkeepers made millionaires as the Tigers were wiped out before collecting their loot. But most lost out. “Everyone gave money to the Liberation Tigers,” says a 30-year-old waiter in Sambar, a Sri Lankan café in Harrow. “And we lost everything.”
Some Tiger supporters have tried to reignite the campaign for a Tamil “Eelam”, or homeland. The Global Tamil Forum, one of several new outfits, says it is planning elections for a “transnational government” in April. Around the world, referendums are being organised on the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, a document adopted in 1976 by a group called the Tamil United Liberation Front, declaring the Tamils’ right to statehood.
The Tigers’ former following, however, is now rudderless, allowing dissenters to speak up. Brutal towards the very Tamils they claimed to represent at home, the Tigers also put heavy pressure on exiles, threatening to harm their relatives. Raghavan, a founder of the Tigers in 1974, who left them a decade later and now lives in London, says their defeat is allowing more moderate views an airing on diaspora radio stations and websites.
His greater hope is that a moderate Tamil voice, without the Tigers to silence it, will now be heard in Sri Lanka itself. Overseas, the diaspora will keep up the calls for investigations into alleged war crimes, and press for a political settlement to ensure lasting peace. But there are fears Tiger activists overseas may seek to undermine Tamil politicians who press for devolution rather than a separate Tamil state.
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