The much awaited UN expert panel report is soothing to the Tamil victims still suffering the excruciating pain of the Sinhala SL genocide since the British left the shores of Ceylon (Sri Lanka)((SL) in 1947. Besides, humanity will also benefit from the report provided the follow up steps produce outcomes that discourage brutal genocide regimes following the Rajapakse model when suppressing dissent. There will be fewer Rajapakse faithfuls, including the notorious Gaddafi, Rajapakse’s bosom pal. Gaddafi testing out the Rajapakse model in Libya today caused most sufferings and the rebellion is gathering greater momentum and deeply stirring the conscience of humanity. Milosovic the brutal practitioner of genocide did not escape accountability for his crimes. Rajapakse through sheer deceit escaped paying for his crimes, for far too long. The birth of Israel was the consequence of Nazi genocide; will the brutality of the Sinhala SL genocide deliver Eelam and how long will the Rajapakses avoid the inevitable?
The core element in the Eelam trauma is the Sinhala SL genocide mindset that outclasses the brutality of the Nazi mindset. When the British left Ceylon (SL) in 1947 the Tamils had 30 percent political representation. This was anathema to the Sinhala genocide mindset. Hence the SL genocide targeted the Tamils politically first. Sinhala SL within a year (1948) of independence disenfranchised and deported about a (substantial) million up country Tamils to Tamil Nadu (India); with the sectarian Brahmins mafia (the precursors of today’s Keralite Mafia) that enjoyed political power in Chennai assisting. The sectarians practiced a form of apartheid of keeping non-brahmins (or untouchables) in eternal semi-servitude. These sectarians like the Keralite Mafia even today manipulated Delhi into acceding to Sinhala SL genocide project of getting rid of the Tamil plantation workers from SL. Some redress only came with the emergence of the Dravida movement in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s supporting the Tamil cause that Delhi could not ignore. Also local political compulsions in SL led JR Jayawardene to restore franchise to the up country Tamils years later only partially to improve his electoral chances over the more radical Sinhala ideologues. However this redress failed to improve the sub human plight of the affected Tamils. This critical start of the Sinhala SL genocide still devastates the lives of all Tamils in Sinhala SL.
Hence the following justifiable lament that highlights how entrenched the genocide mindset in Sinhala SL already was and totally unrelated to the emergence of the armed Eelam (LTTE) insurgency in groundreport ‘Wikileaks – thaw in anti Eelam policies in Delhi – whither the genocide in Sri Lanka’01 April 2011
“By the time India wakes up there will be no Tamils in (ethnic cleansed) Sri Lanka (North included) except the descendents of the Sinhalese soldiers…Let us not forget the plantation Indian workers who have been sold out by the same (sectarians). They live in ghettos (like the Jews under Nazis), cannot leave their area, (no proper education for their children), under-paid and live and die in 10×10 feet sheds called lines …worse still there are still workers without any nationality, they are ..almost slaves.” This is classic genocide keeping a community in deprivation.
These first victims were also subject to regular violence in Sinhala SL; their leaders were not spared either. Sinhala SL genocide was bent on displacing these Tamils en mass to Tamil Nadu; subjugating those who escaped deportation into silently accepting their miserable conditions. This is the Eldorado conditions that Sinhala SL apologists now boastfully claim that the Eelam Tamils living in South SL post LTTE enjoy peacefully!
Sinhala SL’s revised history omits any mention of how successfully it reduced the industrious and reasonably prosperous Eelam Tamils to homeless pauperism. Regular state engineered mob and police violence on the vulnerable Eelam Tamils living in the South Sinhala SL forced them to repeatedly flee North (their safe haven) to save their lives. Those who remained suffered deprivation and lived in a semi-servile state in Sinhala South SL. Tarzie Vittachi’s “Emergency 1958” recounts graphically this tragedy especially the economic deprivation that the Eelam Tamils suffered and the climate of fear the Tamils in the South endure to this day. The 1956 riots were the beginning of state instigated violence to cause displacement (ethnic cleansing) first to the North. Many Tamils remember vividly the three day long harrowing cargo ship journey of refugee Tamils living in the South endured time and again. This was a deliberate state policy. It provided the ships to carry the Tamil refugees North and out of the Sinhala South SL; a form of ethnic cleansing.
Yet Sinhala SL continues to boast that everyone irrespective of ethnicity is safe and enjoys decent living conditions in any part of SL. The world renowned 1983 pogrom engineered an exodus of close to one million Tamils overseas; an enlarged version of the 1950’s ethnic cleansing. Tamil Nadu was host to one million Tamil refugees in the 1950s; the western nations in the 1980’s onwards hosted another 1 million Tamil refugees. Thus over 2 million Tamils were ethnic cleansed from SL soil at no cost to SL; a most successful Sinhala SL genocide. The real cost to SL was the creation of the irreversible deep Eelam-Sinhala divide, the Eelam insurgency, three decades of civil conflict and the prospect of an Eelam as homeland edging closer to becoming a reality.
Sinhala SL successfully exploited overseas host countries’ refugee pragrammes into accepting over 2 million (up country and Eelam Tamils) refugees, a huge achievement for SL genocide by world standards. When the host countries began to suffer refugee acceptance fatigue Sinhala SL openly resorted to more brutal forms of genocide indiscriminate bombings, artillery attacks of civilians to further reduce the numerical strength of the Eelam Tamils. Deprivations bordering on starving were added to the ferocious arsenals that SL used to carry forward its genocide in North SL. Impoverishment in the North is proceeding at a rapid pace encouraging Sinhala soldiers settlements in fertile Tamil farms owned by Eelam Tamils depriving their livelihood. Sinhala fishermen poached Tamil fish harvests and daily harassment by soldiers unheard of during the de facto LTTE rule in the North has intensified several fold. Human rights groups and other NGOs have been evicted sealing off news leaks on the genocide/ethnic cleansing atrocities,
Life for most Eelam Tamils in the South in pre-1983 itself was shrouded in a climate of fear. Except for the two decades when the Eelam insurgency ran a de facto state the conditions of the Eelam Tamils worsened following the defeat of the Eelam resistance in May 2009 even in the North the Eelam Tamil’s safe haven. Mahinda genocide Chintanaya requires that the lives of the Eelam Tamils in the North their traditional safe haven be made unbearable enough even when compared to the conditions endured by Eelam Tamils living in hovels in South SL. This is to encourage a demographic Eelam Tamil dispersion to erase the historical reality of Eelam Tamil homelands. This is sad reflection on the cruel mindset that is unlikely to contribute to genuine reconciliation except for Eelam Tamils to live in servitude.
There are genocide apologists who (like Manmohan Singh) simplistically make much ado over a so-called peace that returned with the ‘ending of the longest running civil war’ and life returning to normality for Tamils. Singh’s and Delhi’s casual dismissal of the ferocity of SL’s ethnic cleansing trivializes the sufferings that are going on in SL especially in the North. Such cavalier treatment is meant to justify Delhi partnership of ‘the most dangerous regime determined to wipe out a race from the face of this earth using torture, murder and rape, abductions, summary executions, forced colonizations under the pretext of extending military bases in Tamil areas even in the absence of war and various human rights abuses.. making Sinhala SL an island of hell,’ The crude logic of Singh’s (a Bushite) slogan that ‘there are no good and bad terrorist’ is ‘that anyone who oppose ..extremist policies and human rights violations are terrorists’ who will be exterminated. Hence Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Red Cross and many other humanitarian organisations become terrorist sympathisers. David Miliband, Hillary Clinton and many other western leaders who are advocates of R2P also become terrorist supporters.
Singh’s view reflects the spell of the Keralite Mafia that still strangles policy making on the Tamil trauma in Delhi. Delhi still parades the ‘in the loop’ M’kal Menon internationally. The risks of the role of this M’kal Menon in the Mullivaykal massacres are sure to surface should the matter go before the ICC.
Another Keralite Mafia member, Nambiar in the UN supposedly working for UN a world guardian institution deputed by Ban to act to prevent the M’kal massacre using the R2P provisions played a dubious role in Gothabhaya’s ‘in the loop’ along with M’kal Narayanan and Menon who were in constant contact at the relevant time. Although the ‘expert panel report’ vaguely mentioned ‘..the United Nations political organs and bodies that failed to take action that might have protected civilians’; the episode in which Nambiar’s involvement as a ‘in the loop’ member in the cold blooded massacre of the white flag waving leaders details of which are already in the public domain is missing in the report? The Nambiar factor and the ‘Nambiar behind the curtain’ dramatics in the UN offices during the meetings of Sinhala SL officials with Ban raises basic questions about the proprietary of Nambiar continuing in that key position in the UN. Hence Eelam Tamils’ lament over the lack of specifics on Nambiar’s role allegedly implicating him in the Mullivaykkal massacres ‘ignoring the cries of the dying at the crucial hours.’ This Ban designated negotiator reportedly met Satish Nambiar his brother a military consultant for SL while on the mission to negotiate a cease fire. There was intense diplomatic activity involving the US, Norway and EU members to avoid the bloodbath that eventually occurred. Lamentably the members of the Keralite Mafia including Nambiar pressured SL to speed up the attacks in Mullivaykkal to meet the compulsions of Indian
politics and causing the massacre. Over 320 000 ‘liberated’ civilians herded to ‘languish’ in the Menik Farm torture camps’ allegedly was the brain child of the Keralite Mafia. Only a Gothabhaya facing the ICC will spill out the truth relating to the sordid behavior of these actors (Nambiar included) that caused a most painful human tragedy.
The logic of the Sinhala SL alarmed over the massacre leaks laughably began calling what was its ‘War on Terror’ a ‘Humanitarian Operation’. The ‘expert panel report’ now dispels any doubts the Eelam victims had that the UN after all is trustworthy as an international body endeavouring to protect the Eelam Tamils, the long suffering victims of the Sinhala genocide all the more vulnerable after Delhi betrayed them reversing the good intentioned Indraji’s support to save them. Eelam Tamils now trust ‘only the international community .. showing the will and intent to act to save Eelam Tamils from extinction’ using the UN agencies.
The ‘expert panel’ report thus earns the respect and gratitude of the Eelam Tamils, strengthening the conclusions based on Wikileaks revelations specifically the diaspora’s efforts to canvass Delhi away from its stance of opposing the international community’s SL war crimes initiatives is correct. ‘Successful war crimes outcome will act to deter SL continuing with its genocide especially its massacres. Going by SL’s genocide record, for the Eelam Tamils safety for their lives is the uppermost concern for which the effective safeguard is justice for the victims in the UN war crimes tribunals. Once this is in place devolution whether it is Rajiv’s 13 Amendment+ or a federal system become feasible solutions’, the Sinhala genocide mindset becomes no longer relevant. The signals are that Delhi will support the international community’s war crimes initiatives provided the solutions to the root cause of the SL genocide are underwritten with the guaranteed safeguards that the international war crimes agencies offer for the safety of the lives (especially preventing the recurrence of the Mullivaykkal massacres) of Eelam Tamils still in SL. This is basic to any solution to the Tamil trauma. Please see ‘WIKILEAKS – THAW IN ANTI-EELAM POLICIES IN DELHI-WHITHER THE GENOCIDE IN SRI LANKA’ (GROUNDREPORT.COM April. 01, 2011)
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