A fear that a Colombo-Delhi axis had NAM’s backing to kill off international initiatives including the recent Ban’s proposed experts panel to advise him on the SL human rights/war crimes turned out to be a massive hoax. The centre piece of this hoax was Palitha Kohona deceitfully obtaining the signature from the current Chair (Egypt who soon after disowned) of NAM to a letter to Ban when NAM was not in session. This deceit misused the name of NAM tarnishing it and its members’ reputation including India as supporting the SL genocide and not agreeing with Ban’s expert panel. India disassociated itself from that letter. The Buddhist Sinhala SL officialdom resorts to such disgraceful conduct to avoid any human rights/war crimes initiatives over its genocide atrocities. An interesting but not kind to Ban “Is Sri Lanka fast losing its true friend at the UN” Upul Joseph Fernando 7 April 2010 piece also throws light on a South Block type role Indian UN officials (the Nambiars and Chatterjees) play in the UN establishment. SL officialdom expected Delhi’s support for it over the Ban letter as Delhi did supporting the UNHRC May 2009 resolutions commending SL’s conduct in the SL-Eelam war. Analysts worldwide condemned that Delhi’s role then as a ‘disgrace’.
With the spell of the South Block sectarians Narayanan/Menon fast fading Delhi’s May 2009 UNHRC type support for the SL genocide is unlikely in the future. The over appeasing Narayanan’s geo-politics (to keep China getting too close to SL) to justify support for SL genocide is backfiring. Alarm bells are ringing in Delhi with a China foothold in Hambantota and sighting of Chinese workmen camps in Katchchativu, over the China threat right at India’s soft under belly doorstep. By its over appeasing SL Delhi abdicated the high human rights moral ground to the West (notably UK, EU and US) implicitly associating or supporting genociders and state terrorists committing serious enough war crimes.
Readers worldwide are horrified over the brutality of the six decades long genocide on the Tamils more specifically the Gothabhaya and (in the loop) Narayanan massacres of tens of thousands and internment of hundreds of thousands civilians behind barb wire fenced camps in SL in 2009/10. A substantial number of these internees still languish in the camps away from their habitual abode. Though SL justified its repeated genocide pogroms on the defenseless Tamils since the 1948 independence as a historical necessity (this was only checked by an incorruptible armed resistance that emerged in the 1980’s) the Narayanan/Menon duo ensured that this security shield for the Eelam Tamils was totally dismantled in May 2009. The success of the genocide is attributable to the overt and covert support SL received from the sectarians in the Delhi South Block who high jacked Indian policies from its dharmic underpinnings. These sectarians detested Eelam Tamils for their alleged Dravida sympathies while the Buddhist-Sinhala SL carried forward deep anti Tamil animosity for the centuries long wars the Tamils waged against Buddhist Sinhala SL.
This hatred towards Eelam Tamils is openly and regularly mouthed by Buddhist Sinhala leaders more so since 1983. SL President JR Jayawardena’s outspoken ‘really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy’ is an explicit statement of SL’s use of starvation as a genocide weapon; a war crime. To delight the Buddhist-Sinhala viewers SL media relayed vivid images of bone starved civilians being herded for internment into Narayanan-Gothabhaya camps in May 2009. Senior Minister Gamini Dissanayake in 1983 boasted ‘In 14 minutes the blood of every Tamil in the country can be sacrificed to the land by us’; a wake-up call for the repeated massacres of Eelam Tamils during the past six decades. Another SL President Wijetunge in 1993 in equating ‘Minorities ..(Tamils to)..creepers clinging to the Sinhala tree’ to be exorcised, led to another prominent Buddhist Sinhala Minister Athulath Mudali to specifically pronounce SL’s ethnic cleansing agenda (also a war crime); the ‘only way to root out terrorism was to remove the concept of “traditional homeland”’. This, the Rajapakse clan successfully achieved by its brutal massacres of tens of thousands of civilian Eelam Tamils with their resistance leaders in May 2009 for President Rajapakse to proclaim the success of the SL genocide with a ‘No minorities in the island of Sri Lanka’ claim. Basil Rajapakse’s anti-Tamil ‘para demala’ label for Sivalingam, a Tamil minister (2009) in the government was publicly repeated by President Rajapakse to the Tamil public in Jaffna ‘Yes we are Sinhala. The country is also Sinhala. So you Demala (Tamils) listen to me. If you cannot…then leave’ (where! there are no takers now) at the Duraiappa Stadium, Lanka News Web 4 April 2010.
This backdrop explains the more vigorous continuation of the Buddhist Sinhala SL genocide. Foreign funds meant for reconstruction (houses, hospitals, schools, roads) that the Buddhist Sinhala SL destroyed by its scotched earth war are being channeled into a more open ethnic cleansing campaign, settling in Buddhist Sinhalas into displaced Tamil homes and building many Buddhist temples in Jaffna; the heart of Tamil Eelam. This is Athulath Mudali’s ethnic cleansing medicine ‘.. remove the concept of “traditional homeland” ’. Tamil Eelam essentially a Tamil Hindu territory is fast becoming a Buddhist Sinhala one. By its silence, Delhi becomes a party to an anti-Hindu/Christian SL crusade. Ethnic cleansing at the point of the gun is a war crime and settling Buddhist Sinhalas into the homes of displaced Eelam Tamils’ habitual homes is classic ethnic cleansing; a war crime.
Another serious SL genocide crime is continuing in the secret reformatory camps for the resistance cadres whose numbers originally reported at 12 500 are now down to 10 500. The trauma of disappearances in the camps is brutal when the regime advises their kin to go to a website (without giving specific details of the website) for the names of the internees adding that those not in the list are not alive. What fate befell the missing detainees remains a mystery. There is no rule of law or judicial process to explain these missing internees. Only urgent UNHR intervention, serious international war crimes processes and Ban Moon’s expert team would bring some accountability to combatants who are state terrorists. Visits by internationally recognized organizations may also save the lives of the internees.
The historical reality of a Tamil Eelam and a Buddhist Sinhala SL was categorically vouched by Sir Hugh Leghorn in June 1799 who asserted “Two different nations, from a very ancient period, have divided between them the possession of the Island… These two nations differ entirely in their religion, language and manners”. The British brought Sir Hugh Leghorn’s two nations together purely for administrative convenience in 1833. When they left the SL shores in 1947 they left the orphaned Eelam Tamils to the foster care of the likes of Buddhist Sinhala Rajapakse types whose hatred of Tamils is legendary. Their vision of a united Lanka is a ‘Sinhala land’ cleansed of Basil Rajapakse’s ‘para demalas’. Had UK anticipated the magnitude of the genocide unleashed on the Tamils with such a genocide SL mindset it would have not entrusted the lives of Tamils to a Buddhist Sinhala SL rule specifically under a unitary constitution.
The answer to ‘how much of the 30 per cent Tamils at independence still live in SL is a measure of the ethnic cleansing oppression of Buddhist Sinhala SL. Over a million were driven out as refugees now the diaspora in UK, Canada and Australia, .9 million up country Tamils disenfranchised in 1948 and sent back to TN/India, .5 million (according to a Harvard study) killed, and almost the entire Tamils displaced, dispossessed and under military occupation. Unlike in Yugoslavia a compassionate EU and US successfully pursued the genociders for their crimes in international courts to end the genocide and deliver genuine relief to the victims, but this trend setting outcome didn’t eventuate in the SL genocide case thanks to the Narayanan saga in Delhi.
The hapless Eelam Tamils remaining in SL urgently need the protection of the mandated UNHR and India/TN support to survive. Narayanan is no longer in the picture. His geo-politics driven over appeasing SL policy destroyed the LTTE leverage India had. This encourages an assertiveness in SL to invite China to play a wider role in the region at India’s expense and for the China threat to knock at India’s soft underbelly. Timely redemption from this predicament requires Delhi to re-think the wisdom of Narayanan’s over-appeasing SL policy. That Delhi disassociated itself from Palitha Kohona’s deceptive NAM letter to Ban is evidence of the winds of change that is gently blowing in the diplomatic arena. Delhi working with the international community on SL human rights/war crimes issues makes better geo-politics, not Narayanan’s one.
vssubramaniam