The SL Ambassador to the US revealed SL’s plans for ‘a lasting peace’ before a distinguished audience (Washington Leadership Program) recently. The hints he gives in the context of provisions of the 1987 Indo-SL Accord which Delhi promises that SL will deliver in full to the Tamils is ominous for India-SL relations. All indications are that the 1987 Accord will continue to remain a dead letter regardless of India’s concerns.
SL’s strategy is to tire out Delhi on the delivery of the Accord provisions. SL interned the refugees to buy time to demographically alter conditions adverse for the returning internees replicating the military occupation style in Jaffna and densely dotting the north east area with many more oppressive military bases. Also interning and keeping incommunicado the 300 000 ‘human shield’ Tamils who escaped but witnessed the May (16-19) massacre in the narrow ‘no fire zone’ for as long as possible plugs the pre-mature leaks of incriminating evidence on the massacres. The internees were the much touted ‘human shield’ that were herded (s) straight into concentration camps. Keeping them as internees also means effectively disenfranchising them en bloc as other displaced Tamils were in the past. ‘We need to bring them into the political process on the local level..in town and provincial councils… And (as an after thought) we need to do it nationally. In other words, we need elections’. The numerous SL pogroms, the latest May 2009 effectively ethnic cleansed and disenfranchised most Tamils. Doubts that the Tamil concerns will be addressed grow with the Ambassador giving no clues on the time frame and the vagueness of the proposals suggested. Elections to local bodies make a mockery of the Tamil grievances and the idea to bring the Tamils into the SL political process.
SL abused the SL electoral system that the near 30 per cent Tamil parliamentary representation in the independence constitution in the multi-ethnic Ceylon in 1947 was reduced to about 21 percent by disenfranchising a section of the Tamils in 1948; within a year of independence. The voting strength of the Tamils in SL as a whole and in certain areas were further stolen through state sponsored pogroms when ethnic cleansing disenfranchised the Tamils reducing the parliamentary representation to at the most 5 per cent today. Those displaced out of their habitat by the pogrom were dispersed to dilute the voting strength of the Tamils that only half-Tamils like the Devanandas, Karunas and Pillaiyans could hold office for SL to fraudulently claim that the Tamils are involved in SL’s political process today. This is demographic manipulation of the electoral system and hence the SL elections.
The international community including Delhi can only bring lasting peace by restoring the political rights of the Tamils. Under the Delhi’s 1987 Indo-SL Accord limited powers to be devolved to the Tamils is in deep trouble. A close reading of what the Ambassador states points to Colombo going in the opposite direction. Though since 2004 SL’s policieshad clearance of the power brokers (the trio) in the Delhi establishment, indications are that a greater betrayal of the Tamils and TN by Delhi is in the making. Delhi’s support to save SL from its human rights crimes is not driven by altruism but to dissuade Colombo from implicating the Delhi trio in the massacres in the tiny Delhi blessed ‘no fire zone’ in May (16-19) and the subsequent interning of those who escaped the massacre. The initiatives that the UNHRC took in the Council meetings in May to pursue SL for war crimes were killed off by Delhi. Delhi’s stance since 2004 has been to condone the morality of the ethnic cleansing and fully support SL genocide to enslave the Tamils.
The Delhi blessed ‘no fire zone’ and ‘intern’ camps; the brain children of the Narayanan/Menon Delhi duo were for the massacres to remain as utmost secrets without independent witnesses to frustrate potential war crimes proceedings. Lurid pictures of the SL massacres are in the public domain worldwide, thanks to the internet. Most interesting is The Sunday Times Gothabhaya Rajapakse interview that incriminates the Indian trio’s (Foreign Secretary, National Security Advisor and Defense Secretary) as closely liaising with their SL counterparts on the timing and details of the (May 16 to 19) massacres including RAW’s role in the massacre of Ltté leadership along with 20 000 civilians that the Delhi trio considered acceptable to Delhi. RAW’s over flights gave precise target co-ordinates and ground conditions for the massacres.
Delhi’s credibility is badly dented after it time and again swore that it never provided SL with arms, but SL’s victory parade featured the Indian radars, Bofors guns, two war ships given by India anchored in the Colombo harbor and more. Over the UNHRC pursuing SL war crimes, Delhi (the Tom Toming Raman) not only contested the civilian numbers killed in SL’s ‘no fire zone’ it accused UNHRC and mandated Human Rights groups personnel and the West of using the ‘Eelam issue to embarrass the SL government ..put its senior officers in the dock by disseminating unauthenticated high figures of civilian casualties’ and pushing under the carpet the savagery of the attacks on civilians (bombardments of the narrow ‘no-fire zone’, lobbing grenades into bunkers where unarmed and starving civilians were taking shelter and bulldozing civilians ‘into mass graves along with the dead’). To prevent evidence of the ‘human shield’ internees who escaped but witnessed the massacres from coming into the public domain SL is tempted to drag out the release of these detainees much to the displeasure of the Indian public. Such evidence will be much more damaging than the TV images of the long marches to the camps of emaciated civilians, vouching to the savage use of starvation as a weapon of war on unarmed civilians.
Despite such inhumanity Delhi voted for SL in the May UNHRC meeting. Will such a Delhi honestly venture to redress the Tamil trauma? Colombo has a weapon (Delhi’s complicity in the 20 000 civilian massacre) to taunt should India falter and expose SL to war crimes proceedings. Delhi $ 100 million relief for the sufferings of the Vanni internees will not erase its guilt in SL using the trio’s internment camps concept. SL is sure to gloat over the Delhi trio’s predicament though gratefully acknowledge Delhi’s support in its war and India’s robust lobbying for SL in UNHRC. SL is unlikely to reciprocate Delhi’s generosity by implicating the Delhi trio but the temptation for Delhi is to keep SL‘s goodwill at all costs. Hence humanity and the Tamils world-wide have to discount the Delhi’s support in ending their trauma and pursue alternative measures to secure justice for the crimes inflicted on the Tamils.
vssubramaniam
SINGAPORE