Twelve years since, where are we?
Twelve years since, where are we?
Today marks the 12th death anniversary of Muthukumar, who died immolating self. The question before Tamils of Tamil Nadu is whether the request for which he doused himself in petrol and set himself alight before the Indian union government’s excise office, after the failure of every other political possibility to stop the war waged by Sri Lanka over the rights of Tamils in Tamil Eelam in 2009, have been even halfway or quarter way met. The answer is a clear no. Not only was Muthukumar’s request to stop the war never attained but the question on rights of Tamils in Eelam has also seen only a reversal, a deterioration from the time of the presence of the LTTE. Not just that, Tamils in Tamil Nadu also face a situation of further erosion of their political rights in India and have a fight on their hands on asserting their rights even as this is getting written. In a way, Muthukumar also foresaw what is happening in Tamil Nadu right now in the form of right-wing or rather in the Indian context casteist hegemonic Hindutva regression and gave up his life in the hope that the decline of the rights of Tamils as an ethnicity would be stalled before it is too late.
Muthukumar’s last wish, expressed in his suicide note was to keep his burnt body – he was taken to hospital with over 90 percent burns on his body and he breathed his last there - as a weapon to realize the demands of Eelam tamils, especially at that time to stop the war. He called the war in Sri Lanka as a war of revenge by the congress led Indian government over the death of the late Congress party leader, Rajiv Gandhi. He wanted Tamils in Tamil Nadu to stop the Indian government from aiding Sri Lanka in its war against Tamils in Eelam, a defacto nation under the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Tamil liberation army was negotiating for peace and separation from Sri Lanka. He praised the leadership of LTTE as sincere and visionary.
Post 2009, what has happened in Eelam?
Unlike what the Sinhala spin said days before winning the war against LTTE which ended on May 18 2009 – that the Sinhala government was freeing Tamils held hostage by the LTTE – the Sinhala government has been running away even from a west sanctioned self-investigation for accountability for war crime charges, leave alone genocide charges raised by Tamils since 1948.
While Tamil political prisoners who surrendered to Sri Lankan army continue to languish in Sri Lankan prisons some known and many unknown, the Sri Lankan government has still not thought it fit to inform, either way of people dead or alive, to the Tamil people waiting over those who went missing after being handed over to the government forces at the end of war.
Tamil journalists, Tamil politicos, Sinhalese journalists too, continue to run from their homeland as refugees fearing police and army harassment while livelihood of Tamils is taken over by the Sri Lankan army which has planted itself alarmingly strongly in the Tamil provinces engaging even in agriculture with no signs of its withdrawal from the Tamil North and East despite several rounds of demands.
Charges of encouraging Sinhala settlements in Tamil provinces continue to be raised routinely in what is described by Eelam Tamils as systematic “structural genocide,” in the name of one country one identity.
The rights of the provincial councils have been downgraded into that of the rights of a ward councilor in India and the dichotomy of the two dominating Sinhala political alliances for power to form government in its democracy - in the last 12 years the country witnessed three elections to change the ruling alliance - rests on raising a political rhetoric among the Sinhala masses that promises Buddhist hegemony across the island and Sinhala one-upmanship over Tamils in the Tamil homeland.
The Buddhist clergy there, upon whom the Sinhala politicians lean towards strongly, raise the bogey of “Indian invasion” on every Indian trade or business negotiation with Sri Lanka, the latest being the development of Colombo port by India’s Adani group, for which India has extracted an agreement with Sri Lanka following External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar’s tight lipped and controversial recent visit to Sri Lanka in first week of January, 2021. The Buddhist clergy who made this quip this time is Medagoda Abayatissa. One may remember that in the past Rajiv Gandhi was hit with the rifle butt by a Sinhala soldier in the island while he was receiving a guard of honour in an attempt to insult India. The island’s Buddhist Sinhalese historically have been consumed by a suspicion of Indian invasion and also see it as a convenient ruse to quell the Tamil population there.
While quips such as that by the Buddhist clergy are made routinely in Sri Lanka, both India and Sri Lanka work well in using the same Buddhist rhetoric for the denial of rights of Eelam Tamils. While India wants Tamils to remain within the union of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka uses the Indian hegemony ruse to deny cultural and political rights for Tamils, including homeland rights.
While India thinks it has hoodwinked Tamils of Tamil Nadu State in India who agitate over denial of political rights for Eelam Tamils, with its top dressing diplomacy repeatedly addressing a stagnant and failed component of the Indo-Sri Lanka accord of 1987 seeking implementation of 13th amendment in Sri Lanka’s much re-written constitution, Sri Lanka makes its clergy speak the language of hatred against India to whip up emotions among the Sinhala population against Tamils of Eelam as if Eelam Tamils are the representatives of Indians in Sri Lanka.
Twelve years since the erasure of the Tamil liberation army over a west driven anti-terrorism bogey, the two ethnicities remain divided in the island. While Tamil provinces continue to mourn the dead in the 2009 war massacre, footages of which are available giving horrifying detail, Sri Lanka which has been repeatedly trying to silence the Tamil people from mourning those lost in their war, has called the war anniversary as victory day in the Sinhala parts of Sri Lanka and describes it as “dawn of peace” for the Island. Eelam Tamils retort that it is a peace after horrifying murders. Sri Lanka is also charged with killing surrendered prisoners of war, even those in non-combat roles, in the white flag incident going against international law and promise of security given to the surrendering rebel fighters.
Poverty and joblessness are highest in Tamil Eelam according to reports filed by Tamil journalists. In contrast, defense allotment to maintain the Sinhala army continues to remain high and army recruitment has remained unrelenting despite fresh calls for recruitment even while there are demands to withdraw the army positioned in Tamil provinces of North and East repeatedly.
The army even manages archeology and is charged with using claims that there were Buddhist viharas everywhere in Tamil North and East to replace Hindu temples with Buddhist viharas throughout the 12 years post LTTE. This action aims to make real, a long propagandized discourse, much like the rightwing or rather casteist RSS makes in India, among the Sinhala population that the whole island was a Sinhala Buddhist country and is not a homeland of Tamils.
The international discourse of Tamils is jammed into west’s favourite jargon “rights of minority in the Island,” a term which Eelam Tamils despise. “How are we a minority in our own homeland?” asks Kuna Kaviyalagan, an escaped rights activist who was a senior member of the now decimated LTTE, who has penned three novels fictionalized on his days as a part of the liberation group as well as his escape from Sri Lanka.
Political rights, power sharing and justice have not been achieved for Tamils to be satisfied with the state of affairs in Sri Lanka observes, journalist Tissinayakam writing in thediplomat.com and warns of an impending crisis due to denial of rights by the Lankan government. The Tamil Muslim population, which is a business / trading population, too have been facing oppression in the Eastern provinces more so since the April 2019 bombing in Churches and hotels in Colombo by a radical Islamic group there. Their dissent with the Sinhala government came to a head during the covid pandemic, when the Sri Lankan government denied Tamil Muslims their rights to a ritual burial. They have been out in the streets protesting the government’s denial of cremation rights for Muslim covid infected dead, along with the other Tamils who are demanding information or return of those missing.
The international geo-politics has also played a role in Sri Lanka’s politics since the cold war era. It was marked by a greed of international powers to control the Trincomalee harbor in North-East coast of the once defacto Eelam. The harbor is of strategic military importance for control of the sea movement in south asian and pacific region. USA tried to negotiate with LTTE over it. LTTE rejected USA demands. USA then took sides with Sri Lankan government. The most important negotiation of India in the Indo-Sri Lanka accord 1987 was on the Trincomalee harbor – the 13th amendment recognizing north and east as an undivided Tamil province, which it was, was only a top dressing to secure Indian interests in the harbor in Eelam - especially extracting a promise from Sri Lanka that it will not be used against Indian interests in exchange for Sri Lankan unity. Since the cold war and the rise of China, the race to control Sri Lanka for the Trincomalee harbor is between USA and China and USA through India.
Increasingly there is awareness among Tamils on both sides of the Palk Straits that rights as Tamils cannot be held hostage to the geo-strategic aspirations of the West and China.
References:
https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30023168/somasunderam-strategicsignificance-2003.pdf
https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/sri-lanka-concedes-indian-demands-over-colombo-harbor
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