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TAMIL NATIONAL FORUM

Editorial, Oru Paper

"...Almost six years after the signing of the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), it is again the subject to debate: was the CFA and the subsequent peace talks a historical mistake of the Tamils? In the past, only the pessimists among us said so. They talked about historical mistakes and so on and predicted doom and gloom. Now the CFA is dead the debate is alive again among all sections of the Tamils..."

",,,While Sir Holmes and Mr Fernandopulle have been bickering over diplomatic semantics (or the lack of it) the Tamil Northeast has been under Sri Lankan Military siege for months. The numbers of dead have reached historic levels; more than half a million people have been locked in the tiny Jaffna peninsula, deprived of proper medical care and food, standing on the verge of starvation. Sir Holmes did not even mention this evil or any of the other countless atrocities inflicted on the Tamils at the hands of GOSL..."

"Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo. The German Wehrmacht won World War II. The United States won in Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Zealots won against the Romans, and Sri Lankan President Rajapakse has won the War against Tamils. You didn't know that?.."

"Sri Lanka President, Mahinda Rajapakse is openly subjugating the Tamil East in military, economic and political spheres. More than half of the entire Eastern Tamils live as refugees.... At the same time very silently state sponsored Sinhalese settlement programmes are at full swing in the newly captured Tamil lands of the East in the name of high security zones. Sinhalese civilian settlements rob the Tamils of every vital resource and freedom necessary for their life, both as individuals and as a nation.."

"It seems that Mr Rajapakse is so generous, he is so egalitarian, that he is making even his beloved Colomboites experience what ever he has asked the hapless Tamils of Northeast to experience day in day out. Hiding under furniture while your life in mortal danger from aerial bombardment is a petrifying experience. As all these are happening in the name of freedom, democracy, good governance etc one has to be sure about the agreement of the international community with Mr Rajapakse's regime."

"..The Cricket World Cup games will come to an end soon. People will congratulate the new champions and wish them more fine achievements in the future. Now lets return to `less' important matters, such as the daily killings and the destruction, the abductions, the launching of expensive rockets to set fire to farmlands which were ready to be harvested, and everything else connected with the current Eelam War IV..."

 "Nation building often means political unification of territory: think of Italy or Germany. Sri Lanka is imposing on the Tamils the very reversed process, hoping to reduce them into numerous separate groups with no collective interests, consciousness and institutions thus breaking their will and capacity to resist. This is what the GOSL and the international community implies by "rehabilitation and massive economic development". "

"Most of us cannot forget Madam Kumaratunge's 'war for peace' of the nineties. During this period, a popular argument in favour of the "liberation of the Tamils," was it being a blessing for the hapless Tamils themselves. After the 'war for peace' and four years of talks of peace, the Tamils of Northeast are confronted with the same 'liberation of Tamils' slogan, again. Thousands of Tamils live in refugee camps in the East and one in two Jaffna households food is insecure as a result of this 'liberation'. Two in three Tamil children live in perpetual hunger and suffer from under nutrition thanks to the 'liberation' efforts of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the supporting international community."

"Politicians, like writers, preachers, and poets, are wordsmiths. They deal mainly in words, not in actions... The best strategy is to disregard words and watch what actions people take... Whether the solution to liberating Tamils in the East is scorching the earth with multi barrel rockets or making them starve so they leave their lands, depends entirely on which Southern politician is describing the action..."

"..The Tamil community may only have warriors, doctors, teachers and artisans and no international diplomats and Nobel prize winning economists. But this does not mean they are stupid. They know well that without the donors’ Dollars Sri Lanka would go bankrupt within few months, that means the Sri Lankan state is controlled and dependent on external players such as the Japanese, the Europeans, the Americans and so on. Without the financial back up from these foreign powers the Sri Lankan government would not have the means to continue this war on Tamils. While the international community lectures Tamils about diplomacy, the Sri Lankan state is carrying on with its main preoccupation: that is how to destroy what is left and what is being built in Tamil land..."

"...Today it is clear beyond all reasonable doubt that the Tamils in Sri Lanka are facing another major war. Already a well planned low intensity war is slowly leeching our people of their futures. Daily people are being injured, intimidated and killed by Sri Lankan institutions, while the moral and ethical guardians of the world, India and the US-European-Japan Bloc are trying to politically stabilise and militarily strengthen the Sri Lankan state in order to promote and consolidate their respective strategic and economic interests. Again and again we see the carrots of political recognition and economic assistance being dangled and verbal and diplomatic threats splayed before the Tamils. While all this is happening in the land of our fore bearers, we, the barefoot colonials, the educated, skilled, suave, connected, or whatever else we like to call ourselves, are in an ethical and moral slumber. ‘The Norwegians would not let the Tamils down, the Indians will save them, the Japanese will sort it out’ we say..." more