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LTTE responds to Rajapakse's statement
[TamilNet, February 15, 2006 ]
Political Wing,
Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam,
15 February. 2006
PRESS RELEASE
The Tamil people are shocked over
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's rejection of their basic political aspirations
in an interview with Reuters on 13 February 2006.
The President had, in this interview, totally rejected the Tamil homeland
concept and emphasised that a political solution to the racial conflict would be
looked into only within the parameters of the unitary constitution.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) strongly condemns these sentiments
expressed by the President that tend to belittle the political rights of the
Tamil people.
That the North-East part of this island is the
traditional
homeland of the Tamil people is not a political concept that developed
overnight. It has remained the habitat and homeland of the Tamil people for over
several thousands of years. The Tamil homeland was well defined and demarcated
even at the time of European invasion of this island.
The Tamil people have always protested against Sinhala governments'
systematic and
planned Sinhala colonisation of the Tamil homeland with an ulterior sinister
motive to grab territory. Ground reality dictates that obviously it is the
growth of Tamil peoples' military strength that has prevented the Sinhala
regimes from furthering their agenda on this score.
Homeland,
nationhood and self-rule are the three basic and cardinal principles that
have been guiding the LTTE in its struggle to find a peacefully negotiated
political arrangement to the Tamil people, resolving the racial conflict. It is
the refusal by the Jayawardena regime to accept these basic principles that led
to the failure of the
Thimpu talks.
The Sinhala rulers are in a dream-psychosis that makes them wrongly perceive
that their success in rejecting the Tamil homeland concept would invariably
nullify the concepts of Tamil nationhood and self-rule.
Unitary form of government, if translated into ground reality, means Sinhala
Parliament, Sinhala Constitution, Sinhala Judiciary, Sinhala bureaucracy and
Sinhala armed forces ruling this country. It is within this conceptually rigid
supremacy centred unitary constitution that the Tamil people continue to face
a cruel genocide.
A resolution of the Tamil national problem through devolution of power within
the parameters of the unitary constitution is a concept that has lost its
credibility and adaptability almost fifty years ago.
The
Tamil people opted for a separate state only because their call for
resolution of their national problem on the basis of federation was rejected.
Tamil call for federalism has seen the passage of fifty years and their option
for secession dates back to thirty years.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa now goes half a century backwards and is
taking shelter in a rotten unitary constitutional concept. Going the extra mile,
he even wishes to place this concept before the LTTE that has under
its de-facto administration major parts of the Tamil homeland.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, hastily going to town without knowing correctly the
deep contradictions and complexities of the Tamil-Sinhala conflict, would
seriously impact the current efforts for talks.
If the Mahinda regime adopts a political stand ruling out the Tamil homeland
concept and insists on a resolution of the conflict within the unitary
constitution, the LTTE would be left with no alternative other than to endeavour
to respond effectively to the Tamil call for self rule.
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