Tamils - a Trans State Nation..

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."
- Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Open Letter to the Sinhala people from the LTTE

22 September 1991

The government of President Ranasinghe Premadasa seeks to mislead the Sinhala masses into believing that the Tamil national struggle, led by the LTTE, is somehow directed against the Sinhala people.

But, nothing can be further from the truth than to suggest that the Tamil national struggle is directed against the Sinhala people. On the contrary, our liberation struggle is the armed struggle of an oppressed people against the tyranny of a Sri Lankan regime which has sought to subjugate them. We seek to liberate our homeland from the clutches of the oppressive Sri Lankan state and its army of occupation and we seek to secure our inalienable right to self determination.

We have no hatred towards the Sinhala people. It is one of the fundamental principles of our struggle that we respect and safeguard the rights of every individual, irrespective of creed, religion, sex or ethnic origin.

We are opposed to all forms of domination - internal or external. We have already proved our independence by battling with the foreign intruders into our country in the previous two phases of our liberation struggle. The third phase of our struggle will bring victory and the liberation of our nation. We are committed to national liberation and to democracy.

The Sinhala people should know that the so called state aided 'colonisation schemes' within Tamil areas having nothing to do with solving landlessness among the Sinhala poor. The real aim of the Sri Lankan government is to use Sinhala settlers sometimes as a buffer, and sometimes as a cutting edge, in its war of aggression against the Tamil nation.

The additional longer term purpose of these 'colonisation schemes' is to change the demography of the Tamil homeland and in this way, make the Tamils a manageable minority in their own land.The Sri Lanka government has systematically armed these settlers - some of them ex-convicts - and often uses them to attack Tamil villagers in the surrounding areas.

Such actions, together with the brutality of the operations of the regular Sri Lankan army, have led our fighters to engage these armed settlers, with consequences which, sometimes, have been admittedly unfortunate and counter productive to our cause. Both you and we, are well aware of the ways in which the government uses such incidents in its attempt to whip up Sinhala chauvinism. But, however restrained we may be, these engagements with armed settlers will continue to be necessary until the armed threat posed by them is, at least, reduced.

However, the Sri Lankan government has adopted the diabolic strategy of increasingly militarising the 'colonisation schemes'. It seeks to exploit the Sinhala poor by arming them in such settlements, and using them as expendable pawns in its war of aggression again the Tamil nation.

If our objective was to annihilate all Sinhala settlers as the government would wish the Sinhala people to believe, it would not have been difficult to have done so. But unlike the Sri Lankan regime we are not fascists or chauvinists. We are revolutionaries leading a historic and progressive struggle for national liberation. We repeat: we have no hatred towards the Sinhala people. We appeal to the Sinhala poor not to become pawns in the 'colonisation schemes' which have been carefully designed by Sinhala chauvinistic forces to sow the seeds of discord and create everlasting enmity between the Tamil people and the Sinhala people.

The prolongation of this war of aggression and the spread of anti LTTE and anti Tamil sentiments are the 'trump cards' used by the Sri Lanka government to maintain and consolidate its oppressive rule over the Sinhala masses. The government seeks to 'blind fold' the Sinhala masses with a pervasive form of racism so that it may continue to rule and exploit them.

We view the oppressed Sinhala people as our allies and we call upon our Sinhala brothers and sisters to join in the struggle against a regime, which in the name of democracy, has been ruthless in denying every democratic right to the peoples which it seeks to rule. We appeal to all the progressive forces in the Tamil and Sinhala nations to join in the fight to dismantle a fascist and chauvinist regime and pave the way for true democracy, liberation and a free and fruitful association between two free nations.