A visitor to the tamilnation website from France
wrote:
"I wish to ask the Tamilnation how you can justify
the violent terrorist acts committed by the LTTE not
only against the Sinhalese civilians, but also
against its own people. How can a bloodthirsty
megalomaniac like Pirabaharan be expected to lead our
people? I'd rather live under the Sinhalese
government than under his terrorist regime!"
We respond to your question on the basis that it
may have sprung from genuine concerns that you may
have...
We do not justify terrorism. But,
we do take the view that the armed resistance of the
people of Tamil Eelam to alien Sinhala rule is not
unlawful. The reasons for that view will appear from
the web page on Tamil Armed
Resistance. Clausewitz's remarks reflect,
perhaps, the unfortunate political reality:
"The would be conqueror is always a lover of
peace, for he would like to enter and occupy our
country unopposed. It is in order to prevent him from
doing this that we must be willing to engage in war
and be prepared for it." - Clausewitz quoted in
Philosophers of Peace and War, edited by Professor
Gallie
The political reality is that the practise of
democracy within the confines of a single state has
resulted in rule by a permanent Sinhala majority (for the nature
of that rule please see Indictment against Sri
Lanka. and for the Tamil response please see
The Charge is
Genocide - the Struggle is for Freedom.)
Having said that, it is true that an armed
resistance movement is not a carte blanche to kill and
lines will have to drawn, however difficult or even
seemingly impossible that task may sometimes appear to
be. As wars have become more and more 'total', it has
become increasingly difficult to separate the
contributions of 'civilians', the 'para military', and
the 'military' to the war effort and the distinction
between combatants and non combatants has been
observed, more often than not, in the breach.
The German blitz on London and the night time Allied
bombings of Bremen during the Second World War exposed
some of the hypocrisy behind the stated concerns about
'humanising' armed conflicts. Again, as Hiroshima and
Nagasaki showed, it is military necessity that in
the end, prevails over humanitarian considerations. The
stated justification for the use of the atomic bomb was
that it prevented the huge casualties that US military
forces would have suffered if a sea borne invasion of
the Japanese mainland was launched - not to put too
fine a point on the matter, the projected casualties of
US combatants (i.e. US armed forces) were balanced
against the clearly foreseen casualties of Japanese non
combatant civilians.
At the recently concluded Rome deliberations on the
International Criminal Court,
India's attempt to include the use of nuclear
weapons as a crime against humanity failed. The
nuclear bomb is the ultimate weapon of terror - it
makes no distinction between combatants and non
combatants and it is intended to terrorise and
intimidate the enemy into submission. The user
justifies the use of the nuclear bomb by relying on
the ends that the user seeks to achieve - freedom and
justice. The justice of the ends seems to influence the
'morality' of the means employed to achieve those
ends. Means and ends appear to be inseparable in more
ways than one.
In the case of the conflict in the island of Sri
Lanka, there is also the further circumstance that Sri
Lanka refuses to even recognise the existence of an
'armed conflict' in the island. It refuses to accept
the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the
conflict. This is in contrast to the LTTE which has
publicly stated and in writing to the relevant
authorities, that it recognised the applicability of
the Geneva Conventions to the conflict in the
island.
Sri Lanka's refusal to recognise the existence of an
'armed conflict' is not unrelated to its chilling record of
gross violations of humanitarian law.
Significantly, Sri Lanka also abstained from voting
for the recent Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court which made provision for individuals and
governments to be punished for crimes against humanity,
serious violations of the humanitarian law of conflict
and genocide.
At the same time, the actions of the LTTE that have
violated the humanitarian law of armed conflict may
have to be carefully considered on the facts of each
individual case. Truth is often the first casualty in a
war and Sri Lanka's continued media
censorship is proof enough of that. (please see
Truth &
Propaganda) One instance of Sri Lanka's
disinformation campaign was proven in 1990. An
Associated Press report in the London Times on 23 June
1990 declared:
"Tamil guerrillas hacked to death 62 Muslim
villagers in eastern Sri Lanka yesterday, accusing
them of being government informants, the Defence
Ministry and an opposition Muslim leader said. The
massacre at Nintavur came on the eleventh day of war
between Tamil separatists and Sri Lankan forces for
control of the northeast...The Defence Ministry said
troops found the bodies of Muslim men, women and
children in Nintavur. Military officials said rebels
used knives to kill the villagers. Survivors said the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam raided the village
early yesterday because they feared the residents
would reveal their jungle hideaway, according to
Mahroof Gani of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress an
opposition party. He said that the rebels set fire to
a mosque, looted and burnt down houses and left
placards warning Muslims not to work for the
government...." - Associated Press Report in
London Times, 23 June 1990
The Sri Lanka military were later compelled to
retract the graphic descriptions of 62 villagers having
been hacked to death.
"The military admitted yesterday that its report
that Tamil Tiger separatists had hacked to death 62
Muslim men, women and children was false... They
claimed their earlier report was based on faulty
information from residents. The allegation was
reported by international news agencies and appeared
in newspapers around the world." - Associated
Press Report, London Sunday Times, 24 June
1990.
The Voice of
America reported on 28 November 1995:
"The Sri Lankan Government is waging a
propaganda war to complement its military
offensive.... truth has become one of the war's
victims. Media observers say Sri Lankan television
has begun resorting to disinformation in its
reporting on the war against Tamil Tiger
guerrillas...
....The military press office on Saturday
issued a statement that the Tamil Tigers had used gas
on troops, implying it was a chemical weapons attack.
Only later did military sources admit the gas in
question had been tear gas. The
government continues to ban reporters from the
northern war zone. The state information department
hands out video and still photographs produced by the
Sri Lankan army. Information is provided by
fax. The government is also forbidding
reporters to visit camps where hundreds of thousands
of civilians have fled to escape the
fighting. Sri
Lanka media are subject to military censorship. The
local cable operator even blacks out stories about
Sri Lanka that appear on foreign television
channels."
Again, the attacks on Sinhala 'settlers' on the
boundaries of Tamil Eelam may need to be considered in
the context of that which the LTTE itself declared in
an open letter to
the Sinhala people in September 1991:
"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. ..
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."
In February 1985, a Joint Memorandum
submitted by a group of nine Non Governmental
Organisations at the UN Commission on Human Rights
declared:
"The President of Sri Lanka has announced his
Government's plan to colonise all Tamil areas with
Sinhala settlers to reflect the nation-wide
population ratio of 75% Sinhalese and 25% other
minority ethnic groups. This is calculated to
undermine the numerical strength of Tamils in areas
where they have traditionally lived... Under the plan
250 families would be selected from each of the
Sinhala constituencies for resettlement in the
northern province. Such settlements would be created
this year in Killinochchi, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu and
Mannar districts and extended to the Jaffna Peninsula
next year.
The new settlers would be given military training and
equipment to safeguard themselves. In fact, in
certain predominantly Tamil areas like Vavuniya,
Mannar, Mullaitivu and Trincomalee districts, guns
have already been distributed. In its recent report
the Civil Rights Movement has drawn attention to the
arming of civilians: 'Civilians in the Trincomalee
district have been given arms by police, ostensibly
for their self-defence. Instances have been given
reported of such individuals and groups using arms to
terrorise persons of the Tamil community.'"
An armed resistance movement is not an afternoon tea
party. Aurobindo's words
are not without relevance:
"It is the common habit of established governments
and especially those which are themselves oppressors,
to brand all violent methods in subject peoples and
communities as criminal and wicked. When you have
disarmed your slaves and legalised the infliction of
bonds, stripes, and death on any one of them who may
dare to speak or act against you, it is natural and
convenient to try and lay a moral as well as a legal
ban on any attempt to answer violence by
violence...
But no nation yet has listened to the cant of the
oppressor when itself put to the test, and the
general conscience of humanity approves the
refusal...Liberty is the life breath of a nation; and
when life is attacked, when it is sought to suppress
all chance of breathing by violent pressure, then any
and every means of self preservation becomes right
and justifiable...It is the nature
of the pressure which determines the nature of the
resistance."
But to say all this, is not to say that 'humanising'
an armed conflict is not a necessary objective -
neither is it to say that genuine efforts in that
direction should not be whole heartedly supported.
However, the good faith of those who question some of
the means adopted by the armed resistance of the Tamil
people will be less open to question, if at the same
time they do not deny the justice of the ends that the
Tamils, as a people, are struggling to achieve i.e.
freedom from alien Sinhala rule.
Such recognition, does not mean blind support for
the armed resistance led by the LTTE. By all means let
us raise the issues that are matters of genuine concern
to the Tamil people and to the extent that we openly do
so, we purify the struggle - and thereby strengthen it.
The struggle will not benefit from mindless support.
But nothing is gained by consorting with those who seek
to conquer and rule us - except, perhaps to secure a
few (personal) crumbs for oneself from the master's
table.
Neither is anything gained by a slanging match or
name calling. Calling Velupillai Pirabaharan a
'megalomaniac' will not change the reality that he has
earned the trust and respect of millions of Tamils
living not only in Tamil Eelam but also in many lands -
trust because of his integrity and his unswerving
commitment to the freedom of his people, and respect
because of the skills that he has displayed in leading
that struggle. Here, you may find the comments of India's ex Foreign
Secretary Dixit, and Professor Marshall Singer and
others of interest.
Lieutenant General S.C. Sardesh Pande, IPKF
Divisional Commander, Jaffna summed it up well in his
book 'Assignment Jaffna':
"I have a high regard for the LTTE for its
discipline, dedication, determination, motivation and
technical expertise... I was left with the
impression that the LTTE was the expression of
popular Tamil sentiment and could not be destroyed,
so long as that sentiment
remained."
The truth is that Velupillai Pirabaharan is
not simply an individual - he has come to symbolise and
represent the stubborn determination of the people of
Tamil Eelam to free themselves from alien Sinhala rule.
It is, perhaps, not surprising therefore, that those
who are opposed to the Tamil struggle for freedom are
quick to categorise this stubborn determination as
'megalomania'.
During the Second World War, there were those who
opposed the Free French movement led by Charles de
Gaulle and who were content to live under the German
sponsored rule of Vichy France - and they too may have
found it useful to rationalise their subservience by
categorising de Gaulle as a 'megalomaniac'. But that
did not prevent the overwhelming majority of the French
people supporting the struggle for freedom from alien
German rule. Again, some of those who supported Vichy
France may have turned 'informers' and put at risk the
lives of those who were struggling for freedom and the
Free French may have been compelled to take 'action'
against 'their own people'. But, again, that is not to
say that all such actions were
necessarily justified. (please see 'Tamil Informers')
During British rule of India, there were some
Indians who welcomed the continuation of alien British
rule and did not want to be ruled by Indians - they
felt that Indians did not have the capacity or the
good sense to know how to rule themselves. Today, there
may be some Tamils who may feel the same about the
people of Tamil Eelam. Again, there may be other Tamils
who may not speak out against Sinhala rule because
they do not wish to be 'rounded up, tortured and
killed'. The case
of Arulapu Jude Arulrajah is but one of several
thousands:
''Thousands of Tamils are being arrested every
month in Colombo, most without any valid reason.
....In many cases families who have not been notified
of the arrest desperately search for their missing
relative, fearing they have 'disappeared'. The army
and armed groups working with the government have
abducted some people and held them in secret places
of detention for upto two and a half months, where
they have been tortured before being dumped on the
side of the road or transferred to police
custody...
Some agencies routinely beat detainees to extract
confessions... After being released they are at risk
of being repeatedly re arrested, most likely to be
released each time without charge and without ever
knowing why they were detained..
The indiscriminate round ups of people solely
because of their ethnic origin and reports of their
treatment in custody is making members of the Tamil
community fearful that they are not safe to walk the
streets of Colombo.... (Amnesty International
Reports released in January and February 1994 and
widely circulated at the 50th Sessions of the UN
Commission on Human Rights at Geneva in
February/March 1994)
Yet, again, there may be other Tamils
who may even welcome the
prospect of living under such alien Sinhala rule, so
long as they themselves are safe and are not rounded
up, tortured and killed.
But, unsurprisingly, the views of such Tamils do not
influence the people to whom they belong, because that
which they say relates only to their personal well
being, and is unrelated to the pain, the
suffering, the agony and the aspirations of a
people struggling for freedom.
The struggle for Tamil Eelam did not
just happen. It was born in the womb of oppression but
its seeds are to be found in the separate language, culture and heritage of the Tamil
people. The struggle for Tamil Eelam arose in Tamil
soil - and from amongst Tamil speaking Tamils. The
words of the Bengali writer, Pramatha Chauduri (written
in Bengali) in 1920 have a broad relevance:
" You have accused me of 'Bengali
patriotism'. I feel bound to reply. If it is a crime
for a Bengali to harbour and encourage Bengali
patriotism in his mind, then I am guilty. But I ask
you: what other patriotism do you expect from a
Bengali writer? The fact that I do not write in
English should indicate that non Bengali patriotism
does not sway my mind...."
The struggle for Tamil Eelam is a quest
for freedom that received the
overwhelming support of the people of Tamil Eelam at
the General Elections in Sri Lanka in 1977 - and
which today, finds poignant expression in the hearts
and minds of millions of Tamils, not so much in
English, but in Tamil:
And here, Gramsci's words may be helpful:
'The error of the intellectual consists in
believing that it is possible to know without
understanding and especially without feeling and
passion... that the intellectual can be an
intellectual if he is distinct and detached from the
people-nation, without feeling the elemental passions
of the people, understanding them and thus explaining
them in a particular historical situation ... in the
absence of such a bond the.. intellectuals become a
caste or a priesthood...'
Finally, there is, perhaps, a need to recognise
that the epithet 'terrorism' is often deliberately
used to cloud the moral legitimacy of a people's
struggle for freedom. The lessons of Vietnam and
Algiers have not been lost on Governments that failed
to quell liberation movements despite having recourse
to superior arms and resources. Michael Schubert
writing 'On Liberation Movements And The Rights Of
Peoples' pointed out in 1992:
"The French Chief of Staff Andre Beaufre wrote
about his own experiences in Algeria and Vietnam in
his 1973 German-language book 'Die Revolutionierung
des Kriegsbildes':
'The surprising success of the decolonization wars
can only be explained by the following: The weak seem
to have defeated the strong, but actually just the
reverse was true from a moral point of view, which
brings us to the conclusion that limited wars are
primarily fought on the field of morale.'
In order for... states to quickly and effectively
wipe out "revolt", which could get out of hand
despite technical superiority (read: better weapons)
due to the political and moral convictions of the
mass movement, it is necessary to make comprehensive
analyses early on and to take effective action in the
psychological arena. It's no coincidence, therefore,
that military and police circles seem to stress the
benefits of "psychological warfare".
Ever since the U.S. Defence Department organised
the first ever World Wide Psyops Conference in 1963
and the first NATO Symposium On Defence Psychology in
Paris in 1960, many NATO leaders and several
scientists have been working in the field of
psychological counter-insurgency methods (cf. The
detailed reports and analyses of P. Watson,
Psycho-War: Possibilities, Power, And The Misuse Of
Military Psychology, Frankfurt 1985, p.25ff.).
The central aim of this defence approach is to
destroy the morale of the insurgent movement at the
early stages, to discredit it and destroy it using
repressive means like long periods of isolation
detention in prisons, thereby preventing a mass
movement from starting which could be hard to control
with conventional means.
Defaming the insurgents as "terrorists" and
punishing them accordingly - thereby ignoring
international
law concerning the rights of people in war - is a
particularly useful means."
