Whats New Archive
-
May 2009 -
Tamil Eelam
Struggle for Freedom
 Tamil Eelam
Struggle for Freedom: We are silencing our guns -
LTTE "... The LTTE had for almost three
decades fought the Sri Lankan military
and defended its right to carry arms as
a means of protecting the Tamil people
living in the island. Since the war
intensified in 2007, several thousand
Tamil civilians have died. The recent
thrust by the military into the
Northern strong holds of the Tamils
have seen an escalation in the deaths
and has resulted in untold misery with
people succumbing to starvation and
lack of medical supplies....We need to
do everything within our means to stop
this carnage...
... It is our
people who are dying now from bombs,
shells, illness and hunger. We cannot
permit any more harm to befall them. We
remain with one last choice - to remove
the last weak excuse of the enemy for
killing our people. We have decided to
silence our guns... We have not
forgotten that it is for our people
that we fight. In the face of the
current conditions, we will no longer
permit this battle to be used as a
justification by the forces of the
Sinhala state to kill our people. We
willingly stand up with courage and
silence our guns... " more
|
Indictment
Against Sri Lanka - Censorship, Disinformation
and Murder of Journalists
|
 SriLanka blocks Tamil
Websites "Sri Lanka Telecom
(SLT) has blocked access to the
following websites as of today from its
ADSL network:
Tamilcanadian.com
Puthinam.com
Tamilnation.org
Reports I have received indicate
that these are still accessible on
Dialog. All ISPs in Sri Lanka have
repeatedly blocked access to
Tamilnet.com, but actions today
indicate that the scope of websites
being blocked that are perceived to be pro-LTTE
is increasing apace. - ICT for Peace
Building together with
Comment
by tamilnation.org
"We have always
taken the view that if we are
ignored, we have not been effective,
and if we are effective we will not
be ignored. It seems that President
Rajapaksa's genocidal regime
regards us as being too effective.
We had on average received around one
thousand visitors each day from Sri
Lanka - and it seems that that number
is large enough to worry the
murderous Rajapaksa regime. Such is
the fragility of its hold on power.
The words of Mamanithar Dharmaretnam
Sivaram come to mind
'It is
easier to enslave a people who have
lost their ability to understand the
nature of their oppression'. Hence
censorship."
|
Reflection
| "... Today it is
clear beyond all reasonable doubt that
India and the US-UK-Japan Bloc are trying
to influence and manage Sri Lanka's peace
process to promote and consolidate their
respective strategic and economic
interests...We already hear fools (and
there are many of the educated variety
among Tamils) declaring that we should
swallow our pride and yield to the
dictates of the world's sole super
power... Any foreign force can have
its way in a country only if its people
are divided, politically obfuscated and
are irredeemably sunk in political
stupor. The creeping
intellectual/political barrenness in the
northeast should be stopped without
further delay. LTTE officials too
should stop making pedestrian, boringly
predictable utterances on public forums
and, instead, make every endeavour to
stir the people's reason, intellectual
curiosity, their sense of community,
their imagination and their intellectual
fervour. This is the only way forward
to decisively break the vicious circle of
political obfuscation by which our people
are deeply but blissfully afflicted
today..." Mamanithar Dharmeretnam
Sivaram on the The folly of Eelam
punditry, 2003 |
Tamils: a
Trans State Nation - United Kingdom
Reflection
|
"Genocides do not just
happen.. Mao Tse-tung's famous dictum that
the guerrilla moves amongst the people
as a fish swims in the sea has brought
with it the counter guerrilla strategy
of draining the sea... It is unfortunate that
US policy appears directed to help
draining the sea by evacuating the
Tamil civilian population from their
homeland in the Vanni to camps - albeit
supervised/overseen by the
international community so that the US
and the 'international community'
(presumably not including China and/or
Iran and/or even India) may secure
their own physical presence in the
island, through international NGOs
and/or the United States Pacific
Command... I have
tried to understand the reasons for
your denial of the justice of the
struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam
for an independent state - an
independent state which may associate
on equal terms and in freedom with an
independent Sinhala Sri Lankan state.
I am driven to the conclusion that
it is the dynamics of the balance of
power in the Indian Ocean region that
leads you to give your support to the
continued existence of an undivided Sri
Lanka. It appears that you are
concerned that support for an
independent Tamil Eelam may lead to an
increased Chinese/Iranian presence in
Sinhala Sri Lanka and in the Indian
Ocean region. At the sametime, you will
recognise that a 'post genocide' Sri
Lanka will prove to be no different to
Saddam Hussien's Iraq which the US
supported in Iraq's war against
Iran..." Nadesan Satyendra in
Open Letter to US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 6
April 2009
|
Indictment
Against Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka's Genocidal War '08
-'09
1.UN Security Council
Press Statement, 13 May 2009 "A
Wakeup Call" together with
Comment by
tamilnation.org
"Predictably, the UN Security
Council has called upon the LTTE to
'allow the
tens of thousands of civilians still
in the conflict zone to leave'. If
not for the humanitarian tragedy
faced by the people of Tamil Eelam
caused by the genocidal onslaught
by Sinhala Sri Lanka, the UN
Security Council suggestion that but
for the LTTE, Tamil civilians would
some how want to voluntarily leave
the conflict zone to go into barbed
wire concentration camps
euphemistically called welfare
villages would be
laughable...
...The UN
Security Council Press Statement (not
Resolution) reflects the horsedealing
that went on before unanimity was
found and the real politick nature of
its deliberations behind the
pretensions of humanitarian
concern...The Statement will provide
a wake up call to those in the Tamil
diaspora who sought to rely on the
'humanitarian concerns' of the
international community to secure
freedom and justice for the people of
Tamil Eelam..." more
|
| |
2. Army's war crimes
continue in northern Sri Lanka
Wije Dias, WSWS, 13 May
2009
"The Sri Lankan
army was responsible for a further
atrocity yesterday as it intensified
its offensive against the remnants of
the separatist Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE). At least 49
people were killed and more than 50
injured when a shell struck the only
remaining hospital in the so-called
no-fire zone on the north east coast
of the island...The army's attacks on
hospitals and other civilian targets
are not accidents but part of a
strategy of terrorising the
population inside the remaining LTTE
territory. The aim is to stampede
civilians into leaving the area so
that it can be turned into a free
fire zone... Sri Lankan President
Mahinda Rajapakse has rejected all
calls for a ceasefire and responded
to any criticisms of the military's
actions with unconcealed
contempt...The Rajapakse
government, however, is secure in the
knowledge that no action will be
taken through the UN. China, Russia,
Japan and Vietnam tacitly supported
the Sri Lankan government and its war
crimes by blocking any formal
discussion of the situation in the UN
Security Council on Monday. The
US, France and Britain have been
issuing hypocritical expressions of
concern about the humanitarian
crisis, but all these powers quietly
backed Rajapakse's decision to plunge
the country back to war in mid-2006.
Their calls for a ceasefire are not
issued out of concern for the trapped
civilians, but to
shape the outcome of the war
in their own economic and strategic
interests. All these powers bear
their share of political
responsibility for the Sri Lankan
government's communal war and the war
crimes being carried out." more
|
International
Dimensions of the Tamil Eelam Freedom
Struggle
 1. Revised
12 May 2009
Sathyam
Commentary: On the
11th Anniversary of the launch
of tamilnation.org -
Understanding Mr.Milliband -
Nadesan Satyendra
".. though
Mr. Miliband has no difficulty in
labeling an organisation that has
resorted to armed resistance as a last
resort against state terror as terrorist,
Mr.Miliband finds difficulty in
labeling President Rajapaksa's war on the
people of Tamil Eelam as genocidal.
Mr.Miliband claims that
'the
fog of war makes it difficult to be
certain of the facts of the present
situation'. Many Tamils will wonder
whether it is the 'fog of war' or the fog
created by the countervailing strategic
interests of the trilaterals (US, EU and
Japan), India and China in the Indian
Ocean region, that prevents Mr.Milliband
from seeing that which the world has seen
for the past several
months." more |
| |
| 2. Revisited:
Sathyam Commentary:
Three Months Ago
- The Politics of Humanitarian
Intervention, 29 January
2009- |
|
|
| "...the international
community will
wait till Tamil resistance is
sufficiently weakened or annihilated
before it
attempts to intervene 'on humanitarian
grounds' and in seeming response to
'world wide Tamil appeals'. Meanwhile
the IC will even welcome ...world wide
appeals by Tamils as that will pave the
way (and establish useful contact points
amongst the Tamil diaspora) for IC's
eventual intervention with 'development
aid' with the mantra of not conflict
resolution but 'conflict transformation'... After all the simplest
thing that the international actors could
have done to protect the Tamil people
would have been to remove the ban on the
LTTE so that the capacity of the people
of Tamil Eelam to resist the genocidal
onslaught launched on them by Sinhala Sri
Lanka may have been strengthened. The
simple and humane thing that the
international actors could have
done was not to
taunt the struggles against terrorism
with the label terrorism but to adopt a
principle centered approach which
liberated political language and also
helped to liberate a people who have
taken up arms as a last resort in
their struggle for freedom
from oppressive alien Sinhala rule.
.." more |
| |
| 3. Mr. Miliband
Prevaricates - Rajiva Wijesinha,
Secretary General, Sri Lanka Secretariat
for Coordinating the Peace Process in
State Controlled Sri Lanka Daily News 6
May 2009 "Though the British have a
reputation for perfidy, there is also
about them a sense of fair play, which
makes them difficult to dislike. Nowhere
is this more apparent than in the BBC
where, though the Sinhala Service tends
to criticize the government at any
opportunity, the English programmes are
better balanced, i.e. they are harsh
about and to everyone... And so the
relentless campaign against Sri Lanka
continues. A UN report appears by
accident on a website, and is highlighted
in the London Times, which also tries to
play the China card to reinforce Western
hostility to Sri Lanka.." |
| |
| 4. How the West lost Sri
Lanka - Don Wijewardana in State
Controlled Sri Lanka Daily News , 8 May
2009 "An important factor Western
countries have overlooked in their
manipulations is that unlike in those
days, when there was no alternative to
Western aid, now there are other donors
who are willing and able to step into the
breach. As Jeremy Page of the Times noted
China's aid to Sri Lanka jumped from a
few million dollars in 2005 to almost $1
billion last year, replacing Japan as the
biggest foreign donor. By comparison, the
United States gave $7.4 million last year
and Britain just £ 1.25 million.
Beijing also appears to have increased
arms sales significantly to Sri Lanka
since 2007, when the US suspended
military aid over the same human rights
issues. According to Jane's Defence
Weekly in April 2007 Sri Lanka signed a
classified $37.6 million deal to buy
Chinese ammunition and ordnance for its
army and navy. It is not China alone that
helps Sri Lanka: there is Japan, Russia,
Iran, Libya and Vietnam in addition to
India and Pakistan. " |
| |
| 5. Double Standards in
Washington - Lucien Rajakarunayake,
in State Controlled Sri Lanka Daily News,
9 May 2009 "...The entire record of
the United State on the current situation
with regard to the Sri Lankan Tamil
civilians is one of double standards.
This was best seen earlier this week when
more than 100 Afghan civilians were
killed and many more injured, when the US
military carried out air attacks on
Afghan terrain where they believe
fighters of the al Qaeda are sheltering.
At a meeting with the Afghan President
Karzhai in Washington US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton said that America
'deeply, deeply regretted' the reported
deaths. That is all. Whether 'deep
regret' is repeated thrice or a hundred
times like a mantra, it does not take
away the sheer brazen nature of the US
action, the tragedy that has taken place,
and the total disregard for the safety of
Afghan civilians, especially
non-combatant women and children, in
carrying out its aerial attacks in
Afghanistan and Pakistan..." |
| |
Indictment
Against Sri Lanka -
Sri Lanka's Genocidal War
| 1.
How many years can some
people exist, before they're allowed to
be free |
How many times can a man turn his
head
And pretend that he just doesn't
see
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry
How many years can some people
exist
Before they're allowed to be free
The answer, my friend, is blowing in
the wind
The answer is blowing in the
wind
|
| |
| 2.
Sri Lanka: A Paradise turned into Kingdom
of Vultures! - Richard Dixon, UK Daily
Telegraph Blog also in PDF-
"The World doesn't need
any more proof to recognise the war
crimes that are being committed against
Tamils. Hospitals are bombed. People are
deliberately forced into starvation and
death. Voices of the victims are
suppressed. Chemical weapons are used
against innocent civilians. Many Tamils
are locked up in barbed wired
concentration camps... It is time for the
West and India to support the Tamils to
establish a State of their own" more |
|
|
Revisited
| Right to Self
Determination: Tamil
Eelam "...In all regions of the world
conflicts turn violent over the desire
for full control by state
governments, on the one hand, and
claims to
self-determination (in a broad sense)
by peoples, minorities or other
communities, on the other. Where
governments recognise and respect the
right to
self-determination, a people can
effectuate it in a peaceful manner. Where
governments choose to use force to
crush or prevent the movement, or where
they attempt to impose assimilationist policies
against the wishes of a people, this
polarises demands and generally results
in armed conflict. The Tamils, for
example, were not seeking independence
and were not using violence in the
1970s. The government response to
further deny the Tamil people equal
expression of their distinct identity
led to armed
confrontation and a war of
secession..." Implementation of the
Right to Self Determination, as a
Contribution to Conflict Prevention ,
UNESCO International Conference of
Experts, Barcelona 1998 more |
Reflection
|
 "Foreign Ministers and diplomats
presumably understand the permanent
interests of their country.. But no
one can foresee clearly the effects of
even very simple facts as they pertain
to the future. The Rajah of Cochin
who in his resentment against the
Zamorin permitted the Portuguese to
establish a trading station in his
territories could not foresee that
thereby he had introduced into India
something which was to alter the course
of history. Nor could the German
authorities, who, in their anxiety to
create confusion and chaos in Russia,
permitted a sealed train to take Lenin
and his associates across German
territory, have foreseen what forces
they were unleashing. To them the
necessity of the moment was an utter
breakdown of Russian resistance and to
send Lenin there seemed a superior act
of wisdom..." Sardar K.M.Pannikar,
Indian Ambassador to China from 1948 to
1952, and later Vice Chancellor, Mysore
University in Principles and
Practice of Diplomacy,
1956
|
International Frame & the Tamil Eelam
Struggle for Freedom
| 1.
China |
|
|
| China - Sri Lanka's
Biggest Aid Donor
"The Sri
Lankan government has been able to
disregard international concern over its
civil war with Tamils because of
financial and military backing by China,
a senior former Indian intelligence
official was quoted saying on Saturday.
The (London) Times newspaper said
China has replaced Japan as Sri
Lanka's biggest foreign donor giving the
island-nation nearly a billion US dollars
last year. By comparison, the US
gave $7.4 million last year, and Britain
1.25 million pounds. " together
with Comment by tamilnation.org "It will not
come as a matter for surprise to many
Tamils that the UK based Times and the
India based Hindustan Times should put
the cart before the horse.
'International concern' is about securing
the international community's own
strategic interests in the Indian Ocean
region - strategic interests which have
been threatened by the China ward tilt by
President Rajapaksa's murderous regime.
And that is why
there is 'international concern' about
'the civil war with Tamils'
The concern is that with
Tamil resistance annihilated, President
Rajapaksa will help embed Chinese
interests in the island for the
forseeable future. We said it two years
ago on 2 October 2007 in
International
Dimensions of Conflict in the Island of
Sri Lanka..". more |
| |
| 2.
United Kingdom |
| Sri Lanka Posters on
UK Foreign Minister Miliband et
al |
|
|
Revisited
|
|
| Conflict Resolution in an
Asymmetric Multi Lateral World
Nadesan Satyendra, 10 May 2004, Revised 7
December 2007 "... The problem with
war is always with the 'victor', because
he (or she) has demonstrated that
superior force pays - and, sooner rather
than later, there will be those who will
rise to show that they have learnt well
the lesson that was taught. If as
Churchill reportedly remarked, the
farther you look back into history, the
further you can look forward, it will
seem that we are faced with the
continuing prospect of conflicts and wars
to end wars, till the end of time. But
then again, hopefully, Churchill may have
been wrong in casting the future in the
mould of the past."... more |
Reflection
| An
Elephant Story... |
|
|
| "Once upon a time
when an elephant was sleeping, a mouse
came up to him and saw him sleeping so
soundly that he tied the elephant with a
chain. Ever since the elephant has
remained a slave of the mouse. One day a
cat came by and wanted to eat the mouse.
The mouse ran to the elephant and asked
for help. He promised the elephant that
if he helped the mouse would set him
free. The innocent elephant helped the
mouse against the cat and then asked him
to release the chains. The mouse laughed
at the elephant and replied, "You don't
deserve to be set free; you are not fit
for it." After a few days the same cat
came again and attacked the mouse. The
mouse once again went to the elephant for
help. The elephant replied, "You are
dishonest; a traitor and deceiver! I
won't help you. I'll try to break my
chains by myself. It is good for the cat
to eat you." And that is exactly what
happened, the cat ate the mouse and the
elephant applied a bit of strength to
break his own chains and was free."
From a Leaflet used by Subhas Chandra Bose,
1944 |
Tamil
National Forum
 Sachi
Sri Kantha writes from Japan
The Indo-LTTE War
(1987-90) - An Anthology. Part 14:
President Premadasa's double-crossing
manoeuvre "...One of India's cottage
industries from ancient times, it should
be noted here, has been the production of
political stooges. Even the current
Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh
qualifies as a perfect stooge.
V.Perumal's career ran in parallel to
that of Afghanistan's Soviet-India stooge
Mohammad Najibulla (1947-1996), who was
killed by the Taliban. Najibulla, while
he ruled the roost for little more than
five years from Nov. 1986 to April 1992
was supported by the India's Research and
Analysis Wing (RAW) operatives.
Similarly, Perumal was also a stooge
installed by the RAW and RAW operatives
helped him to flee the island shoreson
March 10, 1990 with his wife and three
children. Najibulla's wife and his three
daughters also lived in exile in New
Delhi, after Najibulla was ousted by
Taliban in 1992..." more |
|
| |
|
