Sri Lanka's Tamils watch in silence
By Ameen Izzadeen
COLOMBO - Thousands of Tamils in European capitals and elsewhere continue to
press the United Nations and Western governments to stop the war in Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan government dismisses these protests as efforts to provide a
lifeline to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which is now on the
brink of certain defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan security forces.
But the diaspora Tamils say they are protesting to save their kith and kin who
are either suffering in a five square kilometer theatre of war or several
military-run camps.
With journalists and human-rights activists denied free access to
the war zone and the camps, information is largely supply-driven. It is
whatever the authorities or pro-LTTE websites say that makes news. But the
truth lies in between, unexplored or unspoken.
With the exception of the authorities, LTTE and victims, no one knows what
exactly is happening in the tiny war zone. The two sides even bicker over the
numbers. The government says only 15,000-20,000 civilians are in the LTTE-held
but government-declared safe zone where they are being used as human shields,
while the Tigers peg that number at 150,000 and accuse the security forces of
shelling the civilians on a daily basis.
Though the true picture of the war zone is still hazy, one thing is certain -
the civilians are suffering. But, strangely, the Tamils living in other parts
of Sri Lanka stage no protest. They once called the Tamil Tigers "our boys".
But there are no demonstrations in Jaffna, Batticaloa or other Tamil areas in
Sri Lanka as the security forces are all set to score a landmark victory over
the "boys".
Why aren't they protesting? Why can't the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which
is the main Tamil party in parliament, mobilize the country's Tamils and take
to the streets?
The answer to these questions is simple, says TNA frontliner Suresh
Premachandran, a parliamentarian representing the people of the Jaffna district
in Sri Lanka's north. For him, the silence of the Tamils in Sri Lanka comes as
no surprise.
It is simply state-sponsored terror, he says. "During the peace process, the
LTTE was allowed to carry out political activities in government-controlled
Tamil areas. But when hostilities broke out, hundreds of Tamil youths who
engaged in pro-LTTE political activities were singled out and killed by
paramilitary forces. Some disappeared without a trace. Even my party supporters
were killed. Three of our MPs were shot dead. So everyone is scared to speak
out," said Premachandran, whose party is seen as the mouthpiece of the Tigers.
He said he was scared to express himself even in parliament. Asked why his
party had not led any demonstrations in Colombo, he said he did not want to get
any Tamils killed.
"There is no democracy for Tamils in Sri Lanka. The democracy in Sri Lanka is
only for pro-government and pro-war parties," he said.
But some point out that those who complain about the lack of democracy in Sri
Lanka see only one side. They say the LTTE does not tolerate dissent either. It
killed several top Tamil politicians. One-time opposition leader Appapillai
Amirthalingam was gunned down, despite his pro-Eelam credentials. Rival
militant leaders such as Uma Maheshwaran and K Padmanaba, who were men with
vision, were hunted down though they also fought for a separate state called
Eelam.
It was not only rival militant group members that the LTTE eliminated. It also
killed well-known Tamil intellectuals who held a view different from the LTTE.
Among them was Dr Rajini Thiranagama, a prominent academician and co-author of The
Broken Palmyra, which traces the history of Tamil's struggle for
self-determination and militancy and documents human rights violations
committed by the state, the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri
Lanka.
If the Tigers had tolerated dissent and not silenced its critics, people like
Thiranagama and D Neelan Thiuchelvam, another Tamil intellectual it killed,
would have been there with it to whip up international support for the Tamil
cause, observers say.
In a recent article published on Opendemocracy.net, Nirmala Rajasingam,
Thiranagama's sister, sees the absence of protests by Tamils living in Sri
Lanka as the waning of popular support for the LTTE.
"The eastern region of Sri Lanka where many Tamils live - and which has lost
far more of its young people and children in this war than any other Tamil
region - has largely abandoned support for an independent state," she said.
"The Jaffna peninsula in the north has been largely uninvolved for more than a
decade or so in the separatist cause; there, the vast majority of civilians
have submitted to uneasy cohabitation with the army simply because amid
available options, they prefer an absence of war. The LTTE's cynical and
callous use of civilians for its war effort has also over the years undermined
its status within the Tamil population in Sri Lanka."
But Premachandran disagrees. He said the Tamils in Sri Lanka are shedding
silent tears over what is happening to their relatives in northern Sri Lanka.
He said that as a representative of the Tamil people he cannot even visit what
he calls the "concentration camps" where the war-displaced people are
sheltered. He believes the Tamil struggle will continue with or without the
LTTE as long as the Tamils remain an oppressed people.
Ameen Izzadeen is a Colombo-based journalist.
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