Rakpakshe government has been trumpeting that they have been Developmental Plans for the Tamils in Sri Lanka for Tamils post LTTE, genocide era.
Killing of Tamils,Sri Lanka
Facts seem to indicate other wise.
1.Victors,though this term is an inappropriate term to use for killing your own citizens,this is the term what Rajapakshe government uses,
need to be magnanimous,
Lanka Government has opened up a Museum on the War , insulting the Tamils and is promoting it as a Tourist attraction.(read my post for Details)
Sri Lanka’s War Museum.
2.The Government has announced training programmes for The Tamils.
Tamil Girls are molested and Tamil men return with fear truly terrified.
3.Religious Freedom,Attacks on Muslims.
Though the Sri Lanka Government speaks of tolerance; the reality is otherwise.
Muslims were made to go against the Tamils and after the Genocide Muslims have become the target of attacked by the Buddhist extremists.(read my spot )
This is what The Institute on Religious and Public Policy has to say in its 2012 Report.
”
(15) The BBC reported in January 2011 that foreign Muslim preachers in Sri Lanka were ordered to leave the country for violating visa regulations. Sir Lanka’s immigration head Chulanada Perera told AFP news agency, “They have violated immigration laws. A tourist visa is to have a holiday or visit friends and family, and not to preach Islam”.
(16) In September 2011, mobs, allegedly led by Buddhist monks, destroyed a Muslim religious site in the Buddhist city of Anuradhapura.
(17) Public Relations Minister Mervyn Silva, who is a member of the Buddhist majority party, organized and led a protest march in September 2011 to force Hindus to stop the traditional religious ceremony that involves public animal sacrifice. Minister Silva argued that animal sacrifice harms the public image of Sri Lanka. Police reported that they had a court order to halt the animal sacrifice due to requests from activists, and increased the security level in the area because of the unrest.
(18) According to a news report in November 2011, the Ministry of Education did not allow Catholic and Christian students to register for religion exams in English. The Ministry offered examinations only in Sinhala and Tamil. The Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Ranjith appealed to the government in his writing, “the majority of students follow their religion in the “English medium,” and therefore should have the opportunity to do the exam in that language”. However, the Ministry of Education rejected his appeal.”
4. Resettlement of Tamils.
Rather than resettling displaced Tamils, since the war ended, the Sri Lankan armed forces have occupied a further 7,000 sq km of land owned by Tamil people.
So what do the government’s claims of resettlement mean?
“According to the government’s own figures as at 1st July 2011, 258,446 had been ‘returned’ or ‘resettled’ from welfare camps, leaving 12,661 in the Kadirgamar, Anandakumarasawmi (Zone 1), Arunachalam (Zone III) IDP camps. The most current figures suggest that only 7,440 persons remain in these camps, insinuating that all others have been returned or resettled.
“What the statistics do not reveal is that over 200,000 persons in the North and East have not been returned to their places of origin. These persons either continue to be confined in transit camps or have been compelled to take shelter with host families [elsewhere].
“Such persons include those displaced from Valikamam North in the Jaffna Peninsula, Sampur in the Trincomalee District, and several other areas in the Vanni.”
– M.A. Sumanthiran, TNA parliamentarian. See The Hindu’s report here.“
Worse is the government is moving two Sinhalese families for one family of Tamils being resettled in Tamil Areas.
Now in Trincomalee,which used to be a Tamil majority area, Sinhalese are equal to Tamils numerically.
5.Lands of the Tamils have been confiscated , and are either with the Military of handed over to Sinhalese.
6.The Military regime is so tight that even for a family function The Tamils have to get permission from the military, which, usually, is refused.
7.Rape of Tamil Women.
Can rape be far behind when Sri Lanka army is on Duty?
Rapes and killing of Tamil Men are routine.
“( June 06, 2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian)Women and children are at the receiving end of serious crimes due to political interference and the failure of the police to carry out law and order in the country states Socialist Women’s Union (SWU) and pointed out that a woman is raped somewhere in Sri Lanka every 90 minutes.
SWU points out that this state is due to the introduction of the free economy to the country which destroyed human relationships and created a society that decides everything on money. This was stated by the National Organizer of the SWU Samanmalee Gunasinghe at a special media meeting held at the head office of the JVP at Pelawatta today (5th).”(Srilanka Guardian 6 June, 2012)
Tamils raped post War,Genocide.
Report by Human Rights Watch.
Published on Feb 26, 2013
(London, February 26, 2013) — Sri Lankan security forces have been using rape and other forms of sexual violence to torture suspected members or supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. While widespread rape in custody occurred during the armed conflict that ended in May 2009, Human Rights Watch found that politically motivated sexual violence by the military and police continues to the present.
The 140-page report, “‘We Will Teach You a Lesson’: Sexual Violence against Tamils by Sri Lankan Security Forces,” provides detailed accounts of 75 cases of alleged rape and sexual abuse that occurred from 2006-2012 in both official and secret detention centers throughout Sri Lanka. In the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, men and women reported being raped on multiple days, often by several people, with the army, police, and pro-government paramilitary groups frequently participating.
This is what Human Rights watch has to say on this subject.
“Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] said [press release] Monday that no progress has been made in Sri Lanka regarding respect for basic rights and liberties in the four years since the end of the country’s brutal 26-year civil war [JURIST backgrounder]. According to HRW, the government of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa [official website] has failed to investigate and prosecute alleged war crimes, has cracked down on media and human rights activists, and has continued to abuse suspectedLiberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) [CFR backgrounder] supporters, despite Rajapaska’s promise to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official profile]. Since 2009, government officials have reportedly threatened members of the media, civil society and the political opposition, and publications have been subject to government censorship, or, in some cases, shut down. HRW Asia Director Brad Adams said:
The Rajapaksa government seems to be hoping that broad-based repression will dampen the exercise of fundamental freedoms. But Sri Lankan activists and journalists who showed incredible resilience during wartime to bring forth the truth, will undoubtedly find a way to do so when the country is at peace.
HRW urged governments to press for an independent international investigation into wartime abuses, speak out against ongoing abuses and provide support for Sri Lankan civil society.
The Sri Lankan government has faced various allegations of human rights violations and war crimes by civil rights organizations and the UN since the end of its civil war in 2009. In March the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution [JURIST report] to promote reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka. In February Sri Lankan authorities were accused of using rape [JURIST report] as a method of interrogating members or supporters of the LTTE. Earlier that same month the UN criticized Sri Lanka for failing to investigate war crimes, and HRW pushed [JURIST reports] for an independent investigation of rights abuses.”
Following is a short History of the genocide of The Tamils in SriLanka.
Successive Lankan Governments have used the Tamil Card to gain power and used terror against the Tamils to sustain their power.
Excerpts from different sources to get a fair view.
Tamil genocide Sri Lanka
Stephen Senenayake was the first Prime Minister of Ceylon, when Ceylon became independent on 4 February 1948. The first Act he introduced in the parliament was the Ceylon Citizen Bill on 15 September 1948, that effectively disenfranchised the Indian Tamils. The Indian Tamils are also known as Hill Country Tamils, Up-country Tamils or simplyIndian Tamils.
The are descended from workers sent from South India to Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th centuries to work in coffee, tea and rubber plantations. Some became merchants and others service providers in the towns. These Tamil-speakers mostly live in the central highlands and also major urban areas and in the Northern province.
To create the plantation industry they toiled through the malaria infested jungle. In the whole process a good percentage of them died. The plantation sector economy brought prosperity to Sri Lanka but socially and economically their standard of living is below that of the national average. These people are now disfranchised That is justice in Sri Lanka.
D.S Senanayake was respected by Sinhalese and some Muslims. However, Tamils were not happy with his citizenship laws, which disenfranchised virtually all Tamils of recent Indian origin living in the central highlands. He set in motion the first ethnic cleansing, which was followed by all Sinhalese leaders thereafter.
Another Sinhalese leader, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaikeorganised the Sinhala Maha Sabha in 1936. In 1946 he backed the United National Party (UNP) and held ministerial posts from 1947 to 1951. In 1951, Bandaranaike led his Sinhala Maha Sabha faction out of the UNP and established the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).
Bandaranaike became prime minister after winning the 1956 elections in a landslide merely by emphasising on the language issue. He made Sinhala the official language of the country, downgrading the official status of Tamil andEnglish and promoting socialist, anti-Western policies that profoundly changed the course of Ceylonese politics in the following decades.
His policies galvanised the Tamils, and under the leadership of Thanthai Chelvanayagam, peaceful demonstrations were held. These were brutally suppressed by the Sinhalese thugs and police. Then followed a series of riots, the first of which was in 1956. This was the beginning of the present ethnic problem. This was the beginning of the second ethnic cleansing; the driving out of the Sri Lankan Tamils, who were in Sri Lanka for more than 2,000 years, so that the entire island would become a Sinhala Buddhist country….
The act was strongly opposed by certain sections of the Sinhalese community led by Jeyawardene, and was eventually torn up by Prime Minister Bandaranaike in May 1958. The abandonment of the pact led to tensions between the two communities, resulting in a series of outbreaks of ethnic violence in the country which eventually spiralled into the 26 year Sri Lankan Civil War. Prime Minister Bandaranaike’s later attempts to pass legislation, similar to the agreement, was met by strong opposition, and led to his assassination by a Buddhist monk in 1959.
After his death his wife, Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, took over the government. The most important thing she did was to find a solution to the festering problem of the Indian Tamils.
When Sri Lanka disfranchised the Indian Tamils the government of India had made it clear to Sri Lanka that it would not accept responsibility for those Indians whose applications for citizenship were rejected by the Sri Lanka. Discussions between the two governments continued, and in October 1964 agreement was reached between Sirima Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Lal Bhadur Shastri, Prime Minister of India, called the “Sirima Shastri Pact” in 1964
The ideology of the Sri Lankan regime uses a mythologised history drawing from religious texts to assert that the whole of the island has been Sinhala and Buddhist by divine sanction for 2500 years — since being visited by Buddha.
While it is true that Sinhala Buddhist societies have existed in Sri Lanka for over two millenia, the Tamil presence also dates from antiquity. While the Sinhala-chauvinist official history maintains that the Tamils were later invaders, this is not at all clear from the actual historical and archaelogical record.
What is clear is that for centuries Tamil and Sinhala kingdoms coexisted on the island. When Portuguese traders visited the island in 1505 there was a northern Tamil kingdom and two Sinhala kingdoms.
By 1619, the Portuguese had changed from traders to colonialists and began overthrowing the indigenous kingdoms, bringing in three centuries of European rule, which created an economy based on plantation monoculture for export and a single state covering the island. The plantation economy and unitary state are at the centre of the current conflict.
The Sinhala-chauvinist ideology is modern, originating in the late 19th century amongst Buddhist monks who were anxious to defend their theocratic privileges from British encroachment. In the 20th century, nationalist and socialist groups developed that were secular and multinational in character.
However, when the British granted independence in 1948, politicians used populist appeals to Sinhala chauvinism to distract from their inability to satisfy popular expectations.
Immediately after independence, a million Tamil plantation workers lost their citizenship and right to vote. A majority of these stateless Tamils were deported in the 1960s and ’70s.
In the lead-up to the 1956 elections, the Buddhist clergy launched a racist anti-Tamil movement that culminated in the first pogrom against Tamils. It also proved that the clergy could swing elections and secured their position in the political elite.
Following the 1956 elections, laws were enacted making Sinhala the only official language. This excluded most Tamils from public sector employment.
A number of Tamil political parties contested elections on a platform of equal rights. Their inability to prevent further discrimination created sentiment for Tamil independence. By 1980 the Tamil United Liberation Front, that called for self-determination, had become the largest opposition party in the Sri Lankan parliament.
The 1983 pogrom, which took 3000 lives and caused 150,000 Tamils to flee abroad, became the watershed that caused a majority of Sri Lankan Tamils to support the armed struggle for independence by the LTTE, waged since the 1970s.
The SLA’s war against the Tamil population has involved some of the world’s worst war crimes. Civilians have been targetted: orphanages and hospitals have been regularly bombed. Starvation sieges have been imposed, including after the December 26, 2004 tsunami.
Torture, rape and random killings have been perpetrated by the military and pro-government paramilitaries.
Underpinning this war has been Western military aid and political support. This reflects Sri Lanka’s strategic significance, but also that the military, political and theocratic elites that rule Sri Lanka maintain Western domination of the economy that still follows the colonial export-oriented model.
The major suppliers of arms are the US and Israel. Israel provides Kfir jets and illegal cluster munitions and the Israeli secret police, Mossad, train Sri Lankan special forces and paramilitary death squads.
Sri Lanka seems to be in a self destruct mood post LTTE.
They first targeted Tamils,divided the Muslims of Indian origin from the Tamils,Then started attacking Muslims, including the burning od Mosques.
Now it seems that it is the turn of the Hindus .
Gunmen(Buddhists) attack Mosque in Sri Lanka
In a comedy called History a joker has been publishing articles that the Tamils were Buddhists and Jains first and later became Saivites/ Hindus!
“Tamil Saivites who believe that Tamil and Saivism are inextricably intertwined are troubled by suggestions that Tamils were once mainly Buddhist and Jain before Saivism took root after the seventh century AD as the Thevaram Period began. Many Saivites whose ancestors converted at the time think Tamil Saivites who converted to Christianity in European colonial times are traitors.”
This merits only laughter.
For I understand that this as natural , if coming from a man descended from a Lion!
But from a Tamil who is licking the boots of racists?
Is this guy Raj Narain or a Lalu Prasad Yadav to shower jokes?
At least they were/are harmless buffons.
And there is a vitriolic attack on Arumuganavalar, a great Saivaite.
I merely reproduce excerpts from the pulp for readers to enjoy.
“To digress a little, I actually believe that those Tamils who refused to convert became the Sinhalese and these include many ardent South Indian Jain and Buddhist believers who took shelter in Ceylon where Buddhists were comfortable as those refusing to convert in South India were being executed during the Thevaram period – even today a Madurai temple festival celebrates the impalement of 8000 Jains who refused to convert to the new state religion on the orders of Saint Sambandar and this is recorded by Nambi Andar Nambi (Aludaiya Pillaiyar Tiru-ula-malai, Stanzas 59 and 74). This incident dates to the beginning of Chola power at the close of the millennium before last. Nilkanta Shastri, who was not given to making heritage histories, states in his book (A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar, Oxford, 1958) that many Hindu temples today were once Buddhist and Jain”
Does he mean that there were no Hindus before this period in Sri Lanka!
And excellent interpretations of Caste too.
” Dominating Jaffna’s cultural life, Vellalas, as people who labour, are Sudras, the lowest of the caste groups of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra. (Dennis Hudson says Navalar’s caste is elite, something that Vellalas must have told him). Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger calls Vellala control of Jaffna “Sudra Domination.” (Vellalas are a living contradiction, at once claiming to be high caste and also that the four-fold classification is North Indian and therefore not ours – a classic case of not wanting to be low Sudras and not wanting to give up their high status within Sudras. Caste is from North India and Vellalas need to take it or leave it.)”
I posted an article on the Mass grave unearthed in Sri Lanka.
I received a comment , which I am reproducing below and offer my comment on them.
I write objectively , based on facts and Documents.
If my views are wrong I am willing to be corrected, but the rebuttal must be based on facts, Documents and not innuendo and abuse .
Comment Received.
“The mass graves in matale and any other place in SL is a symbol of tormented past of SLn people. The good thing is SLn people have been resilient and built their lifes back whatever they went through in late 80s. However this blog post seems more like an attempt to sling mud at sri lanka and its people.
1. Matale mass graves are no doubt connected to JVP insurgency. However continuous mention of tamils in this try to create an impression this is a grave of tamil civilians.
2. Matale mass grave is a result of SLA’s anti insurgency campaign. Whatever the bad it did ultimately it saved Slns and its people from a far brutal Marxist campaign. Trying to paint this in black and white is distorting the whole scenario.
3. Matale mass grave might contain skeletons of innocents as well as armed rebels.
4. The counter insurgency of SLA has been adopted by Indian government in india during anti-khalistan movement in Punjab. So this is nothing new. This has happened in india as well. Saying SL is the Uganda of Idi Amin is an attempt of distorting the whole picture and slinging mud using dead bodies for one’s own political agendas.
Therefore though this blog post try to seems to be sympathetic (unsuccessfully) to the ones died in Matale this is an attempt with a political agenda”
My reply.
Skeletons in The Mass Grave, Sri Lanka
1.For points 1 to 3.
I have clearly mentioned in the post that the dead could have been.
“It could be the result of the standoff between JVP and The Government, LTTEand Government, or The Marxists or innocent Tamils.
Over 200 bodies were found at the last count”
The comment makes no sense as the writer has echoed my views on this aspect from the same blog!
Point 2 of the comment.
Khalistan. No body denies that there Operation Blue Star and the initiative was done in Public view and, mind you, Sikhs, the pillars of India, were a part of the Operation,
How many Tamil officers were in the Killing of the Tamils?
The writer says,
‘
The mass graves in matale and any other place in SL is a symbol of tormented past of SLn people. The good thing is SLn people have been resilient and built their lifes back whatever they went through in late 80s.’
Excellent! Not only the Sri Lankans kil;l the Tamils, Muslims but Sri Lankans as well.
If this can not be compared to Idi Amin Regime. shall I compare it with Emperor Asoka of lord Buddha?
The writer conveniently omits the fact in the post that,
‘As fate would have it ,that another activist who played the role of the ombudsman to the grieving parents, whose offspring had been snatched away by the State military apparatus and deadly para- military groups’ is now the President of Sri Lanka. When Mahinda Rajapaksa went to Geneva, he attempted to smuggle, concealed in a false compartment of his suitcase, the gory pictures of headless corpse of State terrorism in 1989-90. He was stopped at the airport and the photographs were confiscated..
Successive Sri Lankan Governments, including that of previously activist President Chandrika Kumaratunga, let past military atrocities be swept under the carpet, despite the fact that she herself led the campaign for the excavation of the suspected mass grave in Suriyakanda. That highly emotive campaign was the catalyst in Kumaratunga’s speedy rise to the Presidency of Sri Lanka…”
Ironically the source for this blog post is not a Tamil magazine or a News paper, but from a Sri Lanka paper
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