Military victory meaningless without efforts to negate racial discrimination

Military victory meaningless without efforts to negate racial discrimination

“Then there were the several racial attacks on the Tamils and that too was another type of terrorism. Terrorism is an evil force and so is racism and whatever else that have streaks and strains of racial and religious intolerance ingrained in them.”

by Victor Karunairajan

(January 03, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) The year 2009 has begun for Sri Lanka with the president, the Honourable Mahinda Rajapakse claiming a major military victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) with the reported capture of their de facto enclave capital of Kilinochchi. There is no doubt this has been an extremely costly venture in respect of loss of lives especially for the state forces, unaccounted rebels who must have perished, the civilians affected both by death and displacement and the extensive damage to one of Sri Lanka’s major agricultural regions.

It is hoped there will be no more aerial bombing anywhere in Sri Lanka.

We have had enough of this horrendous tragedy; even more the unfortunate aspect of this ghastly civil war resorted to by the LTTEE as the contention of the minority community treated as lesser citizens of the country. No Sri Lankan government has had the guts to come out and state that every citizen in Sri Lanka enjoys equal rights and no community lives by the grace of another ever since that infamous Sinhala Only legislation that became law half a century ago. It was a measure made rotten and rancid by an act of discrimination with the intolerable contention that the Sinhala race and Buddhism have primacy over all others. This is not democracy.

The Buddha himself would not have tolerated such a contention and a true Buddhist would shudder that such a position was given to his faith over and above that of other faiths. Political Buddhism has been the curse of Sri Lanka just like Catholicism was some centuries ago in Europe. No faith needs political patronage because faith is far beyond the regions of politicians.

During the period since independence Sri Lanka courted racism and religious bigotry cowering to Buddhist monks gone out of control and instigated violence against Tamil minorities. There were shameless racial violence, and in 1983 the hatred and sadist brutality spewed against the Tamils revealed signs of involvement of the government of the day. The intent certainly was genocidal and it was a defining moment for the Tamils and thousands fled the country. Those who fled were people the country could not afford to lose. But the racists and the bigoted did not care. In consequence they have harmed the country immensely.

Political terrorism of the LTTE was not the first to take roots in Sri Lanka. Terrorism first took shape in the south led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna exploiting the southern Sinhala youth who felt let down by the government; the government reacted in kind. Thousands of Sinhala youth were massacred as a result. Today, these Vimukthi people are in parliament many of them still reined in narrow political confines that abhor the reality that Sri Lanka is a multicultural country.

Then there were the several racial attacks on the Tamils and that too was another type of terrorism. Terrorism is an evil force and so is racism and whatever else that have streaks and strains of racial and religious intolerance ingrained in them.

The government forces may have won the Wanni campaign against the LTTE but that does not mean they have brought an end to the reasons for which it existed. A victory in this could be acknowledged only when the government is able to claim that from now onwards every citizen in the country will enjoy equal rights and none more and none less than the other.

President Mahinda Rajapakse is under obligation to announce that the Tamil-speaking community of Sri Lanka are also Sri Lankans as much as the Sinhala-speaking people and that his government will bring forth immediate measures to ensure that whatever measures sought by his government and the previous ones that led to the discrimination of one community against the other will be annulled and negated altogether without any delay.

The Tamils themselves have the responsibility and obligation to honour that Sri Lanka is their country as much as that of the Sinhalese, Muslims, Malays and Burghers and no leader of theirs flirts with any politician or political party of Tamilnadu and create false impressions both in Sri Lanka and India, that the Indian politicians can call the tune in respect of Sri Lanka’s internal affairs. Tamilnadu politicians have largely used the Sri Lankan problems to promote their own political goals on the subcontinent.

The Tamils have the right to seek their political identity as long as they subscribe to their Sri Lankan citizenship in all honour and dignity. They have a right to seek solutions to their problems within a unitary or federal system and also to have their unique cultural features respected and upheld as they would be in the case of other communities in Sri Lanka.

A true democracy accepts and appreciates diversities and helps a nation wedded to them to thrive towards the enrichment of the spirit of a nation. This is the moment for President Mahinda Rajapakse to accredit himself as a statesman, a stature that Sri Lanka has been denied for six decades.- Sri Lanka Guardian