Duplicity, Indifference and Cruelty

Oru editorial, July 11, 2006

After three decades of peaceful political resistance, two decades of armed resistance and then four years of international dialogue and diplomacy, little has changed for the Tamils.

There are almost two million human beings living in the Northeast of Sri Lanka. They are, just like us, young and old, men and women, hoping to lead a peaceful life where there will be choice, freedom, equal opportunity and more importantly, security. 

Theirs is an impoverished land. Decades of carefully planned political, military and economic strategies of the Colombo ruling elite has leached this land of its people, resources, and infrastructure.  Entire generations have been brutalised and intimidated. Hundreds of thousands of people now live without future or hope, living on borrowed time.

While the southern economy grows at eight percent a year, the Northeast economy is facing an embargo and strangulation. While the internationally funded health, educational and infrastructure projects are pushing the Sinhalese nation into a phase of rapid economic and social growth, what is left of the schools, hospitals and other infrastructure of the Tamil land are bombed and shelled and the teachers, doctors and others are being forced to run away from their lands.

When the Tsunami happened, when thousands of people died and many more thousands were left destitute, what happened then?.

Millions of dollars poured into Sri Lanka in order to help everyone who was affected by this monumental natural disaster. But the Sri Lankan Government decided that the Tsunami victims of the Northeast should not get any significant help from anyone.  No institutional help, which was so important to rebuild these affected communities, was allowed. Some rice and dhal, but no houses or boats or fishing gear. The ulterior motive was that the Northeast’s fishing economy, which was systematically destroyed by the state over twenty years, should not be allowed to be redeveloped.

When Tamils peacefully and diplomatically protested against this cruelty, the international custodians of human rights and other lofty liberal ideals, who lecture Tamils about ‘legitimate rights,’ promised to deliver. Something is better than nothing, the pragmatic Tamils thought and welcomed it.

But was this promise fulfilled? Sinhalese nationalist and Buddhist monks kicked up a fuss against the Post-Tsunami Mechanism [PTOMS] that would have allowed the money to be distributed fairly.  And so the Post Tsunami Mechanism idea was binned, and now over a year and a half later, the people still live in camps.

When Tamils complained about this monumental cruelty everyone turned the other way. The international movers and shakers were simply impotent.

The Tamil community may only have warriors, doctors, teachers and artisans and no international diplomats and Nobel prize-winning economists. But this does not mean they are stupid. They know well that without the donors’ dollars Sri Lanka would go bankrupt within a few months. That means the Sri Lankan state is controlled and dependent on external players such as the Japanese, the Europeans, the Americans and so on. Without the financial back up from these foreign powers, the Sri Lankan government would not have the means to continue this war on Tamils.

While the international community lectures Tamils about diplomacy, the Sri Lankan state is carrying on with its main preoccupation: how to destroy what is left from the past and what is now being built on Tamil land.

All these long years the Tamils always thought that there may well be a just solution offered to them so they could live in peace and with dignity in their own small part of this beautiful earth. But the last four years have pushed them more into a corner than any other time.

Now, after all these years of indifference, cruelty and duplicity, the ruling elite is talking about an all party conference regarding devolution, the Indians are talking about ‘the Indian model’ and others about a ‘locally evolved solution.’ Neroes they are and fiddles they play while the Northeast burns.

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