It is the belief of the GTF that the Tamil National Question can only be resolved by political negotiations through a dialogue process. Due to lack of trust within parties in conflict and taking note of the occurrences since independence, GTF believes that any such negotiation must have the support of international governments, including India.
Monthly Archives: September 2012
Diaspora Muslim Academic Reasons Out SLMC Politics
Power is the aim of any political party and Muslim politics think that the strategy of the past still holds good. But sadly the cooperation this time is not winning any substantial concessions for Moors with respect to security, land and autonomy. It is based only on political portfolios, the academic commented adding that he would be happy “if the SLMC would demand for the devolution of Land and Police powers to the Provincial Councils.”
Tamil Poetry In Post-Colonial Sri Lanka
These are my last words
Equality, peace and freedom
Where there is no equality
There is no peace
Where there is no peace
There is no freedom
These are my last words
Equality, peace and freedom
You deny my equal rights?
You lose your own sense of peace
And your freedom
ICG: Action Plan, But No Action
In the six months since the Human Rights Council’s March 2012 resolution on “Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka”, the government of Sri Lanka has taken no meaningful steps to implement the resolution’s core requirements or otherwise address the country’s culture of impunity and deepening crisis of the rule of law. The publication of a “national action plan” to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) does nothing the change this…
USTPAC Applauds U.S. Lawmakers’ Letter-Writing Campaign to Secretary Clinton
“We respectfully urge you and your colleagues to purposefully and dynamically engage with the government of Sri Lanka in advancing reconciliation and accountability and a return to peaceful stability.”
Requiem for G. Kasturi (1924-2012)
The malady faced by the Hindu was aptly diagnosed by S. Sivanayagam, while he was residing in Chennai. He wrote in 1988, “The tragedy of the Hindu is the tragedy of newspaper editors who allow themselves to be sucked into the decision-making processes of their governments!” [Tamil Times, London, Oct. 1988].
The New World
Now, though, we appear on the brink of yet another nation-state baby boom… If anything, they are linked by a single, undeniable fact: history chews up borders with the same purposeless determination that geology does…
Review #2: “A Fleeting Moment in My Country
Impressive social changes occurred in the Vanni under LTTE. What Gandhi, Ambedkhar, and Periyaar failed to achieve in India, the LTTE achieved in Vanni. The pervasive caste-consciousness of South Asia was eliminated. Vanni held the promise of progressive ideals for women in the society and of a government oriented toward the well being of the people. Infusing people with the spirit of struggle, it united them as one people. Indeed, it held the promise for many more social changes that would have benefited Tamils and perhaps even the whole of South Asia. This powerful example has now been destroyed. Even if an independent Tamil Eelam state is miraculously born in future, it will not bring back that hope and that promise that Vanni once held.
Impressive social changes occurred in the Vanni under LTTE. What Gandhi, Ambedkhar, and Periyaar failed to achieve in India, the LTTE achieved in Vanni. The pervasive caste-consciousness of South Asia was eliminated. Vanni held the promise of progressive ideals for women in the society and of a government oriented toward the well being of the people. Infusing people with the spirit of struggle, it united them as one people. Indeed, it held the promise for many more social changes that would have benefited Tamils and perhaps even the whole of South Asia. This powerful example has now been destroyed. Even if an independent Tamil Eelam state is miraculously born in future, it will not bring back that hope and that promise that Vanni once held.
Impressive social changes occurred in the Vanni under LTTE. What Gandhi, Ambedkhar, and Periyaar failed to achieve in India, the LTTE achieved in Vanni. The pervasive caste-consciousness of South Asia was eliminated. Vanni held the promise of progressive ideals for women in the society and of a government oriented toward the well being of the people. Infusing people with the spirit of struggle, it united them as one people. Indeed, it held the promise for many more social changes that would have benefited Tamils and perhaps even the whole of South Asia. This powerful example has now been destroyed. Even if an independent Tamil Eelam state is miraculously born in future, it will not bring back that hope and that promise that Vanni once held…
When it comes to the ideal of living free and prosperously, the Eelam Tamil-speaking people have at least learned to never say never.
Review of “A Fleeting Moment in My Country”
This is the first memoir of that momentous period that started with the heady hopes following the ceasefire, continued through the efforts to build a new society in the Vanni and areas of the East, and ended so tragically with the killing of untold tens of thousands in 2009 and the incarcerations of hundreds of thousands in internment camps.
Readers of news in English will be familiar with the narrative of 2002-2009 from the perspective of Colombo. Almost nothing has been written in English from the other side of the Omanthai checkpoint that separated government-controlled territory from that controlled by the LTTE. Those who lived there, Tamils who visited and those who read news written by Tamils are very familiar with the narrative that Malathy tells, but nobody in the rest of the world will be.
Speech during Senate debate on the State of Emergency 1958
“..The Tamils are the pawns in a political game. It does not matter to anybody how we suffer, how we feel, so long as in this game one Sinhala party is the victor and the other Sinhala party is the vanquished. That is all. That is why I ask you not to make us pawns in your game. … We are willing to go. Every Tamil man, woman and child is willing to go…We do not want language rights from you. Please have Sinhalese only. We only want the right to live in our areas. We want the right to be able to walk the streets without being molested. Those are the rights we want. We will look after our language… The elementary duty of a Government is to afford protection to its subjects, and the duty of the citizens is to be loyal to that Government. The moment that Government fails to afford that protection, it forfeits its right to that loyalty and affection. This Government has forfeited that right. “
Regional Autonomy in a Multi National State 1957
“…While no doubt in a democratic state the will of the majority should prevail, the principle of majority rule can operate fully only in those states which have a homogenous population. In multinational states, this principle cannot apply in determining matters relating to the rights of national minorities. If this principle is applied to such questions then it would amount to the rule of the national minorities by the national majority. The minorities will thus be denied their ordinary human rights of self-expression and self-determination and will he subject to the tyranny of an impersonal majority….if the Tamils as a result of a plebiscite in the Tamil areas opt for a federal constitution, they will be exercising their right of self-determination and it is not for somebody else to say “nay”…”
TNA Leader MP P. Sampanthan’s Speech
22nd August, 2012 [2.17 p.m.] ගරු ආර්. සම්පන්දන් මහතා (மாண்புமிகு ஆர். சம்பந்தன்) (The Hon. R. Sampanthan) Thank you Mr. Deputy Chairman of Committees. I move, “Whereas more than three years have lapsed since the conclusion of the war on 19th May 2009 during the course of which grave violations of international human rights laws… Read more »
Statement by TNA Leader Sampanthan
Statement made by Mr. Sampanthan, MP leader of the Tamil National Alliance following his meeting with Sri Lanka’s President Rajapaksa on September 18 2012
Amnesty – No Real Will to Account
Amnesty — No Real Will to Account Shortcomings in Sri Lanka’s Action Plan August 2012 (PDF)
TULF Leader A. Amirthalingam’s 1978 Speech
In this connection there was a lot of agitation and Mr.Bandaranaike thereafter clarified his position and issued a statement on 16th August 1957. This is the policy which he laid down, and I am sure that it is a policy which all fair-minded people will accept as just:
‘The instrument of colonization should not be used to convert the Northern and Eastern Provinces into Sinhalese majority areas or in any other manner to the detriment of the Tamil-speaking people of those areas.’
That is the policy which he adopted and accepted, and I should say in fairness to him that thereafter, during his tenure of office between 1957 and 1959 this planned colonization ceased for a time.
G.G. Ponnambalam’s 50-50 Speech to Sri Lanka’s State Council 1939
‘G.G. Ponnambalam The Marathon Crusade for 50-50 (Balanced Representation) in the State Council 1939′ is a booklet published Chennai, 2001 with an introduction and background political sketch.
True State of Affairs Regarding Govt-TNA Talks
The third attempt was an initiative made by the Leader of the Opposition in May 2012. The Leader of the Oppossition and other UNP leaders met with the President and several Ministers at which they were told that there had never been any TNA- Government talks and that it was TNA-SLFP talks! Apart from the original letter from the Presidential Secretariat, the joint statement issued after every round of talks clearly identified the delegation as Government delegation…
The text of that agenda was agreed upon after several drafts were exchanged… It had been agreed that the Government would endorse the agenda suggested by the Leader of the Opposition. But sadly again, no such endorsement was made on the floor of the House!…
Despite this the Government continues with its misinformation campaign blaming the TNA for its inability to evolve a political solution.
It even has the temerity to ask the TNA to forget all of this and start afresh by walking into the PSC empty handed. That is not a bona fide invitation. That is a ruse to cheat the TNA and the Tamil People yet again. The TNA is not about to make such a historic blunder.
On Sri Lankan Political Cartoonists, Stray Dogs and Hypocrites
On September 9, Lakbima (a Sinhala daily newspaper in Colombo) carried a cartoon by HasanthaWijenayake. It featured a plump Jayalalitha Jayaram, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, in an aggressive posture against Sri Lanka. While her right index finger was pointing at Sri Lanka, her left hand holding the lower end of saree to her… Read more »
The Dialectics of a Genocide
The Fourth Eelam War IV ended in May 2009 and marked the decimation of the Tamil Tigers. By the end, this genocidal massacre claimed between 40,000 and 100,000 civilian lives. In June this year, I had the opportunity to interview TamilNet.com’s chief correspondent in the Vanni, Lokeesan who stayed on in Mullivaaikkal until a few… Read more »
The LTTE’s Mega Landmine Hit
The shock that an LTTE landmine had decapitated the Sinhalese military leadership of the Northern Province, who had bragged only a week before to the India Today magazine (July 31, 1992) that they were about to humiliate LTTE, was too much to absorb by the Sinhala media and politicians. There was an orgy of breast beating, finger pointing and blame shifting. For popular consumption, these military heroes had died either due to carelessness (as Chandraprema opined recently) or due to internal back-stabbing by President Premadasa who was envious of the popularity of Major General Denzil Kobbekaduwa. Sinhalese military analysts and public found it difficult to gulp that they lost their heroes to the LTTE’s adept reconnaissance tactics.