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THE ACTION GROUP OF TAMILS (TAGOT) Email: ssatha@pan.lk manoraj@sri.lanka.net PRESS RELEASE |
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5 November 1998 PA’S MILITARY DEBACLE AND Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga denied the national rights of the Ceylon Tamil people in a live interview given to two South African TV channels during her visit to Durban in the first week of September 1998. She derogated the Tamil nation to "a minority community" and denigrated Tamils as "not the original people of the country". In other words, the President declared that only the Sinhalese are the bhoomi putra ("sons of the soil") in Sri Lanka. The Action Group of Tamils (TAGOT) takes strong objection to her blatantly chauvinist comment. To add insult to injury, the President’s assertion was broadcast in Sri Lanka by the State-owned Rupavahini television English news at 10 pm on 5 September. But the Tamil political parties and the human rights and conflict resolution organisations have so far failed to demand a retraction of the statement by, and an apology from, the President. It is clear now that the President’s Peoples Alliance (PA) Government, like its predecessors over the past five decades, rejects the principle that Tamils are also the Bhoomi Putra of Sri Lanka. Sinhalese politicians occasionally mouth platitudes about Tamils being equal citizens of the country. That should not detract from the concrete reality that the PA too refuses to recognise the national rights of Tamils. In this context the so-called "peace package" is nothing but part of the PA’s military solution to the Tamil Question. Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Prof GL Peiris helpfully explained the military value of the "peace package", how it would legitimise and strengthen the Government’s military response. Within two weeks of the release of the 1995 President Kumaratunga’s Devolution Proposals he replied to its critics on 14 August thus:
However, the impotence of the Government’s military response was increasingly evident by late 1997 and it was conclusively established by two recent events. The attack in Jaffna on 11 September 1998 killed Jaffna Mayor Mr Pon Sivapalan, Jaffna Brigade Commander Brigadier Susantha Mendis and eleven others and eliminated very senior members of the security hierarchy in Jaffna. About three weeks later the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) over-ran the Kilinochchi-Paranthan military complex on 27-29 September and drove Operation Jayasikurui, which aimed to open the land route from Vavuniya to Elephant Pass, into the proverbial Vanni mud. As the LTTE neutralised the PA’s military response, the chauvinist Sinhalese politicians discovered compassion for Tamil children caught up in the war. Allusions had, however, been made to young Tamils in the LTTE ranks as far back as late 1990. The then United National Party (UNP) Government’s Deputy Minister of Defence Mr Ranjan Wijeratne contemptuously dismissed the LTTE cadre as so-called "baby brigades". Thereafter sporadic mention was made up to 1994 about the alleged deployment of Tamil "children" in battle by that organisation. Since the UNP Government had been confident of victory, the propaganda about LTTE’s "baby brigades" was crafted to bolster Sinhalese morale, to ridicule and thereby diminish the challenge posed by the LTTE. As the battle raged, the defence establishment trumpeted that the armed forces would make mincemeat of "baby brigades". Indeed the Government showed little compassion for the lives of Tamil "babies" in the brigades. They were demonised as the Tamil "enemy", the "terrorists", to be "exterminated" by the patriotic Sinhalese army. Compassion for Tamil children was conspicuously missing also when the armed forces re-commenced indiscriminate aerial bombing and artillery shelling of Tamil civilian areas on 9 July 1995 in the Jaffna peninsula and later in other areas in the North-Eastern Province (NEP). Nor was such compassion even remotely evident when the PA Government imposed the draconian embargo on the supply of food and medicine – including baby food and common antibiotics – to the north. Indeed the Government made no mention whatsoever of the devastating impact of war on Tamil children when the "victorious" Sinhalese occupation forces arrogantly hoisted the Lion Flag over the Tamil people in Jaffna on 5 December. Human rights and conflict resolution organisations in the south including the National Peace Council (NPC), most of which contain a majority of Sinhalese members and tacitly support the military response, maintained a deafening silence on the subject. The military reversals suffered by the armed forces changed all that. The LTTE ground Operation Jayasikurui down to an excruciating military stalemate by late 1997. By early 1998, the Sinhalese occupation army found its control of the Jaffna peninsula rapidly weakening as the LTTE systematically infiltrated the so-called "cleared areas". Not surprisingly, the PA Government lost interest in "crushing" the "baby brigades". Instead, Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar began to shed copious tears over the fate of young Tamils who joined the LTTE. As the news from the warfront became increasingly dismal, the Government became correspondingly vociferous in its condemnation of the LTTE for allegedly recruiting "children". The obvious intention is to capture the moral high-ground for the armed forces, isolate the LTTE in international fora and reduce the military effectiveness of the LTTE-led Tamil National Movement. On 4 October, for instance, the Defence Ministry alleged that twenty-four "child soldiers" of the LTTE, including six girls, had "surrendered" to the army in Mankulam. As if on cue Ms Maureen Seneviratne (a Sinhalese), head of the child rights group PEACE, on the same day mourned "it was tragic that children were being used for war". Not to be outdone, the NPC issued a press release strongly condemning the LTTE for allegedly recruiting Tamil "children". It must be noted that neither of these associations voiced concern for Tamil children when the Government had appeared to be winning the war. More to the point, the PA Government is a party to the conflict. Its allegations about the LTTE must necessarily be treated as partisan claims. Instead the NPC and similar associations have projected the Government as a neutral actor and willingly granted undeserved credibility to its allegations. TAGOT has no hesitation in dismissing the Government’s propaganda as baseless and dishonest. We in contrast emphasise that Tamil children are most at risk due to the war. The following statistics indicate the scale of the tragedy.
The crux of the issue is this. It is the war that violates human rights and the right to life of children. It is the Government that is stubbornly waging war. Therefore it is the PA Government that must stop the war immediately to save Tamil children. The Action Group of Tamils (TAGOT)
------------------------------------------- Dr S Sathananthan, Secretary |
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