A Political Campaign To End All Military Campaigns!
September 25th, 2007
by P Shantikumar
The government of Sri Lanka is continuing with the war against the Tamils in the northeast relentlessly. The Tamils who live in the northeast of Sri Lanka have suffered from war for the last twenty-five years continuously. In that time over seventy thousand (70,000) people have died and over half a million (500,000) have lost their dwellings and possessions and have become internally displaced (IDPs). As you would imagine, civil strife for these internally displaced people have become unbearable, with no proper food and shelter and also without regular schooling for their children, let alone the fact that they are unable to earn a living. Sanitation too is non-existent. Most of these people come from farming and fishing communities, in the locality.
Many around the world have taken a closer interest in the civil strife of northeast of Sri Lanka as the tsunami struck them, in December 2004. Of the generous donations received by Sri Lanka, only a meager amount reached the Tamil IDPs. Their fair share of the donations did not reach them. Corrupt officials had swindled most of it, the rest of it never was allocated to the IDPs. The IDP numbers swelled by over three hundred and fifteen thousand (315,000) since Mahinda Rajapakse assumed presidency of Sri Lanka, in November 2005, to the current total of over half a million.
Closure of the only highway (A9) connecting the Jaffna peninsula in the north to the south deprives over six hundred thousand people their food, livelihood, and freedom of movement. Businesses cannot stock their shelves as the closure of A9 denies transportation of essential items from the south-this inevitably makes the people of Jaffna prisoners in their own land. In the east, having captured territory from Tamil homelands unfairly by military means, the military continues to capture further land from Tamil homeland in the north, thereby dislodging more people from their places of dwelling to becoming IDPs.
Murders, abductions and enforced disappearances of Tamils both in the northeast and in Colombo continue with impunity. Since Mahinda Rajapakse assumed presidency over four thousand (4000) people have been killed and over thousand (1000) people have disappeared. The international community is alarmed and shocked at the scale of the violence unleashed with impunity against a small community of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, they seem unable to do much about stopping the war against Tamils despite the fact that it is the funds provided by the international community that is being used to go to war against the Tamils.
Humanitarian aid workers have been murdered in large numbers, around thirty (30) of them, since Rajapakse’s ascendancy to presidency. According to Paris based Reporters Sans Borders (RSF) Jaffna is the most dangerous place on the planet to work for journalists. The All Party Representative Committee (APRC) that was set up to find a political solution to the Tamil issue by the President is only being used to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community to buy time for the government of Sri Lanka to implement a military solution.
Whilst the UK Peace Building Strategy (PBS) is a laudable effort by the UK government, Sri Lankan government has acquired considerable skill in delaying and undermining international community’s efforts to end the war and get the parties negotiate in good faith. The International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) set up to monitor the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (COI) has expressed disappointment at the progress made by the COI in investigating and inquiring into human rights violations.
This war has gone on for twenty-five years and the Tamils have borne the brunt of it. It is therefore quite urgent that the international community intervenes in a determined manner to end this unending war and give the Tamils the badly needed reprieve they justly deserve. The ceasefire agreement (CFA) entered into by the government of Sri Lanka in February 2002 with the Tamil Tigers should be reinstated and honored in full. Sri Lanka should be persuaded through military and financial sanctions to allow international human rights monitoring to be implemented. It is a pity that Sri Lanka being a resourceful nation should burn its resourcefulness to cinders in this manner because of rather continuously unwise political decision-making.
I therefore urge everyone to kindly campaign vigorously until you bring this rather pointless, brutal and unending war to an end, as a matter of urgency!
Entry Filed under: transCurrents NewsFeatures
14 Comments Add your own
1. sam | September 25th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Just to make one thing clear is all Tamils in north and east, are LTTE? Is government fighting with Tamils or with LTTE?
2. GRanjit | September 25th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
>> The ceasefire agreement (CFA) entered into by the government of Sri Lanka in February 2002 with the Tamil Tigers should be reinstated and honored in full
3. N | September 25th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Who is going to persuade the LTTE?
4. Sean | September 25th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Sri Lankan Government is fighting the LTTE Terrorists who are holding the general populace in the North in its tyrannical captivity. It is the LTTE who started this bloody war instead of working with the democratic political mechanisms that existed within the country. It is the LTTE that massacred innocent women, children in their sleep. It is the LTTE that introduced suicide bombers to the peaceful Tamil society. It is the LTTE that is holding the Tamil diasporas in ransom. It is the LTTE who is sending innocent Tamil children with a cyanide capsule around their neck, dressed in a suicide jacket to destroy others while destroying their own young selves. (What a way to win ‘Rights of the people’?) It is the LTTE that is annihilating the Tamil people, not the democratically elected Government of Sri Lanka.
How long are they going to live this stupid lie?
5. Samantha | September 25th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
This war is a total creiation of the tamil tigers and they killed more than 30,000 innocent Sinhaleese, tamil and muslim just for nothing for last 25 five years.. They are the abductors,muderers and suckers of innocent tamils blood for their luxurious living. Ltte the one which does not want to stop the war. Each and every time, when the defeat at their feet they cry for international comunity (who are in LTTE’s lap)to stop SLAF offencives.
6. Magamage | September 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Sri Lankan Army notorious for the heinous crimes. I think still we can remeber how they suppressed the JVP insurrection. They are the most ruthless klling machine in the world. We need a strong leader who can control that killing machine before any kind of political settlement.
I think our beloved hardlines like Champika Ranawaka, Somawansha of JVP also tasted there ruthless cruelties personally
7. EEroppe Sinhaya | September 25th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
War is chosen by Mr. Prabakaran. If Praba loves peace so much why the hell he killed so many people during the period of CFA.
He requested war and he got it!. Dear Mr. Shanthi Kumar ,been a boy scout and talk like one is a very nice unfortunatly reality is far more different. So if you could tell Mr. Prabakaran come out with a plan and a time table to talk; I think GOSL will listen.
EEroppe Sinhaya
8. Siri Gamlath | September 25th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
P Shantikumar is speaking BS! Has he arrived on this planet lately to write this kind of irresponsible stuff. Government did not rob the tsunami aid but the Tigers did!
Wher did you have Tamil homeland? Must have been another planet somewhere in the space. All the terrorist should gop back there leaving the Sri Lanka for the peace loving all.
WE never had a war with Tamils! Please do not misinterpret things for your blood advantage. Sri Lanka has been fighting a war with the LTTE terrorists and NOT WIT TAMILS. PLease be 100% aware of this without trying to tell a BS storey to the world. In any case despite your one sided storey the whole world knows what is being committed by the obnoxious LTTEE in all over the globe.
9. chandrabosh | September 25th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Magamage
I think you are trying to put jvp in front and get the sympathy for LTTE when they are in a rat hole.
chandra
10. A.Rajasingam | September 26th, 2007 at 12:30 am
The writer has given a correct view of Mahinda’s government. It will be a never ending battle. The government has no definite solution but relies on military confrontation. The government talks with double standard. At the beginning it said to wait for three months to solve this but now it had taken two years. So long as both the government and the LTTE resort to abduction, murder, extortion, there will be a never ending battle. From the time the PA government came into power, the number of IDPs keep on increasing. It is the duty of the government afford protection without any discrimination whatsoever, but it had failed in its duty to assure the basic needs to the Tamils in the North-East. Instead it keeps on unleashing violence on the Tamils. As usual Sri Lanka Government is clever in delaying the international community’s efforts to end the war in order to cover all forms of corruptions of the Ministers and officials. Justice cannot be expected from this government and the international community is also helpless unless the people defeats this government.
11. rodney | September 26th, 2007 at 5:20 am
“The government of Sri Lanka is continuing with the war against the Tamils in the northeast relentlessly.” I think the writer is a tamil chuvinist who doesnt know what he is talking about. Sri Lankan goverment has never faught any war with any particular race. it only fights terrorism be it sinhala, tamil or muslim. Please remember how it suppressed sinhala insurgents in 1971 / 1983 and was successfull. I think the tamils are better off sans LTTE. It has brought nothing but misery and destruction to tamils in in these 20 odd years of their so called freedom struggle.
what have the tamils gained? just think about that and support GOSL on its mission to liberate tamils from the evil ltte.
12. sun | September 26th, 2007 at 8:04 am
hay how would you say militery capturing tamils home land ? its land of all people in Srilanka not only tamils army capturing the lands from LTTE because they cultivate the terrorissiom with in those lands
13. siva | September 28th, 2007 at 7:45 am
Homeland theory is the damging factor for Tamils. Tamils, specially in Jaffna, have no resorces to make their living happy. After passing O/L or A/L all these Tamils pass Elephant pass in order to find a living.
If the Tamils claim they are better educated and support the uneducated TIGERS, Tamils will be history in Sri Lanka.
Can any one provide a Tamil Eelam manifesto printed by Tigers? As far as I searched for the document, I never get it.
This shows the Tigers has no political agenda and time to time they make statements and those statenments have no value at all.
Now LTTE wants to have TALKS. This is a fun because they broke the talks and left. Are Tigers expect that the elected Sri Lankan government dance to their tunes?
14. Naga UK | September 30th, 2007 at 10:49 am
LTTE wanting to have talks? the have already talked! remember the deals? People do not count! They (the LTTE and the goverment) do not care for people on whose behalf they thrive.
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