I want to discuss the war in Sri Lanka, one because I feel extreme sadness when I see it in the news and secondly because I don’t believe it has been given fair treatment in the media for it seems that if the Western powers are not directly involved it doesn’t get the coverage it needs and thus does not acquire the drastic support and aid it certainly requires.
Let me begin my stating that I do not support either side. I do not believe in war in such circumstances, I do not believe that one sides casualties are greater or worse than the other. It is a war and therefore their are brothers, fathers, sisters, mothers, grandparents lost on both sides.
Firstly, with the little media coverage given they have not accurately informed the public of who the LTTE are. The reason for their uprising was solid oppression of the Tamils under the Singhalese government.
The Tamils of Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) are of two categories either Eelam Tamils of the coastal north-east province and the up-country tamils of the central highlands of the Central, Uva and Sabaragamuwa Provinces. The Upcountry Tamils were brought by the British at the beginning of the 19th century from South India to work on the British plantations. Thus the tamils were treated as sub-human, inferior peoples by the majority Singhalese.
Tamils from Tamil Nadu were brought to Ceylon as indentured labourers meaning an agreement binding servant to master (as was the policy in America of the African people).These Tamils were condemned to virtual slavery under the British, and, after independence, to the Sinhalese masters.
After numerous uprisings and civil war, the Sri Lankan state carried out forced strerilisation of Plantation Tamils to reduce their numbers. Many were killed in the series of anti-Tamil pogroms and many fled to the Tamil homeland in the North East.
When Sri Lanka gained its independence from Britain in 1948, one of the new government’s first acts was to remove Tamil plantation workers’ citizenship rights. Sinhalese was declared the country’s sole official language, making speakers of the Tamil language second-class citizens. Knowledge of Sinhalese was made a prerequisite for employment in the public service, excluding most Tamils from government jobs. Discrimination against Tamils was also applied in education.
For many years Tamils opposed this discrimination by peaceful means, including demonstrations, sit-ins and participation in elections. But peaceful protests were met with violent repression, carried out by the police and army, as well as racist Sinhalese mobs incited by politicians and Buddhist monks. Repression of peaceful protests led many Tamil youth to turn to violent methods. The LTTE was formed in 1972 and carried out its first major armed action in 1978.
The armed conflict has since escalated and is not at its absolute peak. The LTTE attacks have grown more and more brutal:
- Feb 21, 2009
Eastern Province, Amapara.
10 civilians including 2 children were killed while 5 others including 2 children reportedly sustained serious injuries when a group of LTTE terrorists opened indiscriminate small arms fire at civilians in Kirimetiya at Rathmalgaha Ella, in Iginiyagala today (Feb 21) at around 5p.m.
- June 6, 2008: Colombo
Two Bomb attacks on buses by LTTE in Sri Lanka have left 22 people dead and about 100 injured, the first of them hitting a vehicle in a suburb of Colombo.
Twenty people died and more than 80 were hurt in the blast in the capital while a later attack in the town of Kandy killed two and injured 20.
- Aug 8, 2006
Colombo
Three civilians including a three year old girl were murdered by the LTTE terrorists exploding a car bomb. The bomb went off near a girls’ school in a residential area of the city.
- June 15, 2006
Anuradapura
LTTE terrorists murdered 64 passengers and injured at least 80 travelling exploding a claymore mine on a bus to the town of Kebitigollewa in Sri Lanka’s north central province. Most of the killed were children.
Yet, the government has done little better with many artillery attacks by the Sri Lankan Army on tamil villages, killing hundreds if not thousands of civillians. At present, the LTTE have trapped thousands of Sri Lankans in a small area of the conflict zone along the northeastern Sri Lankan coast. Their purpose is to secure an independant state in Sri Lanka’s northeast which they have been fighting for since 1983. Over 70,000 people have been killed as a result and the group has been declared a terrorist organization by 32 countries, including the United States and the European Union.
Sri Lanka ordered an end to combat operations against Tamil Tiger rebels in the country’s north to avoid further civillian deaths. The military will now concentrate on saving and rescuing civilians, who have been caught in the fighting between government forces and rebel fighters according to the Presidential statement.
UNICEF has called the situation in the north a “catastrophe for children,” with the lack food, water and basic medical supplies. It is a certainty that no matter the results of the war, Sri Lanka will be repairing itself for many years to come.
Your history of the LTTE and the reasons for it being formed are well known, but that does not justify the use of suicide attacks and murders of ones opponents. Look at the Maoists of Nepal, they were in a fight against the govt but now they have renounced violence and have become part of the democratic process. Prabhakaran should have done that when the world was sympethetic to the cause of the LTTE. But he was acting like some kind of a mafia don and went on a killing spree of all his Tamil oponents. LTTE is a terrorist organisation now and it needs to be completely decimated.
I do not deny the LTTE as a terrorist organization. The purpose of my post was not to sympathize with them but to provide the balance the media are not offering. As I stated, I do not believe in such a war, we have seen countless failures of internal oppressed groups fighting governments for land and ending in absolute catastrophe. If the Tamils were given an independent state, I would imagine it would become a disaster zone like Pakistan. Who would be in government? The men willing to let their people die in order to secure power? Prabhakaran is certainly not the hope the Tamils should be looking up to, his people are in a state of anxiety and confusion and he has abandoned them to God knows where. I agree it needs to be decimated but I also believe that the government massacre’s of innocent civilians in the name of defence is utterly wrong. Such as the case in Israel/Palestine…the usage of suicide bombers especially women and children does not give one side power to massacre ALL civilians.