Feb 04 2025
*PRESS RELEASE*
*SRI LANKA CELEBRATES 77TH ANNIVERSARY OF INDEPENDENCE DAY AMID WAR OF ATTRITION AGAINST TAMIL NATION CONTINUES*
Albeit orchestrating the continuous “War of Attrition” and strengthening oppression against the Indigenous Tamil people since it became independent in 1948 when several Tamil political leaders devoted their strenuous efforts to the cause of freedom from British rule, Sri Lanka is celebrating its 77th Independence Day elegantly as a showpiece to the international community. Since gaining independence, the Sri Lankan state strategy stepped up the sustained process of wearing down the Tamil nation so as to weaken their physical capability and their willpower to fight for their legitimate rights collapse.
The British Tamils Forum (BTF) explores the ruse of the successive Sri Lankan governments’ coercion of Tamil people against their self-dignity by
obfuscating their aspirations.
Among the many, BTF cites the diabolic actions of the Sinhala hegemony on the island.
· Citizenship Act 1948.
· State-sponsored land grab in the traditional homeland of Tamils.
· The UNP stalwart J R Jayawardene led a march in 1956 against the Banda-Chelva Pact for the devolution of powers to the Tamil people.
· The enactment of the Sinhala Only Act 1956.
· Anti Tamil Pogrom in 1956.
· Galoya Massacre 1956.
· Pogrom 1958, after encouraging Sinhala thugs to attack non-violence protest staged by the Tamil leaders.
· Anti Tamil Pogrom 1961.
· Abrogation of the Dudley – Chelva Pact in 1965
· Abolition of the minimum safeguard clause for the minorities’ fundamental rights in the 1948 Soulbury constitution – [1]Section 29(02) –
under the new constitution upon becoming a republic in 1972.
· Introduction of standardisation to curb down Tamil students entering higher studies at universities in 1972.
· Disruption and killing of Tamil people during the World Tamil Conference in Tamils’ hard land of Jaffna in 1974.
· Anti Tamil Pogrom 1977.
· Introduction of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in 1979.
· Arson attack and burning down of Jaffna Public Library destroying more than 97,000 invaluable rare collections of books and documents in 1981.
· Black-July Massacre 1983.
· Imposition of economic embargo – especially food and medicine – on Tamil people during the civil war from 1984 – 1987 and from 1990 to 2009.
· Abduction, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance of more than 18,000 Tamil people during the last phase of the war under retrenched
impunity empowered by the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1979.
· Unleashing brutal massacres of over 158 massacres against Tamils since 1956.
· Over 70,000 people are unaccounted for (Secretary-General’s Internal Review Panel On United Nations Action In Sri Lanka <https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/report-secretary-general%E2%80%99s-internal-review-panel-united-nations-action-sri-lanka>
– 2012) and killing of 40,000 (UN Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts
<https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-documents/document/poc-rep-on-account-in-sri-lanka.php> report – 2011) innocent Tamil civilians under the pretext of wiping out terrorism in the country, by indiscriminately killing people after gathering them in No Fire Zones, hospitals, schools, and make-shift camps, while imposing food and medicine embargo during the final stages of the civil war in 2009. (One estimate is that there were approximately 40,000 surgical procedures and 5,000 amputations performed during the final phase.)
<https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/un-documents/document/poc-rep-on-account-in-sri-lanka.php>
· Hiking up its post-war defence expenditure significantly and increasing its military personnel from 220,000 in 2009 to 380,000 by 2018, by deploying 16 out of its 19 military divisions in Tamil areas, especially in the North, creating an acrimonious atmosphere of abusing Tamil women and children.
· Purposely keeping the war-ravaged northeast region in a destitute situation for over 15 years of the post-war period without allowing it to
conduct a comprehensive needs assessment survey or to develop a master plan for the resettlement, reconstruction and capacity building to bring the
region on par with the rest of the south.
As a consequence of the above more than seven decades of atrocities and deceptions, Tamil people have been living in fear of enduring oppression and suppression.
The arrival of the new NPP government and its cynical stance portraying the emergence of a new era with clean governmental policies has a controversial past behind its grinning face. While it depicts itself as a clean government, merely because of the worsened economic catastrophe faced
by the island due to corrupted predecessors, no one should deny that these NPP governors had been pillars of Rajapakse’s regime in the near past to
execute the atrocity crimes against Tamil people. It is compelled to hide behind the “clean government” concept to satisfy the foreign aid providers,
especially the IMF and the like, for the sake of saving a country strangled with a severe economic crisis.
Though the NPP government has taken some steps to seek justice against previous regimes, it has so far not taken any tangible action to ensure the
non-recurrence of violence through fundamental structural changes and to resolve the persistent ethnic problem by devolving powers to the Tamil
people.
The Tamil people must not forget the past of the following and stay focused on their plight.
· During his student days AKD joined the JVP, an anti-Tamil, anti-West ideologist and [2]anti-Indian Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalist
group opposed the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement in 1987 and staged a violent campaign.
· The JVP gained enormous prominence in the 2001–2004 period as the principal political force *opposing the Norwegian-mediated peace process*
between the United National Front (UNF) government of Ranil Wickremasinghe and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
· It successfully capitalised on the growing momentum of economic discontent against the UNF’s market reform policies and used its influence
in the union movement to instigate a series of sequenced public-sector strikes in the health sector and railways in late 2003 and early 2004. In
doing so, the JVP played a *decisive role in mobilising and coalescing public opinion against the peace process* and provided a growing source of
pressure on President Kumaratunga that legitimised her subsequent actions in dismissing the UNF government, which triggered the ensuing mid-term
elections.
· During this energetic and persistent election campaign, the JVP became instrumental in the April 2004 election defeat of the UNF government
that destabilised the peace process. Even after April 2004, the JVP’s influence as a stubborn and uncompromising coalition partner within the new
United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government played a significant, if not decisive part in the *failure of all subsequent attempts over the
following two years to re-ignite the peace process*.
· They posed *impossible pre-conditions to be met before agreeing to support peace talks*, refused to tolerate any agreement with the LTTE over
joint tsunami aid distribution, and backed the (successful) presidential campaign of Mahinda Rajapakse in November 2005 on an anti-peace process
platform.
· From early 2006 onwards, the JVP openly *promoted a military solution to the conflict*, goading the government to resume the war—which
finally occurred in August 2006.
· The JVP’s Marxist background has been an asset in its emergence as a leading Sinhala nationalist force; the mixture of Marxism and Sinhala
nationalism is not exceptional to the JVP.
· From June 1998 to December 1999, the JVP temporarily deemphasized the Sinhala nationalist component of their agenda and entered a broader
alliance with three other small parties that positioned themselves to the radical left of the ruling People’s Alliance government. But in the months
following the election, the JVP broke ranks completely with these leftist allies and switched ideological emphasis away from Marxism towards Sinhala
nationalism.
· The government’s landmark constitutional reforms and devolution package—which had been under preparation since 1995—were finally presented
before parliament, in August 2000. Both issues—*constitutional devolution and foreign-mediated negotiations—were a source of great anxiety to Sinhala nationalists*, who had long opposed devolution, foreign intervention, and any solution to the ethnic conflict short of outright military victory.
· The JVP effectively stole a march over the other opposition parties by taking the initiative to *categorically oppose the formal cease-fire agreement (CFA) in February 2002, negotiations with the LTTE between September 2002 and March 2003, the government’s interim power-sharing
proposals from May to October 2003, and the LTTE’s counterproposals in November 2003*.
Even after the elections of April 2004, the JVP remained deeply hostile to the resumption of any negotiations with the LTTE during May and
December 2004 and were instrumental in *scuttling ‘P-TOMS’, the post-tsunami aid sharing mechanism (https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2013/04/08/agreements-that-betrayed-sri-lankapost-tsunami-operational-management-structure-p-toms/
<https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2013/04/08/agreements-that-betrayed-sri-lankapost-tsunami-operational-management-structure-p-toms/>)*
between March and July 2005, which proved to be the last gasp of the peace process.
· In its campaign against the peace process, the JVP characterised *Tamil nationalism as an undemocratic, chauvinistic ideology of ethnic exclusivism, promoted by a terrorist organisation and deeply implicated in a neo-colonialist enterprise by foreign powers to divide and re-conquer the
island*.
· The *JVP has historically been composed overwhelmingly of Sinhala-Buddhists, both among its rank and file and at the leadership level—who are utterly opposed to any measures to decentralise powers to the Tamil north-east*.
· *Even during his campaign in 2024, at a meeting in Jaffna Anura Kumara made it clear that he was not willing to give an undertaking regard
to the 13th Amendment. He refused to propose a political solution with substantial power sharing for the ongoing conflict.*
· Vehemently opposed a ceasefire in 2009.
The implication of the foregoing historical facts the plight of Tamil people in Sri Lanka now is “from frying pan to the fire” situation.
Moreover, the destruction of Tamil heritage continues, the proliferation of Buddhist structures in the Tamil homeland, where no Buddhist lives,
continues, land-grabbing of Tamil lands continues with Sinhala colonisation under the guise of Mahaweli River Development. The livelihood of Tamil
farmers is in peril of losing their farmlands and cattle. All these atrocities continue.
The Independence Day celebration is therefore not for the Tamil people of the island, but for the Buddhist chauvinists who want to continue the*
post-independence nation-building process as a mono-ethnic, mono theist and mono-lingual state.*
Unless Tamil people receive justice for the genocidal crimes inflicted on them, the perpetrators are duly punished and a permanent political solution
with substantial power sharing addressing Tamils’ legitimate aspirations for them to live with peaceful coexistence, Sri Lanka’s Independence Day is
a Black Day to them.
Without letting the time to speak for itself, let us all focus on achieving our goal.
——————————
[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/497904755/Soulbury-Constitution-1947
[2]
https://www.ft.lk/columns/The-1989-war-against-India-by-JVP-s-militant-arm-DJV/4-759967
—
*Best Wishes*
*S. Sangeeth *
*BTF Media Contact*
*+44 (0) 7412 435697 <07412%20435697>*
*Website: *www.britishtamilsforum.org
*E-mail: *info@britishtamilsforum.org
*Twitter:* https://twitter.com/tamilsforum
*Facebook:* https://www.facebook.com/BritishTamilsForum
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.