Directory of short articles on various minorities across the world.

http://www.faqs.org/minorities/index.html

This will be added to the Links page.

UJ

BBC NEWS
US to pay Native Americans $1.4bn

The US government has agreed to pay $3.4bn (£2.1bn) to settle a long-running
case over Native American land.

The Cobell case, filed in 1996, alleged the government had mismanaged billions
of dollars in income from natural resources on Native American land.

Under the deal the interior department will share $1.4bn (£859m) among 300,000
tribe members as compensation and set up a $2bn fund to buy land from them.

President Barack Obama said it was "an important step towards reconciliation".

"I heard from many in Indian Country that the Cobell Suit remained a stain on
the nation-to-nation relationship I value so much," Mr Obama told Congress.

He said he had pledged as a presidential candidate to resolve the issue and was
proud the step had finally been made.

The secretary of the interior department also said it would aid reconciliation.

"This is an historic, positive development for Indian country," Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement released by the department.

Contentious case

The dispute dates back to the 1887 Dawes Act, which seized Indian land - much of
it rich in natural resources - and gave it to white-owned companies to exploit.

Under the Act, the land was divided into plots and each Indian family was
assigned a parcel of land, a concept alien to their culture in which all land
belonged to the tribe.

The idea was for them to be "compensated" for the use of their land; however
disputes arose almost immediately, perpetuated as ever smaller parcels of land
were inherited by new generations.

Attorney General Eric Holder said the parties had tried to reach an agreement
"many, many times".

"But today we turn the page. This settlement is fair to the plaintiffs,
responsible for the US, and provides a path forward for the future," he said.

Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfoot tribe and who filed the complaint in
1996, welcomed the settlement, saying the administration had listened to Native
American concerns.

But she said there was "no doubt" that the final amount was "significantly" less
than what those affected actually deserved.

The plaintiffs had claimed they were owed $47bn.

On its website the department for the interior said that the litigation had
included hundreds of motions, dozens of rulings and appeals, and several trials.

The agreement must be approved both by Congress and a federal judge.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8402329.stm

Published: 2009/12/08 23:09:33 GMT

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BBC NEWS
Kashmir conflict 'unfinished business'

The Kashmir insurgency - one of the world's longest-running conflicts - began 20
years ago this week. And it was the shockwave from the fall of the Berlin Wall
that gave young Kashmiris the confidence to take on the Indian state, the BBC's
David Loyn says.

Simmering discontent over this unfinished business left over from the partition
of India in 1947 turned into a full-scale insurgency after the kidnap of Rubiya
Sayeed, the daughter of the Indian home minister, on 8 December 1989.

She was released a few days later in exchange for five militants held in an
Indian jail.

A police crackdown on victory celebrations was the spark that lit the fuse of
the conflict.

One of the militants who took up the gun that week, Mukhtar Baba, said that he
and his friends had the confidence to take on India because of events in Europe.

"The German people stood up against that man-made Berlin wall, so we thought why
don't we, and we started that armed struggle here," he says.

The then chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah, says he
saw the trouble coming.

“ It is not a battle between Kashmiri independence and India, but between the
secular forces of India and the fundamentalist forces which are wanting to get
hold of the Kashmir valley ”
Afsar Karim Retired Indian general

"It was not only the Berlin Wall, I think the main thing was the Russian defeat
in Afghanistan. They felt if a power like Russia can be thrown out, why not
India," he says.

He addressed a packed public meeting to try to warn Kashmiris of what was to
come.

"I told them, 'what you are doing is wrong. It will not lead you to any place
other than the destruction of our state; our houses will go; our villages will
be blown up; innocent people will die; many of our womenfolk will be raped and
murdered'," Mr Abdullah says.

Differing goals

Twenty years on, there are no reliable estimates of the number of people killed,
but it is generally believed to be upwards of 50,000.

The Kashmiri-based International People's Tribunal on Human Rights has recently
called for a thorough investigation of mass graves of bodies buried by Indian
security forces.

The Indian government has rejected the findings, but the head of the research
group, Khurram Parvez, says that much still has to be revealed. He has estimated
that one in 10 people living in the Kashmir valley has been tortured.

From the beginning there were differing goals for those who took up the gun.

Some wanted Pakistan to take over all of the original state of Kashmir, but most
wanted unification of the two wings of the original state in a separate new
independent country.

Global jihad

As the insurgency ground on, from the mid-1990s the Indian state faced a new
threat. Among the Kashmiri youths coming across the Line of Control after
training on the Pakistani side were battle-hardened Islamist warriors who had
come to fight a jihad. They were Arabs, Afghans and Pakistanis.

I met some in Indian custody in 1994, including the alleged military commander
of a new guerrilla group - the Harkat ul-Ansar. His name was Sajjad Afghani -
(Sajjad "the Afghan"), and he proved to have a very limited political agenda.

He was fighting not for Pakistani control of Kashmir but for a global jihad.

We did not know it then, but this kind of thinking was about to take centre
stage in world politics.

So while the fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir may have been inspired by
the end of the Cold War, it provides a direct link with the new conflicts of the
21st Century.

Big change

Pakistan's repeated and strong denials that they backed militant training camps
were rejected by the incoming administration of US President Bill Clinton in
1993, who demanded that the camps should close, threatening to put Pakistan on
the list of "state sponsors of international terrorism".

Conveniently enough, the chaos of the civil war in Afghanistan meant that the
camps should be shifted there, and when Osama Bin Laden reappeared in the region
in 1996 he was given control of some of this training.

Retired Gen Afsar Karim, one of India's leading defence analysts, says that this
development was the most threatening aspect of the Kashmir conflict.

"It is not a battle between Kashmiri independence and India, but between the
secular forces of India and the fundamentalist forces which are wanting to get
hold of the Kashmir valley."

The war has seen a big change in Kashmiri society. There is a new seriousness of
intent in Islamic practice here in a place once famous for more tolerant liberal
ways.

A women's movement, the Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Faith), holds
classes to try to change the ways of Kashmiri women to a more rigorous lifestyle
including covering every part of their body.

Their fundamentalist world view includes a demand for Pakistan to control all of
Kashmir. They also believe that 9/11 was an attack carried out by America on
itself.

One of their leading members Naheeda Nasreem, dressed all in black, including
black gloves, says: "Is there any proof it was done by any Muslim? We think it
might have been done by them. The Taliban and other forces are working at the
behest of America and Israel. Why are the Taliban terrorising Pakistan? This is
only on at the behest of America. They sent some people dressed as Muslims."

'Sky's limit'

Most of the original militant groups have turned away from violence. They are
waiting for the result of a peace process that has been called "quiet diplomacy"
backed by US President Barack Obama.

Both Pakistan and India now appear ready to compromise. On a recent trip to
Srinagar, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a secessionist politician
that - apart from the border itself - anything could be negotiated.

"The sky's the limit," he said.

There is some impatience for progress, and the Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir
Liberation Front, Yasin Malik, warns that if there is no progress, then it will
be hard to stop young Kashmiris from returning to violence.

He has tried to lead a path of non-violent resistance, but knows of the
impatience of Kashmiris for a settlement.

"For God's sake, don't give our next generation a sense of defeat. If you are
giving them a sense of defeat you are pushing them for another revolution,"
Yasin Malik says.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8400176.stm

Published: 2009/12/08 07:28:07 GMT

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Philippine rebels in peace talks

Peace talks have resumed between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front, a separatist group from the south of the country.

The talks are being held in Malaysia, which had brokered talks which collapsed
16 months ago.

An International Contact Group including Japan, the UK and Turkey has been
formed to join the talks.

Earlier peace talks collapsed when a promised agreement was quashed by a
Philippines court.

"The formation of the ICG finally clears the way for the formal resumption of
the peace talks," said a statement signed by the chief negotiators of the two
sides, released last week.

Solution elusive

Rafael Seguis, the government's top negotiator, said in an opening statement in
Kuala Lumpur that the process was "now formally back on track".

"I believe - and I am sure that we all share this optimism - that we will be
able to forge a peace settlement that is just, lasting, acceptable, and truly
beneficial to the Muslim Filipinos in Mindanao, and to the entire Filipino
people," he said.

"But the task ahead of us is still great. The challenges we have to surmount
remain high. There is a lot of work to do."

Mohagher Iqbal, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's (Milf) chief negotiator,
told Reuters by phone from his base on the southern island of Mindanao that he
was confident a final solution to the conflict can be reached before President
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo steps down in June.

He said the two sides would negotiate to reconstitute an International
Monitoring Team (IMT) and reactivate an ad hoc joint action group which would
try to isolate Muslim militants from criminal groups in rebel-controlled areas.

The IMT and ad hoc joint action group pulled out more than a year ago after
violence escalated in Muslim areas in the south following a Supreme Court ruling
that stopped a deal between Manila and the Milf that expanded an autonomous
Muslim region.

President Arroyo's inability to implement an agreement her government had signed
severely dampened hopes of any peace settlement while she remains in office.

The Milf has been fighting off and on for decades for autonomy from the
Philippine government.

Although often described in religious terms, pitching Muslims against a
Catholic-dominant majority, analysts note that the conflict has been focused on
ownership of resource-rich land.

More than 1,000 people were killed and nearly 750,000 people were displaced by
fighting between security forces and rogue Muslim rebels from August 2008 until
July this year.

Efforts have been underway for 12 years to end a conflict that has killed at
least 100,000 people and forced 2m residents into large refugee camps.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8400804.stm

Published: 2009/12/08 05:07:53 GMT

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BBC NEWS
Turkish soldiers killed in attack

Seven Turkish soldiers have been shot dead after gunmen opened fire on a
military unit in northern Turkey, officials have said.

A further four soldiers were injured in the attack, which took place in the town
of Resadiye in Tokat province.

There was no immediate indication of who was behind the attack. However, both
Kurdish and leftist militants are reported to be active in the area.

Attacks on military bases in the north of the country are, however, rare.

Rising tensions

According to one local television report, the soldiers were on patrol near a
military outpost in a mountainous area and during foggy weather when they came
under fire.

It was the worst attack since April when Kurdish militants killed 10 soldiers
with a remote-controlled bomb in the country's southeast.

The ambush came as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was preparing to meet President
Barack Obama in Washington. Government moves to improve Kurdish rights are
likely to be on the agenda.

There have been rising ethnic tensions over recent days ahead of a court hearing
on whether the country's largest pro-Kurdish political party, the Democratic
Society Party, should be closed down.

On Sunday, one man died in clashes between police and protesters in the
south-east of the country.

In the past, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has carried out attacks
on military targets. Extreme leftist groups active in northern Turkey are
believed to have signed co-operation pacts with the PKK.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8399926.stm

Published: 2009/12/07 16:24:48 GMT

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My apologies for the spammer sneaking in under the wire, list members. The
offender has been cast into the pit of Hades.

As you were.

UJ

Yemeni forces clamp down on Aden separatists
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=1092\
73

ADEN, Yemen: Yemeni security forces spread out across the southern port city of
Aden Monday, clamping down on any display of secessionist sentiment on the
anniversary of the south's independence from Britain. Residents said hundreds of
troops lined the streets of Aden, where southern activists had been planning a
festival to commemorate the day the last British soldier departed in 1967.

In the run-up to the anniversary several clashes erupted between the Sanaa
government and southerners, who have long complained that northerners abused a
1990 unity agreement to exploit their resources and discriminate against them.

Southern activist websites said security forces had blocked off all entrances to
Aden, where the authorities had told people not to hold gatherings or
demonstrations without a permit.

Yemen's government is already fighting a revolt in the north by minority Zaydi
Shiites, who also complain of neglect and oppression. Neighboring Saudi Arabia
was recently drawn into the northern conflict when rebels seized some Saudi
territory.

The rebels said on their website (almenpar.com) that Saudi Arabia renewed its
air and missile attacks on several locations near the border early on Monday.
They accused Saudi forces of using phosphorus bombs and poison gas in the
attacks.

There was no immediate reaction from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil
exporter, which fears growing instability in Yemen is giving Al-Qaeda an
opportunity to strengthen its foothold there.

On Sunday, activists shot dead a soldier in the southern province of Shabwa. A
second soldier died of wounds inflicted in fighting there on Wednesday, a
security official said.

Secessionists also clashed with the armed forces in the Radfan region Sunday,
when one person was killed and a grenade hit the local intelligence
headquarters, the same official said.

Members of the activist Southern Movement killed three northerners in two
carjackings, the state-run website September 26 (26sep.net) said. But the
pro-southern website adenpress.com quoted Nasser al-Khabji, a leader of the
movement, as denying its members were involved in the incidents.

Violence erupted this year after an April 28 opposition rally to mark the 1994
civil war in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh's forces defeated the
secessionist south, known before the unity deal as the People's Democratic
Republic of Yemen.

Demonstrations led by yemeni army officers, riled by their meager pensions
following forced retirement, turned violent in 2007. �" Reuters

Wikipedia entry on the list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_list_of_Non-Self-Governing_Territori\
es

UN Decolonisation webpage:

http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/decolonization/main.htm

The latter will be added to the Links page.

UJ

BBC NEWS
SNP outlining independence plans

The Scottish Government is due to publish its white paper on Scotland's
constitutional future, which could pave the way for an independence referendum.

First Minister Alex Salmond is expected to argue Scotland must be independent to
meet its full economic potential.

But the minority SNP administration does not have enough support to pass a
referendum bill as Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems all oppose the plan.

But the process could see Holyrood gain more power over taxation and spending.

The white paper is being launched on ST Andrew's Day and comes after the SNP
government began its "national conversation" on Scotland's future.

'More responsibility'

The first minister has also previously said he would consider a referendum
question on more powers for the Scottish Parliament.

But he is expected to make the case for a substantially enhanced role for
devolution, on issues such as empowering Holyrood with full fiscal autonomy.

Details of the final wording on the ballot paper will be released next year,
with the publication of the Referendum Bill.

Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have urged Mr Salmond to drop the
referendum plan and focus on more immediate issues, such as tackling the
recession.

The launch will come in the wake of proposals by the UK government to hand more
responsibility to Holyrood, including some tax powers, in the wake of the Calman
Commission review of devolution.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8385425.stm

Published: 2009/11/30 00:14:17 GMT

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BBC NEWS
Drop independence plan, SNP urged

Labour has urged First Minister Alex Salmond to shelve his plans for a
referendum on Scottish independence and concentrate on fighting the recession.

The appeal came from Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, who accused the SNP of a
"peculiar obsession" with independence.

The Tories and Liberal Democrats also hit out at the SNP's referendum plans,
which will be published on Monday.

But the Nationalist government said Labour could not be trusted to take Scotland
forward.

The SNP's White Paper will set out options on Scotland's constitutional future
and is expected to be followed by a referendum Bill.

But there are to be no details on what the independence referendum question will
ask. The wording is expected to be finalised next year.

Ahead of the White Paper's publication, Mr Murphy said that the SNP's
unremitting focus on getting Scotland out of Britain was "out of kilter with the
spirit of Scotland at the moment".
“ In these tough economic times, Scottish ministers should be focusing on the
real issues that matter to the people of Scotland, like jobs, schools and
hospitals ”
Tavish Scott Scottish Lib Dem leader

He added: "In these difficult times they should behave like patriots, not just
like nationalists, and put Scotland before their party."

Mr Murphy said he agreed with Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray who did not rule
out a referendum "forever".

The Scottish secretary's appeal came in the wake of Westminster's rival White
Paper setting out Labour's own proposals for Scotland.

Based on the recommendations of the Calman Commission, these would give Scotland
more powers over setting income tax, as well as new powers in areas such as
airgun control, national speed limits and drink-drink alcohol limits.

Under the proposals, Westminster would cut the UK rate of income tax by 10p in
Scotland and would also make a corresponding cut in the block grant.

This would require Holyrood to take decisions on income tax - imposing a
Scottish rate of 10p if it wanted its budget to remain unchanged, or more if it
wanted extra money.

'Move forward'

Commenting on Mr Murphy's plea over the referendum, a spokesman for Mr Salmond
said: "Jim Murphy proved with his flop of an announcement on Calman last week
that Labour cannot be trusted to take Scotland forward.

"The reality is that Scotland needs full financial and economic powers in order
to fight recession and maximise the opportunities that will come with recovery,
which is exactly why we need to move forward in the referendum the government
propose for next year."

But Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott claimed the publication of the White Paper would
be "an SNP jamboree of flag waving and nationalist fervour".

He argued the SNP had got its priorities wrong, stating: "Just in the last few
days we've seen teacher numbers plummet and major delays to the construction of
a new hospital.

"In these tough economic times, Scottish ministers should be focusing on the
real issues that matter to the people of Scotland, like jobs, schools and
hospitals."

And Conservative leader Annabel Goldie said an independence referendum would
cost £9m and many hundreds of hours of parliamentary time.

She added: "He [Alex Salmond] should ditch the independence bill and get on with
what he was elected to do - helping Scotland through these tough times."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8384407.stm

Published: 2009/11/29 00:24:38 GMT

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BBC NEWS
Spain holds youths over Eta links

Spanish authorities say 34 people have been arrested as part of a police
operation against a banned youth group linked to radical Basque separatism.

Officers raided a number of properties in the Basque region and the neighbouring
province of Navarra.

They were reportedly acting on documents seized earlier this year after the
arrest of an alleged senior member of the militant group Eta.

Eta has waged a 41-year campaign for an independent Basque homeland.

The group, which ended its most recent ceasefire in June 2007, is blamed for
more than 820 deaths in that period. This year, the group has killed three
Spanish police officers using car bombs.

Youth activity

Those arrested are said to be members of Segi, a radical Basque youth group
declared illegal in 2007, after a judge concluded it had links to Eta.

Under the supervision of an investigating judge, the police raided more than 60
premises, the interior ministry said.

Police said they found material and equipment for making explosive devices.

The police operation is ongoing, with reports saying a number of other suspects
could have fled across the border into France.

"With these arrests, we have dismantled the core leadership of Segi," said
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba.

He added that there could be further arrests.

The suspects are considered hardliners within the separatist movement, police
sources told local media.

Anti-terrorist officers had been monitoring youth activity following the arrest
in Paris earlier this year of an alleged senior commander of Eta, says the BBC's
Steve Kingstone in Madrid.

Documents seized at the time indicated the group was seeking to enlist a new
generation of followers.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8375734.stm

Published: 2009/11/24 18:53:08 GMT

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Balochistan: Unrelenting Insurgency
Kanchan Lakshman
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor,
Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution
[From: South Asia Intelligence Review
Volume 8, No. 20, November 23, 2009]

The strategic and resource-rich Balochistan province continues to remain on the
periphery of Pakistan's projects and perceptions. With both the "dialogue with
those who are up in the mountains" and the counter-insurgency (CI) operations
failing, the Baloch insurrection persists. Worse, subversion from the Taliban-Al
Qaeda in the north of the province has added to the region's complexities.

There has, however, been some reduction in violence during 2009. At least 268
persons, including 148 civilians and 83 Security Force (SF) personnel, have died
in the current year (till November 20) according to the South Asia Terrorism
Portal (SATP). Significantly, there has been a dramatic reduction in the number
of insurgents killed, an indication that CI operations are not yielding results.
[table deleted]

Despite the reduced levels of violence, the insurgency continues to simmer, with
a steady stream of bomb and rocket attacks on gas pipelines, railway tracks,
power transmission lines, bridges, and communications infrastructure, as well as
on military establishments and Government facilities. While there have been at
least 126 bomb blasts and grenade explosions across the province in 2009 [data
till November 20 (Source: SATP)], there have also been rocket attacks (numbers
for which are not available currently) targeting state installations reported
almost on a daily basis in the province. Baloch insurgents have also targeted
Government officials and politicians. On October 25, 2009, for instance, the
Balochistan Education Minister Shafiq Ahmed Khan was shot dead near his house in
Quetta. The Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF) immediately claimed
responsibility for the assassination. The BLUF spokesman, Shahiq Baloch, said
the Minister, born to Punjabi settlers, was killed due to his anti-Baloch
policies, and to "avenge the state-sponsored murders of Baloch nationalist
leaders Ghulam Muhammad, Sher Muhammad and Lala Munir in Turbat in Balochistan
some time ago." Earlier, on August 6, 2009, the Minister for Excise and
Taxation, Sardarzada Rustam Khan Jamali, was shot dead in Karachi, the capital
of Sindh province, which has a significant Baloch population. Though the Police
subsequently managed to arrest a key suspect, who is an alleged member of a car
lifting gang, investigators are still unclear about the motive behind the
mysterious killing, and there is suspicion of Baloch involvement. On October 18,
2009, a grenade was hurled into the house of the Information Minister Younas
Mullazai in Quetta, but the Minister was not in at that time and no loss of life
or injury was reported. Rahimullah Yusufzai notes,

There have been other targeted killings in the province, along with frequent
acts of sabotage against government installations, infrastructure and utility
services. A new trend in this campaign is the blowing up of properties of
pro-government tribal elders. Frontier Corps soldiers and policemen are attacked
and the settlers, the ones whose parents and grandparents came from other
provinces to settle in Balochistan, are now a major target of Baloch
separatists.

Muhammad Ejaz Khan similarly reported in The News on October 18, 2009, that
Balochistan had seen a sharp increase in incidents of targeted killing,
especially since 2003. According to a senior official of the provincial
Government, there have been two principal kinds of targeted killings �" the
sectarian and those backed by insurgent or separatist groups. In most reported
incidents, the targets were found to have been shot in the head by highly
trained shooters. Most of the victims of these targeted killings have been Shias
and Punjabis (generally referred to as settlers). In Quetta and other
Baloch-dominated areas of the province, Punjabi barbers and labourers have also
been routinely targeted. Dr. Farrukh, the Superintendent of Police in Quetta,
disclosed that the Police had arrested four high-profile killers and blamed the
outlawed Sunni outfit, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), for the targeted killing
incidents. The Hazara community in Quetta claims that over 270 of its people
have been killed over the past six years.

Currently, there are at least six active insurgent groups in Balochistan: the
Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), the Baloch Republican Army, the Baloch
People's Liberation Front, the Popular Front for Armed Resistance, the Baloch
Liberation Front (BLF) and BLUF. BLUF, according to Rahimullah Yusufzai, appears
more aggressive and violent even than BLA and BLF. In February 2009, BLUF cadres
abducted American John Solecki, who headed the UNHCR mission in Balochistan, but
freed him unharmed after "much effort, and probably a deal." The kidnapping
signaled the "arrival of the BLUF as the most radical of the three Baloch
separatist groups even though it isn't clear if these are separate or
overlapping factions operating under different names." In addition, young Baloch
separatists "forming part of the Diaspora and living in Kabul, Kandahar, Dubai,
London, Brussels and Geneva, are now often calling the shots in Balochistan and
setting the agenda."

The insurgents retain capabilities to carry out acts of sabotage on a daily
basis across the province. Acts of violence are, importantly, not restricted to
a few areas but are occurring in practically all the 26 Districts, including the
provincial capital Quetta. Quetta continues to witness substantial militant
activity, both from the Islamist extremists and the Baloch nationalists. There
were 73 militancy-related incidents in Quetta during 2009 (till November 15) as
against 81 in 2008; 72 in 2007; 75 in 2006; 61 in 2005; 51 in 2004; and 32 in
2003.

While the low-intensity nationalist insurgency continues, there is a far more
insidious movement of subversion being orchestrated by the Taliban-al Qaeda
combine in the northern part of the province. The Baloch insurgency, in fact,
plays out in the sidelines of greater theatre of violence, as Islamist militants
in the north orchestrate attacks on both sides of the Afghan border in their
areas of domination. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the US Commander
in Afghanistan, Taliban militants in Balochistan, known as the `Quetta Shura',
operate openly from the provincial capital, conducting attacks inside both
Balochistan and Afghanistan. On September 29, 2009, The Washington Post quoted
US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, as saying that "In the past, we
focused on al Qaeda because they were a threat to us. The Quetta Shura mattered
less to us because we had no troops in the region… Now our troops are there on
the other side of the border, and the Quetta Shura is high on Washington's
list." Other US officials claim that virtually all of the Afghan Taliban's
strategic decisions are made by the Quetta Shura, Dawn reported on September 30,
2009. Decisions flow from the group "to Taliban field commanders, who in turn
make tactical decisions that support the Shura's strategic direction," one such
official told the US media. The Washington Post report claims that Pakistani
officials have allowed the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area
because they view it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat. The US
Consul General in Karachi, Stephen Fakan, told reporters on October 21, 2009
that a Waziristan-like situation might develop in Balochistan if "necessary
action" is not taken against the Taliban in Quetta. According to him, "They have
their existence in Quetta and the Government of Pakistan should root them out
from here."

Even as the American apprehension about the top leadership of Taliban hiding in
Quetta and other parts of Balochistan were being articulated, there has also
been some talk about the Barack Obama administration planning to broaden the
scope of its drone attacks to include Quetta and other parts of Balochistan.
Interestingly, a Washington Times report now suggests that Mullah Omar, chief of
the Afghan Taliban who heads the Quetta Shura, may have been shifted by the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan external intelligence agency, to
safer environs in Karachi, to protect him from the possibility of a US drone
strike.

Meanwhile, the Taliban-al Qaeda combine continues to try and disrupt the supply
line for NATO Forces in Afghanistan passing through Balochistan. In 2009, there
have been at least 12 attacks in Balochistan on oil tankers and trucks ferrying
NATO supplies to Afghanistan. These have occurred in the Lakorain area on the
National Highway in Khuzdar District, near the Chaman border crossing, Chaman
town, Kalat, Pishin District, Western Bypass in Quetta, Wadh in Khuzdar
District, on the RCD Highway in Khuzdar, Bolan and in the Chhoto area of Mastung
District. Among these was also the first-ever suicide attack in a
Baloch-populated area. On June 30, four persons were killed and 11 injured when
a bomber targeted a hotel in Kalat in an apparent bid at disrupting supplies to
the NATO forces in Afghanistan. The bomber detonated his explosives inside a
hotel in the Sorab area of the District, 250 kilometers southeast of Quetta.
Most of the victims were reportedly Baloch tribesmen. Witnesses said the suicide
bomber, dressed in white traditional clothes, parked his explosives-laden
vehicle outside the hotel on the Quetta-Karachi RCD Highway, and then went into
the hotel.

The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Government, after coming to power at Islamabad
in 2008, made some politically correct statements of intent on providing a
`healing touch' to Balochistan. However, all of this has remained mere rhetoric
and the political process has failed to take off. Making it more difficult for
Islamabad to launch an acceptable political process is the inability to find any
allies among the nationalist elements in the province. Worse, the PPP regime has
now been associated with the custodial killing of at least four prominent Baloch
leaders. The mutilated bodies of Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, President of the Baloch
National Movement, his deputy Lala Munir Baloch and Sher Mohammed Baloch, Deputy
Secretary General of Balochistan Republican Party, were found on a mountain
river bed in Pidrak near Turbat on April 8, 2009. Later the body of Baloch
National Front Joint Secretary Rasul Bakhsh Mengal, who was abducted on August
23, 2009 from Uthal in Lasbela District, with marks of torture, was found
hanging from a tree.

The Federal Government is currently attempting to develop a `consensual'
Balochistan package, which would purportedly address the province's political,
social and economic problems. The package, named Aghaze Huqooq-i-Balochistan,
reportedly contains three parts, including constitutional, administrative and
economic measures. At this point in time, it remains unclear what measures are
being suggested to achieve a consensus and, more importantly, get all the
stakeholders on board. The past trajectory in Balochistan, however, indicates
that packages, essentially financial in nature, have achieved little.
Predictably, the latest package seems to have run into rough weather even before
its contours have been defined. The Balochistan National Party (BNP), one of the
leading political parties in the province, has termed the package a bribe, given
to halt their movement, and has consequently demanded the withdrawal of the
ongoing military action in the province and the release of missing persons as a
confidence-building measure. BNP Secretary, General Habib Jalib Baloch, told The
Nation on November 18 that such packages had also been announced in the past,
but these always backfired and remained sterile. Abdur Rauf Mengal, a former
parliamentarian from the Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) stated,
further, "We have no faith in the Government's sincerity." On November 17, 2009,
he asserted, "Our problems include the military operation, which is ongoing
regardless of the Government's denial; then there are the countless missing
persons; massive displacement due to the military operation; and fake cases
against and the extrajudicial killings of Baloch nationalist leaders."

Hectic efforts have been underway for some time now to bringing the Baloch
rebels to the negotiating table. None of these has, however, had the desired
impact in Balochistan as far as Islamabad is concerned. With the `peace process'
ignoring the fundamental issues that have sustained the insurgency, and
Islamabad focusing only on the suppression of the insurgency, violence continues
to be an everyday reality in the Province. The basic issues, which include
control over resources, equal authority, and autonomy, are yet to be addressed.
There is also the issue of endemic neglect and backwardness. Balochistan has the
weakest long-term growth performance of all provinces in the country, according
to a World Bank study. The Balochistan Economic Report 2009, which accounted for
statistics from 1972-73 to 2005-06, said the province's economy expanded by 2.7
times in Balochistan, 3.6 times in the NWFP and Sindh and four times in Punjab.
Balochistan also has the worst social indicators, scoring the lowest on 10 key
variables �" education, literacy, health, water and sanitation �" for 2006-07.
The World Bank study noted that illiteracy is high in Balochistan (approximately
60 per cent) and primary school enrolment is low. The Report only confirms the
long-standing disparities between Balochistan and the other provinces,
especially Punjab, and underlines the deep disconnect between Balochistan and
the rest of the country, as also the resentment of the Baloch.

Clearly, a lasting solution to the long-standing Baloch rebellion looks highly
unlikely in the proximate future. Indeed, there could be a rising danger from
the augmenting presence of the Taliban-Al Qaeda combine in Balochistan.

[One might question the timing somewhat, but it helps to keep it on the radar.
UJ]

History of the Tamil Struggle for Self-Determination in Sri Lanka
Posted by Ka Frank on November 23, 2009
http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/history-of-the-tamil-struggle-for-s\
elf-determination-in-sri-lanka/#more-5135

This article was published on Radical Notes.
Tamil Eelam: Historical Right to Nationhood (II)

by Ron Ridenour

We are running four parts of a five-part series posted on Radical Notes on
November 19, 2009. These articles trace the settlement of the Tamil people in
Sri Lanka and the development of the modern Tamil struggle for
self-determination. They also expose the cabal of imperialist and reactionary
powers that have fortified the Sinhala-chauvinist Sri Lanka regime, and describe
the horrific conditions in the so-called "welfare villages" that now hold close
to 300,000 Tamil refugees. Finally, the author draws apt comparisons with
Israel's oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon in English, and Serendib in Arabic (which gave rise
to the word serendipity) is commonly referred to as the "pearl of the orient"
due to its beauty and wealth of natural resources, flora and fauna. Today, it is
a land torn apart by hatred: racist government policies, ethnic cleansing, and
terror war just ended albeit continuing in the form of incarceration of hundreds
of thousands of Tamil people in the north. A key reason for this brutal hatred
is the dispute over whether a minority of its people, the Tamils, should have:
equal rights with the majority Sinhalese, and if this is denied (as will be
shown it has), should they have the right to their own autonomous territory.

Sri Lanka's first aborigines with continuous lineage are the Tamil people. It is
not precisely known when they came to the island, but perhaps as many as 5000
years ago. Archaeologists date the first humans in Sri Lanka to some 34,000
years. Scientists call them Balangoda people, the name of the location where
artifacts were found. These hunting-gathering cave dwellers have no current
lineage.

Tamils were also known as proto-Elamites or Ela. These people in Sri Lanka call
themselves Eelam Tamils, meaning earthly people. Tamils speak a Dravidian
language, which has no ties to other language families. It was, perhaps,
associated with Scythians and Urals. The Dravidian language and Tamils
originated, perhaps, from Sumer and Ur: the cradle of the first civilization,
now Iran. The Sumer and Tamils formed the first language of proto-grams on clay
tablets. Tamil inscriptions and literature are at least 2500 years old. Today,
100 to 200 million people speak Tamil.

The Christian Bible refers to Elam as maritime nations in various lands, each
with a separate language (Genesis 10) In the myth of Noah's Ark, Elam was
thought to be a descendant of one of Noah's three sons on the ark.(Genesis 5-9)
Tamils were the first to use the wheel for transportation. They traveled to
India and the island Sri Lanka, which had been connected to India. The first
known manuscripts in India were written in Tamil. Other Tamil inscriptions have
been found in Egypt and Thailand.

About 2500 years ago, the first Sinhalese came to Sri Lanka from India. This was
hundreds of years after Tamils were settled in the kingdom in the north at
Jaffna (Yazhpanam). Sinhalese is, perhaps, a term originating from King Vijayan,
who was expelled from the kingdom of Sinhapura in India and arrived in Sri Lanka
543 BC. He and his people engaged in combat with the Tamil aborigines. They
established the Kandi and Kottai kingdoms in the central and southern areas.

The Sinhalese are among many ethnic groups who speak an Indo-Aryan language,
Pali, believed to have developed in Sindh, Gujarat and Bengal areas about 3000
years ago. They early became practitioners of Buddhism, an off-shot of Hinduism,
which is the religion that most Tamils adopted. Buddhism was created by the
prince, Siddhartha Gautama, in the 6th century BC. Most Sinhalese adopted
Buddhism but some were converted to Christianity, which was first introduced by
traders from Syria, in the 1st or 2nd century after Christ.

The Sinhalese and Tamils have distinct ethnic backgrounds, languages and
religions. The vast majority of both peoples have always lived in separate
regions of Sri Lanka and they have often been at war. The Sinhalese adopted the
chauvinistic attitude that their language and religion were the only true ones
and they must reign throughout Sri Lanka. All other religions were alien. This
notion seems to have originated, or been fortified, by the historical poem
Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle) written in Pali by the Buddhist monk Mahatera
Mahanama. It covers nearly one thousand years of Sinhalese kingdom history in
Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese maintain that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation because, they claim,
it has been so throughout history although they count the beginning of national
history with Mahanama's account of the first Sinhalese kingdom of Vijaya, in 543
BC. The fact that Tamil Eelam had kingdoms in Sri Lanka for many hundreds of
years is ignored.

When the first Europeans, Portuguese traders, landed in Sri Lanka, in 1505, they
encountered three native kingdoms: two Sinhalese kingdoms at Kottai and Kandi,
and the Tamils in Jaffna peninsula. Although the Portuguese were traders, they
brought fire power and eventually seized power militarily from the Kottai
kingdom. Despite their superior weaponry, it took them decades to defeat the
kingdoms at Jaffna and Kandi, yet resistance remained throughout Portuguese
occupation. The Portuguese named the island Ceilão, which the English later
transliterated as Ceylon.

In 1658, Dutch invaders arrived. The Dutch United East India Company sided with
the Kandi resistance to defeat the Portuguese. But when the natives realized the
Dutch sought total control, the Kandians organized guerilla warfare. In 1766,
the Dutch took sovereignty over the entire coastline but not the entire island
where some Tamils and Sinhalese remained independent.

In 1795, the British landed and kicked out the Dutch within a year. They
realized there were two separate nations of natives. In June 1796, the British
Colonial Secretary, Sir Hugh Cleghorn wrote to his government:

"Two different nations, from a very ancient period, have divided between them
the possession of the Island: the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior in its
southern and western parts from the river Wallouwe to Chilaw, and the Malabars
(Tamils) who possess the northern and eastern districts. These two nations
differ entirely in their religion, language and manners."

It took the Brits a generation to defeat resisting natives. In 1811, they
defeated Bandara Vanniyan and his guerrilla resisters in the Tamil Vanni
territory. In 1815, the British finally captured the last of the Kandyan
kingdom.

The European invaders were only interested in the riches they could steal. They
converted the peasant based agricultural economy into an export one. The island
was rich in cinnamon and other spices, coconuts and graphite. English
colonialists converted much of the land into tea, coffee and rubber plantations.

Religion was used by the colonialists to dominate and pacify the natives. The
Portuguese spread Catholicism in an organized manner. Some Tamils and some
Sinhalese converted or were forced to convert. Both the Dutch and English
continued the process with their Protestant missionaries, yet most natives held
onto their beliefs in either Buddhism or Hinduism. Islamism was also introduced
by Arab traders.

Sri Lanka as British-ruled Ceylon was subjected to a classic divide-and-rule,
wrote John Pilger. (Distant Voices, Desperate Lives, New Statesman, May 13,
2009.)

The English had to have their tea so they created tea plantations in the
mountainous regions, especially in the center of the country where Sinhalese
lived. But Sinhalese would not work them so the Brits brought Tamils from India
as virtual slave labor while building an educated Tamil middle-class to run the
colony, continued Pilger. Only a few indigenous Tamils, however, ran anything,
but some educated ones took the opportunity to sit on top of the bottom castes.

A hierarchy of races, classes and castes was perpetrated among native ethnic
groups and new arrivals. In the mid-1800s, English and German scholars adopted
an ideology of superiority first based on language and then on race. The English
viewed Sinhalese as cousins in the large Aryan family. Brits (and Germans) were
the superior white Aryans; the Sinhalese lesser Indo-Aryans, and Tamils were the
colonialized proletariat, the black inferior race. This fit in nicely with the
Sinhalese elite notion of superiority, based on their precious book of
mythology, Mahavamsa. In the 1870s, a German scholar, Max Muller, writing about
language origins, especially Indo-Aryan, first coined the term Aryan race,
something he later regretted.

Europeans took it for granted that Greek and Latin were superior languages, and
they saw affinities with Sanskrit, from which Sinhalese is derived. Given this
identity, it was easier for the colonialists to drive a wedge deeper between the
indigenous peoples, and all the more so by allowing Sinhalese to own land
without having to work the British tea and rubber plantations in the center of
the country. The Brits left the aborigine Tamils stay in their homeland in the
north and east, but brought between 800,000 and 1.5 million Tamils from India to
work the fields; nearly one-fourth died in route. It is estimated that 70,000
Tamil Nadu died on route in the 1840s. Their story parallels that of Africans
forced into slavery and brought to the Americas.

Ironically, it was protestant missionaries who contributed greatly to the
development of political awareness among Tamils in the north and east, and led
to a revival of the Hindu faith as a reaction against Christian domination. We
find many examples of this in modern history, such as the increasing interest
among Arabs in practicing strict Islamic customs, including separate gender
rules, as a reaction to the invasions and occupations of Western imperialism in
the Middle-East. Something similar is occurring in Palestine in response to the
apartheid enforced by Zionist Jews.

Led by revivalist Arumuga Navalar in the mid-1800s, Tamils in the north and east
built their own schools, temples, associations and presses. Literacy was used to
spread Hinduism and its principles. Tamils published their own literature and
newspapers to counter the ideology-religion of the missionaries. Tamils thought
confidently of themselves as a community, thus lending to the legitimacy of
their later assertion of the necessity to be treated equally with the Sinhalese
or be granted or take their own autonomy as Eelam Tamils.

For some of the time that Britain ruled the island different colonial governors
recognized equality of the native peoples, yet played one against the other. In
1833, the British mandated the administrative unification of the country while
incorporating the different native administrative structures that existed
earlier. The new legislative council was composed of three Europeans and one
representative from the Sinhalese, the Ceylon Tamils and the Burghers, a
Euro-Asian minority, Creole descendants of European colonialists who spoke a
mixture of Indo-Portuguese. They had been converted to Protestantism.

Tamil laborers brought from India had no say nor did the few Arab Muslims.
Racist Sinhalese massacred many in 1915. In 1930, another hard-working minority,
Malayali plantation workers, were attacked by Sinhalese and most fled back to
Kerala.

In 1921, the colonialists altered the legislative council so that Sinhalese
acquired 13 seats to three for the Tamils. From here on out, Tamils developed a
communal consciousness as a minority. In 1931, the Brits changed the rules again
by incorporating the notion of universal franchise�"one man one vote including
for castes. Most Sinhalese opposed this progressive measure, seeking to maintain
classes and castes while agreeing to part of the rule allowing them, as the
majority, to have a decisive say over the minority Tamils. The issue of
representative power-sharing, and not the structure of government, was used by
nationalists of both communities to create an escalating inter-ethnic rivalry,
which has been the dominant trend since.

Britain's vacillating ruling strategy throughout their 150 year domination led
to sporadic episodes of violence between Sinhalese and Tamils, often expressed
as religious conflicts between Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims. More
often than not, it was Buddhists who first attacked other ethnic peoples who
held other faiths. The Brits often held police on the sidelines.

In the 1930s, and especially during World War II, Sinhalese and Tamils spoke out
for independence. Various left-wing parties and coalitions arose, and some
conservative groupings as well. Many natives hoped for a German victory over the
hated English colonialists.

Tamils struggled to have their language placed on equal terms with Sinhalese,
and replace English as the official language. Some Sinhalese leaders agreed but
many did not. In 1939, a Tamil leader, G.G. Ponnambalam, spoke against the
common Sinhalese notion, taken from the Mahavamsa, that their language should be
the only official language and Buddhism the only official religion. Angry at the
speech, Sinhalese mobs bashed and killed many Tamils. This time the British
stopped the riots, but the roots to the upcoming 26-year long civil war had been
laid.

Once WW II ended, the British Empire realized it had to give in to so many
native peoples struggling for sovereignty. India won dominion status in 1947, a
slight reform until full independence in 1950. The civil disobedience movement
led by Mahatma Gandhi had succeeded yet he was assassinated by a Hindu
nationalist on January 30, 1948. Gandhi sought unity among all Indians, but most
Muslims wanted their own State after colonialism. Many Muslims were killed in
riots; many lost their homes. Gandhi believed it morally correct for India to
compensate them with finances. Many Hindu nationalists opposed this, and it led
to his murder.

Great numbers of Hindus in India discriminated against non-Hindus just as
Buddhist Sinhalese discriminate against Hindus and Muslims. The percentage of
Tamils in Sri Lanka has been reduced from 30% to 12.6%. Tens of thousands have
been murdered before and during the recent war, and as many as one million have
fled the country, part of a massive Diaspora, like the Jews.

Current population statistics of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri
Lankaرso named since 1978رshow a population of 21 million people.
74% (15 million) Sinhalese; 12.6% (2.5 million) Tamil; 7.4% (1.5 million) Moors;
5.2% (1 million) Indian Tamil. 93% of Sinhalese are Buddhists, and the remainder
Christian. 60% Tamils are Hindus, 28% are Muslim and 12% Christian.

Sri Lanka: Equal Rights or Self-Determination (III)

At independence, in 1948, the new political elite, in its rush for power,
cultivated ethnic support in a society whose real imperative should have been
the eradication of poverty. Language became the spark, journalist-documentary
filmmaker John Pilger recently wrote.

The Tamil people in Sri Lanka had expectations that they would achieve equal
rights and power with the Sinhalese once independence was won from the British
colonialists. As the independence movement was winning over colonialization
there was no talk of any Tamil separatism.

Even before the defeat of the Axis powers, Britain prepared to decolonize
Ceylon. In 1943, the colonial secretary of state stated that a constitution
would be drafted will all parties involved. A condition would be that "The
Parliament of Ceylon shall not make any law rendering persons of any community
or religion liable to disabilities or restrictions to which persons of other
communities are not made liable."

Britain established the Soulbury Commission in 1944. The leading Sinhalese
politician was D.S. Senanayake, a conservative, who founded, in 1946, the
rightist pro-independence and pro-capitalist United National Party (UNP).
Senanayake became known as the Father of Sri Lanka. He convinced a leading Tamil
politician, G.G. Ponnamblam, who founded the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) in
1944 to partake in independence negotiations.

Another provision of the Soulbury Commission (Constitution) was that any bill
which evoked serious opposition by any racial or religious community and which,
in the opinion of the Governor-General is likely to involve oppression or
serious injustice to any community must be reserved by the Governor-General.

The vote on the third reading of the Free Lanka bill was supported by all the
Muslim members and by most Tamil and Sinhalese groups. Some of the other
minority members who did not want to openly support the bill took care to be
absent or abstain. Finally, the debate and the vote of acceptance on the eighth
and ninth of September 1945 was the most significant indication of general
reconciliation among the ethnic and regional groups. Far exceeding the 3/4
majority required by the Soulbury Commission, Senanayake had 51 votes in favor,
and only three votes against the adoption of the constitution. The vote was in
many ways a vote of confidence by all communities and the minorities were as
anxious as the majority for self-government.

Senanayake's speech in proposing the motion of acceptance made reference to the
minorities and said "throughout this period the Ministers had in view one
objective only, the attainment of maximum freedom. Accusations of Sinhalese
domination have been bandied about. We can afford to ignore them for it must be
plain to every one that what we sought was not Sinhalese domination, but
Ceylonese domination. We devised a scheme that gave heavy weightage to the
minorities; we deliberately protected them against discriminatory legislation.
We vested important powers in the Governor-General. We decided upon an
Independent Public Service Commission so as to give assurance that there should
be no communalism in the Public Service. I do not normally speak as a Sinhalese,
and I do not think that the Leader of this Council ought to think of himself as
a Sinhalese representative, but for once I should like to speak as a Sinhalese
and assert with all the force at my command that the interests of one community
are the interests of all. We are one of another, what ever race or creed."

The first national election was held August 23-September 30, 1947. 1,887,364
people voted for 95 MP (members of parliament). There were six parties and many
independents. The results were:

UNP with 39.8% (42 MPs)

LSSP 10.8% (10)

BLPI 6% (5)

ACTC 4.4% (7)

CIC 3.8% (6)

CPC 3.7% (3)

Labor 1.4% (1)

Independents 29% (16)

(LSSP=Ceylon Equal Society Party comprised of Sinhalese Trotskyists;
BLPI=Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India also Trotskyists; CIC=Ceylon Indian
Congress, which soon changed its name to Ceylon Workers Congress, represented
the Indian Tamils of the Estates Workers Trade Union; CPC, the Communist Party
of Ceylon, with a pro-Moscow line; Labour was fashioned after Clement Attlee-led
British Labour party. The Marxist parties later colluded with capitalist
Sinhalese parties in opposing equality with Tamils. The CPC is now the Communist
Party of Sri Lanka, which is part of the United People's Freedom Alliance that
includes the Sri Lanka Freedom Party-led government of Mahinda Rajapaksa.)

We are one of another, whatever race or creed, swore the Father of the new
independent State. It looked good for all ethnic and religious groups, but then
the deceit became evident with the new citizenship act.

On February 4, 1948, the new government introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Bill
before Parliament. The outward purpose of the bill was to provide a means of
obtaining citizenship, but I think its real purpose was to discriminate against
the Indian Tamils by denying them citizenship. The Ceylon Citizenship Act no.
18, August 20, 1948 denied citizenship to 11% of the population.

Although the All Ceylon Tamil Congress opposed the bill, it had joined with the
UNP. This provoked half of its members to form the Federal Party, led by SJV
Chelvanayakam. Next year, the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act, no.3,
disenfranchised nearly all Tamils, who were originally from India. Their seven
MPs were kicked out of parliament and there were no Indian Tamils in the 1952
parliament elections. It wasn't until 1988 that the Sri Lanka government granted
citizenship to stateless persons, who hadn't applied for Indian citizenship. In
2003, 168,141 descendants of Indian Tamils were allowed citizenship.

The new government allowed Sinhalese to appropriate land on the Tamil
traditional homeland in the north and east. Entire villages were driven
out�"ethnic cleansing�"which the Sinhalese settled, aiming to break a
geographic continuity of the Tamil homeland. Within time, Sinhalese settlers had
taken over 30% of Tamil lands and homes a la Israel in Palestine.

In 1956, The Sinhala Only Act became law. It mandated Sinhala as the sole
official language, which at that time was spoken by 70% of the population.

Supporters of the law saw it as an attempt by a community that had just gained
independence to distance themselves from their colonial masters, while its
opponents viewed it as an attempt by the linguistic majority to oppress and
assert dominance on minorities. The Act symbolizes the post independent majority
Sinhalese to assert its Sri Lanka's identity as a nation state, and for Tamils,
it became a symbol of minority oppression and a justification for them to demand
a separate nation state, which resulted in decades of civil war.

Tamils protested the discriminatory law by using Gandhian tactics of non-violent
sit-ins. Although stated advocates of non-violence, Buddhist monks led Sinhalese
mobs against Tamils.

The Gal Oya riots were the first ethnic riots that targeted the minority Sri
Lankan Tamils. The riots took place from June 11, 1956 and occurred over the
next five days. Local majority Sinhalese colonists and employees of the Gal Oya
settlement board commandeered government vehicles, dynamite and weapons and
massacred minority Tamils. It is estimated that over 150 people lost their lives
due in the violence. Although initially inactive, the Police and the Army were
eventually able to re-take control of the situation and brought the riots under
control.

Tamil political leader SJV Chelvanayagam began to organize a massive Satyagraha
(non-violent resistance). In order to avoid even more bloodshed, Prime Minister
Solomon Bandaranayaka signed an agreement with Chelvanayagam promising to
restore Tamil as the (or one of two) official language(s) in its minority areas.
This infuriated many Sinhalese, especially monks, and they assaulted and
sometimes killed Tamils in many areas. Buddhist monks even besieged the official
residence of Bandaranayaka demanding that he abandoned the agreement, which he
did.

But, in 1958, the Sinhalese-led parliament, pressed by the violence and the
pro-Moscow and Trotskyist Sinhalese parties, passed an amendment to the Sinhala
Only Act (called Sinhala Only, Tamil Also) restoring Tamil as a co-official
language in their areas of the North and East. Frustrated at the compromise,
Sinhalese mobs murdered 200-300 Tamils, including some Sinhalese who gave Tamils
refuge. Many Tamil women were raped and some Tamil boys were stripped, bound,
and burned alive. This violent hatred evokes the lynching and burning alive of
black people by whites in the southern USA.

Some Buddhists were angry that the Sinhalese Prime Minister Bandaranayaka had
tried to compromise with Tamils. In 1959, a Buddhist monk assassinated him.

The language law had its intended effect. In 1955, the civil service had been
largely made of Tamils, who had benefited more than Sinhalese from western style
education provided by missionaries. This fact was used by populist Sinhalese
politicians to come to power, or retain power, on the promise of providing more
civil service jobs to Sinhalese by demanding that their language be the only one
used in public service. By 1970, the civil service was almost entirely
Sinhalese. Thousands of Tamil civil servants were forced to resign due to lack
of fluency in Sinhala. In the 1960s, government forms and services were
virtually unavailable to Tamils.

Confrontation became the modus operandi; Sinhalese were the Zionists and Tamils
the Palestinians!

It is important to stress, especially with progressive-revolutionary
governments, such as the ALBA alliance in Latin America, and their supporters
throughout the world, that the Tamils' history in Sri Lanka is one of constant
and widespread discrimination. They are also subjects to a policy of genocide as
defined by the United Nations.

Sri Lanka made world headlines in 1960 when a woman, Sirimavo RD Bandaranaike,
was elected prime minister, the world's first female leader. Being the widow of
the martyr and founder of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) was an asset. She
immediately brought Sri Lanka into the Non-Alignment Movement, founded in 1961.
The originators, India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser, Yugoslavia's Tito and Ghana's
Nkrumah, sought support for each other's sovereignty without aligning with
either super-power bloc at that time.

Nevertheless, Sri Lankan leaders of both predominantly Sinhala major parties
continued to be dependent upon economic and military ties with India, the US,
the UK, and Israel. Social welfare programs were carried out within a capitalist
economic structure. This was a cause for radical opposition. In 1971, thousands
of Sinhalese students, and Indian Tamil plantation workers, under the leadership
of a new nationalistic and Marxist-oriented political party, Janatha Vimukthi
Peramana JVP, translated as People's Liberation Front, engaged in
anti-government clashes. Fifteen thousand protestors were killed in the
uprising.

Once in power, Bandaranaike's widow did not alter the Sinhalese policy of
genocide, an ingenious device was resorted to deprive the Tamils of the
constitutional safeguards and the characteristics of the conditional polity. A
coalition of three Sinhalese political parties, led by Mrs. Sirimavo R.D.
Bandaranaike, called upon the people to give a mandate (in the 1970 General
Elections, during her second term) for a new Constituent Assembly to scrap the
1948 dominion polity and create a new Republic of Sri Lanka. Whilst the voters
in the seven Sinhalese provinces gave Mrs. Bandaranaike the mandate that she had
requested, the Tamil voters in the Northern and Eastern Provinces summarily
rejected her call. In the North and East, a mere 14% of the votes polled
supported the call for a new constituent Assembly.

Laws protecting rights of racial and religious minorities were abandoned and
Buddhism was made the constitutional religion of Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese claimed 5000 acres in the Tamil farmland Nochikulam as theirs,
renaming it Nochiyagama. Next year, 10,738 Sinhalese families settled in
Trincomalee illegally.

The sovereignty of the Tamil people (who were ethnically, geographically and
linguistically separately identifiable and distinct) revived.س

With this setback, a reinvigorated ACTC joined with the Federal Party, in 1972,
to form the Tamil United Front (TUF). Separatism or autonomy now became the cry
for nearly all Tamils, who sought an Eelam part of Sri Lanka. Thirty Tamil
militant groups emerged.

The operative part is Thamil Eelam and it means the Tamil part of Eelam. The
term Eelam is a synonym for Sri Lanka and has been in use in Tamil literature
right from the Cankam Period dating as far back as 200 B.C. to circa 250 A.D.

The second government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike enacted a discriminatory double
standard law for admission grades to universities, requiring Tamil students to
achieve higher grades than Sinhalese.

Throughout the 1970s, Sinhalese mobs clashed with impunity not only with Tamils
but also Muslim Moors. In 1976, Sinhalese burned 271 houses and 44 shops,
murdering a score of Muslims.

In 1976, the Tamil United Front Party changed its name to the Tamil United
Liberation Front (TULF) at the Vattukottai Conference, and adopted a demand for
an independent sovereign state in traditional Tamil homeland in the north and
east to be known as the secular, socialist state of Tamil Eelam.

By 1975, Tamil militancy increased with the birth of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, who considered himself a
Marxist and follower of Che Guevara. The LTTE engaged in small armed clashes
with the military.

The conservative UNP won a landslide victory in the July 1977 elections. But the
pro-independence TULF won 6.4% of the popular vote, winning all 14 seats in the
Tamil homeland area, and four more seats of the 168-member parliament. In
response to Tamils' peaceful struggle and its parliamentary victory, Sinhalese
mobs, led by Buddhist monks, again destroyed many Tamil homes and shops and
murdered up to 300 Tamils.

In July 1978, the UNP, led by Prime Minister Junius Richard Jayewardene, changed
the constitution and renamed the country the Democratic Socialist Republic of
Sri Lanka. An executive presidency was established, allowing the president
greater powers than the prime minister, whom the president now appoints. The
president is also the commander-in-chief and head of the cabinet. He can
dissolve parliament and has judicial impunity.

Jayewardene became the first president and appointed Ramasinghe Premadosa (UNP)
prime minister. Despite the new name, democratic socialist republic, the
capitalist government began deregulating much of what had been government run
enterprises. Private enterprise was priority.

On May 31, 1981, the TULF held a rally in Jaffna in the north. Police clashed
with Tamils and two policemen were killed. For three days, Sinhalese mobs,
policemen, and soldiers went on a rampage. Several Tamils were taken from their
homes and killed. The TULF headquarters, a newspaper office, presses, and shops
were destroyed. Worst of all was the total destruction of the Jaffna library and
its 97,000 volumes of books and irreplaceable historical manuscripts, some made
of palm leaves. It is now well known that the fire that destroyed this unique
institution of the Tamils in their homeland was masterminded by a handful of
ministers of the Sinhala Government in Colombo, who were present in Jaffna the
night of the fire.

The national newspapers did not carry information about the incident and in
subsequent parliamentary debates some majority Sinhalese members reminded
minority Tamil politicians that if Tamils were unhappy in Sri Lanka, they should
leave for their homeland in India. This is a direct quotation from United
National Party member MP WJM Lokubandara:

"If there is discrimination in this land which is not their (Tamil) homeland,
then why try to stay here? Why not go back home (India) where there would be no
discrimination?"

Twenty years later, the mayor of Jaffna, Nadarajah Raviraj, still grieved at the
recollection of the flames he saw as a University student. He was later killed
by unknown gunmen in the capital Colombo, in 2006.

Civil War and LTTE
By summer 1983, the then small guerrilla army of LTTE was well settled in most
northern and eastern areas. Their first major assault against the state's
military took place at Jaffna peninsula, July 24. LTTE ambushed a convoy of
soldiers passing through land mines and killed 15.

This could have been in response to many random attacks upon Tamils in various
areas. One example is in Trincomalee where, on 10 April 1983, a young Tamil died
in police custody after having been held without charge for two weeks. At the
judicial inquest into his death, on May 31, the Jaffna Magistrate returned a
verdict of homicide. Three days later, the government changed the rules
permitting the police to bury or cremate bodies without a post mortem or an
inquest.

Amnesty International cabled President Jayawardene expressing concern that such
a regulation could give rise to grave human rights violations and appealed to
him to rescind it. But he did not. On the contrary, on June 3, 1983, the day
that the new Emergency Regulation was brought into effect, the attacks on the
Tamils in Trincomalee commenced in earnest.

R. Sampanthan, M.P. for Trincomalee, described that mobs of Sinhalese went from
village to village setting fire to Tamil houses and shops. A particular modus
operandi was observed. Heavily armed service personnel would enter a Tamil area
and carry out a search alleging that explosions and dangerous weapons were
hidden in that area. Invariably nothing would be recovered other than implements
that would normally be available in any house. Sometimes Tamil youths would be
arrested on suspicion and taken for questioning. After a month of many pogrom
raids, the LTTE struck the army convoy.

That night and for weeks Sinhalese rampaged against Tamils, especially in the
Colombo area where some Tamil youths were stripped naked and burned alive in
petrol. Black July ended with between 2000 and 3000 dead Tamils, among them 53
prisoners, including key political leaders, who were murdered by Sinhalese
prisoners at Welikadai. One political prisoner, Kuttimani, had his eyes gouged
out and stomped upon under a soldier's boots.

One hundred thousand Tamils were rendered homeless and that many and more fled
to India.

Even non-violent advocates of separatism or independence, such as the TULF, were
pushed out of the democratic process. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution,
enacted in August 1983, classified all separatist movements as unconstitutional.
That meant that all its members of parliament,16 then, lost their seats.
Thousands of Tamil youth joined militant armed groups, especially the LTTE,
which became the most disciplined and well organized.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the LTTE established a de facto state, called
Tamil Eelam, and managed a government, which provided a judicial court system, a
police force, and social assistance in health and education and for the poorest.
LTTE ran a bank, a radio station (Voice of Tigers), even a television station.
Guerrilla leaders helped organize small cooperative farming units based on
traditional methods. The LTTE dismantled the caste system and officially stopped
discrimination against women. The LTTE organized a civilian administration under
its command. There was order and peace in these areas, as long as everyone
obeyed and when the Sri Lanka army did not bomb.

In the 1980s, there was much discontent in other parts of Sri Lanka. Radical
Sinhalese youths, such as the JVP, demanded going further towards socialism. In
1987, JVP engaged in another armed uprising. But after 1989, it entered into
parliamentary politics. It participated in the 1994 parliamentary general
election and joined conservative and liberal party coalitions in opposing equal
rights with Tamils.

Ranasinghe Premadasa was prime minister from February 1978 to January 1, 1989,
under President Jayewardene, and then he became president until his
assassination on Mayday 1993. Many Sinhalese elitists thought he was too common
to be their leader and too compromising with Tamils. Controversial policies
under his terms included the matter of language, ethnic cleansing, and the role
of India in internal affairs. The first controversy was the constitutional
amendment allowing equality of languages in the Tamil areas: "National languages
shall be Sinhala and Tamil, although, the official language of Sri Lanka shall
be Sinhala. Tamil shall also be an official language. English shall be a link
language."

This compromise spoke in double tongues. Why not just make Sinhala and Tamil
equally official, as India has done with a score of languages?

Alienated Tamils
Even a U.S. Library of Congress study characterized Tamils as alienated. In
1988, it published, SriLanka: a Country Study. In the chapter entitled, Tamil
Alienation, the authors wrote:

"Moderate as well as militant Sri Lankan Tamils have regarded the policies of
successive Sinhalese governments in Colombo with suspicion and resentment since
at least the mid-1950s, when the Sinhala Only language policy was adopted.

Several issues provided the focus for Sri Lankan Tamil alienation and widespread
support, particularly within the younger generation, for extremist movements.
Sinhalese still remained the higher-status official language, and inductees into
the civil service were expected to acquire proficiency in it. Other areas of
disagreement concerned preference given to Sinhalese applicants for university
admissions and public employment, and allegations of government encouragement of
Sinhalese settlement in Tamil-majority areas.

Government-sponsored settlement of Sinhalese in the northern or eastern parts of
the island, traditionally considered to be Tamil regions, has been perhaps the
most immediate cause of inter-communal violence. There was, for example, an
official plan in the mid-1980s to settle 30,000 Sinhalese in the dry zone of
Northern Province, giving each settler land and funds to build a house and each
community armed protection in the form of rifles and machine guns. Tamil
spokesmen accused the government of promoting a new form of colonialism, but the
Jayewardene government asserted that no part of the island could legitimately be
considered an ethnic homeland and thus closed to settlement from outside.
Settlement schemes were popular with the poorer and less fortunate classes of
Sinhalese."

Che Guevara made no bones about the significance of alienation: the ultimate and
most important revolutionary aspiration (is) to see man liberated from his
alienation.

India's Vacillating Role
The role of India in Sri Lanka's civil war was a major problem. India's Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi, son of assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, first
supported the LTTE. His air force even dropped 25 tons of aid in their territory
in Jaffna (Operation Poomalai). A month following this, the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace
Accord was signed between Gandhi and the reluctant Prime Minister Ranasinghe
Presmadasa, under pressure from his president, JR Jayewardene.

The July 29, 1987 accord was expected to resolve the ongoing civil war. Colombo
agreed to devolution of power to the Tamil provinces, and its military was to
withdraw in exchange for the Tamil rebels' disarmament. The LTTE had not been
made party to the talks but reluctantly agreed to surrender arms to the Indian
Peace Keeping Force. Within a few months, however, both sides flared into an
active confrontation. Indian soldiers died in far greater numbers than Tamil
rebels: 1,500 killed and 4,500 wounded.

In January 1989, Premadasa was elected President on a popular platform promising
that the Indian Peace Keeping Force would leave within three months. The police
action was unpopular in India as well, especially with some 50 million Tamil
Nadu people. Gandhi refused to withdraw India's troops, however, believing that
the only way to end the civil war was to politically force Premadasa and to
militarily force the LTTE to accept the accord. But, in December 1989,
Vishwanath Pratap Singh was elected India's Prime Minister and completed the
pullout.

On May 21, 1991, in an act of revenge over India's militarist actions, a female
LTTE member blew up Rajiv Gandhiin a suicide bomb attack. In 1992, India became
the first government, even before Sri Lanka, to declare the LTTE a terrorist
group.

President Premadasa resumed the civil war, which became stalemated. Many forces
were angry with him, including a rival Sinhalese leader Lalith Athulathmudali,
who sought an impeachment motion against Premadasa, in 1991. Lalith was an
adamant supporter of Zionism.

When Athulathmudali, a pro-Israeli power broker, challenged Premadasa two years
ago with an impeachment motion in the parliament, Premadasa openly accused
Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel, of trying to topple him. In his
address to the Sri Lankan parliament, Premadasa said,

"I had Israeli interests section removed. In such a context there is nothing to
be surprised about the Mossad rising up against me. Please remember that there
are among us traitors who have gone to Israeli universities and lectured there
and earned dirty money."

In April 1993, Athulathmudali was murdered. Eight days later, on Mayday,
Premadasa was murdered. The LTTE did not claim responsibility for these
assassinations but were so blamed by Sinhalese and the mass media.

When Athulathmudali was assassinated last April, the members of his party
immediately accused Premadasa for ordering the killing. The murder of Premadasa
could have been a return hit planned and executed by the Mossad which had lost
its major card in Sri Lankan politics.

The second Eelam war lasted from 1989 until November 1994 when the People's
Alliance (led by SLFP) candidate, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, won the
presidency. But peace negotiations broke down and the war continued from 1995
until the end of 2001 when ceasefire negotiations made progress. But not before
the LTTE proved to the Sri Lanka government and military, with 230,000 well
armed troops, that it was its equal. With somewhere around 5000 guerrillas,
along with a small Sea Tigers boat unit, which made some pirate hits for
funding, and even a few light civilian aircraft, the Sky Tigers, which sometimes
made damaging raids against the Air Force, the LTTE won many military victories.

The Sri Lankan military often bombed civilian Tamils in the LTTE-controlled
zones. It claimed that they were legitimate collateral damage given that the
guerrillas allegedly forced them to remain against their will. The civilian
hostage charge was widely reported as truth by the west and its mass media, as
was the allegation that the LTTE forces children into armed combat.

On January 31, 1996, the LTTE stunned the nation when it bombed the Central Bank
in Colombo, which managed most financial business accounts. One suicide bomber
with 200 kilos of explosions drove through the main gate and exploded, wiping
out many bank floors and several other buildings. Behind him came a vehicle with
two cadres firing rifles and launchers. They escaped but were later captured.
Material damage was tremendous but more so was the loss of 53 lives and injuries
to 1,400 people, most of them not military targets.

On July 24, 1996, LTTE forces bombed a commuter train killing 70 Sinhalese
civilians. By the end of the 1990s, both sides had killed tens of thousands of
people. Civilians were targeted by both sides. The Tigers claimed that civilians
were targeted only when associated with military installations. But some
attacks, such as the train, were unjustifiable. Furthermore, the LTTE has often
murdered other Tamils who also seek autonomy but were not part of the LTTE or
had made public critiques. It has, for example, killed several leaders of the
TULF.

On April 22, 2000 LTTE forces surprisingly overran Sri Lanka's Elephant Pass
military base on Jaffna. Over 1,000 troops were killed and huge quantities of
arms and ammunition were taken. On July 24, 2001, the LTTE again stunned the
nation and the world when it attacked the only international airport and the
nearby military base.

Around 3:30 am on July 24, 14 members of the LTTE Black Tiger suicide squad
infiltrated Katunayake air base. After destroying electricity transformers to
plunge the base in darkness they cut through the barbed wire surrounding the
base to begin their assault. Using rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank weapons
and assault rifles, the militants attacked the air force planes. They were not
able to attack the aircraft in the hangars but did destroy eight military
aircraft on the tarmac: three Nanchange K-8 trainer aircraft, one Mil Mi-17
helicopter, one Mil Mi-24 helicopter, two LAI Kfir fighter jets, and a Mig-27.
Five K-8s and one MiG-27 were also damaged. A total of 26 aircraft were either
damaged or destroyed in the attack.

Eight Tigers and three air force officers died in the battle at the air base.
The six remaining LTTE members then crossed the runway to nearby Bandaranaike
Airport. Using their weapons, they began blowing up any civilian aircraft they
could find, which were all empty. One Airbus340 was destroyed by an explosive
charge; an A330 was destroyed by a rocket fired from the control tower. In
addition, an A320-200 and an A340-300 were damaged in the assault.

All 14 guerrillas were killed, along with six Sri Lankan air force personnel and
one soldier killed by friendly fire; 12 soldiers were injured, along with three
Sri Lankan civilians and a Russian engineer. The cost of replacing the civilian
aircraft was estimated at $350 million USD. The attack caused a slowdown in the
economy of Sri Lanka, to about -1.4%. Tourism also plummeted, dropping 15.5% at
the end of the year.

Cease Fire
During two decades of civil war, the LTTE had several times offered a ceasefire
on the condition of negotiations to establish peace and ethnic equality. With
this military victory, the guerrilla army offered a unilateral ceasefire. Some
national voices and many international ones were also pressing for a ceasefire.
Norway took concrete steps, but it was this spectacular military victory and the
loss to the economy that forced the government to the bargaining table.

The formal Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed on February 22, 2002. Prime
Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and LTTE leader Velupillai Pirabakaran signed the
agreement, alongside mediator Jan Petersen representing Norway's foreign
ministry.

Provisions provided for each side holding their ground positions. Neither side
was to engage in any offensive military operation or move munitions into the
area controlled by the other side.

The LTTE proposed an Interim Self-Government Authority (ISGA) to administer the
Tamil homeland, pending final agreement and elections. The ceasefire was
monitored by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. It was staffed by designees from
Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. The US, UK and other EU countries
had observers. Headquarters were established in Colombo, and there were 60
monitors in six district teams and two naval ones. The SLMM monitored violations
and mediated between the two parties but could not enforce sanctions. Many
Sinhalese considered the Monitoring Mission, especially Norway, of being partial
to the Tigers.

During the ceasefire, progress was made in agricultural development and general
infrastructure in the Tamil Homeland. Many foreigners were invited to observe
and participate in building Tamil Eelam. Impressive first-hand accounts have
been written about the progress in many areas: administrative, economic and a
social welfare network. While voices friendly to this process praised the
advances made, many also questioned the lack of civilian input in the
decision-making process.

The LTTE did not emphasize an international political solidarity movement. It
did appeal for economic donations, which poured to it, especially from Tamils in
the Diaspora. The LTTE stopped speaking of Marxism or building a socialist
independent state. It emphasized winning militarily if Sri Lanka continued
preventing an autonomous Tamil homeland and constructing a social welfare state
with cooperative and private enterprises.

The Tigers became so respectable they could openly purchase weaponry from some
countries not directly under the thumb of US-EU-Israel or their partial
antagonists: China, Iran and Pakistan. A May 29, 2009 Times Online piece quotes
the editor of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, saying that the LTTE used
11 merchant ships to deliver weapons, many of which they got from Bulgaria,
Ukraine, Cyprus, Thailand and Croatia. Even the World Bank recognized the LTTE
as an unofficial State, according to its representative in Sri Lanka, Peter
Harrold, in 2005.

The LTTE was even building a Tamil University where Tamils in the Diaspora would
have taught. I spoke with one of them, a man who had earned a doctorate degree
in environmental science and taught in European universities. He frequently
visited the homeland he had left three decades previously. He hoped that he
would return and teach once the university would be opened.

An activist in independence forces using peaceful methods, he wished to remain
anonymous. His impressions were that the Tigers were the dominating factor in
civilian administration but that as long as no one objected one felt safe in the
Homeland areas whenever Colombo's armed forces were not bombing. He was critical
that the LTTE armed forces had resorted to terrorist methods in their history,
such as assassinating political critics. The professor, however, did not think
the LTTE forced children into combat or used civilians as human shields,
generally.

"Tigers were good people, intelligent and sensitive to people and nature. But
contradictions did exist. They were a strange animal."

Cease Fire Ends
On December 26, 2004, the greatest earthquake-tsunami ever recorded (9.3) hit
Southeast Asia. Eleven countries were deeply affected: 230,000 were killed or
missing. Sri Lanka was one of the worst disasters. About 40,000 people were
killed or missing; 1.5 million were displaced from their homes. International
aid poured in but did not arrive in the North and East due to Sinhalese
political party opposition. The LTTE organized all the aid it could muster for
hundreds of thousands in the Tamil homeland. Foreign volunteers and emergency
relief organizations praised the LTTE for its effective and caring work. There
are many accounts of this.

Mahinda Rajapakse was appointed prime minister April 6, 2004, and then elected
President on November 19, 2005 with just 50.3% of the vote. He was the pro-war
candidate of a new coalition, the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Tamil
political parties and many foreign relief groups accused Rajapakse of diverting
Tsunami relief funds designated for their homeland. In this complex reality,
those parties most adamant about refusing aid to suffering Tamils and who
demanded an end to the ceasefire with the objective of launching an all-out war
were those claiming to be either hard-core Marxist-Communist-Trotskyists or
self-proclaimed non-violent Buddhists.

UFPA is undoubtedly the broadest coalition of progressive forces in the country.
This coalition, which came into being in 2004 upon a platform of new liberal
socio economic program and a resolve to defeat separatist terrorism, has since
mobilized people around a social democratic agenda.س

This coalition is not just made up of alleged progressives but of social
capitalists and self-styled democratic socialists. At the start, the coalition
parties were: Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Sri Lanka
Mahajana Pakshaya, Muslim National Unity Alliance, Mahajana Eksath Peramuna,
Democratic United National Front, and Desha Vimukthi Janatha Party.

The Communist Party of Sri Lanka and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party signed a
memorandum of understanding with the SLFP so their candidates would take part in
parliamentary elections in the new coalition. They also joined the UPFA. On
April 2, 2004, the alliance won 45.6% of the popular vote and took 105 out of
225 seats.

A Buddhist political party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), was founded in
February 2004 and participated in the 2004 parliamentary elections, winning 6%
of the vote for nine seats. In 2007, it formally joined the hodge-podge UPFA
coalition government and was given a ministry post.

On April 3, 2008, JHU's leader gave his reasons for warring against Tamils to
the United States government financed Voice of America radio station.

"Athurliye Rathana, a Buddhist monk who heads the Jathika Hela Urumaya party in
Sri Lanka's parliament, wants to end the suffering by putting a quick end to the
war. Speaking with VOA at a seaside hotel in this former tourist haven, Rathana
says he supports the government's latest military offensive to quash the rebel
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Anytime a militant group is harmful to peaceful people, then government should
have the right to exercise constitutional law and order, Rathana said. And, LTTE
is unlawful and so, under our constitutional law, anyone cannot exercise
militancy. But with the LTTE separatist movement, the government has some duty
to control their military activities. I say only one thing, Please do your
duty."

For comments like that, the Sri Lankan media has branded Rathana the war monk.
His sentiments are common in Sri Lanka's majority ethnic Sinhala community.

Rathana is a celebrated figure in this predominantly Buddhist nation, where
monks are cherished for their spiritual guidance. The pro-war activism of
Rathana and others has spurred as many as 30,000 Sinhalese young men to join the
army in the past few months.

The UPFA alliance of apparently conflicting ideologies and economic policies is
so strange that one can easily be confused about who is who and why their
politics are such that they are. After a month's research, having begun as a
total novice to this region, I am unclear about why various political forces
take the position they do not only about the Tigers but about the entire Tamil
ethnic group. For many Sinhalese, an engrained racism is clearly a major
motivation. But how can one explain that a Tamil group, Eelam People's
Democratic Party, also takes part in this coalition of Sinhalese racists? The
EPDP is a paramilitary group fighting against the LTTE alongside the government.
It even has one member in parliament. EPDP also assassinates civilians,
including BBC reporter Nimalarajan Mylvaganam.

The Cease Fire Agreement was a thorn in the side of the new ruling coalition.
Although the government claimed that the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission favored
the Tiger guerrillas, its monitors had lodged 3006 violations committed by the
LTTE and only 133 by the government, as of June 30, 2005. From May 2006 onward
to its termination in January 2008, the Monitoring Mission was hampered by
worsening hostilities, especially following a Sea Tiger boat attack on a navy
convoy, May 11, 2006.

The European Union then placed the Tigers on its terrorist list, while appearing
to be even-handed by calling upon the Sri Lankan government to end its culture
of impunity and to curb violence in its areas of control.

Sweden, Finland and Denmark, as members of EU, also considered the Tigers to be
terrorists, and the LTTE objected to their membership on the Monitoring Mission.
They withdrew leaving only Norway and Iceland with 20 monitors. The reduced Sri
Lanka Monitoring Mission disbanded in 2008. The path for a full war was clear.

The Terrorists: International Support for Sri Lanka's Racist Discrimination (IV)

The Geneva Declaration on Terrorism, passed May 29, 1987 by the UN general
assembly, points out that the main perpetrators of terrorism are governments
striving to keep down parts of their populations or other peoples. In this
document, at that time, the main culprits are the United States, Israel, South
Africa and the many dictatorships in Latin America at that time.

State terrorism manifests itself in: 1) police state practices against its own
people to dominate through fear by surveillance, disruption of group meetings,
control of the news media, beatings, torture, false and mass arrests, false
charges and rumors, show trials, killings, summary executions and capital
punishments;

The terrorism of modern state power and its high technology weaponry exceeds
qualitatively by many orders of magnitude the political violence relied upon by
groups aspiring to undo oppression and achieve liberation.

Peoples who are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and
against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination have
the right to use force to accomplish their objectives within the framework of
international humanitarian law.

This document applies to the situation of the Sri Lankan governments since 1983
as well as to the LTTE, and the proportions of the use of violence are as
written by the general assembly. The LTTE did, however, after time, go beyond
the framework of international humanitarian law.

One voice regarding terrorism and what lies behind these atrocities appears so
credible to me, and so tragic in itself, that I quote him extensively to show
that all warring parties in Sri Lanka acted as terrorists. Here are some of the
last words of Sri Lankan journalist Manilal Wickrematunge Lasantha, a Sinhalese,
who predicted his assassination shortly before it occurred, on January 8, 2009.
His newspaper, The Sunday Leader, published his own obituary three days later.

"Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of
the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to
control the organs of liberty.

Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy.
Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours,
secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united.

We have consistently espoused the view that while separatist terrorism must be
eradicated, it is more important to address the root causes of terrorism, and
urged government to view Sri Lanka's ethnic strife in the context of history and
not through the telescope of terrorism. We have also agitated against state
terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror
that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own
citizens.

The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have
infested the planet. There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated. But to
do so by violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them
mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim to be
custodians of the dhamma (the teachings of Buddha, which lead to enlightenment)
is forever called into question by this savagery, much of which is unknown to
the public because of censorship.

What is more, a military occupation of the country's north and east will require
the Tamil people of those regions to live eternally as second-class citizens,
deprived of all self respect.

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on
another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government's
sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the
perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all
these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the
government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.

The irony in this is that, unknown to most of the public, Mahinda Rajapakse, the
president] and I have been friends for more than a quarter century. Sadly, for
all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years
you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on
human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no
other President before you."

When Lasantha's dramatic editorial appeared, he had already been murdered on his
way to work by four men on motorcycles. The probable conspirator behind the
execution was Lasantha's friend's brother, war secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, a
naturalized citizen of the USA. In December 2008, he had censored the Sunday
Leader from publishing any criticism of his actions. He had earlier threatened
the careers and lives of other journalists.

A week before Lasanth's murder, G. Rajapakse's army captured the capital of the
de facto Eelam state, Kilinochchi. LTTE guerrilla army fled but not all the
civilians had evacuated before the government's troops entered and butchered
scores or hundreds. On August 25, 2009, England's Channel 4 News broadcast
footage showing Sri Lankan forces executing nine Tamils stripped naked. One of
the military's soldiers had filmed this atrocity on his mobile telephone.
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (Sinhalese and Tamils) obtained the film
and presented it to Channel 4, which showed it after verifying its authenticity.

The United States government praised Sri Lanka for its military offensive. The
US embassy in Colombo issued this statement: "The United States does not
advocate that the Government of Sri Lanka negotiate with the LTTE."

Following this crushing defeat, the LTTE was reduced to an area of a few square
kilometers. Many thousands of civilians had left their homes to reach so-called
No Fire Zones, which the S.L. army began setting up on January 20th. Conditions
were sub-human (and they continue to be so for over two-hundred and fifty
thousand interned civilians in various camps as of this writing), and they were
(are) forced to remain. Amnesty International, more often than not a reliable
observer of international conflicts, one of the few NGO's that does not take
money from any government or political party, recently published a report about
these camps. Sri Lanka is violating rules established by the United Nations,
including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, applying to
displaced persons.

Here is an excerpt from a civilian inmate. "Knowing that many civilians were not
able to move, the government restarted shelling. They even hit the No Fire Zone
so even that small area was not protected. When we heard the supersonic Kfirs
[Israel jets] overhead we used to rush to the bunker and hide. That was our life
for months just squatting in bunkers."

Amnesty stated: "The Government of Sri Lanka exacerbated this isolation by
restricting access by outsiders to the conflict area. In September 2008, Defense
Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaska issued a directive ordering all humanitarian and
UN agencies to leave the Vanni and remove all equipment and vehicles. This order
also applied to journalists, opposition politicians and humanitarian
organizations."

John Pilger described Sri Lanka's isolation strategy this way: "The Sri Lankan
government has learned an old lesson from, I suspect, a modern master: Israel.
In order to conduct a slaughter, you ensure the pornography is unseen, illicit
at best. You ban foreigners and their cameras from Tamil towns like
Mulliavaikal, which was bombarded recently by the Sri Lankan army, and you lie
that the 75 people killed in the hospital were blown up quite willfully by a
Tamil suicide bomber."

>From 2006-7 onward President Rajapakse was spending nearly one-quarter ($1.5
billion) of Sri Lanka's national budget of $7.5 billion (2008 figures) on war.
By January 2009, the Sri Lankan military, refortified especially by Israel,
Pakistan and China, had recaptured much of the Tamil Homeland. From the end of
2008 to Sri Lanka's military victory over LTTE, it had indiscriminately bombed
Tamil civilians even in the "safe zones." where the government had told them to
flee. Many thousands were killed.

After the fall of Tamil Eelam's de facto capital, it still took the far
superiorly armed and manned army four and one-half months to defeat the
guerrilla army. There were few close contact battles. The LTTE fighters and
civilians in the remaining Homeland area were subject to shelling from the air
and by long-distance artillery. Amnesty International reported:

"Eyewitness accounts of the final months of the war painted a grim picture of
deprivation of food, water and medical care; fear, injury and loss of life
suffered by civilians trapped by the conflict, both the LTTE and Sri Lankan
government forces committed violations of international humanitarian law. The
LTTE forcibly recruited children as soldiers, used civilians as human shields
against the Sri Lankan army's offensive, and attacked civilians who tried to
flee. The Sri Lankan armed forces launched indiscriminate attacks with artillery
on areas densely populated by civilians. Hospitals were shelled, resulting in
death and injuries among patients and staff."

Sri Lanka's military achieved victory by murdering any Tamil in its way, and
because of the extensive military force provided to it by many capitalist and
so-called socialist states. Here are the major players:

1. India has provided weaponry, radar and training to Sri Lanka's military since
1987. It often hides what aid it gives or sells since so many of its citizens
are against S.L.'s brutality against Tamils. After a period of providing little
military assistance, it increased its aid at the end of 2008 when the government
launched its all-out offensive. As late as April 2009, India sent three fast
attack boats and a missile corvette (INS Vinash), part of $500 million in total
aid. It has also turned over LTTE fugitives to S.L. India sees its traditional
role as the dominant nation in South Asia being replaced by China's fast-growing
presence, which is another reason for its support to Sri Lanka's Buddhist
government despite the fact that 80% of India's 1.2 billion people practice
Hinduism with less than 1% Buddhists. On the world plan, India hip hops from one
antagonist force to another. There is no clear direction.

2. The United States of America has been arming and financing Sri Lanka for most
of the civil war period. The Indian Ocean is a vital waterway in which half of
the world's containerized cargo passes through. Its waters carry heavy traffic
of petroleum products. The US signed a ten year Acquisition and Cross-Servicing
Agreement (ACSA) with Sri Lanka on 5 March 2007 which provides, along with other
things, logistics supplies and refueling facilities. The US already has Voice of
America installation at Tricomalee, which can be used for surveillance.

>From at least the 1990s, the US has provided military training, financing and
weapons sales averaging $1.5 million annually. During the cease fire, in 2002,
this sum went down to $259,999 for military training only. Bush was especially
glad for Sri Lanka's terrorism, and encouraged Colombo to resume the civil war,
in 2006, which his government financed with $2.9 million. The Pentagon provided
counter-insurgency training, maritime radar, patrols of US warships and
aircraft.

At the end of Bush's second term, the US was forced to cut back on aid given
that it was bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. That, coupled with critical
public opinion, organized by the Diaspora, of state terrorism and systematic
discrimination of Tamils, prompted congress to make noises about abuses of human
rights by not only LTTE but also about the use of children in paramilitary
forces of the Sri Lankan government. Nevertheless, in 2008, $1.45 million in
military financing and training was granted the government out of a total of
$7.4 million in total aid. The US made noises about killing a humanitarian
crisis, when the Sri Lankan army was about to finish the war but it never took
affirmative action to bring the war to an end. Its howling about human rights is
only a veiled threat to the Sri Lankan government that it should not do anything
prejudicial to its interests, that is, keep China at bay.

3. Israel was officially re-awarded diplomatic relations, in May 2000, after Sri
Lanka had severed them, in 1970, in protest at Israel's continued illegal
expansion into Palestinian territory. Nevertheless, Israel continued to operate
inside S.L. out of a special interests office set up in the US embassy. Under
the table, however, Sri Lanka's successive regimes embraced Israel's military
advisors, a special commando unit in the police, and Mossad counter-intelligence
agents who sought to drive a wedge between Muslims and Tamils. After S.L.
military defeat at Elephant Pass, it appealed to Israel for military aid. Israel
sent 16 of its supersonic Kfir fighter jets, some Dvora fast naval attack craft,
and electronic and imagery surveillance equipment, plus advisors and
technicians. Israel personnel took part in military attacks on Tamil units, and
its pilots flew attack aircraft. Tigers shot down one Kfir. Just before the end
of the war, Prime Minister Wickremanayake was in Israel to make bigger deals
with Israeli arms suppliers.

4. U.K./EU. In 2005, British arms export rose by 60%, according to John Pilger.
In 2008, 1.4 million in arms export was approved. France sent patrol boats, and
other EU countries continued but reduced military aid. The EU had never been
required to offer much aid given that its major allies were so much engaged.

5. Japan has long been Sri Lanka's greatest economic donor until China overtook
that position in 2008-9. Japan has sold technology and offered generous loans,
but it has also outright donated millions more every year. In 1997, for
instance, it granted $52 million outright but $26 in technical cooperation. In
2001, aid was at $310 million. It also paid for the government television
station, Rupavahini. While Japan's aid, sales and loans are not directed at
defense, these huge sums allow the Sri Lanka governments to use more of its
budget for war. This is the case as well with several other Asian countries.

6. Iran: "We don't need your money (with all those strings)", a Sri Lanka
treasury functionary purportedly told World Bank officials last year. The
international community (US-EU governments) had begun to cut back on aid and
even to ask questions about treatment of Tamil civilians, whose cries were being
heard from the Diaspora. So, Sri Lanka played one power against another:
India-Pakistan/China, US-China, Israel-Iran/Libyaرthe West-NAM. In 2008-9,
Iran provided $1.9 billion in credit to build an oil refinery, in order to
process S.L.'s crude oil, and it donated $450 million for a hydropower project.
Iran is US's most important inside ally with the Quisling Iraq government. And
Libya has most recently been approached for a $500 million loan by Sri Lanka.
Libya is with and against Iran.

7. Pakistan came into the Sri Lanka debacle, in 2008, at the encouragement of
China. At the beginning of 2009, it provided $100 million in military assistance
loans; it gave Chinese-origin small arms, and offered pilot training for S.L.'s
new Chinese aircraft. Pakistan is also an ally of the US in its terror war
against terror. Its governments are part of the war against Afghanistan, which
has spread throughout most of Pakistan and split the population. Here have we a
country allied with Cuba and ALBA et al. in NAM at the same time a partner with
the world's greatest terrorist state.

8. China entered the picture in 2005.China is the world's no 2 oil consumer
after the United States. China has stepped up efforts to secure sea lanes and
transport routes that are vital for its oil supplies. In April 2007, just one
month after the US's ACSA deal with SL, China's Poly Technologies supplied $36.5
million arms to Sri Lanka. A $150 million contract was given to China's Huawei,
which has close links with the Chinese intelligence wing MSS, to build a
country-wide infrastructure for communications.

In 2008, China invested five times over what it did in 2007. Its biggest
investment is a vast construction project at Hambantota on the southern coast,
which it will use as a re-fuelling and docking station for its navy. Ever since
Sri Lanka agreed to the plan, in March 2007, China has given it all the aid,
arms and diplomatic support it needs to defeat the Tigers, without worrying
about the West, wrote The Times (London). China acts without asking questions
about the treatment and conditions of workers and minorities. In April 2007,
S.L. made a deal to buy Chinese ammunition and ordnance for is military. China
gave it six F7 jet fighters after a Sky Tiger raid that destroyed ten military
aircraft, in 2007. One Chinese fighter was soon shot down by Tigers. China has
also given or sold on credit: an anti-submarine warfare vessel, gunboats and
landing craft, battle tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and air surveillance radars. In
June 2009, after the conclusion of the civil war, it signed an $891 million
agreement for the Norochcholai Coal Power project. Chinese companies were
granted an Economic Zone for 33 years. Huichen Investments Holdings Limited is
to invest $28 million in next three years in the Mirigama Zone. For the first
time a specific area was given to a foreign country. China is making major
inroads into Sri Lanka, causing concern in the US-India Axis.

In the last few months of the war, Sri Lanka's military used China's weapons to
systematically bombard what was left of the Tamil Eelam homeland. British media
reported that 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed just in the last five days. Yet
President Rajapakse claimed that not one Tamil civilian was killed by military
shelling.

According to the pro-imperialist The Times (London), aerial photographs,
official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony tell a story of the
Sri Lankan's fierce barrage of three weeks constant shelling in a five-kilometer
area where 300,000 Tamil civilians were. The Times estimated that about 1,000
civilians were killed each day for three weeks until May 19. With most of the
leadership dead, and tens of thousands civilians slaughtered, the LTTE
surrendered.

One of The Times sources for these figures, and that responsibility lay with SL
military, is the Catholic priest Amalraj, who was there until May 16. At the
time of article, May 29, 2009, he was interned in the militarized Manik Farm
camp along with 200,000 others.

Even the editor of the pro-imperialist Armed Forces of the UK magazine contended
that it was not the Tigers who fired upon their own people but that is was the
Sri Lankan government, which used imprecise air-burst and ground-impact mortars
to annihilate anything alive.

The Times piece ended on this sad note: S.L was cleared of any wrongdoing by the
UN Human Rights Council after winning the backing of countries including China,
Egypt, India and Cuba.

Sri Lanka: Post-War Internment Hell (V)

The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is able to commit these crimes
(referring to 2009 war atrocities, including brutal internment of 300,000
Tamils) actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice that is precisely
what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the
first place. That racism has a long history ذ of social ostracism,
economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The nature of the decades-long civil
war, which started as a peaceful protest, has its roots in this, wrote author
Arundhati Roy.

"This is something similar to what occurred in Gaza or worse, because neither
observers nor journalists had access to the war zone, stated a UN source who
asked for anonymity. The army acknowledges that 6,200 soldiers and 22,000
guerrillas died in the last three years of the longest civil war in Asia. The UN
affirms that between 80,000 and 100,000 persons died in the conflict," wrote
Elisa Reche of Prensa Marea Socialista.

"During the war," Reche continued, "the army had 200,000 troops. Now with peace,
100,000 are being incorporated. A strange peace it is that requires more troops
than in actual combat."

More troops are needed because systematic ethnic cleansing is now the order of
the day for the Tamil people. Their Homeland will be obliterated by introducing
more Sinhalese settlers. The same strategy, as John Pilger pointed out, that
Israel uses against Palestinians.

This is what M.K. Bhadrakumar, an ambassador for India who served in Sri Lanka
and other countries, wrote about the day after Sri Lanka declared victory.

"See, they have already solved the Tamil problem in the eastern provincesة
The Tamils are no more the majority community in these provinces. Similarly,
from tomorrow, they will commence a concerted, steady colonization program of
the Northern provinces where Prabhakaran reigned supreme for two decades. They
will ensure incrementally that the northern regions no more remain as Tamil
provinces. Give them a decade at the most. The Tamil problem will become a relic
of the bloody history of the Indian sub-continent."

Ethnic cleansing goes hand-in-hand with the policy of imprisoning and
mistreating hundreds of thousands of Tamils. For more than a year before its
military victory, the Sri Lanka government enticed Tamils, wishing to flee the
war zone, into so-called "welfare centers" or villages. Tens of thousands became
Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), and are thus subject to United Nations
regulations concerning decent living conditions, food and water, freedom of
movement and the right to leave and rejoin families. All these rights and
necessities have been denied them.

"Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy," President
J.R. told the Daily Telegraph (UK) on July 11, 1983.

A quarter-century later, the current president is striving to fulfill his
predecessor's genocidal intentions. Mahinda Rajapakse has claimed that no IDP is
held against his/her will and all are treated well. However, the few United
Nations visitors, there are no official investigators into abuses since the
Human Rights Council majority blocked such a possibility, who come to observe
have quite another picture.

When UN's political chief, Lynn Pascoe, visited camps in September he said
people were not free or well treated, "This kind of closed regime goes directly
against the principles under which we work in assisting IDPs all around the
world."

Rajapakse told Pascoe another tale about "free movement". He said that detention
was necessary because the army was clearing the area for mines, and it was still
looking for guerrillas hiding among civilians. However, as the UN resident
coordinator reported, and Amnesty International quoted: "Under international
humanitarian law, captured combatants may be held pending the cessation of
hostilities. Once active hostilities have ceased, prisoners of war must be
released without delay."

At of July, there were 9,400 individuals with purported links to the LTTE held
separately from the rest of the population. They have not been released nearly
half-a-year after internment.

Amnesty International also reported that the camps are clearly militarized. The
19-member Presidential Task Force established in mid-May to plan and coordinate
resettlement, rehabilitation and development of the Northern Province is headed
by Major General CA Chandrasiri, who was also appointed governor of the
province. All inmates are enclosed by barbed-wire fences, guarded and brutalized
by well-armed soldiers.

Arrests have been reported from the camps and Sri Lankan human rights defenders
have alleged that enforced disappearances have also occurred, wrote Amnesty.

Sri Lanka's history of large-scale enforced disappearances dating back to the
1980s, and the lack of independent monitoring, raises grave concerns that
enforced disappearances and other violations of human rights may be
occurringة Previous research shows that persons suspected by the
government of being members or supporters of LTTE are at grave risk of
extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and torture, cruel, inhumane
and degrading treatment.

Although the government calls these facilities "welfare villages," they are
effectively detention camps. Amnesty International also reported that not only
are people not free to move as they wish, women and girls are raped by soldiers,
and people live in sewage, disease-infested conditions, with little food and
water and medical attention. They die in droves because of these imposed
conditions.

Women and children are especially mistreated, which was the subject that James
Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, complained about to Sri Lankan authorities, who
then expelled him from the country. Elder described the unimaginable suffering
of children caught in the fighting, including babies he had seen with shrapnel
wounds.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had refrained from criticizing Sri
Lanka's government, leveling his critique only at LTTE for carrying out
atrocities. But when he briefly visited one camp less than a week after the end
of the war, he said:

"I have traveled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far
the most appalling scenes I have seen. I sympathize fully with all of the
displaced persons," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told CNN after visiting
Manik Farm, the most presentable of Sri Lanka's squalid and dangerous internment
camps for Tamils civilians. The UN Chief has also promised international action
regarding the heavy shelling of civilian populations during the recent fighting.

Out of the 280,000 IDPs after the end of the war (there were nearly one-half
million over a year's period), only between 15,000 and 40,000 had been released
by November 1. Half of them, perhaps, have been ransomed. The Sunday Times wrote
about human trafficking at the internment camps. Relatives were made to pay camp
authorities in order to secure their release.

Future
A week after the end of the war, the LTTE communicated that several of its
leaders were killed, but the organization would continue struggling for an
independent Tamil Eelam in peaceful ways. July 22, the LTTE announced that its
chief of international relations, Selvarsa Pathmanathan, known as KP, was made
the new leader, and that a new strategy for a free Tamil Eelam would occur. On
August 8, England's The Independent wrote that Pathmanathan was under arrest by
Sri Lanka and held incommunicado.

For us solidarity activists, left-wing organizations, and governments considered
to be progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe that our task
must be to press for the lives and rights of the Tamil people. Australia's
Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance said it well in its
October 2009 international situation report:

"Now the Tamil struggle has entered a new phase. The immediate campaign must
focus on defence of basic human rights, release and resettlement of the
Internally Displaced Persons currently held in SL government concentration
camps, an end to murders, torture, rapes, and provision of basic housing, food
and drinking water to the Tamil people under brutal occupation."

As a solidarity activist, who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to
conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to induce oppressive and
terrorist governments to engage in a process aimed at peace with justice, I
condemn all perpetrators of terrorism and demand they change tactics to ones
that are morally in accordance with our ideology for socialism, for justice with
equality.

I find that most, if not all, armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even
acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case
with FARC and PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous
struggle. They are up against, as was the more brutal LTTE, much greater
military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. Remember
the ANC in South Africa's war for liberation. They committed much the same.

The main reason why I am on their side, why I have been a leftist solidarity
activist and writer for nearly half-a-century is a matter of basic ethics. I
define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our
conscious hand without being attacked, invaded, oppressed beyond bare. A moral
person, organization, political party, government acts in daily life and in the
struggle for justice with that ethic in mind. These are my thoughts on morality.

1. We act to so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under
another.

2. In combat against oppressors and invaders, we do not
kill non-combatant civilians nor forcefully recruit them, or use them as
hostages.

3. We struggle to create equality for
all.

4. We abolish all profit-making based upon the exploitation of
labor or the oppression of any person, group of people or class. Instead, we
build an economy based upon principles of justice and equality, one in which no
one goes hungry, sharing equitably our resources and production.

5.
We struggle to create a political system based upon participation where all have
a voice in decision-making of vital matters, in local, national and
international policies.

6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in
each of us.

After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there
for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, which fortunately
only lasted two years, it acted in a moral manner. Cuba's revolutionary armed
struggle was exceptional in this way. The Vietnamese struggle against the
invaders of France and the USA was so conducted as well. There are a few other
examples: the original Sandinistas is, perhaps, one.

I think that the key reason why so many millions of people the world love and
respect Che Guevara is because of his moral stance, of his example as a just
revolutionary leader. I conclude this all-too-long essay with these oft-quoted
words from Che's Socialism and Man.

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is
guided by a great feeling of love. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize
this love of the people, the most sacred cause, and make it one and indivisible,
one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth
in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an
isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living
humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as
examples, as a moving force."
(II)

by Ron Ridenour

We are running four parts of a five-part series posted on Radical Notes on
November 19, 2009. These articles trace the settlement of the Tamil people in
Sri Lanka and the development of the modern Tamil struggle for
self-determination. They also expose the cabal of imperialist and reactionary
powers that have fortified the Sinhala-chauvinist Sri Lanka regime, and describe
the horrific conditions in the so-called "welfare villages" that now hold close
to 300,000 Tamil refugees. Finally, the author draws apt comparisons with
Israel's oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon in English, and Serendib in Arabic (which gave rise
to the word serendipity) is commonly referred to as the "pearl of the orient"
due to its beauty and wealth of natural resources, flora and fauna. Today, it is
a land torn apart by hatred: racist government policies, ethnic cleansing, and
terror war just ended albeit continuing in the form of incarceration of hundreds
of thousands of Tamil people in the north. A key reason for this brutal hatred
is the dispute over whether a minority of its people, the Tamils, should have:
equal rights with the majority Sinhalese, and if this is denied (as will be
shown it has), should they have the right to their own autonomous territory.

Sri Lanka's first aborigines with continuous lineage are the Tamil people. It is
not precisely known when they came to the island, but perhaps as many as 5000
years ago. Archaeologists date the first humans in Sri Lanka to some 34,000
years. Scientists call them Balangoda people, the name of the location where
artifacts were found. These hunting-gathering cave dwellers have no current
lineage.

Tamils were also known as proto-Elamites or Ela. These people in Sri Lanka call
themselves Eelam Tamils, meaning earthly people. Tamils speak a Dravidian
language, which has no ties to other language families. It was, perhaps,
associated with Scythians and Urals. The Dravidian language and Tamils
originated, perhaps, from Sumer and Ur: the cradle of the first civilization,
now Iran. The Sumer and Tamils formed the first language of proto-grams on clay
tablets. Tamil inscriptions and literature are at least 2500 years old. Today,
100 to 200 million people speak Tamil.

The Christian Bible refers to Elam as maritime nations in various lands, each
with a separate language (Genesis 10) In the myth of Noah's Ark, Elam was
thought to be a descendant of one of Noah's three sons on the ark.(Genesis 5-9)
Tamils were the first to use the wheel for transportation. They traveled to
India and the island Sri Lanka, which had been connected to India. The first
known manuscripts in India were written in Tamil. Other Tamil inscriptions have
been found in Egypt and Thailand.

About 2500 years ago, the first Sinhalese came to Sri Lanka from India. This was
hundreds of years after Tamils were settled in the kingdom in the north at
Jaffna (Yazhpanam). Sinhalese is, perhaps, a term originating from King Vijayan,
who was expelled from the kingdom of Sinhapura in India and arrived in Sri Lanka
543 BC. He and his people engaged in combat with the Tamil aborigines. They
established the Kandi and Kottai kingdoms in the central and southern areas.

The Sinhalese are among many ethnic groups who speak an Indo-Aryan language,
Pali, believed to have developed in Sindh, Gujarat and Bengal areas about 3000
years ago. They early became practitioners of Buddhism, an off-shot of Hinduism,
which is the religion that most Tamils adopted. Buddhism was created by the
prince, Siddhartha Gautama, in the 6th century BC. Most Sinhalese adopted
Buddhism but some were converted to Christianity, which was first introduced by
traders from Syria, in the 1st or 2nd century after Christ.

The Sinhalese and Tamils have distinct ethnic backgrounds, languages and
religions. The vast majority of both peoples have always lived in separate
regions of Sri Lanka and they have often been at war. The Sinhalese adopted the
chauvinistic attitude that their language and religion were the only true ones
and they must reign throughout Sri Lanka. All other religions were alien. This
notion seems to have originated, or been fortified, by the historical poem
Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle) written in Pali by the Buddhist monk Mahatera
Mahanama. It covers nearly one thousand years of Sinhalese kingdom history in
Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese maintain that Sri Lanka must be a Buddhist nation because, they claim,
it has been so throughout history although they count the beginning of national
history with Mahanama's account of the first Sinhalese kingdom of Vijaya, in 543
BC. The fact that Tamil Eelam had kingdoms in Sri Lanka for many hundreds of
years is ignored.

When the first Europeans, Portuguese traders, landed in Sri Lanka, in 1505, they
encountered three native kingdoms: two Sinhalese kingdoms at Kottai and Kandi,
and the Tamils in Jaffna peninsula. Although the Portuguese were traders, they
brought fire power and eventually seized power militarily from the Kottai
kingdom. Despite their superior weaponry, it took them decades to defeat the
kingdoms at Jaffna and Kandi, yet resistance remained throughout Portuguese
occupation. The Portuguese named the island Ceilão, which the English later
transliterated as Ceylon.

In 1658, Dutch invaders arrived. The Dutch United East India Company sided with
the Kandi resistance to defeat the Portuguese. But when the natives realized the
Dutch sought total control, the Kandians organized guerilla warfare. In 1766,
the Dutch took sovereignty over the entire coastline but not the entire island
where some Tamils and Sinhalese remained independent.

In 1795, the British landed and kicked out the Dutch within a year. They
realized there were two separate nations of natives. In June 1796, the British
Colonial Secretary, Sir Hugh Cleghorn wrote to his government:

"Two different nations, from a very ancient period, have divided between them
the possession of the Island: the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior in its
southern and western parts from the river Wallouwe to Chilaw, and the Malabars
(Tamils) who possess the northern and eastern districts. These two nations
differ entirely in their religion, language and manners."

It took the Brits a generation to defeat resisting natives. In 1811, they
defeated Bandara Vanniyan and his guerrilla resisters in the Tamil Vanni
territory. In 1815, the British finally captured the last of the Kandyan
kingdom.

The European invaders were only interested in the riches they could steal. They
converted the peasant based agricultural economy into an export one. The island
was rich in cinnamon and other spices, coconuts and graphite. English
colonialists converted much of the land into tea, coffee and rubber plantations.

Religion was used by the colonialists to dominate and pacify the natives. The
Portuguese spread Catholicism in an organized manner. Some Tamils and some
Sinhalese converted or were forced to convert. Both the Dutch and English
continued the process with their Protestant missionaries, yet most natives held
onto their beliefs in either Buddhism or Hinduism. Islamism was also introduced
by Arab traders.

Sri Lanka as British-ruled Ceylon was subjected to a classic divide-and-rule,
wrote John Pilger. (Distant Voices, Desperate Lives, New Statesman, May 13,
2009.)

The English had to have their tea so they created tea plantations in the
mountainous regions, especially in the center of the country where Sinhalese
lived. But Sinhalese would not work them so the Brits brought Tamils from India
as virtual slave labor while building an educated Tamil middle-class to run the
colony, continued Pilger. Only a few indigenous Tamils, however, ran anything,
but some educated ones took the opportunity to sit on top of the bottom castes.

A hierarchy of races, classes and castes was perpetrated among native ethnic
groups and new arrivals. In the mid-1800s, English and German scholars adopted
an ideology of superiority first based on language and then on race. The English
viewed Sinhalese as cousins in the large Aryan family. Brits (and Germans) were
the superior white Aryans; the Sinhalese lesser Indo-Aryans, and Tamils were the
colonialized proletariat, the black inferior race. This fit in nicely with the
Sinhalese elite notion of superiority, based on their precious book of
mythology, Mahavamsa. In the 1870s, a German scholar, Max Muller, writing about
language origins, especially Indo-Aryan, first coined the term Aryan race,
something he later regretted.

Europeans took it for granted that Greek and Latin were superior languages, and
they saw affinities with Sanskrit, from which Sinhalese is derived. Given this
identity, it was easier for the colonialists to drive a wedge deeper between the
indigenous peoples, and all the more so by allowing Sinhalese to own land
without having to work the British tea and rubber plantations in the center of
the country. The Brits left the aborigine Tamils stay in their homeland in the
north and east, but brought between 800,000 and 1.5 million Tamils from India to
work the fields; nearly one-fourth died in route. It is estimated that 70,000
Tamil Nadu died on route in the 1840s. Their story parallels that of Africans
forced into slavery and brought to the Americas.

Ironically, it was protestant missionaries who contributed greatly to the
development of political awareness among Tamils in the north and east, and led
to a revival of the Hindu faith as a reaction against Christian domination. We
find many examples of this in modern history, such as the increasing interest
among Arabs in practicing strict Islamic customs, including separate gender
rules, as a reaction to the invasions and occupations of Western imperialism in
the Middle-East. Something similar is occurring in Palestine in response to the
apartheid enforced by Zionist Jews.

Led by revivalist Arumuga Navalar in the mid-1800s, Tamils in the north and east
built their own schools, temples, associations and presses. Literacy was used to
spread Hinduism and its principles. Tamils published their own literature and
newspapers to counter the ideology-religion of the missionaries. Tamils thought
confidently of themselves as a community, thus lending to the legitimacy of
their later assertion of the necessity to be treated equally with the Sinhalese
or be granted or take their own autonomy as Eelam Tamils.

For some of the time that Britain ruled the island different colonial governors
recognized equality of the native peoples, yet played one against the other. In
1833, the British mandated the administrative unification of the country while
incorporating the different native administrative structures that existed
earlier. The new legislative council was composed of three Europeans and one
representative from the Sinhalese, the Ceylon Tamils and the Burghers, a
Euro-Asian minority, Creole descendants of European colonialists who spoke a
mixture of Indo-Portuguese. They had been converted to Protestantism.

Tamil laborers brought from India had no say nor did the few Arab Muslims.
Racist Sinhalese massacred many in 1915. In 1930, another hard-working minority,
Malayali plantation workers, were attacked by Sinhalese and most fled back to
Kerala.

In 1921, the colonialists altered the legislative council so that Sinhalese
acquired 13 seats to three for the Tamils. From here on out, Tamils developed a
communal consciousness as a minority. In 1931, the Brits changed the rules again
by incorporating the notion of universal franchise�"one man one vote including
for castes. Most Sinhalese opposed this progressive measure, seeking to maintain
classes and castes while agreeing to part of the rule allowing them, as the
majority, to have a decisive say over the minority Tamils. The issue of
representative power-sharing, and not the structure of government, was used by
nationalists of both communities to create an escalating inter-ethnic rivalry,
which has been the dominant trend since.

Britain's vacillating ruling strategy throughout their 150 year domination led
to sporadic episodes of violence between Sinhalese and Tamils, often expressed
as religious conflicts between Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims. More
often than not, it was Buddhists who first attacked other ethnic peoples who
held other faiths. The Brits often held police on the sidelines.

In the 1930s, and especially during World War II, Sinhalese and Tamils spoke out
for independence. Various left-wing parties and coalitions arose, and some
conservative groupings as well. Many natives hoped for a German victory over the
hated English colonialists.

Tamils struggled to have their language placed on equal terms with Sinhalese,
and replace English as the official language. Some Sinhalese leaders agreed but
many did not. In 1939, a Tamil leader, G.G. Ponnambalam, spoke against the
common Sinhalese notion, taken from the Mahavamsa, that their language should be
the only official language and Buddhism the only official religion. Angry at the
speech, Sinhalese mobs bashed and killed many Tamils. This time the British
stopped the riots, but the roots to the upcoming 26-year long civil war had been
laid.

Once WW II ended, the British Empire realized it had to give in to so many
native peoples struggling for sovereignty. India won dominion status in 1947, a
slight reform until full independence in 1950. The civil disobedience movement
led by Mahatma Gandhi had succeeded yet he was assassinated by a Hindu
nationalist on January 30, 1948. Gandhi sought unity among all Indians, but most
Muslims wanted their own State after colonialism. Many Muslims were killed in
riots; many lost their homes. Gandhi believed it morally correct for India to
compensate them with finances. Many Hindu nationalists opposed this, and it led
to his murder.

Great numbers of Hindus in India discriminated against non-Hindus just as
Buddhist Sinhalese discriminate against Hindus and Muslims. The percentage of
Tamils in Sri Lanka has been reduced from 30% to 12.6%. Tens of thousands have
been murdered before and during the recent war, and as many as one million have
fled the country, part of a massive Diaspora, like the Jews.

Current population statistics of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri
Lankaرso named since 1978رshow a population of 21 million people.
74% (15 million) Sinhalese; 12.6% (2.5 million) Tamil; 7.4% (1.5 million) Moors;
5.2% (1 million) Indian Tamil. 93% of Sinhalese are Buddhists, and the remainder
Christian. 60% Tamils are Hindus, 28% are Muslim and 12% Christian.

Sri Lanka: Equal Rights or Self-Determination (III)

At independence, in 1948, the new political elite, in its rush for power,
cultivated ethnic support in a society whose real imperative should have been
the eradication of poverty. Language became the spark, journalist-documentary
filmmaker John Pilger recently wrote.

The Tamil people in Sri Lanka had expectations that they would achieve equal
rights and power with the Sinhalese once independence was won from the British
colonialists. As the independence movement was winning over colonialization
there was no talk of any Tamil separatism.

Even before the defeat of the Axis powers, Britain prepared to decolonize
Ceylon. In 1943, the colonial secretary of state stated that a constitution
would be drafted will all parties involved. A condition would be that "The
Parliament of Ceylon shall not make any law rendering persons of any community
or religion liable to disabilities or restrictions to which persons of other
communities are not made liable."

Britain established the Soulbury Commission in 1944. The leading Sinhalese
politician was D.S. Senanayake, a conservative, who founded, in 1946, the
rightist pro-independence and pro-capitalist United National Party (UNP).
Senanayake became known as the Father of Sri Lanka. He convinced a leading Tamil
politician, G.G. Ponnamblam, who founded the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) in
1944 to partake in independence negotiations.

Another provision of the Soulbury Commission (Constitution) was that any bill
which evoked serious opposition by any racial or religious community and which,
in the opinion of the Governor-General is likely to involve oppression or
serious injustice to any community must be reserved by the Governor-General.

The vote on the third reading of the Free Lanka bill was supported by all the
Muslim members and by most Tamil and Sinhalese groups. Some of the other
minority members who did not want to openly support the bill took care to be
absent or abstain. Finally, the debate and the vote of acceptance on the eighth
and ninth of September 1945 was the most significant indication of general
reconciliation among the ethnic and regional groups. Far exceeding the 3/4
majority required by the Soulbury Commission, Senanayake had 51 votes in favor,
and only three votes against the adoption of the constitution. The vote was in
many ways a vote of confidence by all communities and the minorities were as
anxious as the majority for self-government.

Senanayake's speech in proposing the motion of acceptance made reference to the
minorities and said "throughout this period the Ministers had in view one
objective only, the attainment of maximum freedom. Accusations of Sinhalese
domination have been bandied about. We can afford to ignore them for it must be
plain to every one that what we sought was not Sinhalese domination, but
Ceylonese domination. We devised a scheme that gave heavy weightage to the
minorities; we deliberately protected them against discriminatory legislation.
We vested important powers in the Governor-General. We decided upon an
Independent Public Service Commission so as to give assurance that there should
be no communalism in the Public Service. I do not normally speak as a Sinhalese,
and I do not think that the Leader of this Council ought to think of himself as
a Sinhalese representative, but for once I should like to speak as a Sinhalese
and assert with all the force at my command that the interests of one community
are the interests of all. We are one of another, what ever race or creed."

The first national election was held August 23-September 30, 1947. 1,887,364
people voted for 95 MP (members of parliament). There were six parties and many
independents. The results were:

UNP with 39.8% (42 MPs)

LSSP 10.8% (10)

BLPI 6% (5)

ACTC 4.4% (7)

CIC 3.8% (6)

CPC 3.7% (3)

Labor 1.4% (1)

Independents 29% (16)

(LSSP=Ceylon Equal Society Party comprised of Sinhalese Trotskyists;
BLPI=Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India also Trotskyists; CIC=Ceylon Indian
Congress, which soon changed its name to Ceylon Workers Congress, represented
the Indian Tamils of the Estates Workers Trade Union; CPC, the Communist Party
of Ceylon, with a pro-Moscow line; Labour was fashioned after Clement Attlee-led
British Labour party. The Marxist parties later colluded with capitalist
Sinhalese parties in opposing equality with Tamils. The CPC is now the Communist
Party of Sri Lanka, which is part of the United People's Freedom Alliance that
includes the Sri Lanka Freedom Party-led government of Mahinda Rajapaksa.)

We are one of another, whatever race or creed, swore the Father of the new
independent State. It looked good for all ethnic and religious groups, but then
the deceit became evident with the new citizenship act.

On February 4, 1948, the new government introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Bill
before Parliament. The outward purpose of the bill was to provide a means of
obtaining citizenship, but I think its real purpose was to discriminate against
the Indian Tamils by denying them citizenship. The Ceylon Citizenship Act no.
18, August 20, 1948 denied citizenship to 11% of the population.

Although the All Ceylon Tamil Congress opposed the bill, it had joined with the
UNP. This provoked half of its members to form the Federal Party, led by SJV
Chelvanayakam. Next year, the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act, no.3,
disenfranchised nearly all Tamils, who were originally from India. Their seven
MPs were kicked out of parliament and there were no Indian Tamils in the 1952
parliament elections. It wasn't until 1988 that the Sri Lanka government granted
citizenship to stateless persons, who hadn't applied for Indian citizenship. In
2003, 168,141 descendants of Indian Tamils were allowed citizenship.

The new government allowed Sinhalese to appropriate land on the Tamil
traditional homeland in the north and east. Entire villages were driven
out�"ethnic cleansing�"which the Sinhalese settled, aiming to break a
geographic continuity of the Tamil homeland. Within time, Sinhalese settlers had
taken over 30% of Tamil lands and homes a la Israel in Palestine.

In 1956, The Sinhala Only Act became law. It mandated Sinhala as the sole
official language, which at that time was spoken by 70% of the population.

Supporters of the law saw it as an attempt by a community that had just gained
independence to distance themselves from their colonial masters, while its
opponents viewed it as an attempt by the linguistic majority to oppress and
assert dominance on minorities. The Act symbolizes the post independent majority
Sinhalese to assert its Sri Lanka's identity as a nation state, and for Tamils,
it became a symbol of minority oppression and a justification for them to demand
a separate nation state, which resulted in decades of civil war.

Tamils protested the discriminatory law by using Gandhian tactics of non-violent
sit-ins. Although stated advocates of non-violence, Buddhist monks led Sinhalese
mobs against Tamils.

The Gal Oya riots were the first ethnic riots that targeted the minority Sri
Lankan Tamils. The riots took place from June 11, 1956 and occurred over the
next five days. Local majority Sinhalese colonists and employees of the Gal Oya
settlement board commandeered government vehicles, dynamite and weapons and
massacred minority Tamils. It is estimated that over 150 people lost their lives
due in the violence. Although initially inactive, the Police and the Army were
eventually able to re-take control of the situation and brought the riots under
control.

Tamil political leader SJV Chelvanayagam began to organize a massive Satyagraha
(non-violent resistance). In order to avoid even more bloodshed, Prime Minister
Solomon Bandaranayaka signed an agreement with Chelvanayagam promising to
restore Tamil as the (or one of two) official language(s) in its minority areas.
This infuriated many Sinhalese, especially monks, and they assaulted and
sometimes killed Tamils in many areas. Buddhist monks even besieged the official
residence of Bandaranayaka demanding that he abandoned the agreement, which he
did.

But, in 1958, the Sinhalese-led parliament, pressed by the violence and the
pro-Moscow and Trotskyist Sinhalese parties, passed an amendment to the Sinhala
Only Act (called Sinhala Only, Tamil Also) restoring Tamil as a co-official
language in their areas of the North and East. Frustrated at the compromise,
Sinhalese mobs murdered 200-300 Tamils, including some Sinhalese who gave Tamils
refuge. Many Tamil women were raped and some Tamil boys were stripped, bound,
and burned alive. This violent hatred evokes the lynching and burning alive of
black people by whites in the southern USA.

Some Buddhists were angry that the Sinhalese Prime Minister Bandaranayaka had
tried to compromise with Tamils. In 1959, a Buddhist monk assassinated him.

The language law had its intended effect. In 1955, the civil service had been
largely made of Tamils, who had benefited more than Sinhalese from western style
education provided by missionaries. This fact was used by populist Sinhalese
politicians to come to power, or retain power, on the promise of providing more
civil service jobs to Sinhalese by demanding that their language be the only one
used in public service. By 1970, the civil service was almost entirely
Sinhalese. Thousands of Tamil civil servants were forced to resign due to lack
of fluency in Sinhala. In the 1960s, government forms and services were
virtually unavailable to Tamils.

Confrontation became the modus operandi; Sinhalese were the Zionists and Tamils
the Palestinians!

It is important to stress, especially with progressive-revolutionary
governments, such as the ALBA alliance in Latin America, and their supporters
throughout the world, that the Tamils' history in Sri Lanka is one of constant
and widespread discrimination. They are also subjects to a policy of genocide as
defined by the United Nations.

Sri Lanka made world headlines in 1960 when a woman, Sirimavo RD Bandaranaike,
was elected prime minister, the world's first female leader. Being the widow of
the martyr and founder of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) was an asset. She
immediately brought Sri Lanka into the Non-Alignment Movement, founded in 1961.
The originators, India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser, Yugoslavia's Tito and Ghana's
Nkrumah, sought support for each other's sovereignty without aligning with
either super-power bloc at that time.

Nevertheless, Sri Lankan leaders of both predominantly Sinhala major parties
continued to be dependent upon economic and military ties with India, the US,
the UK, and Israel. Social welfare programs were carried out within a capitalist
economic structure. This was a cause for radical opposition. In 1971, thousands
of Sinhalese students, and Indian Tamil plantation workers, under the leadership
of a new nationalistic and Marxist-oriented political party, Janatha Vimukthi
Peramana JVP, translated as People's Liberation Front, engaged in
anti-government clashes. Fifteen thousand protestors were killed in the
uprising.

Once in power, Bandaranaike's widow did not alter the Sinhalese policy of
genocide, an ingenious device was resorted to deprive the Tamils of the
constitutional safeguards and the characteristics of the conditional polity. A
coalition of three Sinhalese political parties, led by Mrs. Sirimavo R.D.
Bandaranaike, called upon the people to give a mandate (in the 1970 General
Elections, during her second term) for a new Constituent Assembly to scrap the
1948 dominion polity and create a new Republic of Sri Lanka. Whilst the voters
in the seven Sinhalese provinces gave Mrs. Bandaranaike the mandate that she had
requested, the Tamil voters in the Northern and Eastern Provinces summarily
rejected her call. In the North and East, a mere 14% of the votes polled
supported the call for a new constituent Assembly.

Laws protecting rights of racial and religious minorities were abandoned and
Buddhism was made the constitutional religion of Sri Lanka.

Sinhalese claimed 5000 acres in the Tamil farmland Nochikulam as theirs,
renaming it Nochiyagama. Next year, 10,738 Sinhalese families settled in
Trincomalee illegally.

The sovereignty of the Tamil people (who were ethnically, geographically and
linguistically separately identifiable and distinct) revived.س

With this setback, a reinvigorated ACTC joined with the Federal Party, in 1972,
to form the Tamil United Front (TUF). Separatism or autonomy now became the cry
for nearly all Tamils, who sought an Eelam part of Sri Lanka. Thirty Tamil
militant groups emerged.

The operative part is Thamil Eelam and it means the Tamil part of Eelam. The
term Eelam is a synonym for Sri Lanka and has been in use in Tamil literature
right from the Cankam Period dating as far back as 200 B.C. to circa 250 A.D.

The second government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike enacted a discriminatory double
standard law for admission grades to universities, requiring Tamil students to
achieve higher grades than Sinhalese.

Throughout the 1970s, Sinhalese mobs clashed with impunity not only with Tamils
but also Muslim Moors. In 1976, Sinhalese burned 271 houses and 44 shops,
murdering a score of Muslims.

In 1976, the Tamil United Front Party changed its name to the Tamil United
Liberation Front (TULF) at the Vattukottai Conference, and adopted a demand for
an independent sovereign state in traditional Tamil homeland in the north and
east to be known as the secular, socialist state of Tamil Eelam.

By 1975, Tamil militancy increased with the birth of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, who considered himself a
Marxist and follower of Che Guevara. The LTTE engaged in small armed clashes
with the military.

The conservative UNP won a landslide victory in the July 1977 elections. But the
pro-independence TULF won 6.4% of the popular vote, winning all 14 seats in the
Tamil homeland area, and four more seats of the 168-member parliament. In
response to Tamils' peaceful struggle and its parliamentary victory, Sinhalese
mobs, led by Buddhist monks, again destroyed many Tamil homes and shops and
murdered up to 300 Tamils.

In July 1978, the UNP, led by Prime Minister Junius Richard Jayewardene, changed
the constitution and renamed the country the Democratic Socialist Republic of
Sri Lanka. An executive presidency was established, allowing the president
greater powers than the prime minister, whom the president now appoints. The
president is also the commander-in-chief and head of the cabinet. He can
dissolve parliament and has judicial impunity.

Jayewardene became the first president and appointed Ramasinghe Premadosa (UNP)
prime minister. Despite the new name, democratic socialist republic, the
capitalist government began deregulating much of what had been government run
enterprises. Private enterprise was priority.

On May 31, 1981, the TULF held a rally in Jaffna in the north. Police clashed
with Tamils and two policemen were killed. For three days, Sinhalese mobs,
policemen, and soldiers went on a rampage. Several Tamils were taken from their
homes and killed. The TULF headquarters, a newspaper office, presses, and shops
were destroyed. Worst of all was the total destruction of the Jaffna library and
its 97,000 volumes of books and irreplaceable historical manuscripts, some made
of palm leaves. It is now well known that the fire that destroyed this unique
institution of the Tamils in their homeland was masterminded by a handful of
ministers of the Sinhala Government in Colombo, who were present in Jaffna the
night of the fire.

The national newspapers did not carry information about the incident and in
subsequent parliamentary debates some majority Sinhalese members reminded
minority Tamil politicians that if Tamils were unhappy in Sri Lanka, they should
leave for their homeland in India. This is a direct quotation from United
National Party member MP WJM Lokubandara:

"If there is discrimination in this land which is not their (Tamil) homeland,
then why try to stay here? Why not go back home (India) where there would be no
discrimination?"

Twenty years later, the mayor of Jaffna, Nadarajah Raviraj, still grieved at the
recollection of the flames he saw as a University student. He was later killed
by unknown gunmen in the capital Colombo, in 2006.

Civil War and LTTE
By summer 1983, the then small guerrilla army of LTTE was well settled in most
northern and eastern areas. Their first major assault against the state's
military took place at Jaffna peninsula, July 24. LTTE ambushed a convoy of
soldiers passing through land mines and killed 15.

This could have been in response to many random attacks upon Tamils in various
areas. One example is in Trincomalee where, on 10 April 1983, a young Tamil died
in police custody after having been held without charge for two weeks. At the
judicial inquest into his death, on May 31, the Jaffna Magistrate returned a
verdict of homicide. Three days later, the government changed the rules
permitting the police to bury or cremate bodies without a post mortem or an
inquest.

Amnesty International cabled President Jayawardene expressing concern that such
a regulation could give rise to grave human rights violations and appealed to
him to rescind it. But he did not. On the contrary, on June 3, 1983, the day
that the new Emergency Regulation was brought into effect, the attacks on the
Tamils in Trincomalee commenced in earnest.

R. Sampanthan, M.P. for Trincomalee, described that mobs of Sinhalese went from
village to village setting fire to Tamil houses and shops. A particular modus
operandi was observed. Heavily armed service personnel would enter a Tamil area
and carry out a search alleging that explosions and dangerous weapons were
hidden in that area. Invariably nothing would be recovered other than implements
that would normally be available in any house. Sometimes Tamil youths would be
arrested on suspicion and taken for questioning. After a month of many pogrom
raids, the LTTE struck the army convoy.

That night and for weeks Sinhalese rampaged against Tamils, especially in the
Colombo area where some Tamil youths were stripped naked and burned alive in
petrol. Black July ended with between 2000 and 3000 dead Tamils, among them 53
prisoners, including key political leaders, who were murdered by Sinhalese
prisoners at Welikadai. One political prisoner, Kuttimani, had his eyes gouged
out and stomped upon under a soldier's boots.

One hundred thousand Tamils were rendered homeless and that many and more fled
to India.

Even non-violent advocates of separatism or independence, such as the TULF, were
pushed out of the democratic process. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution,
enacted in August 1983, classified all separatist movements as unconstitutional.
That meant that all its members of parliament,16 then, lost their seats.
Thousands of Tamil youth joined militant armed groups, especially the LTTE,
which became the most disciplined and well organized.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the LTTE established a de facto state, called
Tamil Eelam, and managed a government, which provided a judicial court system, a
police force, and social assistance in health and education and for the poorest.
LTTE ran a bank, a radio station (Voice of Tigers), even a television station.
Guerrilla leaders helped organize small cooperative farming units based on
traditional methods. The LTTE dismantled the caste system and officially stopped
discrimination against women. The LTTE organized a civilian administration under
its command. There was order and peace in these areas, as long as everyone
obeyed and when the Sri Lanka army did not bomb.

In the 1980s, there was much discontent in other parts of Sri Lanka. Radical
Sinhalese youths, such as the JVP, demanded going further towards socialism. In
1987, JVP engaged in another armed uprising. But after 1989, it entered into
parliamentary politics. It participated in the 1994 parliamentary general
election and joined conservative and liberal party coalitions in opposing equal
rights with Tamils.

Ranasinghe Premadasa was prime minister from February 1978 to January 1, 1989,
under President Jayewardene, and then he became president until his
assassination on Mayday 1993. Many Sinhalese elitists thought he was too common
to be their leader and too compromising with Tamils. Controversial policies
under his terms included the matter of language, ethnic cleansing, and the role
of India in internal affairs. The first controversy was the constitutional
amendment allowing equality of languages in the Tamil areas: "National languages
shall be Sinhala and Tamil, although, the official language of Sri Lanka shall
be Sinhala. Tamil shall also be an official language. English shall be a link
language."

This compromise spoke in double tongues. Why not just make Sinhala and Tamil
equally official, as India has done with a score of languages?

Alienated Tamils
Even a U.S. Library of Congress study characterized Tamils as alienated. In
1988, it published, SriLanka: a Country Study. In the chapter entitled, Tamil
Alienation, the authors wrote:

"Moderate as well as militant Sri Lankan Tamils have regarded the policies of
successive Sinhalese governments in Colombo with suspicion and resentment since
at least the mid-1950s, when the Sinhala Only language policy was adopted.

Several issues provided the focus for Sri Lankan Tamil alienation and widespread
support, particularly within the younger generation, for extremist movements.
Sinhalese still remained the higher-status official language, and inductees into
the civil service were expected to acquire proficiency in it. Other areas of
disagreement concerned preference given to Sinhalese applicants for university
admissions and public employment, and allegations of government encouragement of
Sinhalese settlement in Tamil-majority areas.

Government-sponsored settlement of Sinhalese in the northern or eastern parts of
the island, traditionally considered to be Tamil regions, has been perhaps the
most immediate cause of inter-communal violence. There was, for example, an
official plan in the mid-1980s to settle 30,000 Sinhalese in the dry zone of
Northern Province, giving each settler land and funds to build a house and each
community armed protection in the form of rifles and machine guns. Tamil
spokesmen accused the government of promoting a new form of colonialism, but the
Jayewardene government asserted that no part of the island could legitimately be
considered an ethnic homeland and thus closed to settlement from outside.
Settlement schemes were popular with the poorer and less fortunate classes of
Sinhalese."

Che Guevara made no bones about the significance of alienation: the ultimate and
most important revolutionary aspiration (is) to see man liberated from his
alienation.

India's Vacillating Role
The role of India in Sri Lanka's civil war was a major problem. India's Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi, son of assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, first
supported the LTTE. His air force even dropped 25 tons of aid in their territory
in Jaffna (Operation Poomalai). A month following this, the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace
Accord was signed between Gandhi and the reluctant Prime Minister Ranasinghe
Presmadasa, under pressure from his president, JR Jayewardene.

The July 29, 1987 accord was expected to resolve the ongoing civil war. Colombo
agreed to devolution of power to the Tamil provinces, and its military was to
withdraw in exchange for the Tamil rebels' disarmament. The LTTE had not been
made party to the talks but reluctantly agreed to surrender arms to the Indian
Peace Keeping Force. Within a few months, however, both sides flared into an
active confrontation. Indian soldiers died in far greater numbers than Tamil
rebels: 1,500 killed and 4,500 wounded.

In January 1989, Premadasa was elected President on a popular platform promising
that the Indian Peace Keeping Force would leave within three months. The police
action was unpopular in India as well, especially with some 50 million Tamil
Nadu people. Gandhi refused to withdraw India's troops, however, believing that
the only way to end the civil war was to politically force Premadasa and to
militarily force the LTTE to accept the accord. But, in December 1989,
Vishwanath Pratap Singh was elected India's Prime Minister and completed the
pullout.

On May 21, 1991, in an act of revenge over India's militarist actions, a female
LTTE member blew up Rajiv Gandhiin a suicide bomb attack. In 1992, India became
the first government, even before Sri Lanka, to declare the LTTE a terrorist
group.

President Premadasa resumed the civil war, which became stalemated. Many forces
were angry with him, including a rival Sinhalese leader Lalith Athulathmudali,
who sought an impeachment motion against Premadasa, in 1991. Lalith was an
adamant supporter of Zionism.

When Athulathmudali, a pro-Israeli power broker, challenged Premadasa two years
ago with an impeachment motion in the parliament, Premadasa openly accused
Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel, of trying to topple him. In his
address to the Sri Lankan parliament, Premadasa said,

"I had Israeli interests section removed. In such a context there is nothing to
be surprised about the Mossad rising up against me. Please remember that there
are among us traitors who have gone to Israeli universities and lectured there
and earned dirty money."

In April 1993, Athulathmudali was murdered. Eight days later, on Mayday,
Premadasa was murdered. The LTTE did not claim responsibility for these
assassinations but were so blamed by Sinhalese and the mass media.

When Athulathmudali was assassinated last April, the members of his party
immediately accused Premadasa for ordering the killing. The murder of Premadasa
could have been a return hit planned and executed by the Mossad which had lost
its major card in Sri Lankan politics.

The second Eelam war lasted from 1989 until November 1994 when the People's
Alliance (led by SLFP) candidate, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, won the
presidency. But peace negotiations broke down and the war continued from 1995
until the end of 2001 when ceasefire negotiations made progress. But not before
the LTTE proved to the Sri Lanka government and military, with 230,000 well
armed troops, that it was its equal. With somewhere around 5000 guerrillas,
along with a small Sea Tigers boat unit, which made some pirate hits for
funding, and even a few light civilian aircraft, the Sky Tigers, which sometimes
made damaging raids against the Air Force, the LTTE won many military victories.

The Sri Lankan military often bombed civilian Tamils in the LTTE-controlled
zones. It claimed that they were legitimate collateral damage given that the
guerrillas allegedly forced them to remain against their will. The civilian
hostage charge was widely reported as truth by the west and its mass media, as
was the allegation that the LTTE forces children into armed combat.

On January 31, 1996, the LTTE stunned the nation when it bombed the Central Bank
in Colombo, which managed most financial business accounts. One suicide bomber
with 200 kilos of explosions drove through the main gate and exploded, wiping
out many bank floors and several other buildings. Behind him came a vehicle with
two cadres firing rifles and launchers. They escaped but were later captured.
Material damage was tremendous but more so was the loss of 53 lives and injuries
to 1,400 people, most of them not military targets.

On July 24, 1996, LTTE forces bombed a commuter train killing 70 Sinhalese
civilians. By the end of the 1990s, both sides had killed tens of thousands of
people. Civilians were targeted by both sides. The Tigers claimed that civilians
were targeted only when associated with military installations. But some
attacks, such as the train, were unjustifiable. Furthermore, the LTTE has often
murdered other Tamils who also seek autonomy but were not part of the LTTE or
had made public critiques. It has, for example, killed several leaders of the
TULF.

On April 22, 2000 LTTE forces surprisingly overran Sri Lanka's Elephant Pass
military base on Jaffna. Over 1,000 troops were killed and huge quantities of
arms and ammunition were taken. On July 24, 2001, the LTTE again stunned the
nation and the world when it attacked the only international airport and the
nearby military base.

Around 3:30 am on July 24, 14 members of the LTTE Black Tiger suicide squad
infiltrated Katunayake air base. After destroying electricity transformers to
plunge the base in darkness they cut through the barbed wire surrounding the
base to begin their assault. Using rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank weapons
and assault rifles, the militants attacked the air force planes. They were not
able to attack the aircraft in the hangars but did destroy eight military
aircraft on the tarmac: three Nanchange K-8 trainer aircraft, one Mil Mi-17
helicopter, one Mil Mi-24 helicopter, two LAI Kfir fighter jets, and a Mig-27.
Five K-8s and one MiG-27 were also damaged. A total of 26 aircraft were either
damaged or destroyed in the attack.

Eight Tigers and three air force officers died in the battle at the air base.
The six remaining LTTE members then crossed the runway to nearby Bandaranaike
Airport. Using their weapons, they began blowing up any civilian aircraft they
could find, which were all empty. One Airbus340 was destroyed by an explosive
charge; an A330 was destroyed by a rocket fired from the control tower. In
addition, an A320-200 and an A340-300 were damaged in the assault.

All 14 guerrillas were killed, along with six Sri Lankan air force personnel and
one soldier killed by friendly fire; 12 soldiers were injured, along with three
Sri Lankan civilians and a Russian engineer. The cost of replacing the civilian
aircraft was estimated at $350 million USD. The attack caused a slowdown in the
economy of Sri Lanka, to about -1.4%. Tourism also plummeted, dropping 15.5% at
the end of the year.

Cease Fire
During two decades of civil war, the LTTE had several times offered a ceasefire
on the condition of negotiations to establish peace and ethnic equality. With
this military victory, the guerrilla army offered a unilateral ceasefire. Some
national voices and many international ones were also pressing for a ceasefire.
Norway took concrete steps, but it was this spectacular military victory and the
loss to the economy that forced the government to the bargaining table.

The formal Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed on February 22, 2002. Prime
Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and LTTE leader Velupillai Pirabakaran signed the
agreement, alongside mediator Jan Petersen representing Norway's foreign
ministry.

Provisions provided for each side holding their ground positions. Neither side
was to engage in any offensive military operation or move munitions into the
area controlled by the other side.

The LTTE proposed an Interim Self-Government Authority (ISGA) to administer the
Tamil homeland, pending final agreement and elections. The ceasefire was
monitored by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. It was staffed by designees from
Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland. The US, UK and other EU countries
had observers. Headquarters were established in Colombo, and there were 60
monitors in six district teams and two naval ones. The SLMM monitored violations
and mediated between the two parties but could not enforce sanctions. Many
Sinhalese considered the Monitoring Mission, especially Norway, of being partial
to the Tigers.

During the ceasefire, progress was made in agricultural development and general
infrastructure in the Tamil Homeland. Many foreigners were invited to observe
and participate in building Tamil Eelam. Impressive first-hand accounts have
been written about the progress in many areas: administrative, economic and a
social welfare network. While voices friendly to this process praised the
advances made, many also questioned the lack of civilian input in the
decision-making process.

The LTTE did not emphasize an international political solidarity movement. It
did appeal for economic donations, which poured to it, especially from Tamils in
the Diaspora. The LTTE stopped speaking of Marxism or building a socialist
independent state. It emphasized winning militarily if Sri Lanka continued
preventing an autonomous Tamil homeland and constructing a social welfare state
with cooperative and private enterprises.

The Tigers became so respectable they could openly purchase weaponry from some
countries not directly under the thumb of US-EU-Israel or their partial
antagonists: China, Iran and Pakistan. A May 29, 2009 Times Online piece quotes
the editor of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, saying that the LTTE used
11 merchant ships to deliver weapons, many of which they got from Bulgaria,
Ukraine, Cyprus, Thailand and Croatia. Even the World Bank recognized the LTTE
as an unofficial State, according to its representative in Sri Lanka, Peter
Harrold, in 2005.

The LTTE was even building a Tamil University where Tamils in the Diaspora would
have taught. I spoke with one of them, a man who had earned a doctorate degree
in environmental science and taught in European universities. He frequently
visited the homeland he had left three decades previously. He hoped that he
would return and teach once the university would be opened.

An activist in independence forces using peaceful methods, he wished to remain
anonymous. His impressions were that the Tigers were the dominating factor in
civilian administration but that as long as no one objected one felt safe in the
Homeland areas whenever Colombo's armed forces were not bombing. He was critical
that the LTTE armed forces had resorted to terrorist methods in their history,
such as assassinating political critics. The professor, however, did not think
the LTTE forced children into combat or used civilians as human shields,
generally.

"Tigers were good people, intelligent and sensitive to people and nature. But
contradictions did exist. They were a strange animal."

Cease Fire Ends
On December 26, 2004, the greatest earthquake-tsunami ever recorded (9.3) hit
Southeast Asia. Eleven countries were deeply affected: 230,000 were killed or
missing. Sri Lanka was one of the worst disasters. About 40,000 people were
killed or missing; 1.5 million were displaced from their homes. International
aid poured in but did not arrive in the North and East due to Sinhalese
political party opposition. The LTTE organized all the aid it could muster for
hundreds of thousands in the Tamil homeland. Foreign volunteers and emergency
relief organizations praised the LTTE for its effective and caring work. There
are many accounts of this.

Mahinda Rajapakse was appointed prime minister April 6, 2004, and then elected
President on November 19, 2005 with just 50.3% of the vote. He was the pro-war
candidate of a new coalition, the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Tamil
political parties and many foreign relief groups accused Rajapakse of diverting
Tsunami relief funds designated for their homeland. In this complex reality,
those parties most adamant about refusing aid to suffering Tamils and who
demanded an end to the ceasefire with the objective of launching an all-out war
were those claiming to be either hard-core Marxist-Communist-Trotskyists or
self-proclaimed non-violent Buddhists.

UFPA is undoubtedly the broadest coalition of progressive forces in the country.
This coalition, which came into being in 2004 upon a platform of new liberal
socio economic program and a resolve to defeat separatist terrorism, has since
mobilized people around a social democratic agenda.س

This coalition is not just made up of alleged progressives but of social
capitalists and self-styled democratic socialists. At the start, the coalition
parties were: Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Sri Lanka
Mahajana Pakshaya, Muslim National Unity Alliance, Mahajana Eksath Peramuna,
Democratic United National Front, and Desha Vimukthi Janatha Party.

The Communist Party of Sri Lanka and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party signed a
memorandum of understanding with the SLFP so their candidates would take part in
parliamentary elections in the new coalition. They also joined the UPFA. On
April 2, 2004, the alliance won 45.6% of the popular vote and took 105 out of
225 seats.

A Buddhist political party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), was founded in
February 2004 and participated in the 2004 parliamentary elections, winning 6%
of the vote for nine seats. In 2007, it formally joined the hodge-podge UPFA
coalition government and was given a ministry post.

On April 3, 2008, JHU's leader gave his reasons for warring against Tamils to
the United States government financed Voice of America radio station.

"Athurliye Rathana, a Buddhist monk who heads the Jathika Hela Urumaya party in
Sri Lanka's parliament, wants to end the suffering by putting a quick end to the
war. Speaking with VOA at a seaside hotel in this former tourist haven, Rathana
says he supports the government's latest military offensive to quash the rebel
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Anytime a militant group is harmful to peaceful people, then government should
have the right to exercise constitutional law and order, Rathana said. And, LTTE
is unlawful and so, under our constitutional law, anyone cannot exercise
militancy. But with the LTTE separatist movement, the government has some duty
to control their military activities. I say only one thing, Please do your
duty."

For comments like that, the Sri Lankan media has branded Rathana the war monk.
His sentiments are common in Sri Lanka's majority ethnic Sinhala community.

Rathana is a celebrated figure in this predominantly Buddhist nation, where
monks are cherished for their spiritual guidance. The pro-war activism of
Rathana and others has spurred as many as 30,000 Sinhalese young men to join the
army in the past few months.

The UPFA alliance of apparently conflicting ideologies and economic policies is
so strange that one can easily be confused about who is who and why their
politics are such that they are. After a month's research, having begun as a
total novice to this region, I am unclear about why various political forces
take the position they do not only about the Tigers but about the entire Tamil
ethnic group. For many Sinhalese, an engrained racism is clearly a major
motivation. But how can one explain that a Tamil group, Eelam People's
Democratic Party, also takes part in this coalition of Sinhalese racists? The
EPDP is a paramilitary group fighting against the LTTE alongside the government.
It even has one member in parliament. EPDP also assassinates civilians,
including BBC reporter Nimalarajan Mylvaganam.

The Cease Fire Agreement was a thorn in the side of the new ruling coalition.
Although the government claimed that the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission favored
the Tiger guerrillas, its monitors had lodged 3006 violations committed by the
LTTE and only 133 by the government, as of June 30, 2005. From May 2006 onward
to its termination in January 2008, the Monitoring Mission was hampered by
worsening hostilities, especially following a Sea Tiger boat attack on a navy
convoy, May 11, 2006.

The European Union then placed the Tigers on its terrorist list, while appearing
to be even-handed by calling upon the Sri Lankan government to end its culture
of impunity and to curb violence in its areas of control.

Sweden, Finland and Denmark, as members of EU, also considered the Tigers to be
terrorists, and the LTTE objected to their membership on the Monitoring Mission.
They withdrew leaving only Norway and Iceland with 20 monitors. The reduced Sri
Lanka Monitoring Mission disbanded in 2008. The path for a full war was clear.

The Terrorists: International Support for Sri Lanka's Racist Discrimination (IV)

The Geneva Declaration on Terrorism, passed May 29, 1987 by the UN general
assembly, points out that the main perpetrators of terrorism are governments
striving to keep down parts of their populations or other peoples. In this
document, at that time, the main culprits are the United States, Israel, South
Africa and the many dictatorships in Latin America at that time.

State terrorism manifests itself in: 1) police state practices against its own
people to dominate through fear by surveillance, disruption of group meetings,
control of the news media, beatings, torture, false and mass arrests, false
charges and rumors, show trials, killings, summary executions and capital
punishments;

The terrorism of modern state power and its high technology weaponry exceeds
qualitatively by many orders of magnitude the political violence relied upon by
groups aspiring to undo oppression and achieve liberation.

Peoples who are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and
against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination have
the right to use force to accomplish their objectives within the framework of
international humanitarian law.

This document applies to the situation of the Sri Lankan governments since 1983
as well as to the LTTE, and the proportions of the use of violence are as
written by the general assembly. The LTTE did, however, after time, go beyond
the framework of international humanitarian law.

One voice regarding terrorism and what lies behind these atrocities appears so
credible to me, and so tragic in itself, that I quote him extensively to show
that all warring parties in Sri Lanka acted as terrorists. Here are some of the
last words of Sri Lankan journalist Manilal Wickrematunge Lasantha, a Sinhalese,
who predicted his assassination shortly before it occurred, on January 8, 2009.
His newspaper, The Sunday Leader, published his own obituary three days later.

"Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of
the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to
control the organs of liberty.

Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy.
Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours,
secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united.

We have consistently espoused the view that while separatist terrorism must be
eradicated, it is more important to address the root causes of terrorism, and
urged government to view Sri Lanka's ethnic strife in the context of history and
not through the telescope of terrorism. We have also agitated against state
terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror
that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own
citizens.

The LTTE are among the most ruthless and bloodthirsty organisations ever to have
infested the planet. There is no gainsaying that it must be eradicated. But to
do so by violating the rights of Tamil citizens, bombing and shooting them
mercilessly, is not only wrong but shames the Sinhalese, whose claim to be
custodians of the dhamma (the teachings of Buddha, which lead to enlightenment)
is forever called into question by this savagery, much of which is unknown to
the public because of censorship.

What is more, a military occupation of the country's north and east will require
the Tamil people of those regions to live eternally as second-class citizens,
deprived of all self respect.

It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on
another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government's
sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the
perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all
these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the
government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.

The irony in this is that, unknown to most of the public, Mahinda Rajapakse, the
president] and I have been friends for more than a quarter century. Sadly, for
all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years
you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on
human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no
other President before you."

When Lasantha's dramatic editorial appeared, he had already been murdered on his
way to work by four men on motorcycles. The probable conspirator behind the
execution was Lasantha's friend's brother, war secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, a
naturalized citizen of the USA. In December 2008, he had censored the Sunday
Leader from publishing any criticism of his actions. He had earlier threatened
the careers and lives of other journalists.

A week before Lasanth's murder, G. Rajapakse's army captured the capital of the
de facto Eelam state, Kilinochchi. LTTE guerrilla army fled but not all the
civilians had evacuated before the government's troops entered and butchered
scores or hundreds. On August 25, 2009, England's Channel 4 News broadcast
footage showing Sri Lankan forces executing nine Tamils stripped naked. One of
the military's soldiers had filmed this atrocity on his mobile telephone.
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (Sinhalese and Tamils) obtained the film
and presented it to Channel 4, which showed it after verifying its authenticity.

The United States government praised Sri Lanka for its military offensive. The
US embassy in Colombo issued this statement: "The United States does not
advocate that the Government of Sri Lanka negotiate with the LTTE."

Following this crushing defeat, the LTTE was reduced to an area of a few square
kilometers. Many thousands of civilians had left their homes to reach so-called
No Fire Zones, which the S.L. army began setting up on January 20th. Conditions
were sub-human (and they continue to be so for over two-hundred and fifty
thousand interned civilians in various camps as of this writing), and they were
(are) forced to remain. Amnesty International, more often than not a reliable
observer of international conflicts, one of the few NGO's that does not take
money from any government or political party, recently published a report about
these camps. Sri Lanka is violating rules established by the United Nations,
including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, applying to
displaced persons.

Here is an excerpt from a civilian inmate. "Knowing that many civilians were not
able to move, the government restarted shelling. They even hit the No Fire Zone
so even that small area was not protected. When we heard the supersonic Kfirs
[Israel jets] overhead we used to rush to the bunker and hide. That was our life
for months just squatting in bunkers."

Amnesty stated: "The Government of Sri Lanka exacerbated this isolation by
restricting access by outsiders to the conflict area. In September 2008, Defense
Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaska issued a directive ordering all humanitarian and
UN agencies to leave the Vanni and remove all equipment and vehicles. This order
also applied to journalists, opposition politicians and humanitarian
organizations."

John Pilger described Sri Lanka's isolation strategy this way: "The Sri Lankan
government has learned an old lesson from, I suspect, a modern master: Israel.
In order to conduct a slaughter, you ensure the pornography is unseen, illicit
at best. You ban foreigners and their cameras from Tamil towns like
Mulliavaikal, which was bombarded recently by the Sri Lankan army, and you lie
that the 75 people killed in the hospital were blown up quite willfully by a
Tamil suicide bomber."

>From 2006-7 onward President Rajapakse was spending nearly one-quarter ($1.5
billion) of Sri Lanka's national budget of $7.5 billion (2008 figures) on war.
By January 2009, the Sri Lankan military, refortified especially by Israel,
Pakistan and China, had recaptured much of the Tamil Homeland. From the end of
2008 to Sri Lanka's military victory over LTTE, it had indiscriminately bombed
Tamil civilians even in the "safe zones." where the government had told them to
flee. Many thousands were killed.

After the fall of Tamil Eelam's de facto capital, it still took the far
superiorly armed and manned army four and one-half months to defeat the
guerrilla army. There were few close contact battles. The LTTE fighters and
civilians in the remaining Homeland area were subject to shelling from the air
and by long-distance artillery. Amnesty International reported:

"Eyewitness accounts of the final months of the war painted a grim picture of
deprivation of food, water and medical care; fear, injury and loss of life
suffered by civilians trapped by the conflict, both the LTTE and Sri Lankan
government forces committed violations of international humanitarian law. The
LTTE forcibly recruited children as soldiers, used civilians as human shields
against the Sri Lankan army's offensive, and attacked civilians who tried to
flee. The Sri Lankan armed forces launched indiscriminate attacks with artillery
on areas densely populated by civilians. Hospitals were shelled, resulting in
death and injuries among patients and staff."

Sri Lanka's military achieved victory by murdering any Tamil in its way, and
because of the extensive military force provided to it by many capitalist and
so-called socialist states. Here are the major players:

1. India has provided weaponry, radar and training to Sri Lanka's military since
1987. It often hides what aid it gives or sells since so many of its citizens
are against S.L.'s brutality against Tamils. After a period of providing little
military assistance, it increased its aid at the end of 2008 when the government
launched its all-out offensive. As late as April 2009, India sent three fast
attack boats and a missile corvette (INS Vinash), part of $500 million in total
aid. It has also turned over LTTE fugitives to S.L. India sees its traditional
role as the dominant nation in South Asia being replaced by China's fast-growing
presence, which is another reason for its support to Sri Lanka's Buddhist
government despite the fact that 80% of India's 1.2 billion people practice
Hinduism with less than 1% Buddhists. On the world plan, India hip hops from one
antagonist force to another. There is no clear direction.

2. The United States of America has been arming and financing Sri Lanka for most
of the civil war period. The Indian Ocean is a vital waterway in which half of
the world's containerized cargo passes through. Its waters carry heavy traffic
of petroleum products. The US signed a ten year Acquisition and Cross-Servicing
Agreement (ACSA) with Sri Lanka on 5 March 2007 which provides, along with other
things, logistics supplies and refueling facilities. The US already has Voice of
America installation at Tricomalee, which can be used for surveillance.

>From at least the 1990s, the US has provided military training, financing and
weapons sales averaging $1.5 million annually. During the cease fire, in 2002,
this sum went down to $259,999 for military training only. Bush was especially
glad for Sri Lanka's terrorism, and encouraged Colombo to resume the civil war,
in 2006, which his government financed with $2.9 million. The Pentagon provided
counter-insurgency training, maritime radar, patrols of US warships and
aircraft.

At the end of Bush's second term, the US was forced to cut back on aid given
that it was bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. That, coupled with critical
public opinion, organized by the Diaspora, of state terrorism and systematic
discrimination of Tamils, prompted congress to make noises about abuses of human
rights by not only LTTE but also about the use of children in paramilitary
forces of the Sri Lankan government. Nevertheless, in 2008, $1.45 million in
military financing and training was granted the government out of a total of
$7.4 million in total aid. The US made noises about killing a humanitarian
crisis, when the Sri Lankan army was about to finish the war but it never took
affirmative action to bring the war to an end. Its howling about human rights is
only a veiled threat to the Sri Lankan government that it should not do anything
prejudicial to its interests, that is, keep China at bay.

3. Israel was officially re-awarded diplomatic relations, in May 2000, after Sri
Lanka had severed them, in 1970, in protest at Israel's continued illegal
expansion into Palestinian territory. Nevertheless, Israel continued to operate
inside S.L. out of a special interests office set up in the US embassy. Under
the table, however, Sri Lanka's successive regimes embraced Israel's military
advisors, a special commando unit in the police, and Mossad counter-intelligence
agents who sought to drive a wedge between Muslims and Tamils. After S.L.
military defeat at Elephant Pass, it appealed to Israel for military aid. Israel
sent 16 of its supersonic Kfir fighter jets, some Dvora fast naval attack craft,
and electronic and imagery surveillance equipment, plus advisors and
technicians. Israel personnel took part in military attacks on Tamil units, and
its pilots flew attack aircraft. Tigers shot down one Kfir. Just before the end
of the war, Prime Minister Wickremanayake was in Israel to make bigger deals
with Israeli arms suppliers.

4. U.K./EU. In 2005, British arms export rose by 60%, according to John Pilger.
In 2008, 1.4 million in arms export was approved. France sent patrol boats, and
other EU countries continued but reduced military aid. The EU had never been
required to offer much aid given that its major allies were so much engaged.

5. Japan has long been Sri Lanka's greatest economic donor until China overtook
that position in 2008-9. Japan has sold technology and offered generous loans,
but it has also outright donated millions more every year. In 1997, for
instance, it granted $52 million outright but $26 in technical cooperation. In
2001, aid was at $310 million. It also paid for the government television
station, Rupavahini. While Japan's aid, sales and loans are not directed at
defense, these huge sums allow the Sri Lanka governments to use more of its
budget for war. This is the case as well with several other Asian countries.

6. Iran: "We don't need your money (with all those strings)", a Sri Lanka
treasury functionary purportedly told World Bank officials last year. The
international community (US-EU governments) had begun to cut back on aid and
even to ask questions about treatment of Tamil civilians, whose cries were being
heard from the Diaspora. So, Sri Lanka played one power against another:
India-Pakistan/China, US-China, Israel-Iran/Libyaرthe West-NAM. In 2008-9,
Iran provided $1.9 billion in credit to build an oil refinery, in order to
process S.L.'s crude oil, and it donated $450 million for a hydropower project.
Iran is US's most important inside ally with the Quisling Iraq government. And
Libya has most recently been approached for a $500 million loan by Sri Lanka.
Libya is with and against Iran.

7. Pakistan came into the Sri Lanka debacle, in 2008, at the encouragement of
China. At the beginning of 2009, it provided $100 million in military assistance
loans; it gave Chinese-origin small arms, and offered pilot training for S.L.'s
new Chinese aircraft. Pakistan is also an ally of the US in its terror war
against terror. Its governments are part of the war against Afghanistan, which
has spread throughout most of Pakistan and split the population. Here have we a
country allied with Cuba and ALBA et al. in NAM at the same time a partner with
the world's greatest terrorist state.

8. China entered the picture in 2005.China is the world's no 2 oil consumer
after the United States. China has stepped up efforts to secure sea lanes and
transport routes that are vital for its oil supplies. In April 2007, just one
month after the US's ACSA deal with SL, China's Poly Technologies supplied $36.5
million arms to Sri Lanka. A $150 million contract was given to China's Huawei,
which has close links with the Chinese intelligence wing MSS, to build a
country-wide infrastructure for communications.

In 2008, China invested five times over what it did in 2007. Its biggest
investment is a vast construction project at Hambantota on the southern coast,
which it will use as a re-fuelling and docking station for its navy. Ever since
Sri Lanka agreed to the plan, in March 2007, China has given it all the aid,
arms and diplomatic support it needs to defeat the Tigers, without worrying
about the West, wrote The Times (London). China acts without asking questions
about the treatment and conditions of workers and minorities. In April 2007,
S.L. made a deal to buy Chinese ammunition and ordnance for is military. China
gave it six F7 jet fighters after a Sky Tiger raid that destroyed ten military
aircraft, in 2007. One Chinese fighter was soon shot down by Tigers. China has
also given or sold on credit: an anti-submarine warfare vessel, gunboats and
landing craft, battle tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and air surveillance radars. In
June 2009, after the conclusion of the civil war, it signed an $891 million
agreement for the Norochcholai Coal Power project. Chinese companies were
granted an Economic Zone for 33 years. Huichen Investments Holdings Limited is
to invest $28 million in next three years in the Mirigama Zone. For the first
time a specific area was given to a foreign country. China is making major
inroads into Sri Lanka, causing concern in the US-India Axis.

In the last few months of the war, Sri Lanka's military used China's weapons to
systematically bombard what was left of the Tamil Eelam homeland. British media
reported that 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed just in the last five days. Yet
President Rajapakse claimed that not one Tamil civilian was killed by military
shelling.

According to the pro-imperialist The Times (London), aerial photographs,
official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony tell a story of the
Sri Lankan's fierce barrage of three weeks constant shelling in a five-kilometer
area where 300,000 Tamil civilians were. The Times estimated that about 1,000
civilians were killed each day for three weeks until May 19. With most of the
leadership dead, and tens of thousands civilians slaughtered, the LTTE
surrendered.

One of The Times sources for these figures, and that responsibility lay with SL
military, is the Catholic priest Amalraj, who was there until May 16. At the
time of article, May 29, 2009, he was interned in the militarized Manik Farm
camp along with 200,000 others.

Even the editor of the pro-imperialist Armed Forces of the UK magazine contended
that it was not the Tigers who fired upon their own people but that is was the
Sri Lankan government, which used imprecise air-burst and ground-impact mortars
to annihilate anything alive.

The Times piece ended on this sad note: S.L was cleared of any wrongdoing by the
UN Human Rights Council after winning the backing of countries including China,
Egypt, India and Cuba.

Sri Lanka: Post-War Internment Hell (V)

The impunity with which the Sri Lankan government is able to commit these crimes
(referring to 2009 war atrocities, including brutal internment of 300,000
Tamils) actually unveils the deeply ingrained racist prejudice that is precisely
what led to the marginalization and alienation of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in the
first place. That racism has a long history ذ of social ostracism,
economic blockades, pogroms and torture. The nature of the decades-long civil
war, which started as a peaceful protest, has its roots in this, wrote author
Arundhati Roy.

"This is something similar to what occurred in Gaza or worse, because neither
observers nor journalists had access to the war zone, stated a UN source who
asked for anonymity. The army acknowledges that 6,200 soldiers and 22,000
guerrillas died in the last three years of the longest civil war in Asia. The UN
affirms that between 80,000 and 100,000 persons died in the conflict," wrote
Elisa Reche of Prensa Marea Socialista.

"During the war," Reche continued, "the army had 200,000 troops. Now with peace,
100,000 are being incorporated. A strange peace it is that requires more troops
than in actual combat."

More troops are needed because systematic ethnic cleansing is now the order of
the day for the Tamil people. Their Homeland will be obliterated by introducing
more Sinhalese settlers. The same strategy, as John Pilger pointed out, that
Israel uses against Palestinians.

This is what M.K. Bhadrakumar, an ambassador for India who served in Sri Lanka
and other countries, wrote about the day after Sri Lanka declared victory.

"See, they have already solved the Tamil problem in the eastern provincesة
The Tamils are no more the majority community in these provinces. Similarly,
from tomorrow, they will commence a concerted, steady colonization program of
the Northern provinces where Prabhakaran reigned supreme for two decades. They
will ensure incrementally that the northern regions no more remain as Tamil
provinces. Give them a decade at the most. The Tamil problem will become a relic
of the bloody history of the Indian sub-continent."

Ethnic cleansing goes hand-in-hand with the policy of imprisoning and
mistreating hundreds of thousands of Tamils. For more than a year before its
military victory, the Sri Lanka government enticed Tamils, wishing to flee the
war zone, into so-called "welfare centers" or villages. Tens of thousands became
Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), and are thus subject to United Nations
regulations concerning decent living conditions, food and water, freedom of
movement and the right to leave and rejoin families. All these rights and
necessities have been denied them.

"Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy," President
J.R. told the Daily Telegraph (UK) on July 11, 1983.

A quarter-century later, the current president is striving to fulfill his
predecessor's genocidal intentions. Mahinda Rajapakse has claimed that no IDP is
held against his/her will and all are treated well. However, the few United
Nations visitors, there are no official investigators into abuses since the
Human Rights Council majority blocked such a possibility, who come to observe
have quite another picture.

When UN's political chief, Lynn Pascoe, visited camps in September he said
people were not free or well treated, "This kind of closed regime goes directly
against the principles under which we work in assisting IDPs all around the
world."

Rajapakse told Pascoe another tale about "free movement". He said that detention
was necessary because the army was clearing the area for mines, and it was still
looking for guerrillas hiding among civilians. However, as the UN resident
coordinator reported, and Amnesty International quoted: "Under international
humanitarian law, captured combatants may be held pending the cessation of
hostilities. Once active hostilities have ceased, prisoners of war must be
released without delay."

At of July, there were 9,400 individuals with purported links to the LTTE held
separately from the rest of the population. They have not been released nearly
half-a-year after internment.

Amnesty International also reported that the camps are clearly militarized. The
19-member Presidential Task Force established in mid-May to plan and coordinate
resettlement, rehabilitation and development of the Northern Province is headed
by Major General CA Chandrasiri, who was also appointed governor of the
province. All inmates are enclosed by barbed-wire fences, guarded and brutalized
by well-armed soldiers.

Arrests have been reported from the camps and Sri Lankan human rights defenders
have alleged that enforced disappearances have also occurred, wrote Amnesty.

Sri Lanka's history of large-scale enforced disappearances dating back to the
1980s, and the lack of independent monitoring, raises grave concerns that
enforced disappearances and other violations of human rights may be
occurringة Previous research shows that persons suspected by the
government of being members or supporters of LTTE are at grave risk of
extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and torture, cruel, inhumane
and degrading treatment.

Although the government calls these facilities "welfare villages," they are
effectively detention camps. Amnesty International also reported that not only
are people not free to move as they wish, women and girls are raped by soldiers,
and people live in sewage, disease-infested conditions, with little food and
water and medical attention. They die in droves because of these imposed
conditions.

Women and children are especially mistreated, which was the subject that James
Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, complained about to Sri Lankan authorities, who
then expelled him from the country. Elder described the unimaginable suffering
of children caught in the fighting, including babies he had seen with shrapnel
wounds.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had refrained from criticizing Sri
Lanka's government, leveling his critique only at LTTE for carrying out
atrocities. But when he briefly visited one camp less than a week after the end
of the war, he said:

"I have traveled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far
the most appalling scenes I have seen. I sympathize fully with all of the
displaced persons," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told CNN after visiting
Manik Farm, the most presentable of Sri Lanka's squalid and dangerous internment
camps for Tamils civilians. The UN Chief has also promised international action
regarding the heavy shelling of civilian populations during the recent fighting.

Out of the 280,000 IDPs after the end of the war (there were nearly one-half
million over a year's period), only between 15,000 and 40,000 had been released
by November 1. Half of them, perhaps, have been ransomed. The Sunday Times wrote
about human trafficking at the internment camps. Relatives were made to pay camp
authorities in order to secure their release.

Future
A week after the end of the war, the LTTE communicated that several of its
leaders were killed, but the organization would continue struggling for an
independent Tamil Eelam in peaceful ways. July 22, the LTTE announced that its
chief of international relations, Selvarsa Pathmanathan, known as KP, was made
the new leader, and that a new strategy for a free Tamil Eelam would occur. On
August 8, England's The Independent wrote that Pathmanathan was under arrest by
Sri Lanka and held incommunicado.

For us solidarity activists, left-wing organizations, and governments considered
to be progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe that our task
must be to press for the lives and rights of the Tamil people. Australia's
Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance said it well in its
October 2009 international situation report:

"Now the Tamil struggle has entered a new phase. The immediate campaign must
focus on defence of basic human rights, release and resettlement of the
Internally Displaced Persons currently held in SL government concentration
camps, an end to murders, torture, rapes, and provision of basic housing, food
and drinking water to the Tamil people under brutal occupation."

As a solidarity activist, who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to
conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to induce oppressive and
terrorist governments to engage in a process aimed at peace with justice, I
condemn all perpetrators of terrorism and demand they change tactics to ones
that are morally in accordance with our ideology for socialism, for justice with
equality.

I find that most, if not all, armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even
acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case
with FARC and PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous
struggle. They are up against, as was the more brutal LTTE, much greater
military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. Remember
the ANC in South Africa's war for liberation. They committed much the same.

The main reason why I am on their side, why I have been a leftist solidarity
activist and writer for nearly half-a-century is a matter of basic ethics. I
define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our
conscious hand without being attacked, invaded, oppressed beyond bare. A moral
person, organization, political party, government acts in daily life and in the
struggle for justice with that ethic in mind. These are my thoughts on morality.

1. We act to so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under
another.

2. In combat against oppressors and invaders, we do not
kill non-combatant civilians nor forcefully recruit them, or use them as
hostages.

3. We struggle to create equality for
all.

4. We abolish all profit-making based upon the exploitation of
labor or the oppression of any person, group of people or class. Instead, we
build an economy based upon principles of justice and equality, one in which no
one goes hungry, sharing equitably our resources and production.

5.
We struggle to create a political system based upon participation where all have
a voice in decision-making of vital matters, in local, national and
international policies.

6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in
each of us.

After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there
for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, which fortunately
only lasted two years, it acted in a moral manner. Cuba's revolutionary armed
struggle was exceptional in this way. The Vietnamese struggle against the
invaders of France and the USA was so conducted as well. There are a few other
examples: the original Sandinistas is, perhaps, one.

I think that the key reason why so many millions of people the world love and
respect Che Guevara is because of his moral stance, of his example as a just
revolutionary leader. I conclude this all-too-long essay with these oft-quoted
words from Che's Socialism and Man.

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is
guided by a great feeling of love. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize
this love of the people, the most sacred cause, and make it one and indivisible,
one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth
in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an
isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living
humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as
examples, as a moving force."

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BBC NEWS
Seven killed in NE India blasts

At least seven people have been killed in two bomb blasts in India's
north-eastern state of Assam, police say.

The explosions happened within minutes in Nalbari, 70km (43 miles) from the
state capital, Guwahati.

Police said the two devices were mounted on bicycles left near a Nalbari police
station and some 25 other people were hurt, reports said.

The police suspect separatist militants from the United Liberation Front of
Assam (Ulfa) carried out the blasts.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for Sunday's attacks.

Paramilitaries deployed

Television images showed injured people being dragged away a fire caused by one
explosion, minutes before another blast nearby.

There were unconfirmed reports of a third blast in a nearby town less than an
hour after the first two explosions.

Police and paramilitary troops were deployed across Assam last week after the
reported arrest of two Ulfa leaders prompted the group to enforce a 12-long
strike across the state.

It has been fighting for an independent homeland in north-east India since 1979.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8372801.stm

Published: 2009/11/22 11:44:08 GMT

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BBC NEWS
'Good progress' in Karabakh talks

Azeri and Armenian leaders have made significant progress in talks on the
disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a French mediator has said.

But Bernard Fassier, of the Organisation for Co-operation and Security in
Europe, said "some difficulties" had been identified.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place in the region since a brutal war there in
the 1990s.

Both nations lay claim to the enclave, currently under Armenian control.

Earlier Azeri President Ilham Aliyev warned he could use force to seize the
enclave if the talks failed.

He said the talks, in Munich, Germany, were the final hope of settling the issue
peacefully.

Military threat

Mr Fassier said he and fellow mediators would prepare a new meeting, but gave no
indication of when it might take place.

"The discussion [led] the presidents and us to identify problems that still have
to be resolved," he said.

"But what is important, that we have been instructed to resolve these problems."

US mediator Robert Bradtke said he was impressed by the political will to seek a
settlement.

"I think today what was impressive was the way the two presidents worked with
us, ... their willingness to discuss points that are quite difficult and quite
controversial and I think, as someone who is relatively new to this process,
that is what impressed me the most," he said.

President Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisyan left the talks
without making any comment.

But in remarks broadcast on Azeri TV on Saturday, Mr Aliyev said that if the
Munich talks failed to reach agreement he would be "left with no other option".

"We have the full right to liberate our land by military means," he said.

Some 30,000 people died in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, which erupted after
the mountainous region declared independence in 1991.

The region and seven surrounding Azeri district have been under Armenian control
since the Russian-brokered ceasefire in 1994.

Azerbaijan has never ruled out military action to take back the land and has
spent billions on dollars on building up its military.

The meeting was the first since Armenia and Turkey - an ally of Azerbaijan -
normalised diplomatic relations after a century of hostility.

That move has left Azerbaijan feeling isolated, says the BBC's Tom Esslemont, in
the South Caucasus region.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8372747.stm

Published: 2009/11/22 20:04:37 GMT

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More powers for Wales says report (BBC News)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/wales_politics/8350333.stm



The assembly in Wales should be given full law-making powers in devolved areas
through a referendum, a key report has found.

The All Wales Convention, established by the assembly government, said a 'yes'
vote in favour of boosting powers was obtainable but not guaranteed.

Opinion polling for the convention indicated 47% of people would vote 'yes' in a
referendum and 37% 'no'.

Ministers are committed to holding a poll, if it is winnable, by May 2011.

Establishing the convention was central to the coalition deal which formed the
Labour-Plaid Cymru Welsh Assembly Government in the summer of 2007.



The issue of how Wales is governed matters, says Sir Emyr Jones Parry, chairman
of the covention
Its role was to gauge the level of public support for the Welsh assembly gaining
full law-making power and to provide the basis for ministers to decide whether
or not to trigger a referendum.

The 130-page report, compiled by chairman Sir Emyr Jones Parry and a 16-member
executive committee, said a "great fog" surrounded the public understanding of
the current system, where powers are transferred on a step-by-step basis from
Westminster to Cardiff Bay.

The document suggests the assembly should decide on whether or not to hold
another referendum by June 2010 - to allow the poll to be held before the next
assembly election.

'Legitimacy'

The convention unequivocally agreed that the transfer of full powers was
preferable to the current system.

Sir Emyr said: "What we found was that the current arrangements for giving the
assembly law-making powers... were seen as cumbersome and slow.


What is the National Assembly for Wales?

- It is made up of 60 elected Assembly Members (AMs), who represent a specific
area of Wales as a member of a political party or as an independent member.
- The Welsh Assembly Government is composed of up to 14 AMs
- AMs meet when the assembly is in session, to discuss issues of importance to
Wales and its people; they pose questions to assembly government ministers,
carry out debates on government policies and committee reports and examine Welsh
laws
- The assembly is able to make laws for Wales - called Measures - in certain
policy areas, including agriculture, education, the environment, health,
transport, housing, local government, sport and the Welsh language
- However, the assembly still has to ask MPs for permission to legislate in some
areas

"Having the powers all at once offers distinct advantages and can only be
obtained through a 'yes' vote in a referendum.

"If that happened, it would give particular legitimacy to the National Assembly
for Wales."

Receiving the report from Sir Emyr, outgoing First Minister and Labour leader
Rhodri Morgan said he would make a full statement on it next week.

He described the report as being "a little bit short of saying (there was) an
open and shut case - just move ahead straight away" with holding a referendum.

"It shows that in certain circumstances the appetite is there and the level of
understanding is there... to have a referendum which can be won," Mr Morgan
said.

"But it is not guaranteed we would win, the reasons for that are explored in the
document," he added.

Deputy First Minister and Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones said the document
contained "a recommendation which has this caveat about no guarantee (of a 'yes'
vote being achieved)".

"We've always said you wouldn't want to go into a referendum if you thought you
were going to lose it," he said.

"There is advice here also that if you are going to conduct a successful
referendum then the nature of the campaign and the nature of the question you
ask is important - how you present the arguments.

"And we as politicians will now have to consider...whether in presenting those
arguments (for a referendum) we enhance the case," Mr Jones added.

The convention concluded the current 60-member assembly could handle the
additional workload of making its own laws but did not rule out increasing the
number of members in future.

It also decided that giving the assembly full law-making powers would be broadly
neutral in cost terms.

The convention process cost �1.3m and received evidence from over 3,000
organisations and individuals across Wales.

Plaid AM Helen Mary Jones said the report demonstrated "the people of Wales are
ready for change" and she "looked forward" to discussions on when the referendum
should take place.

"As a nation, there is recognition that this is not about power for power's sake
but about giving our Welsh government the proper tools it needs to do the job at
hand," she said.



Sir Emyr Jones Parry presented the convention report on Wednesday.

That request must then go to Westminster, where the Secretary of State for Wales
decides whether to approve or deny the referendum.

Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, who devised the current system by which the assembly
obtains powers gradually, has argued it is "already delivering those
comprehensive law-making powers from Westminster at an ever-increasing pace".

In a letter to Sir Emyr in October 2008, whilst not a minister, Mr Hain said he
would "regard it personally as showing bad faith to Parliament" if a referendum
were to be held before or during 2011.

"Nor do I believe Parliament would agree to trigger such a referendum (before
that time)," he wrote.

Mr Hain had previous given MPs assurances there was "no case" for a referendum
during the current assembly term.

'Devastating critique'

It is unlikely the process of calling a referendum could be completed before the
next general election, expected in late spring 2010.

The three Welsh Labour leadership contenders - Carwyn Jones, Edwina Hart and Huw
Lewis - have also said the poll should not take place before then.

Earlier this month, Conservative leader David Cameron said he would not block a
request for a referendum if he was prime minister.

Welcoming the convention's report, Welsh Conservative leader Nick Bourne said he
was "not at all surprised" it had "identified the failings of the current system
and seen advantages in moving to full powers".

"We also note from the convention's research the strong support for devolution
here in Wales," he said.

"We will be studying the results in great detail and reading with interest the
views and thoughts of the electorate right across Wales," Mr Bourne added.

Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams said: "The report itself provides
a devastating critique of the existing, half-baked settlement, confirming my
belief that a referendum will allow Wales to choose a better, proper settlement,
fit for the purpose of truly devolved Welsh government."

But Mr Bourne's fellow Conservative AM Jonathan Morgan was a dissenting voice on
the convention's work.

He said it had "not been a good use of public money" and had "not told us
anything that we didn't already know" on the assembly powers question and
whether or not there should be a referendum.

Mr Morgan, who is in favour of further devolution, said: "I don't think this has
been thorough enough and I don't think this has been sufficient in dealing with
the question of what the public think about the assembly and, for the money we
spent, we could have commissioned a whole host of opinion polls which would have
reached a greater number of people than the convention did."

The Theft of West Papua's mineral wealth. Let the Bird of Paradise go Free
The province's courageous resistance movement
by John Pilger
Global Research, November 17, 2009
New Statesman - 2009-11-12
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16134

When General Suharto, the west's man, seized power in Indonesia in the
mid-1960s, he offered "a gleam of light in Asia", rejoiced Time magazine. That
he had killed up to a million "communists" was of no account in the acquisition
of what Richard Nixon called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the
greatest prize in South-east Asia".

In November 1967, the booty was handed out at an extraordinary conference in a
lakeside hotel in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful
capitalists in the world, the likes of David Rockefeller, and senior executives
of the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, British American Tobacco,
Imperial Chemical Industries, American Express, Siemens, Goodyear, US Steel. The
president of Time Incorporated, James Linen, opened the proceedings with this
prophetic description of globalisation: "We are trying to create a new climate
in which private enterprise and developing countries work together for the
greater profit of the free world. The world of international enterprise is more
than governments . . . It is a seamless web, which has been shaping the global
environment at revolutionary speed."

Suharto had sent a team of mostly US-groomed economists, known as the "Berkeley
Boys". On the first day, salutations were exchanged. On the second day, the
Indonesian economy was carved up. This was done in a spectacular way: industry
in one room, forests and fisheries in another, banking and finance in another.
The ultimate prize was the mineral wealth of West Papua, almost half of a vast
and remote island to the north of Australia. A US and European consortium was
"awarded" the nickel and gold. The Freeport company of New Orleans got a
mountain of copper. Forty-two years later, the gold and copper make more than a
million dollars profit every day.

What a carve-up

For the Indonesian elite, enrichment was assured. From 1992 to 2004, Freeport
provided $33bn in direct and indirect "benefits", much of it finding its way to
the Indonesian military, the real power in the land, which "protects" foreign
investments in the manner of a mafia. The reward for the people of West Papua
has been a rate of impoverishment double that of the rest of Indonesia, says a
World Bank report. At Bintuni Bay, where BP is exploiting natural gas, 56 per
cent of the people live in abject poverty. "More than 90 per cent of villages in
Papua do not have basic health facilities," the report noted. In 2005, famine
swept the district of Yahukimo, where virgin forests and gas deposits deliver
unerring profit. The suffering of West Papuans is seldom reported; the
Indonesian government bans foreign journalists and human rights organisations
from the hauntingly beautiful territory known by its indigenous people as "the
forgotten bird of paradise".

When the carve-up of its natural wealth took place, West Papua was not part of
but merely claimed by Indonesia, whose former colonial masters, the Dutch,
recognised no historical or cultural ties to Jakarta and began to prepare the
territory for independence. The Indonesians were having none of it; neither were
the Americans, the British and the Australians, who invented a cold-war tale
that the Russians were coming. In 1962, the Dutch handed the colony to the
United Nations, which promptly gave it "on trust" to Indonesia on condition that
the West Papuans would vote on their future.

In 1969, an "Act of Free Choice" took place. The Indonesians hand-picked 1,026
West Papuan men and ordered them to vote for integration with Jakarta. Guns were
pointed at heads. When two West Papuans escaped in a light aircraft, hoping to
reach New York and alert the UN general assembly, they were detained by the
Australian government after landing at nearby Manus Island. West Papuan villages
wanting a genuine "act of free choice" were bombed by Indonesia's US-equipped
air force.

Independence day

West Papua would have slipped into oblivion had it not been for a resistance,
the OPM, or Free Papua Movement, whose endurance has defied almost impossible
odds. The Indonesians have been unsparing in their oppression, aided by
British-made machine guns and Tactica water cannon vehicles. When Suharto was
deposed in 1998, the people on the island of Biak celebrated by singing hymns of
thanksgiving and raising West Papua's Morning Star flag. For this, 150 of them
were murdered by the Indonesian military. In 2004, Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage
were sentenced to 15 and ten years respectively for raising the flag, an
immeasurable act of bravery in a territory effectively run by a Gestapo-style
force known as Kopassus, which bears responsibility for much of the genocide in
East Timor. The destruction of West Papuan society is also genocide.

The post-Suharto regime in Jakarta, which likes to regard itself as a
respectable democracy, is vulnerable to pressure on West Papua. In Britain, the
mining giant Rio Tinto, formerly a shareholder in Freeport, retains a
joint-venture interest that has earned fortunes for the company. On the rare
occasions that the Foreign Office is challenged about the behaviour of Jakarta
in West Papua, officials drone about "respecting the territorial integrity of
Indonesia", echoing decades of Foreign Office mendacious apologies for the
slaughter in East Timor. And yet East Timor slipped Suharto's leash and is now
free, thanks to the resilience of its people and an international network of
support. The people of West Papua deserve nothing less. On 1 December, which
West Papuans call their independence day, those exiled in Britain and their
allies will assemble outside the Indonesian embassy in London to break the
silence.

The Free West Papua Campaign website is www.freewestpapua.org. To help, email
office@...

In your current 3rd draft report: