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LTTE 'can only be defeated by the guns, men and women of the Sri Lankan
armed forces' - Sri Lanka Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka M.R. Narayan Swamy
Sunday, 1 June 2008
 " Jayatilleka accused the
University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna (UTHR-J) of 'becoming part of the West's civil society pets... It
has joined several other Tamil dissident groupings in showing extreme distress
at the thought of military defeat of the LTTE... These elements just do not want
the Sri Lankan state to win... They must comprehend that Tiger fascism
cannot be defeated by unarmed Tamil expatriate dissidents... It can only be
defeated by the guns, men and women of the Sri Lankan armed forces and their
(armed)
Tamil partners."
Comment by tamilnation.org
Tamils living in many lands
(including Tamil Nadu) will welcome Mr.Dayan Jayatilleka's statement that the LTTE
'can only be defeated by the guns, men and
women of the Sri Lankan armed forces and their (armed) Tamil partners' and
not by 'unarmed Tamil expatriate dissidents'. They will welcome
his statement for its
belligerent
frankness.
According to Indian journalist
M.R. Narayan Swamy (whose book 'Inside an Elusive Mind - Prabhakaran'
reveals the access he has to sources in India's RAW),
Mr. Jayatilleka
is
one of Sri Lanka's 'most high-profile
diplomats' and 'enjoys a close rapport with President Mahinda Rajapaksa.'
Ergo, his words should be taken seriously by the Tamil people - and not
dismissed simply as the bluster of a Sinhala Buddhist racist.
It appears that Mr.Jayatilleke does not subscribe to the views expressed by the
United
States Institute for Peace in May 1999 on How Terrorism Ends
-
" ...The nature of the grievance
matters. Ethnically based terrorist campaigns can be harder to end
decisively than politically based ones, because they often enjoy broader
support among a population they seek to represent. The nature of the organisation putting forth the grievance
matters as well. Intelligence is important not only to prevent terrorist
attacks but also to understand how the organisation works and how its
decision making process can be affected.... deterring terrorism and prosecuting terrorists may be insufficient to end terrorism,
especially when a large population supports the terrorists' cause.
In such situations, negotiated settlements may provide the only
solutions. In Sri Lanka, the government appears to have concluded from its victory over the Maoist JVP that law enforcement and compulsion can end a terror campaign. However,
the LTTE has a much broader base of support than the JVP ever did, and the LTTE is unlikely to go away simply through government-applied force....
Trying to 'decapitate' a movement may radicalise the whole movement ...
Assassinations and military force can provoke a desire for revenge,
create mythologies of martyrdom, or feed paranoia and secretiveness
(which makes the movements even harder to penetrate for reasons of
either understanding motivations or foiling actions).."
That ofcourse was 9 years ago and many will
conclude that the USIP
has been proved right in its assessment that the LTTE, given its broad base
of support, was 'unlikely to go away simply through government-applied
force'. But then Mr.Jayatilleke may regard the United States Institute for Peace as a
'part of the West's civil society pets'. And he may well be right. It is
not that interventions by NGOs like the USIP and Western state actors
are benign
and neutral. After all,
the USIP in its study conspicuously failed to distinguish between 'terrorism' and 'lawful
armed resistance'. And it appears that the USIP was not troubled by views
such as those expressed by
UN Special Rapporteur, Kalliopi K. Koufa,
in Terrorism and Human Rights -
"The most problematic issue relating to terrorism and armed conflict is
distinguishing
terrorists from lawful combatants, both in terms of combatants in legitimate
struggles for
self-determination and those involved in civil wars or non-international
armed conflicts. In the former category, States that do not recognize a
claim to self-determination will claim that those using force
against the State’s military forces are necessarily terrorists....The controversy over the exact meaning, content,
extent and beneficiaries of, as well as the means and methods
utilized to enforce
the right to self-determination
has been the major obstacle to the development of both a
comprehensive definition of terrorism and a comprehensive treaty on
terrorism... ...The Special Rapporteur has analysed the distinction between armed
conflict and
terrorism, with particular attention to conflicts to realize the right to
self-determination and civil
wars. This is an issue of great international controversy, in need of
careful review due to the
“your freedom fighter is my terrorist” problem and the increase in the
rhetorical use of the
expression “war on terrorism”, labelling wars as terrorism, and combatants
in wars as terrorists,
and it has an extremely undesirable effect of nullifying application of and
compliance with
humanitarian law in those situations, while at the same time providing no
positive results in
combating actual terrorism...."
Presumably it was not the USIP view that
there were no circumstances in which a people ruled by an alien people may
lawfully resort to arms to liberate themselves.
Be that as it may, the USIP was right when it said that the Sri Lanka government
in the 1990s wrongly
concluded 'from its victory over the Maoist JVP' that law
enforcement and compulsion can end a struggle for freedom. It seems that the
Sri Lanka government now
takes the
view that Angola (a civil
war but not a secessionist movement) and
land locked Chechnya (surrounded on three sides by Russia and on the
fourth side by Georgia) are today's success stories for 'law
enforcement and compulsion'.
It is strange that on the one hand, Sinhala
ethno nationalists justify their assimilative
agenda in the island of Sri Lanka by pointing out that the Sinhala
people are a minority in the Indian region, that they have a so called 'minority complex',
and that they have fears rooted in the history of the
Chola empire and the
associated
Tiger emblem -
and on the other hand,
the same Sinhala ethno nationalists ignore the togetherness of more than 70 million Tamils living in many lands (including
Tamil Nadu) in their pronouncements that the struggle for Tamil Eelam can be
annihilated by resort to 'the guns, men and women of the Sri Lankan armed
forces.' The story of the little boy who cried wolf may come to haunt
Sinhala ethno nationalists bent on genocide in Tamil Eelam. Tamil Eelam is not Angola.
Tamil Eelam is not landlocked Chechnya.
The people of Tamil Eelam have, for the past several decades,
struggled for freedom from
oppressive alien Sinhala rule
without depending on the 'civil society pets' of either the West or India - but with the growing support of their
own brothers and sisters
(their udanpirapukal) living in Tamil
Nadu, in Karnataka, in
Malaysia, in
Singapore, in
South Africa and
in many lands around the world. Mr. Jayatilleka's remarks will serve to remind
Tamils living everywhere, yet again, of something which Aurobindo
said a century ago -
"...The mistake which despots, benevolent or malevolent, have
been making ever since organised states came into existence and which, it seems,
they will go on making to the end of the chapter, is that they
overestimate
their coercive power, which is physical and material and therefore palpable, and
underestimate the power and vitality of ideas and sentiments. A feeling or a thought,
the
aspiration towards liberty, cannot be estimated in the terms of concrete power,
in so many fighting men, so many armed police, so many guns, so many prisons,
such and such laws, ukases, and executive powers. But such feelings and
thoughts are more powerful than fighting men and guns and prisons
and laws and ukases. Their beginnings are feeble, their end is
mighty. But of despotic repression the beginnings are mighty, the
end is feeble... But the despot will not recognise this superiority,
the teachings of history have no
meaning for him. ..He is deceived also by the temporary triumph of his
repressive measures.. and thinks,
“Oh, the circumstances in my case are quite different, I
am a different thing from any yet recorded in history, stronger, more virtuous
and moral, better organised. I am God’s favourite and can never come to
harm.”
And so the old drama is staged again and acted till it
reaches the old catastrophe..."
It may be that Mr.Jayatilleka believes
that the circumstances in Sri Lanka's case 'are quite different', that
Sinhala Sri Lanka is
a 'different thing from any yet recorded in history, stronger, more
virtuous and moral, better organised' and that Sinhala Sri Lanka is 'God’s favourite
and can never come to harm.' But to many Tamils it will appear that
Sri Lanka's ethno nationalist Sinhala leaders seeking to conquer
and rule Tamil Eelam are acting out the old drama 'till it reaches the old
catastrophe'.
Again, more than 70 million Tamils
living in many lands whose memories may not
extend to a century ago will be reminded of something which
Velupillai Pirabakaran said
more recently -
".. Victory in war is not
determined by the size of an army or the quality of armaments.
Factors like unshakable determination, heroism, and desire for
liberation determine victory...Truth stands as our witness.
History stands as our guide...
What do we demand? Why are we
fighting? We want to live with peace and honour and independence
from others
in our land,
historically our habitat, and our homeland where we were born and
where we grew up. We are also humans; a human society with
fundamental human rights. We are a
separate ethnic community with a
separate cultural life and history. We demand that we should be
accepted as a human society with distinctive characteristics. We
have the
right to decide our political life by ourselves. On the
basis of this right, we like to establish a system of government
where we rule ourselves.... We are no racists and no violent war-mongers; we do not regard
the Sinhala people as our enemies or as our opponents. We are no enemies of
democratic principles. We fight only for the fundamental democratic
political rights of our people..."
That Mr. Jayatilekka may see the views of Velupillai Pirabakaran as the expression of 'Tiger fascism' is ofcourse
understandable - understandable that is, from the point of a view
of a propagandist for a
Sinhala Buddhist ethno nation
with a
Sinhala flag, with an
unrepealed
Sinhala Only Act, with
Buddhism
enthroned in the Constitution, and with the
Sinhala
'Sri
Lanka' name which it gave itself unilaterally in 1972 - a
Sinhala Buddhist ethno nation
which dare not speak its name, which lives a lie by denying its existence and which seeks to masquerade as a
multi ethnic plural
society and pass itself off as a 'Sri Lankan civic
nation'.
Mr. Jayatilekka is concerned that the
(UTHR-J)
'has joined several other Tamil dissident groupings in showing extreme
distress at the thought of military defeat of the LTTE. These elements just
do not want the Sri Lankan state to win.'
Mr.Jayatilekka may want to ask
himself the reason for this 'extreme distress'. These Tamil dissident
groupings which had been nurtured by Sri Lanka during these many years, know
only too well that if the LTTE is militarily defeated, Sri Lanka will have
no further use for them - and that they will be left only with a begging bowl,
pleading for crumbs at
their master's table. Hence their 'extreme distress'.
And here, let us make clear that the struggle
for Tamil Eelam is not about what the LTTE may have done or may not have
done.
Those states who have banned the LTTE, so that each
of them may advance
its own
strategic interests given the uneasy balance of power in the
Indian Ocean region, may
want to recognise that they may ban the LTTE but they cannot ban the
aspiration of a people for freedom. The struggle for Tamil Eelam is about the democratic right of the
people of Tamil Eelam to rule themselves in their homeland. If
democracy means the rule of the people by the people for the people then it
surely follows as night follows day that no one people may rule another.
Self determination and democracy are one - and inseparable. The struggle for
Tamil Eelam is a struggle for freedom from alien Sinhala rule. And it is
this which Gandhian leader S.J.V.Chelvanayagam
proclaimed
33 years ago on 7 February 1975 in Kankesanturai in Tamil Eelam -
"Throughout the ages the Sinhalese and Tamils in the country lived as distinct
sovereign people till they were brought under foreign domination. It should be remembered
that the Tamils were in the vanguard of the struggle for independence in the full
confidence that they also will regain their freedom. We have
for the last 25 years made every effort to secure our political rights on the basis of
equality with the Sinhalese in a united Ceylon."
"It is a regrettable fact that successive Sinhalese governments have used the
power that flows from independence to deny us our fundamental
rights and reduce us to the position of a subject people. These governments have been
able to do so only by using against the Tamils the sovereignty common to the Sinhalese and
the Tamils."
"I wish to announce to my people and to the country that I consider the verdict at
this election as a mandate that the
Tamil Eelam nation
should exercise the sovereignty already vested in the Tamil people and become free."
And that is why
more than
70 million Tamils living in many lands will
welcome Mr.Dayan Jayatilleka's sincerely felt pronouncements because his
belligerent frankness will serve to broaden and deepen support for the struggle of the
people of Tamil Eelam to expel the 'guns, men and
women of the Sri Lankan armed forces' from the Tamil homeland -
and free Tamil Eelam from alien Sinhala rule. More than 70 million Tamils living in many lands
will be moved to revisit the words of Velupillai Pirabakaran -
"உலகெங்கும் தமிழன் பரந்து வாழ்ந்தாலும்..
தமிழீழத்திலேதான்
தனியரசு உருவாகும் வரலாற்றுப்
புறநிலை தோன்றியுள்ளது..."
"Though Tamils live in many lands and
across distant seas, it is in Tamil Eelam that the
historical situation has arisen for the creation of
an independent Tamil state."
New Delhi, June 1 (IANS) A negotiated end to Sri Lanka's dragging conflict is
still possible but not before the Tamil Tigers are 'verifiably demilitarised and
democratised,' says one of the most high-profile diplomats of that country. Dayan Jayatilleka also said in an interview that the conflict would only end
when Velupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive and feared leader of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), gets 'demilitarised one way or another'. Jayatilleka, who enjoys a close rapport with President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was
asked if there was any room for a possible negotiated settlement to end a war
that has claimed over 70,000 lives since 1983 and still rages. 'Yes but not with the Tigers, and certainly not with Prabhakaran,' the
51-year-old said over email from Geneva, where he is Sri Lanka's permanent
representative to the UN and other international organisations based in
Switzerland. Referring in some detail to the 1991 assassination of former Indian prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber, Jayatilleka said of Prabhakaran:
'With him there can be no peace.' 'A peaceful, negotiated settlement is possible only if it recognises that any
solution has to be within a single, united Sri Lanka, and the Tigers are
verifiably demilitarised and democratised.' Jayatilleka is a political analyst and academic who served briefly as a minister
in the provincial government in Sri Lanka's northeast when Indian troops were
deployed there in 1987-90. He was posted in Geneva in June 2007 as fighting escalated between the military
and the LTTE and Sri Lanka came under intense attack over rampant human rights
violations. Asked how the war in Sri Lanka will end, Jayatilleka asserted: 'It will all end
the way it all ended in Angola after decades of conflict when (rebel leader)
Jonas Savimbi was killed by the Angolan armed forces. 'It will all end the way it did in Chechnya when the Russian army got Djokar
Dudayev, defeated the Chechen separatist militia in fierce combined arms
warfare... Angola and Chechnya are peaceful and prosperous now. 'It cannot end while Prabhakaran has not been demilitarised one way or another.' Claiming that Sri Lanka's 'human rights record, our record of civilian
casualties, compares favourably with that of the West in theatres where its
armed forces' operate, he said the West's use of human rights as an instrument
was 'most disturbing'. 'The issue of Kosovo (and the de facto separate status of Iraqi Kurdistan)
reveal that the West is not averse to the splintering of existing states and the
carving out of new ones.' Jayatilleka added: 'The West does not seem to believe in a brotherhood of
legitimate states which are besieged by terrorism. For the West, terrorism is a
problem only if the anti-state movement in question claims to be Islamic or
Leftist.'
Comment by tamilnation.org
On the 'brotherhood of legitimate
states'... "...Let us accept the fact
that states have lifecycles similar to those of human beings who created
them. The lifecycle of a state might last for many generations, but hardly
any Member State of the United Nations has existed within its present
borders for longer than five generations. The attempt to freeze human
evolution has in the past been a futile undertaking and has probably brought
about more violence than if such a process had been controlled
peacefully...Restrictions on self-determination threaten not only democracy
itself but the state which seeks its legitimation in democracy"
Self
Determination & the Future of Democracy -
Prince Hans-Adam II of
Liechtenstein, 2001
In contrast, most Asian countries back Sri Lanka on the issue of human rights,
he said, because 'they are not possessed of colonial or neo-colonial habits of
centuries', because they believe in 'non-interference in the internal affairs of
others', and also because they 'know what it is to experience the threat of
secession and terrorism'.
Comment by tamilnation.org
"The Third World has declared a geographic war on the
Fourth World. This
global conflict is assisted by First and Second World states.. National liberation movements are not the activities of small groups of isolated individuals, though state
authorities opposed to them frequently describe them as such for propaganda purposes.
They are the struggle of rebellious nations against foreign invaders ..
To defend their nations from being annihilated, many peoples have taken up
arms and engaged in wars of national liberation. To understand armed
national liberation movements, it is necessary to strip away the camouflage
terms and explanations that states use to hide their true nature... Instead of identifying them as patriots or freedom
fighters battling oppression and injustice and seeking the liberation of
their people, they usually refer to them as "terrorists." Every nation
people that has resisted state domination or invasion has been accused of
being terrorists. But armed national self-preservation or self-defense is
not "terrorism" or "banditry"."
National
Liberation Movements in Global Perspective - Dr. Jeff Sluka
Jayatilleka accused the
University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna (UTHRJ), a
respected rights group, of 'becoming part of the West's civil society pets... It
has joined several other Tamil dissident groupings in showing extreme distress
at the thought of military defeat of the LTTE. 'These elements just do not want the Sri Lankan state to win... They must
comprehend that Tiger fascism cannot be defeated by unarmed Tamil expatriate
dissidents... It can only be defeated by the guns, men and women of the Sri
Lankan armed forces and their Tamil partners.' |
