RE: Another misguided venture by the mighty USA

Dear US Citizen,

It is with much regret that I present this information to you concerning the state of affairs in Sri Lanka and the critical role the United States (US) is playing in it. Whenever I attempt to reason logically about this matter, it grieves me deeply to realize that a nation which took part in two world wars to preserve the ideal of freedom, could in fact be aiding and abetting the subjugation of the minority Tamil speaking people on the island of Sri Lanka.

Recent statements made by the Ambassador to Sri Lanka Jeffrey J. Lunstead and the Under Secretary for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns are suggestive of a misguided foreign policy that is perhaps more out of ignorance than anything else. I do not for a minute think that the US foreign policy makers have even the slightest idea about the underlying factors that have been propelling a civil war for the past 30 years on the island of Sri Lanka.

At a time when the US should be actively pursuing friends around the world, the sad truth is my friends, a misguided venture in Sri Lanka, on the scale of that in East Timor may in fact earn the US the wrath of 80 million strong Tamils residing in every corner of the world. Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka – A Brief Summery While attempts by any country or institution to bring the ethnic conflict on the island of Sri Lanka to an end are commendable, it is also of profound importance that such external parties have a through understanding of the conditions which shaped and sparked the conflict in the first place.

It is often repeated in the media that the Tamils are fighting for a separate state because they are discriminated against in education and employment opportunities by the majority Sinhalese. I would like to categorically state that it is simply not true, because no people have ever recourse to such a serious remedy as armed warfare against the state to correct discrimination in education and employment. While it is true that such discrimination provoked discontent and unrest among the Tamil youth, the real causes which led to their taking up arms and fighting a war for their separate state lie far deeper in the political and social history of the island.

It must be noted that until the arrival of the British Colonial powers, there existed three separate kingdoms on the island of Sri Lanka. The kingdom which made up the Northern and Eastern parts of the island was known as the Jaffna or Tamil Kingdom. The other two were ruled by Sinhala kings. Soon after the Colebrook unification of the conquered territories in 1833, the British divided the island into 9 provinces for their administrative convenience. In so doing, they recognized the Tamil ethnic character of the territory and population of the old Jaffna Kingdom and ensured its continuity by carving out 2 separate provinces out of the territory where the population would be entirely Tamil speaking.

They are the northern and eastern provinces, now recognized as the North-East province consequent to the Indo-Sri Lanka pact of 1987. Soon after the transfer of political power to the Sinhalese majority in 1948, national chauvinism reigned supreme and fuelled a vicious and violent form of state oppression against the Tamil people. It assumed a multi dimensional thrust, attacking simultaneously on different levels of the conditions of existence of the Tamil people. It imperiled their linguistic rights, the right to education and employment; it deprived their right to ownership of their traditional lands, endangered their religious and cultural life and as a consequence posed a serious threat to their very right to existence. As an integral part of the genocidal program, the state organized periodical communal holocausts, which plagued the island, resulting in mass extermination of Tamils and massive destruction of their property.

Another matter of profound importance is the role plaid by the Tamil political parties throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s. There has been a media blackout of the political campaigns that failed to change Sinhala thinking and bring about any real change with regards to the Tamil peoples' right to existence. The Tamil Federal Party and later the Tamil United Liberation Front led the people on several passive Gandhian non-violent Satygrahas. Almost all were broken up by Sinhala hooligans, aided by the police and military. Two pacts were signed in 1958 and 1965, between leaders of both the communities to give a reasonable amount of autonomy to the Tamil speaking North-East.

Both were abrogated as a consequence of pressure from Sinhala-Buddhist extremists. It was the inability of elected Tamil representatives to bring about change that aggravated the ethnic conflict and made reconciliation and co-existence between the two nations extremely difficult. Continued mob attacks on peaceful demonstrations and Satygrahas stiffened the Tamil militancy and created conditions for the emergence of the Tamil armed resistance movement. It paved the way for the invocation of the Tamil right to self determination and secession.

American Partiality In recent years, due to prevailing strategic interests in the world geo-political arena, the US has been taking a more keen interest in the ethnic conflict on the island of Sri Lanka. While the US has stated it wishes to see an end the conflict as soon as possible, it has not made any real efforts to address the issues mentioned above as being the conditions that sparked the conflict in the first place. Moreover, the US is being viewed by the Tamil people as a party that is aiding and abetting the continued subjugation of the Tamil speaking people by the Sinhalese majority.

It is a well known fact that during the 90s the US provided both military training and hardware to the Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF). It was the technical role plaid by the US which led to the invasion of Jaffna and the subsequent displacement of over half a million Tamils from the peninsula. Since then the US has been slowly but steadily increasing its role in strengthening the SLAF. The US has upped its military credits under its Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programme from 496,000 dollars in 2005 to an estimated one million dollars in 2006.

If genuine about its goal to see an end to the conflict, the US as one of the Co-Chairs of the current Peace Process should be taking an impartial approach that will fully address the conditions that led to the conflict. However, it is very clear from statements made by the Ambassador to Sri Lanka Jeffrey J. Lunstead and the Under Secretary for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns that the US is and will continue to take a biased approach. In a blunt threat against the Tamil people Ambassador Lunstead said 'we want the cost of a return to war to be high,' for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). I can not for a minute contemplate how such a threat directed at the party representing one of the two sides involved in the conflict can help resolve it.

Not surprisingly then, Ambassador Lunstead's comments were welcomed by the 40, 000 strong Sinhala soldiers based in the North of the country with scores of human rights violations against the Tamil population. Reported cases of rapes, murders, torture and disappearances saw a steep rise following the abject statement. Lesson from the past It is my strong belief that ideals and not military might wins wars. In both the World Wars and recently in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the US has stood for the ideal of freedom, not hampered by any other interests.

All these wars ended in freedom to the parties the US sided with, and won the US great moral standing amongst the freedom loving people of the world. At the same time, the US has in the past embarked on some rather misguided ventures that were principally against the ideal of freedom. These ventures resulted in the death of thousands of people, and degradation in the moral standing the US commands over much of the world. I would like to bring to your attention, a recent report published by East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), which was created in 2001 by the UN and East Timor to provide a full accounting of abuses during the Indonesian occupation.

'The Commission finds that the United States of America failed to support the right of the East Timorese people to self-determination, and that its political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation,' the report said. 'The support of the United States was given out of a strategically motivated desire to maintain a good relationship with Indonesia, whose anti-communist regime was seen as an essential bastion against the spread of communism,' it adds. 'U.S.-supplied weaponry was crucial to Indonesia's capacity to intensify military operations from 1977 in its massive campaigns to destroy the Resistance in which aircraft supplied by the United States played a crucial role,' according to the report.

As the CAVR report states, 'U.S. administration officials refused to admit that the primary reason that East Timorese were dying in their thousands was the security policies of the Indonesian military.' One could see a disturbing similarity between US policy with regards to the suffering of the East Timorese people and the Tamil people. The US for 25 years provided military training and hardware to the Indonesian military. By time the US decided to put an end to the Indonesian atrocities around 300, 000 East Timorese had been slaughtered. The question is how many more Tamils would need to be slaughtered by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces before the US decides to stop its military training and hardware assistance to the SLAF.

A humble request As a Tamil I would like to make a humble request to all the freedom loving Americans to take action to put an end to the role the US is playing in the genocidal campaign being carried out by the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) against the Tamil speaking people on the island. Our objective has always been peace, but you also have to recognize that freedom is a right which we can not surrender for the sake of peace. Recently the LTTE, compromised from its request for a separate state to a Federal Solution within a united Sri Lanka. However, the new Sri Lankan president is insistent on a Unitary State, which would maintain all the discriminatory conditions that led to the conflict.

The US must use its position to pressure the GoSL to accept a Federal Solution. Further in the true sprit of peace and conflict resolution, US representatives should stop making open threats against one of the two parties involved in the Peace Process. The US must also bring all military aid to Sri Lanka to an immediate halt, such that neither of the two sides are favored and strengthened to such an extent that they will be swayed away from addressing the other's grievances.

Sincerely
A Thamilan

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