As an example, till recently, Ken Livingstone the Mayor of London was described by the British media as ‘Red’ Ken though he was never a communists, that did not matter to the media since the label was catchy and looked sensational in print. In Sri Lanka today, most Sinhala politicians and military spokespersons as a rule, always describe the LTTE as ‘terrorists’. Sadly in their case, it is because their vocabulary is sorely limited even in their mother tongue, as one would have noted on the rare occasions when an individual or a military spokesperson was interviewed by the newspapers or on television.

This brings me to a recent article by Karen Parker, the American Human Rights lawyer that I read recently. Karen Parker holds that if one was to use the same yardstick with which Americans describe the Tamil freedom fighters as terrorists, George Washington, the first American President, could be termed a terrorist. Most students of American history are aware of what is described as the ‘Boston Tea Party’, when a group of American rebels, dressed as Native Americans, boarded a tea clipper in the Boston harbour and dumped the crates containing processed tea leaves into the water. This incident is what was said to have started the American freedom movement that was soon to develop into a war of independence. Today, journalists would have referred to them as ‘terrorists’.

As Eric Margolis says, in an article published on Saturday 27th August 2006 in Toronto Sun.com, under the title ‘The Tamils of Sri Lanka are fighting for their independence after decades of oppression’. To quote Mr Margolis ‘Terrorism is generally defined as “attacks on civilians for political purposes”. Mad dogs who blow up airliners, trains and schools are terrorists, no question. But under this definition, then what do we call the Allied mass slaughter of civilians in Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

Or, Russia’s massacre of 100,000 Muslim Chechens a decade ago. Israel’s 1982 bombardment of Beirut that killed 18,000 civilians. U.S. destruction in 1991 of Iraq’s water treatment plants, creating an epidemic that killed thousands of children’

It is unfortunate that most foreign writers and journalists tend to describe the Tamil freedom fighters of Eelam as ‘terrorists’. The west has, particularly after the 7/11 incident in New York, USA, tended to describe any individual or organisation not with the establishment, as a terrorist or a terrorist organisation. Journalists and newspapers are happier with labelling individuals or organisations. If a label is not available, they are always ready to create a catchy label. As an example, till recently, Ken Livingstone the Mayor of London was described by the British media as ‘Red’ Ken though he was never a communists, that did not matter to the media since the label was catchy and looked sensational in print. In Sri Lanka today, most Sinhala politicians and military spokespersons as a rule, always describe the LTTE as ‘terrorists’. Sadly in their case, it is because their vocabulary is sorely limited even in their mother tongue, as one would have noted on the rare occasions when an individual or a military spokesperson was interviewed by the newspapers or on television.

This brings me to a recent article by Karen Parker, the American Human Rights lawyer that I read recently. Karen Parker holds that if one was to use the same yardstick with which Americans describe the Tamil freedom fighters as terrorists, George Washington, the first American President, could be termed a terrorist. Most students of American history are aware of what is described as the ‘Boston Tea Party’, when a group of American rebels, dressed as Native Americans, boarded a tea clipper in the Boston harbour and dumped the crates containing processed tea leaves into the water. This incident is what was said to have started the American freedom movement that was soon to develop into a war of independence. Today, journalists would have referred to them as ‘terrorists’.

As Eric Margolis says, in an article published on Saturday 27th August 2006 in Toronto Sun.com, under the title ‘The Tamils of Sri Lanka are fighting for their independence after decades of oppression’. To quote Mr Margolis ‘Terrorism is generally defined as “attacks on civilians for political purposes”. Mad dogs who blow up airliners, trains and schools are terrorists, no question. But under this definition, then what do we call the Allied mass slaughter of civilians in Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

Or, Russia’s massacre of 100,000 Muslim Chechens a decade ago. Israel’s 1982 bombardment of Beirut that killed 18,000 civilians. U.S. destruction in 1991 of Iraq’s water treatment plants, creating an epidemic that killed thousands of children’

Eric Margolis has given these many instances of inter state ‘terrorism’ in order to show that the word ‘terrorism’ is often misused. No one today, refers to America or Britain or Russia or Israel as terrorist states. Yet, the media and these very states are prepared to label the Tamil freedom fighters as ‘terrorists’ without any justification whatsoever. Some of these states have gone further, and even proscribed the LTTE within their countries.

Let us look at what is happening in Sri Lanka and especially in the Tamil homeland Eelam. I quote from an article in the Sunday Telegraph of 7th June 2007 by Mian Ridge who says ‘Wearing an orange robe and a serene smile, the Venerable Athuraliys Rathana looks the very embodiment of peace, but when the Sri Lankan Buddhist monk talks of the Tamil Tigers, he sounds more like an army general.

“Day by day we (note the all inclusive ‘we’) are weakening them militarily” he said cocking his shaven head thoughtfully to one side, “Talk can come later”.

Continuing, Mian Ridge says ‘Most Buddhist monks are known for their love of peace, harmony and a philosophical acceptance of fate- but as the bloody war that has ravaged Sri Lanka for 25 years enters a new and terrible phase, Mr Rathana and his fellow hard-line monks are urging the president Mahinda Rajapakse, to keep the promise upon which he came to power in late 2005; to crush the Tamil Tigers with military force.’ (my emphasis).

These hard-line monks are at the heart of Sinhala-Buddhist ethno nationalism. They view the Tamils as outsiders in the island. They consider the entire island as granted to the Sinhala Buddhists by the Buddha as their personal and private habitat. The hard-line monks have their own political party the Jatika Hela Urumaya (JHU). The word Jatika in the name of the party does not mean ‘national’ as most journalists appear to believe. Jatika stands for ‘race’ or ‘racial’. The lay ethno nationalist party the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which also supports the government has a name that means Janatha (Peoples’) Vimukthi (Victory) Peramuna (Army). Of course, the Janatha (People) refers to the Sinhala people!

Speaking of ‘terrorists’, it is mainly the Sri Lankan military that has indulged in terrorists activity either directly or through renegade Tamil mercenaries like the group led by a man who likes to calls himself ‘Col. Karuna’. On the morning of Christmas day 2005 at 1.20 am, during mass at which the Bishop of Batticaloa Bishop Kingsley Swamipillai was officiating, Mr Joseph Pararajasingham MP for Batticaloa was gunned down inside the church by the government’s renegade Tamil mercenaries. Mr Parajasingham’s wife was seriously injured along with seven others in the vicinity.

An ITRO Press Release issued on the 6th August 2007 invites TRO staff and volunteers to ‘join the (worldwide) humanitarian community in honouring the memory of 17 ‘Action Contre La Faim (ACF)’ humanitarian workers executed in Muttur in August 2006 and call on the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) to fully investigate this crime against humanity and bring the perpetrators to justice. One year after the execution that has still been no progress in the ‘investigation’ of this massacre.’

‘Tamil Insight’ of 9th September 2006 reported the gunning down of Dr Ketheeswaran Loganathan , Deputy Head of the government’s Peace Secretariat. As the ‘Insight’ story goes ‘reportedly hours before being shot to death, Ketheeswaran was on the phone to the President’s inner junta to express his disgust over the killing by government forces and stated that he no longer believed in government peace negotiations.’ He is also said to have added that he had inside information on the execution of NGO staff and, after a heated exchange, threatened to resign and make public his reasons. That threat clearly signed his death warrant!

The above three are just microscopic examples of the type of terrorist activity the Sinhala government and its military wing indulge in, against the Tamil nation, either directly or through mercenaries.

It is well known that the Sinhala Air Force have always indiscriminately bombed civilian targets on the Tamil homeland in the north and east. If one were to land at the Palaly airport, on one of the civilian flights to Jaffna, one needs to get to Jaffna town or the villages on the way, by coach. The coach passes scenes of devastation wreaked by these bombers and fighter planes that are utilised not to shoot down planes in the air but to shoot at civilians and target their homes on the ground. It is difficult for the rare journalist taking a civil flight to Palaly, to miss scenes of rubble between Palaly and Jaffna town, being all that is left of flourishing villages and towns. My own ancestral home in Chundikuli in Jaffna was targeted even though it was in a residential area. The rear of the sprawling house was demolished while the house across the road was completely destroyed as too were a few houses down the road that I remembered from my youth..

Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian regarding the Iraq war has these comments that are equally applicable to the Sri Lankan military. ‘When bombing from the air kills non combatants, as it does to an appalling degree, there should at least be a military inquiry.’

‘If soldiers enter a house by the front door and kill the civilians inside, then they are hauled before world opinion and condemned. If a dropped bomb enters the same house through the roof and has the same effect, it is dismissed as collateral damage.’

The lack of world media interest in the civil war in Sri Lanka has led to a dearth of adventurous journalists who can make on the scene reports that will arouse ‘world opinion’.

I shall end with the following reference from a book titled ‘Ethnic Warfare in Sri Lanka ‘, by William Clarance (former head of the United Nation High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Mr Clarance was commenting on military retaliation after a suicide bomb attack wounded Lt Gen Fonseka the Armed Services chief in Colombo. The attack provoked the Sri Lankan Air Force to carry out retaliatory strikes of supposed LTTE positions in the far off east.

Mr Clarance says ‘To maintain that this is something less than civil war is too strenuously semantic understandably, it is serious warfare and future historians may well choose to note that Eelam War IV started with deadly attacks by both sides on clearly defined military targets, while at the same time each tried to put the blame for the resumption of hostilities on the other.’

Can any rational person, in the light of all evidence to the contrary, still insist that the Tamil freedom fighters are ‘terrorists?: I end with this passage from William Clarance ‘On the 23rd July 2004, 21 years after the event, following the findings of the Presidential Truth Commission, President Chandrika Kumartatunga made an unqualified national apology on behalf of the state to the victims of the July1983 riots, some of whom received compensation.’

Though M Carance refers to the 1983 state sponsored carnage of Tamils as ‘riots’ it is clear that it was a pogrom. The very fact that the President had need to apologise (to the affected Tamils) on behalf of the state and pay some slight compensation to a few, goes to prove beyond any shadow of doubt that what took place in July 1983 was state terrorism.

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