The separatist conflict in Sri Lanka and
the souring of Canada against Sri Lanka.
HOMEPAGE
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| The separatist conflict in Sri Lanka and
the souring of Canada against Sri Lanka. |
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Since 1980 waves of Sri-Lankan Tamil immigrants and refugees have arrived in
Canada. They have escaped from the horrors of the Tigers, the military wrath of the
state, inter-racial violence since 1956 etc. They were also a large percentage of economic refugees who took advantage of the humanitarian situation. The tigers established in Canada a network of legal and illegal financial and military support that nourished their war. The 'Tamil diaspora' also became a powerful political force. This ensured that the successive Canadian governments ignored the warning of security services and (at first by by default, later tacitly) allowed hostile action against Sri Lanka, for many decades. In the next phase refugees became immigrants and entered politics, with many ex-Tiger leaders entering and funding civil activism, human-rights lobbies, and contesting elections. NGOs and academic conferences were financed to bring mainstream academics into the fold. Meanwhile immigration, and even just visiting Canada by Sinhala-speaking Sri Lankans were made extremely difficult. The Sri Lankan government, engaged in a war with the Tigers began in its turn to view Canadian legislators and journalists visiting Sri Lanka as agents of a hostile power . This comprehension was compounded by the fact that since ~1990s, CIDA, WUS and other Canadian agencies stopped dealing with the Sri Lankan government and worked almost entirely through NOGs headed, in most cases, by separatists, or their fellow travelers. Thus Canada focused attention only in the North and East, then controlled by the Tigers. Almost all Canadian emissaries visited the North, but failed to visit the South (populated by Sinhalese and also a sizable percentage of Tamils who co-exist peacefully). The south had suffered three decades of injury and horrific attacks by the Tigers. The number of dead and injured, widowed etc., on the Sinhala-speaking side was at least a factor of two to three larger than among the Tamil-speaking Sri Lankans.
The Tamil diaspora was firmly with the liberal party when the Conservatives defeated Paul Martin. In retaliation, the Harper government used the strong evidence accumulated by the CSIS and the RCMP and banned the Tigers, the World Tamil Movement (WTM), and subsequently the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), as well as other Tiger-front organization. However, after a short lull, the members of these organizations regrouped under new names for money collecting, developed thrusts embracing `human rights', and joined the Harper government. They showed their financial and political power in bringing Toronto to a halt by blocking its streets in 2009 May, demanding that Canada intervene to save the Tiger leaders who were facing imminent defeat. This show of power was enough for all major Canadian political parties to actively woo the Tamil-Canadian diaspora. All three parties in the Canadian House of Commons have become the voice of the Tamil-separatist sentiments. This movement tried to achieve its ends militarily. Having failed, it is seeking a Kosovo or Dafur type action where the international community is the instrument. The international community had been (see main text) preventing the eradication of the Tigers, allowing the Diaspoara to fund the Tigers, and unrealistically demanding a 'political settlement' with the Tigers for several decades. Hence, expressing sentiments in resonance with Tamil voter demands fits seamlessly with the seemingly hostile policy against Sri Lanka that Canada had followed for decades, perhaps without clear insight. Furthermore, the hostile reception accorded to even well-meaning Canadian emissaries who ignore the South and focus only on the North has further crystallized the hostile attitudes in Canadian circles against the Sri Lankan government. While the Tiger leaders in Sri Lanka were defeated and killed, the actual international leaders of the LTTE, living in Canada, USA and Europe were untouched, with funds coming from trans-national' collections of a legal and illegal nature. Clear-cut human smuggling of Tamils who had left Sri Lanka decades ago and were living in Indonesia and Malaysia, etc., waiting for a chance to settle in the more affluent West have been used for fund raising. The Tiger transnational leaders used their refugee networks and financial power in UK, EU and Australia to achieve similar control over the political processes in those countries and in UN agencies. Highly paid US attorneys like Bruce Fein were used to sue or harass opponents and lobby government agencies. The Tamils for Obama campaign successfully influenced the US attitudes towards Sri Lanka, with Hillary Clinton. On 12th May 2009, US and UK Governments made a 'last-ditch' attempt to save the trapped Tiger Chief and called on Sri Lanka and the Tigers to end hostilities immediately and resume political negotiations. In the following text we briefly review the rise of armed separatism in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, due to ethnic polarization that began with the introduction of Universal Franchise in 1931, and the involvement of Canada on the side of Tamil separatists by its lop-sided refugee policies, and how its politics became a process of stalking successive Sri Lankan governments, in consort with other similarly afflicted Western nations. The text will review in detail the hearings of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, Canada, that took place in November 2011, and again in November and December 2013. |
Depuis 1980, des vagues d'immigrants et de réfugiés tamouls sri-lankais sont arrivés en
Canada. Ils ont échappé aux horreurs des tigres, ou la brutalité militaire de la gouvernement, ou bien la violence inter-raciale depuis 1956. Ils ont également, dans plus de 50% des cas, les réfugiés économiques qui ont profité de la situation humanitaire. Les Tigres établis au Canada un réseau de soutien financier et militaire légale et illégale qui a nourri leur guerre. La `diaspora tamoule' est aussi devenu une force politique puissante. Cela a permis que les gouvernements canadiens successifs ont ignoré la mise en garde des services de sécurité et (dans un premier temps, par défaut, plus tard tacitement) a nourris, depuis de nombreuses décennies, une action hostile contre le Sri Lanka. Dans la phase suivante, les réfugiés sont devenus des immigrants et entrés en politique, avec de nombreux leaders ex-tigre entrant et finançaient de l'activisme civil, lobbies de droits de l'homme, et à se présenter aux élections. Les ONG et des conférences universitaires ont été financés pour apporter des universitaires dans leur bergerie. Pendant ce temps, l'immigration, et même simplement visiter le Canada par Sri-Lankais parlant cinghalais ont été extrêmement difficiles. Le gouvernement sri-lankais, engagé dans une guerre avec les Tigres a commencé à son tour à traiter les législateurs et les journalistes canadiens en visite au Sri Lanka en tant qu'agents d'une puissance ennemie . Cette compréhension a été aggravé par le fait que, depuis ~1990, l'ACDI, WUS et d'autres organismes canadiens cessé de traiter avec le gouvernement sri-lankais et ont travaillé entièrement par NOG dirigés principalement par des Tamouls qui sont ouvertement pro-séparatistes. Ainsi, le Canada a accordé une attention seulement au nord et à; l'est, alors contrôlée par les Tigres. Presque tous les émissaires canadiens ont visité le Nord, mais n'ont pas visiter le Sud (peuplé de Cinghalais et aussi un pourcentage important de Tamouls qui coexister pacifiquement). Le sud a subi trois décennies de blessures et horribles attaques par les Tigres. Le nombre de morts et de blessés, veuves, etc , sur le côté cinghalais était d'au moins un facteur de deux a trois plus grande que chez les Tamouls.
La diaspora tamoule était fermement avec le parti libéral lorsque les conservateurs ont défait Paul Martin. En représailles, le gouvernement Harper a utilisé la preuve solide accumulée par le SCRS et la GRC et a interdit les Tigres, le `World Tamil Movement' (WTM ), et par la suite `The Tamil Rehabilitation Organization' (TRO), ainsi que toute autre organisation liees avec le Tiger. Cependant, après une courte accalmie, les membres de ces organisations regroupées sous de nouveaux noms pour le collect du fond, entrer dans des groupes pour les droits civiques, et egalement rejoint le gouvernement Harper. Ils ont montré leur puissance financière et politique en apportant Toronto à un arrêt, en bloquant ses rues en 2009 mai , demandant que le Canada intervienne pour sauver les leaders Tiger qui souffraient une défaite imminente. Cette démonstration de force a été suffisant pour tous les grands partis politiques canadiens à courtiser activement la diaspora tamoule du Canada. Tous les trois partis à la Chambre des communes du Canada sont devenus la voix des sentiments séparatistes tamouls. Ce mouvement a essayé de parvenir à ses fins militairement. Ayant échoué, il est à la recherche d'une action de type Kosovo ou le Darfour où la communauté internationale est l'instrument d'action. La communauté internationale a toujours empêché l'élimination (voir texte principal) des Tigres, permettant la Diaspoara pour financer les Tigres, et exigeant un irréaliste "règlement politique" avec les Tigres depuis plusieurs décennies. donc, exprimant des sentiments politiques en résonance avec le pointe de vue Tamil-speratist était facile pour le Canada, etant donneé que le Canada avait suivi une telle politique pendant des décennies, peut-être sans vision claire. En outre, la réception hostile accordé par Sri Lanka aux des émissaires canadiens bien-intentionnés (qui ignorent le Sud et se concentrent uniquement sur le Nord) a encore cristallisé les attitudes hostiles contre le gouvernement sri-lankais. Alors que les dirigeants de tigre au Sri Lanka ont été défaits et tués , les leaders internationaux réels de la LTTE, vivant au Canada, Etats-Unis et l'Europe n'ont pas été touchés. Ils controlés les fonds provenant de collections `trans-nationales' de nature légale et illégale. Le passage de clandestins de Tamouls qui avaient quitté le Sri Lanka il ya plusieurs décennies et vivaient en Indonésie et en Malaisie, l'Inde etc., et en attendant une chance de s'établir dans l'Ouest plus riches ont clairement été utilisé pour la collecte de fonds. Les dirigeants transnationales Tiger utilisé leurs réseaux de réfugiés et de la puissance financière au Royaume-Uni, l'Union européenne et l'Australie pour réaliser un contrôle similaire sur les processus politiques dans ces pays et dans les agences de l'ONU. Les avocats américains très bien payés comme Bruce Fein ont été utilisés pour poursuivre ou de harceler les opposants et les organismes gouvernementaux. Les Tamouls de campagne d'Obama a réussi à influencer les attitudes des Américains envers le Sri Lanka, via a vis Hillary Clinton. Le 12 mai 2009, les gouvernements américains et britanniques ont fait une tentative `de la dernière chance' pour sauver le chef de Tigre pris au piège et ont appelé le Sri Lanka et les Tigres de mettre fin aux hostilités immédiatement et reprendre les négociations politiques . Dans le texte qui suit, nous examinons brièvement la montée du séparatisme armé au Sri Lanka dans les années 1980, en raison de la polarisation ethnique qui a commencé avec l'introduction du suffrage universel en 1931. Nous examinos egalement, la participation du Canada sur le côté de séparatistes tamouls par sa politiques déséquilibré relatives aux réfugiés, et comment sa politique est devenue un processus de harcèlement des gouvernements sri-lankais successifs, en consort avec d'autres nations occidentales. Le texte examinera en détail les audiences du Comité permanent des affaires étrangères et du développement international, le Canada, qui a eu lieu en Novembre 2011, et à nouveau en Novembre et Décembre 2013. |
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Quote from S. J. V. Chelvanayagam, 1947
The separatist aspirations of the upper-class Colombo-Tamil leaders were clear, even prior to the formation of ITAK (Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi or Tamil State Party) and before the Independence from Britain (1948). Moving an amendment to the first address of thanks to the throne speech, in the first House of Representatives on November 26, 1947 S.J.V. Chelvanayakam said: "If Ceylon is fighting to secede from the British Empire, why should not the Tamil people if they like it, secede from the rest of the country?" Later addressing a meeting at the Young Men's Muslim Association at fort, Colombo in October said: "It is better to have our territory, our own culture and self-respect than be a minority in the island living on the good fortune of the majority". Reference: Manohara De Silva in Constitutional Manoeuvres of Separatist Forces (publisher: World Alliance for Peace in Sri Lanka, 2009). | - |
| K. M. de. Silva | Managing ethnic tensions in multi-ethnic societies: Sri Lanka, 1880-1985, University Press of America, 1986 |
| Jane Russell | Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution 1931-1947, Tissara Prakashakayo, Dehiwela, Sri Lanka, 1982 |
| The Sinhalese felt that their language legislation was no more discriminatory than those of other countries (e.g, Uni-lingual USA which has a much bigger percentage of Hispanics than the percentage of Tamils in Sri Lanka, or uni-lingual Canada at the time with a big French minority). To complicate matters, a good fraction of the Tamils lived in the south, among the Sinhalese, and did not live in the claimed "exclusive homeland" in the North. The hill-country 'Indian' Tamils who had come to work in the tea plantations, and led by their own leader Mr. Thondaman, did not participate in ITAK separatist politics. Thus, at the time, most Sinhalese, Muslims, and many Tamil speakers accepted the language legislation with equanimity. Although the language switch-over was supposed to be swift, it was initially, mostly ineffective. Most government business chugged on in English for sometime, since a new public service had to be trained in Sinhala. The government was ready to give concessions and time windows for government servants to acquire proficiency in the official language. However, the ITAK, with less than 5% of popular support at the start, moved in and began a campaign of dissuasion, litigation and intimidation urging the Tamils to not to study Sinhala. | Many commentators forget the already existing pre-WWI and later ITAK separatist movement, and simplify the narrative by claiming that the 'ethnic split' started from the sinhala-only legislation'. The strongly anti-Bandaranaike anglicized Ceylonese were the authors of this erroneous simplification. The separatists use it as a justification for their demand for an 'Arasu'. Even the LLRC commission makes this superficial mistake. It has also become the typical view-point of Western NGOs as well. These have acquired a dominant position since 2001, when large amounts of money were pumped by Norway and other nations into NGOs (like the 'Center for Policy Alternatives), supporting a political solution with the Tigers. We may take the example of Sash Jayawardena (SJ) who, writing for "Impunity Watch", a Netherlands-based NGO that targets small countries like Guatemala, describes the Sinhala-language bill as the infamous 'Sinhala-Only Act', which made Sinhala the sole official language of Ceylon and impacted the education and employment opportunities of the Tamil community (and quotes Manoharan, 2006). SJ further asserts that "in 1957, the Prime Minister of Ceylon bowed to pressure from Sinhala Buddhist nationalist elements and unilaterally abrogated the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact, which sought to address the growing concerns of Tamils (Manoharan 2006). Below we discuss how the B-C pact had already run foul of Tamil extremists and become caduc. |
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Quantitative measures of caste discrimination in the Hindu society of the Tamils living in the North, and the largely Buddhist society of the Sinhalese in the South, provide data for sociological studies of social discrimination. Such quantitative measures are provided by, for example (i) number of inter-caste marriages per 1000 people (ii) degree of accessibility of places of (a) worship, (b) schools, (c) shops, (d) transport and public places to individuals. (iii) accessibility to dining, and drinking water, without restrictions based on the concept of "caste pollution" (iv) Land ownership. (v) access to justice. (vi) ease of mobility from one job to another. Based on all these counts, the North (in comparison to the south) has been a very repressive society where the land-owning elite castes extracted surf-like domination over the lower castes, well into the 1960s and even 1970s when the cry for Tamil-Eelam (coming from the elite high-caste leaders) became dominant, with backing from the less-privileged Tamils who believed that their plight would be put right under Eelam. The prohibition of discrimination on the basis of caste, enabled the lower-caste Tamils to use public transport, and engage in other perfectly normal types of civil activities (at least on paper). At the time ~1950s, even in urban Jaffna, the lowest castes were not allowed to be seen in public; low-caste men and women were not allowed to cover the upper body. Many lower castes were not allowed in shops, temples, public transport, 'good' schools, near drinking-water wells etc. |
| Sash Jayawardane | A Study of Impunity in Postcolonial Sri Lanka, Impunity Watch, Holland (2013) |
| V. Navaratnam | The Fall and rise of the Tamil Nation: events leading to the Tamil war of independence and the resumption of Eelam sovereignty, (1991) |
| Michael Roberts | Tamil Nationalism, Journal of South Asian Studies, n.s., Vol.XXVII, no.1, April 2004. |
| K. M. de Silva | Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE, Penguin books, (2012) |
| Sir Ivor Jennings, the architect of Sri lanka's constitution and 'constitutional Guru' to D. S. Senanayake wrote: "So far as can be ascertained without a detailed comparison of the correspondence and the Act, the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act No.3 of 1949, was based on the agreement of 1941 (with Nehru) modified by the concessions made by Mr. Senanayake in 1948" (Sir Ivor Jennings, "The Ceylon Historical Journal", Vol. 11, 1952, p. 197) |
| The separatist struggle of the Sri Lankan Tamils was both a set back, and finally a help to the 'Indian estate-Tamils'. If there had been cooperation between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, the Sinhalese would not have been afraid of absorbing the Indian Tamils as citizens. The Muslim Minister of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike (nicknamed `Sinhala Marikkar') had even attempted to help Thondaman in this regard. However, the politics of the ITAK created suspicion against all Tamils, delaying any possibility of absorbing the Indian Tamils into citizenship. Two decades later, Thondaman found his chance when Jayawardena was keen on ensuring that the 'Indian Tamils' would not support the TULF. Ironically, the old guard of the ITAK and the TC had never wanted to link too closely with the Indian Tamils who were regarded by them as low-caste individuals unfit to be called Sri Lankan Tamils. They had even been happy with the Sirima-Shastry pact that sent many Indian Tamils back to India. | The usual position taken by NGO writers about the Indian citizenship act is interesting, and tracks the position taken by the Tamil-Separatist websites. Thus Sash Jayawardene (SJ) of the Dutch NGO named "Impuntiy Watch" writes: " The provisions of the Citizenship Act disenfranchised a large proportion of Plantation Tamils by requiring that a person born in Ceylon and claiming citizenship by descent prove that his father was born in Ceylon or that his paternal grandfather and paternal great-grandfather were born in Ceylon (Citizenship Act 1948: Section 4(1); De Silva Wijeyeratne 1998: 44) ... However SJ fails to mention the provision based on seven-year residency (see Ladduwahetty ), and thus gives a very lop-sided view of the act. |
| However, many moderate Tamils and Sinhalese who had been working hard to build ethnic bridges bemoaned the fact that Amirthalingam and other more democratic TULF leaders were assassinated by Prabhakaran. The TULF leaders and the UNP leaders moved in the same social circles, and had very similar mercantile interests. They would have come to a peaceful settlement with the Sinhalese leaders like Jayawardena if their lives had not been extinguished by the LTTE. |
| The goings-on in the North were not well understood in the south where the Sinhalese and the Tamils lived relatively peacefully, but interrupted by bouts of increasing violence arising from the political confrontations of the two groups. The Sinhalese smugly felt that the Tamils have 'every right open to every Sri Lankan', and perhaps more privileged 'because of their dominant position in government, commerce and in the professions'. It was (and is) common for Sinhalese to ask "what are the tangible grievances of the Tamils"? The Sinhalese felt that the strident demands of the ITAK for an `exclusively Tamil homeland' containing 1/3 of the land mass, and 2/3 of the coastal area for a small minority of about 12%, with half of them opting to stay in the 'Sinhalese south', was simply a non-starter. Nevertheless even Tamils who opted to live in the South wanted a separate 'Tamil Eelam' for their kith and kin, while most Sinhalese were against 'any attempt to divide the country'. Given the slogans of the ITAK since 1949, they believed that federalism and devolution are just paths to separation. This fear is basic to the politics of Sri lanka even today. |
Eelam map & LTTE emblem with a Tiger, rifles and bullets (click to enlarge)
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Many informed commentators (e.g., K. M. de Silva, Gerald Pieris, Sebastian Rasalingam, Michael Roberts, D. B. S. Jeyaraj, and lately, Dyan Jayatilleke) felt that even if an Eelam were created, it would still lead to explosive border confrontations, battles for fishing rights in the sea, for water which comes from the central hills outside the proposed Eelam, and so on. These sober observations were eclipsed once India and the West began to support 'a political solution' with the Tigers, and dumped large sumps of money to change public opinion to fit the Norwegian stance formulated by Solheim and Balasingham. The political views of the Western nations like Canada today are skewed by those events.
Meanwhile, the North itself became increasingly under the thumb of terrorists groups, especially the LTTE. The government responded by strengthening its security operations in the North, and
easily found informants against the LTTE from among the low-caste Tamils who had been the victims of the Tamil social system for centuries. Prabhakaran's response was to capture some (probably innocent) low-caste Tamils and hang them by lamp posts for public display.
see:
Lamp-post murders of low-caste Tamils by the LTTE
Skirmishes between the security forces and the armed groups increased gradually.
However, what happened on the night of 23rd July 1983, was a turning point in the history of the country and in the emergence of a hardened Diaspora. The "Report on the Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence (1981-1984), Volume I; S. Sharvananda, S. S. Sahabandu, M. M. Zuhair; September 2002", states that:
| around 11.30pm, 13 soldiers on a routine patrol in the North traveling in a jeep and a truck, came under terrorists attack and all 13 soldiers were killed. This was at this time the largest number of army men killed so far in any incident in the North. News of the killing spread instantly on Sunday in the country", igniting emotions. |
Massive Foreign NGO-funding to achieve political agendas.
| It is recorded that the Western-sponsored Colombo NGOs that called for a deal with the LTTE (declared a Terrorist ogranization by the UN in 2001, and also 32 countries) received from Norway alone over 28 million US dollars during 2002-2004, while other Western countries also contributed large sums through their front organizations. The funding sources for NGOs included Meyers Norris Penny Ltd RM (Canada), Canadian International Development Agency, Berghof Foundation (Germany), `Facilitating Local Initiatives for Conflict Transformation' (Germany), Stichting Cortaid (The Netherlands), Norwegian Embassy, Commission Des Communautes (Norway), ICT for Peace Foundation (Switzerland), Dep. F. Auswaert, Angelegenheiten (Switzerland), Swedish Embassy, Swedish International Development Agency, Goldman Sachs Grant (UK), Minority Rights GRP Ltd BCA (UK), European Commission, Transparency International Division (UK), Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (UK), European Union, Diakonia (US), Forum of Federations/Forum Des (US), International Media Support (US), the Ford Foundation (US), Fredskorpset Bergen (US), National Endowment for Democracy (US), Partnership for Transparency Fund (US) and Academy for Educational Development (US). Forum of Federations. |
| Out of Rs. 618.33 million received by the 'Center for Policy Alternatives' (headed by Pakiasoothy Saravanamuttu), 'National Peace Council' (Kumar Rupasinghe) and 'Transparency International' during the three-year period, Rs. 111.48 million had been donated by various other sources but not named. There were many other NGOs, 'Asian-Human-Rights foundations', organizations dedicated to force a 'federal solution' (with websites like federalidea.com), etc., created by Western funds, as well as Western Church groups during this period. These organizations completely over-whelmed and distorted news reporting and local journalism responding to their funds. The
story of the journalist Tissanaygam who was lured by NGO funding, and finally charged by the government for terrorist activities is instructive in this regard. Many NGO writers mis-represented and white-washed the activities of the LTTE (e.g., the assassination of Kadirgamar), and also engaged in propaganda against the army `in the name of peace'. The invincibility of the LTTE, and hence making a deal with Prabhakaran at what ever price, with no need for free elections in the North at any stage, no need for accountability for Prabhakaran's assassinations, were foregone conclusions of this program. Their `country-situation reports' echoed the separatist views of the CPA and other NGOs. These were carried to the West by AI, HRW, ICG and other Western agencies that the Western governments trust. Thus, while the `peace effort' of Norway, constructed within this narrative to legitimize Prabhakaran failed, the organisms created under its leadership have permanently distorted the Western view of the Sri Lankan conflict, with opinion slanted against the Sri Lankan Government. This has been a key facilitator of the indictment of Sri Lanka using the UNHRC. |
| Gerald E. Peiris | Twilight of the Tigers, (Oxford) (2008) |
| Christine C. Fair | Diaspora Involvement in Insurgencies: Insights from the Khalistan and Tamil Eelam Movements, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics vol. 11, no. 1, p. 143 (2005) |
| Sarah Wayland | Ethno-nationalist Networks and Transnational Opportunities: The Sri Lanka and Tamil Diaspora, Review of International Studies, vol. 30, no. 3, p. 405 (2004) |
| Michael Roberts | Tamil Nationalism, Journal of South Asian Studies, n.s., Vol.XXVII, no.1, April 2004. |
| Shamindra Fernando | Who got the Norwegian Money?, Island newspaper, Nov. 13, 2011 |
| Sandhya Jain | Using NGOs to coerce nations - IBTL, May 8, 2012 |
