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“EU should review its decision in the interest of peace”

“European Union should review its decision on the censure on LTTE in the larger interest of peace in this country” said Mr. V.Vigneswaran, Chairperson of the Trincomalee Tamil peoples’ forum in a statement on the consequences of EU’s censure on LTTE activities.

Exerpts:

Tamil people view the action of EU as an incentive to the government of Sri Lanka to continue its discriminatory treatment and would no doubt place them again in a vulnerable situation of facing military oppression. The Tamil determination to fight against military oppression climaxed with the LTTE successfully evicting the occupying forces from major parts of the Tamil Homeland, placing the LTTE in a very stronger position. It is at this stage the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) was entered into with the encouragement and support given by the international community.

Cease-fire having not produced any tangible benefits that could create normalcy in the life of a people battered by two decades of war, remains just a promise more on the breach and pushing the war affected people into the abyss of frustration. On the other side of the divide, south is pre-occupied with a presidential election that has already seen strange bedfellows entering into pacts with the solemn pledge of doing away with all that could help the peace process to move on. A naked war mongering on in the election platforms, extremist elements in the south have now got a fertile ground in the form of the EU censure on LTTE which for all intent and purposes would mean a censure on the Tamil people. The oppressed is being censured to the delight of the oppressor.

With no malice to the people of Great Britain, one feels the irony of Britain heading the EU at a time the censure is made, for the Tamil people have an axe to grind with in this case with Britain. Recorded history tells the present Tamil generation that their sovereignty as a distinct nation was lost to the invaders in the early 16th century and Britain being the power that held sway in the affairs of the isle of Ceylon, as it was then known, at the time full independence was contemplated by the Crown, failed to realise the dangers that would ensue to the Tamil people through the first constitution, safety clause 29 on fundamental rights notwithstanding.

The Tamil people rightly expect Britain to be more circumspect as dictated by history and right the wrongs rather than aggravate the situation. The decision of the EU has only helped to exacerbate the already complex nature of the conflict resolution. The most worrying question in the Tamil mind is about the partisan manner in which the ‘terrorism’ mode has been applied to the Tamil side of the divide, leaving the state terrorism perpetrated by successive governments untouched; the question per se is “under what classification does the terroristic acts of the state of Sri Lanka fall into”?

It is a sad commentary on the EU if it had fallen for the propaganda fabricated by the government and the late Foreign Minister. It would have been more sensible, had the EU and the international community at large strived and succeeded in providing to the Tamil people the necessary political arrangement with the right to self-determination and then censure the LTTE to ‘behave’. This is what the Tamil people expect from the civilised world. If this just and fair expectation does not materialise through the good offices of the EU and the like entities, the Tamil people have no alternative other than to achieve it all by themselves.

We therefore request the EU most respectfully to review its decision in the light of ground realities and historical obligations”.

(‘Eelanatham’ Tamil daily 2 Oct 2005)

02 October 2005

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