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Will today’s declaration by people in Kilinochchi wake up the world?

A Tamil uprising gathering is taking place in Kilinochchi today. It is intended to strengthen a similar one held in Vavuniya in July.

This gathering will bring out the longing and the outrage of the Tamils. The organizers of the gathering, Tamil Uprising Federation of Kilinochchi district, in their invitation said, “This gathering will demonstrate the context that is evolving where Tamils will determine their own destiny”.

In the history of this island, that contains many living cultures within it, the Sinhala and the Tamil people have a long and continuous history that predates Christ and have thrived as two distinct and ancient peoples. This island is today the battleground where one of these people has attempted to eliminate the distinctness of the other and the other has taken up a struggle to resist this.

These two people who have distinct language, culture, tradition, history and homeland have been governed by two separate systems through history. When the Portuguese first arrived here in the 16th century they witnessed the existence of two peoples, Tamils in Northeast and Sinhala in South living with two distinct cultures. In due course the Portuguese and subsequently the Dutch captured and ruled many parts of the island. Yet, both these imperial powers recognized the unity of the Tamil homeland and ruled it as a separate government.

It was only the British imperial power that captured the island from the Dutch that turned the situation upside down. For its own convenience in governing it brought the Tamil nation and the Sinhala nation into one unit and forced a unitary government on it. It is the British colonialism that laid the foundation for today’s struggle by the Tamils. The same British imperialist that forced a unitary system on the Tamils handed over the power to rule the Tamil nation to the majority Sinhala nation when they left the island.

When the political power in the island was transferred to the Sinhala majority in 1948 under the guise of independence the Sinhala chauvinisms took the upper hand. The oppression of the minority Tamils took the form of violent cultural genocide of the Tamils. It carried out well planned destruction of all evidence of the existence of a Tamil nation. The last 50 years of history shows the many different ways that this destruction of the distinctness of Tamil nation was carried out.

The language right of Tamils was first taken away and Sinhala was made the only official language. This was followed by an attack on the Educational rights of Tamils and then on the job opportunities for Tamils. Deliberate colonisation of Tamil land by Sinhala took away the land rights of Tamils. Finally even the right to life of Tamils was taken away by letting loose the military in Tamil homeland.

Tamils are at a turning point today after experiencing a long history of State terrorism that has tried to destroy the foundation on which Tamils can live as a cultural entity, as a nation, and identify themselves as such.

When non-violent protest demanding their political rights was violently and cruelly broken by the Sinhala government, Tamils were forced into the situation of having to remove a thorn with another thorn. This is the visible historical fact today.

It is in this situation that today’s Tamil uprising gathering will say loud and clear to the international community their right to sovereignty and ask the international community for the acceptance of that sovereignty. The international community must hear this loud message and react to those demands. That is what the Tamils are expecting.

01 September 2005

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