NEWS & LETTERS, June - July 2009
World in View
Sri Lanka tragedy
A tragedy continues to unfold against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Tens of thousands of unarmed Tamil civilians--men, women and children--died in the last weeks of the war in Sri Lanka, as they faced wanton government shelling, as well as Tamil guerrillas' desperate maneuvers to survive by using these fleeing civilians. They died as the world's governments, did little but issue abstract humanitarian appeals with no substance, with India and China actively supporting the Sri Lankan government's murderous last campaign.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Tamil refugees are in Sri Lanka government camps (called welfare camps or internment camps), in the aftermath of the civil war. They are completely dependent on government officials and humanitarian aid for their survival. How authoritarian these camps are, and to what end they will be put, remains to be seen.
Within Sri Lanka, the principal Tamil opposition force, the Tamil Tigers, which have conducted a quite contradictory campaign for Tamil self-determination over the past 25 years, have been decisively defeated in a final murderous military campaign.
While for the moment, the authoritarian, militaristic Sri Lankan government rides high, it is clear that all the questions of decades-long racism and denied self-determination of the Tamil minority remain.
The right to self-determination lies in the divisions that were already present in the birth of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) as an independent nation in 1948: Sinhala-Buddhist Ceylon/Sri Lanka with a large minority of Hindu/Christian Tamils within. The more than half a century since has witnessed demands ranging from autonomy to a full-fledged independent Tamil nation. Massive bloodshed does not stop these demands.
--E. W.
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