Musings of 1084

Noted Tamil writer, S.Ramakrishnan writes in his blog.

Some friends from Eelam used to send me emails for the past few years. The emails sent from a state of mind where there is no option left other than to share the hope, pain and agony…

A friend who called himself with a single word ‘Yo’, used to send me mails for the past two years. I always found an indefatigable hope in his mails. Deaths at the war front couldn’t deter his hopes. But, two months before, he sent a mail which had only three words.

I AM ALIVE.

I switched off the monitor and spent the rest of the night in the deep darkness of the room, totally numbed. It was not an expression of a single individual but the pathetic cry of a race which has been forced to shed all the residual hopes.

I received yet another mail from him after two days of the massive devastation. This time the mail had more words.

I AM ASHAMED TO BE ALIVE.

Day before Yesterday, repeating the horrifying images of lifeless Prabakaran (it’s under dispute), CNN IBN found a ’scholar’ to voice his opinions on air. The scholar was none other than the tout (courtesy:himself), the political pimp of Tamilnadu, Subramanian Swamy. Jegath Gasper Raj, a christian priest who has twice met Prabakaran was quiet defensive while Swamy was brazen.

Let us not be innocents. Civilians will get harmed in a war and now it’s time to move forward.

3000 people died in 3 days and this was the reaction of the so-called Harvard visiting Professor or in real the CIA agent. He called Prabakaran, a megalomaniac.

The next day we get the information that Srilankan Army puts out a dossier which describes Prabakaran as a megalomaniac. Beyond the similiarity of word usuage, the vulgar enthusiasm of Srilanka to Swamy, and the conspicous silence of Indian State sends the message that mission is over. Beyond all our criticisms on Prabakaran and tigers, We must acknowledge that they have died a brave death against the megalomaniacs of xenophobic fascism.

Today the same Hindu comes up with articles published in guardian. Till date we heard all the SLA propaganda masked as news and now we see obituaries to Prabakran and we hear the voices of Eelam Tamils for the first time in the pages of ‘The Hindu’.

With no proper hospitals inside the no-fire zone, doctors put patients on mattresses under the trees, he said. “One day in April it rained really hard. It started to flood. Those patients who were lying on the ground and who had limited mobility could not get up fast enough. Ten people died of drowning that night,” he said.

“Things are really tough for us. My children are begging me for food and water. It is killing me to see us like this. We led such different lives. Why is this happening to us?”

Yesterday Srilankan Government announced a national holiday to ‘celebrate’ the Victory. Now every scoundrel who accompanied Srilanka in the genocide is voicing his concern to address the demands of Tamils and to rehabilitate them. Rajapaksa starts his presidential address in Tamil and this symbolism is celebrated by the media.

It would be self deceiving to believe that the same Rajapaksa who killed Lasantha Wickramatunga and silenced many others who questioned his fascist measures will bestow equal rights to Tamils. Sonali Wickramatunga, wife of Lasantha puts it with pain.

The free Sri Lanka in which I was born no longer exists. Our country has entered a Dark Age where the government unapologetically equates democratic dissent with treason.

Now we can imagine when Sinhalese people themselves claim there is no free Srilanka what lies ahead for Tamils. This genocide has set up an example for rest of the world that you can deny the access of international media, medical help and carry out what you want in the name of ‘War on Terror’. we can very well expect that Israel and other rogue regimes will emulate this example in future or we are missing something? How it was possible to a state to outrageously deny even the media presence amidst the so-called ‘International pressure’? Was there a pressure? or did we got it wrong? may be the pressure was to finish off the LTTE sooner.

But, megalomanic Rajapaksa and the South asian regimes, India, China and Pakistan who have directly lended all support to him are not understanding the simple fact that struggles for self-determination and the just voices against Genocide cannot be wiped out by military might. Kashmir is the live example that even after decaded and decades of oppression both in the hands of India and Pakistan, it still defies to cow down. North east still fights the hegemony of Delhi.

May be the chapter of Tigers ended in the long struggle. But the story will not end as the contradiction will not get resolved without justice. New chapters will definitely arise defying all the obstacles, assimilating the positive and negative experiences of the past chapters of the struggle.

The duty of democratic and revolutionary forces across the world at this crucial juncture must be to raise voice for convicting Rajapaksa for the horrendous war crimes and to expose the connivance of the South asian powers which will be the real reconcillation to the Eelam Tamils other than providing food and water.

Image Courtesy: Vinavu.com

Statement of the Meeting Conveners is given below with the details. It is reproduced here as a measure of solidarity.

The Sri Lankan Government has time and again declared: “The war against LTTE has entered the final stage”. Notwithstanding the claims, what is clear is that the war has reached this “final stage” after the slaughter of almost half of the population of the Sri Lankan Tamils. There is not a single person who has not lost a family member, not a single family that has not been displaced from their homes. In fact they have been displaced several times over. Their homeland came under heavy aerial attack in 2007 when Sri Lankan Government unilaterally withdrew ceasefire and started its war ostensibly to annihilate the LTTE. People were forced to leave their homes and take shelters in the various camps. But did the Sri Lankan forces ever spare the camps?! Schools, hospitals and now the so called ‘no-fire zone’ too were not spared by the murderous Sri Lankan Government. Some independent reports confirm that the recent phase of war itself has perished around 70,000 Tamils. After 2 years the war still continues, violating UN resolutions and committing the worst genocide of our contemporary times.

Our role to stop this heinous war of genocide becomes crucial as India is the backbone of this war and has extended material, intelligence and political support to the chauvinist Sri Lankan state. India’s position on Sri Lanka has always catered to the interests of the Sri Lankan rulers due to the geo-political importance of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. In turn, Sri Lanka had always been ambivalent/non-committal to the interests of Indian rulers. Hence the Indian rulers for a brief time supported the Tamil militant movement (for their own interests). Later they switched back to their original position after diluting and disarming most movements and sending troops to annihilate the only remaining force –the LTTE after the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan accord. This covert support to Sri Lanka became an open partnership in the period after the death of Rajiv Gandhi.

In this light the statement of Shiv Sankar Menon, “Sri Lanka and India has never been so warm, so close, and so deep,” puts in nutshell the present Indo-Lanka relations. India had provided Sri Lanka with radars, intelligence assistance, arms training and now with its own troops. Worst, doing all this while talking about saving the lives of innocent Tamils in Sri Lanka. India has not only been a partner in killing thousands of Tamils in the north of Sri Lanka but did not even condemn the killings of journalists both Tamil and Sinhalese, illegal detentions and torture, media censorship and the dictatorial rule of the SLFP regime.

The recent attack on April 06 of this year on the Tamil people has reached catastrophic proportions. Some independent reports fear that the Sri Lankan army used deadly chemical weapons, poisonous gas and thermo baric bomb – a bomb that uses a fuel-air explosive capable of creating overpressures equal to an atomic bomb in the war zone resulting in killing thousands of people. This information is to be verified by the international community. But the Sri Lankan Government is not allowing the journalists and independent international agencies to report from the Tamil areas. In this regard the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has come out with a statement expressing their anguish.

The suspected use of chemical weapons and nerve gas and flamethrower weapons reminds one of the days of the Auschwitz where the Nazis butchered countless number of people. The International Conventions have strictly prohibited such use of weapons and poisonous gases resulting in gruesome mass killings of combatants and civilians. It has also been reported that the Sri Lankan army is using cluster bombs which are banned in almost 93 countries in the world. And to escape from indictment on many counts from the international community against the use of prohibited weapons to human rights abuses, the Sri Lankan state systematically keeps international media and foreign aid workers out of the war scene. According to UN 1948 Genocide Convention, many of these acts clearly constitute as genocide and Sri Lankan state deserves to be termed as a war criminal and brought before the world court, if an investigation by competent International Team is held and such glaring criminal acts are confirmed.

In this context the continuous covert and overt support of Indian state to Sri Lankan Government is condemnable and is against the overall peace and stability in the sub-continent which it claims to be committed to. Only a people who can determine their own sovereign future without being coerced, mistreated, discriminated or oppressed can bring a lasting and just solution to the spectre of war and genocide that is beholding the sub-continent.

Public Meeting/ Convention
Venue: Speaker’s Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, Near Parliament Street, New Delhi

Time and Date:
2 PM,28 April 2009 (Wednesday)

Speakers:

A B Bardan, General Secretary, Communist Party of India (CPI)

Varavara Rao, Poet, Revolutionary Writer’s Association (RWA)

Arundhati Roy, Writer

N Venuh, General Secretary, NPMHR, Kohima, Nagaland

S A R Geelani, Vice- President, Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP)

Justice Ajit Singh Bains, Punjab

Prof. Jagmohan Singh, Editor World Sikh News,

Prof. Ajit Bhuyan, Assam

Viduthalai Rajendran, General Secretary Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, TN

Two Members of Parliament, Sri Lanka

Some more speakers are yet to be confirmed.

Organised by:
Revolutionary Democratic Front and Delhi Tamil Students Union
Contact: Kalaiarasan -09968344662

Congress has finally bowed down before Jarnail’s Shoe. Tytler and Sajjan Kumar have announced their exit. Jarnail was looking visibly tired in yesterday’s Television show. He was repeating again and again. “I don’t want to make a political comment.” His shoe has already made a huge political statement and the repercussions we saw in Punjab and Delhi filled today’s front pages. I think Tamilnadu has some lessons to draw from these incidents.

Various sections of Tamilnadu, Lawyers, Students, Traders, Fishermen and Political Parties of various hues, are conducting various forms of protests for the past four months against the Genocide at Srilanka. The Genocide that’s taking place with the Indian State actively helping the Sinhalese Army in arms, ammunition and strategy. But Manmohan Singh Govt didn’t showed even a sign of irritation to the commotion in Tamilnadu.

It reminds a crude joke in a Tamil film in which a comedian plays the role of a  politician. He announces his master plan for the development of Tamilnadu showing an Indian map and says,

Since Tamilnadu is very far away from Delhi, We are not heard better. So we should lift Tamilnadu from here and place it there, near to Delhi.

May be that’s not a Joke but a fact. You need to protest in and around Delhi so that your protest can be noticed. The volume of the protest is not the factor but the timing. May be i sound like yet another secessionist voice from Tamilnadu like that of Vaiko who is getting bashed by the English Media. Yesterday Vaiko burst out at a public meeting.

Tamil Nadu would witness a bloodbath even if the slightest harm befell Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader V. Prabakaran.

This crap is not only insane but an example of the understanding of the entire struggle of Eelam Tamils. So According to vaiko, Tamilnadu will or should face a bloodbath only when Prabakaran gets hurt and not for the thousands of ordinary hapless men and women who are crying desperately for help in the living hell for the past five months. This kind of hero worship that was propagated for years has ditched the Tamilians in a pit where people don’t sense the role they have to play but wait for the magic of  Prabakaran, which seems remote.

May be the crux of the issue also lies here. ‘The Hindu’ comes up with a news item on DMK’s rally on the issue and adds a double quote to the word “Genocide”, as if it’s an exaggerated claim in the print edition. Muralidhar Reddy speaks and writes as the defence spokesperson of Srilankan Government. Siddarth Varadarajan is ready to open his mouth on every international issue from palestine to Iran to Egypt, but not on Srilanka. He posts the self-written obituary of Lasantha Wickramatunge that exposes the Fascism of Rajapakse in his blog, but not ready to reply a comment on the totally different stand of his newspaper. P.Sainath writes immediately on Jarnail Singh and the 1984 Genoide but maintains a strange silence on Srilanka. Arundhathi Roy limits herself with a single statement. As a whole, every one buys the argument of Rajapakse and Pranab Mukherjee, in one or another way, that it’s a war to crush the LTTE. No progressive element from the North goes for an analogy that this argument is the exact replica of how Israel defends it’s onslaught on Palestinians. They don’t sense the gravity and the duty of solidarity to the Eelam Tamils which they find with Palestine.

Vaiko and his likes are responsible for this state of affairs by their opportunist stances and appeasing of Indian State for the past two decades by which they have precipitated the Srilankan issue to a single point agenda of whether supporting or not supporting Tigers. The artificial boasting of the umbilical cord relationship has diminished the cry of a just nationality struggle in to a linguistic sentiment in the world view. The excessive word jugglery has not yielded anything except isolation from the rest of india and now we witness the last moments of the most disastrous yet least sensitised Genocide since Second world war.

Jarnail probably shows the way. Like the Hindi Proverb, “Laatho ke bhooth, baato se nahin maante!” (Ghosts of kicks don’t understand the language of words). The conspicuous silence of Indian State needs such a kick at this crucial hour. It may not necessarily repeat the same but an effective and organised election boycott by the whole Tamilnadu. It will be a kick on the entire framework.

…

Related Posts:

• India is a bigger Terrorist than LTTE!
• Eelam: Smash the Indian hegemony!

Lasantha Wickramatunga, Editor of Sunday Leader, a newspaper from Srilanka was shot dead on January 8 by Rajapakse’s Henchmen.  Countercurrents has posted his last editorial with the note below.

We know many editors who thoughtfully got ready obituaries of living persons, in the fond anticipation that they would die sooner or later, of course, sooner rather than later. We know some editors, who, rather unluckily, published obituaries prematurely, even wrongly. But we do not know a single editor who wrote his own obituary, quite truthfully, and died just before its publication.

Lasantha Wickramatunga of Sunday Leader, Sri Lanka, was one such editor. He had even captioned his edit: And then they came for me. They actually came. And they did their job. That edit was Wickramatunga’s self-obituary, not unintended, duly anticipated, with courage and certitude. This report about it is a must-read for anyone who loves writing and reading.

I do recommend it’s a must read. Not because of it’s literary quality but it’s a genuine account of a man who fought against a Fascist regime and gave his life. When ‘The Hindu’ is jubilant over Rajapakse’s series of victories it’s time we present the voice of a journalist from the same country. It’s not only an account for Journalists but for every progressive individual who encounter the same question in the struggle for truth. Withstand or Withdraw? Lasantha chose the first option.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

When news of the agony of Eelam Tamils haunts us from every quarters, the criminal silence of the so-called international community, the complicity of the Indian State drives us wild, we hear a democratic voice that sounds unbelievably clear and stern even at the last moment. The call of conscience gives us hope that, at last it exists the Island state. We wish it grows louder.

READ LASANTHA’S SELF-OBITUARY.