Appeal For Sri Lankan Peace, Justice & Democracy

International appeal to restore peace, justice and democracy

Twenty four years ago this month the ethnic civilians of Sri Lanka suffered the worst racist rioting in the island's post colonial history.

The massacre, which has infamously been referred to since as 'Black July' (and occasionally as the ethnic ' Holocaust), was not merely an eruption of mob violence, but a systemic and violent cleansing of Tamils from Colombo and much of the south by the Sinhala-dominated state.

Over three thousand Tamils perished as our people were driven first into refugee camps and then dispatched by ship to the north. In one week almost all ethnic civilians homes and businesses in the south had been looted and burnt. The armed struggle that escalated amid the resultant grief and anger has since evolved into what is today a substantive state-building project.

However, in the near quarter century since Black July, despite the tens of thousands of lives that have been lost in the conflict, there has not been an iota of change in the Sinhala leadership's thinking - nor, for that matter, in the sentiments of the international community.

The military campaign now being waged by President Mahinda Rajapakse is underpinned by the same racial superiority and exclusive, even annihilatory logic as that of President Junius Jayawardene in the eighties - and President Chandrika Kumaratunga's 'war for peace' in the nineties; namely that Sri Lanka is a majoritarian (Sinhala) state in which Tamils would be tolerated provided they accept their secondary minority status and abandon their demands that political power be shared.

They openly waged a brutal war against the ethnic civilians unleashed the murderous mobs, assisted by the Sri Lanka forces and armed with voters lists: Last month President Rajapakse forcibly expelled hundreds of ethnic Tamils from Colombo, deeming them a security threat.

The move was halted amid international protests, but the point had been made: the Tamils had better know their place in Sri Lanka. Now, as three decades ago, state terror remains the primary method of governing the Tamils - though the violence of the Sinhala mob has been replaced by that of the Army's multi-barrel rocket launcher.

President Rajapakse's battlefield executed during the past year in Sampur, southern Trincomalee and especially Vaharai, militarily seal off and starve the population while subjecting it to relentless bombardment and air strikes. Jayawardene blockaded the Jaffna peninsula for months, relentlessly blasting the northern peninsula from land, sea and air. the Vanni was subject to the same draconian embargo which blocked food and medicine from the residents as imposed on the northern eastern ethnic areas.

The point is that throughout the conflict, every Sinhala leadership has readily inflicted widespread suffering amongst the hundreds of thousands of ordinary ethnic civilians, as part of its bid to crush the liberation movement -And just like Jayawardene and Kumaratunga, Rajapakse also inflicts this suffering. Every Sinhala leader has declared his or her vicious violence

Amid reprehensibly weak international pressure for them to solve the ethnic conflict, all these Sinhala leaders have sought to delay and prevaricate on sharing power until the sole reason for that need to compromise - the struggle - For decades our people suffered and died in their thousands as the Sinhala military, unrestrained by law or morals, laid waste to our homeland. But it was our efforts to resist this genocidal violence. The instead hailed as a struggling democracy and strengthened anew.

Black July is thus not just a historical event. Rather, it is an emblematic act of Sinhala rule. In remembering Black July, we not only commemorate the thousands of ethnic civilians who perished in the Holocaust of 1983, but we also remember the tens of thousands who were slaughtered before and since in the pursuit of Sinhala hegemony. Thus we also remember at the same time why the liberation struggle began, why it changed from ahimsa to arms, why it necessarily continues today. We remember that we are a nation resisting oppression.

ENDS

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