Tsunami won't stop Tamil struggle: LTTE
PK Balachanddran
Colombo, December 31, 2004
The Sri Lankan Tamil rebel group, the LTTE, has said that despite the nationwide tsunami tragedy, it will not give up its fight for the rights of the minority Tamils.
Speaking to the media in Kilinochchi on Thursday, the LTTE's Political Wing leader SP Tamilselvan, said that just as all ethnic groups were equal before the forces of nature as the tsunami proved, all ethnic groups had equal rights. It was only when this entitlement to equality was not respected by some, liberation struggles occurred.
If the tsunami would lead to a change of heart among the Sinhala-hegemonistic forces in Sri Lanka, there would be no need for a Tamil liberation struggle, Tamilselvan said. But so long as the Tamils were denied their right to equality, their struggle would continue, the LTTE's political commissar made it clear.
Asked specifically if the current cooperation between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government in the matter of relief distribution indicated future political accommodation, Tamilselvan said that the question was unfair at this juncture, when the need was cooperation with the government to alleviate the acute suffering of the Tamil people.
Speculation on end of war
There is much speculation in the Sri Lankan and international media about the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE sinking their differences, if not burying the hatchet, and working towards a permanent ceasefire and a lasting solution of the 50-year-old ethnic problem.
Many relief workers from the Sinhala-dominated South Sri Lanka, who had gone to the stricken Tamil-speaking eastern districts, told Hindustan Times that they were sincerely welcomed by the local Tamils and that everybody spoke about the futility of the ethnic conflict and war.
Also the Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalas living in the East, were seeing unprecedented mutual cooperation. "Even if a Sinhala or Muslim man had one banana or biscuit to eat, he would share it with a starving Tamil. The Tamils were eating whatever the Muslim mosques were preparing, disregarding religious taboos," said a Tamil resident of Kalmunai.
"After a long time I felt that I was a Sri Lankan, and not just a Tamil. I did not see others as Muslim or Sinhala but as human beings, as Sri Lankans," a Batticaloa-based Tamil relief worker in Kalmunai said.
"I was impressed with Buddhist monks bringing lorry loads of relief material and distributing it even-handedly," a resident of Batticaloa said.
Buddhist monks are Sinhalas and generally associated with Sinhala nationalism and unsympathetic to the Tamil demand for federalism or separation.
A Tamil school teacher in Batticalao said that it was heartening to see the LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran talking of the suffering of all the people of Sri Lanka, Tamils, Sinhalas and Muslims in the tsunami disaster.
"Please note that Prabhakaran did not use the word Tamil Eelam. He spoke of the island of Sri Lanka," the teacher said. "And when he mourned the dead in South Asia, in India and Tamil Nadu in particular, he showed a readiness to reach out to them and cooperate with them."
North-East divide among Tamils
But in contrast to popular expressions of inter-ethnic solidarity in the eastern districts, old antagonisms and distrust seem to prevail in the northern districts. This is because aid from the Sri Lankan government and the Sinhala South started going to the North late. The LTTE had openly complained about this. The complaint speeded up the delivery from Tuesday onwards.
The delay on part of the government and civil society groups was due to logistical problems as well as fear and reservations about going into the LTTE-held areas.
Indeed, according to President Chandrika Kumaratunga, when some non-official relief workers wanted to take relief material to an LTTE-controlled area in the East, the LTTE stopped them from entering, and demanded that the material be given to them for distribution.
The Sri Lankan Army said on Thursday that the LTTE seized material from eight relief-laden trucks.
Clearly, the LTTE was afraid that the Sinhala civil society groups would use relief for political purposes, to prop up their majoritarian hegemony over the Tamils.
When Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was meeting tsunami victims in Point Pedro on Thursday along with ministers belonging to the Sinhala nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), he was asked to go back by an unruly mob of Tamils, inspired by the LTTE. Placards denounced Rajapaksa for bringing the JVP with him.
"We don't want your aid, Go back!" and "JVP's racial hegemony is more destructive than the tsunami!" cried some of the angry placards.
At any rate, the LTTE's Political Wing Leader Tamilselvan made it clear on Thursday that while government and international agencies were welcome to the LTTE-controlled areas, they would have to work under the direction of the LTTE. The government had agreed to this stipulation, he said.
What is clear from all this is that while the people are forging ties across the ethnic divide in the ethnically mixed and easily accessible eastern districts, the Tamils of the uni-ethnic and less accessible North are still labouring under old fears and prejudice of keeping up the Tamil struggle in its extreme form is unlikely to get full support in the East, thanks to the tsunami and its aftermath. But in the North, greater support is likely.
But even in the North, because of the challenge of putting battered lives together again and exposure to Sri Lankan and international presence, ethnic animosity and insularity may start melting at the edges. These may pave the way for the indefinite continuation of the ceasefire or the existing 'No War, No Peace' situation, even if they do not lead to a permanent or lasting peace.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.