CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Subidcham: The challenges we face and how we respond

Subidcham July 13, 2006

Subidcham is a recently formed group of committed media persons from the Tamil Diaspora interacting with a number of individuals and organizations. They are not politically involved with any specific party or group. Their primary aim is to help redeem the Sri Lankan society that has become deeply mired in political chaos and violence and the country split apart on racial animosities that are keeping it in a perpetual state of civil commotion.

No Sri Lankan political leader since independence has arisen to lead the country upholding the highest traditions of democracy despite the fact the people of the country are adherents of four great religions of the world, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Today Sri Lanka is facing the risk of becoming a mafia state led by one of the world’s most brutal terrorist groups, the Tamil Tigers. We present here a Subidcham statement for our readers

Children are very precious to us; let no one touch them in abuse

Subidcham was founded to focus on three main issues that are of paramount importance to the Tamil-speaking peoples of Sri Lanka, the Tamils and the Muslims in the current circumstances prevailing in the country. These two communities have suffered immensely in the areas of fundamental rights and their redemption is crucial to the larger interests of the island nation.

Subidcham is not a news website, nor a media industry with investments for profit and would never be a cover-up for any community or organization. We have neither vested interests nor even emotional affiliations. We are not pro-anybody of the players that are embroiled in violent confrontations in Sri Lanka for nearly half a century now. Subidcham is pro-human values, human aspirations, human decencies and above all human rights.

Subidcham views all confrontational issues from the position of a larger perspective. Though the area of our operations is large and forbidding and our resources quite minimal, we will react and respond to whatever that poses any danger to our people, be they Sinhalese, Tamils or Muslims. Depending on the issue, we will appropriately express our views and concerns on whatever we undertake without fear or favour and in particular without any partiality towards any one. In all these we welcome sharing of views, critical and otherwise because such a freedom is fundamental to our ideal, as it should be to any group or individual or nation.

In our three concerns, none is higher or lower than the other; there are no priorities. They have equal status. We are strongly committed to non-violence. In matters related to authoritarian states and governments we advocate the Gandhian philosophy of resistance absolutely. We are convinced that any form of violence – physical, verbal and emotional, will achieve nothing positive, healthy, creative and purposeful. No community or nation will prosper peacefully if founded on violence; sooner or later destruction will demand its due.

Naturally, violence against children and the vulnerable is something that we fervently deplore and this is also the very reason we have taken a strong stand against anyone employing children in fighting forces and also they being used as slaves. Equally, we are extremely concerned about children being exploited by foreign and local paedophiles especially in the country’s tourism industry. In this respect we feel that the government has been in a state of lackadaisical comatose far too long and allowed this terrible problem to take very deep roots into the tourism industry. There are several shady and seedy adjuncts and appendages to the industry and many such are operated by overseas groups working in close liaison with their local equally sleazy and slimy agents.

When these three issues such as communal discord, authoritarian governments and political groups wedded to terrorism, and abuse of the rights of children and young people being our primary concerns, whatever that are related to them will naturally come under our intense scrutiny, observations, investigations and reports; even our indictment on the media forum. We are all volunteers and we seek no shekels in this except being able to share our talents in our search for a better world.

The world is faced with immense problems. In Sri Lanka there are many areas that are actively militating against human rights and values. In a feature of this nature we do not like to make a pointed finger at any one group except to emphasize we abhor terrorism of all kinds whether it is from the state or from any group that has taken to violence as the means to an end.

We are not taking anybody’s side except placing everybody’s interests and rights as fundamental and in Sri Lanka it would mean that of the Sinhalese, the Tamils, the Muslims and any others to whom Sri Lanka is home; it doesn't matter which or who came first, the chicken or the egg. If our position is not agreeable to some people, as we have observed from a very small proportion of hate mail we receive, we cannot help it. We certainly will not compromise on our values and we insist we are not a news website; we are campaigners for justice, freedom and fundamental rights.

We also make a much-anguished note that there are some individuals and media agencies that are trying to infuse and inculcate into the minds of young people of the Tamil Diaspora with emotional material and poison that could draw them into homegrown terrorist organizations in countries where the Tamil community has founded new homes.

In this respect, we point our fingers firmly at certain media agencies operating in Canada, United Kingdom and Australia and the publishers of countless numbers of Tamil tabloid trash. These are akin to carrion eaters of the wild that are likely to spread dreaded diseases, in this case of the minds of young people.

Finally, let us pose a challenge to those who take great pains to criticize us on very unjustified grounds and in a kind of language that we cannot subscribe to in any form.

How many of you will join us in helping to liberate all the children who are in the grip of a movement that is using them as soldiers and young women as suicide bombers? Such precious members of our community should never be in such places with some awesome responsibilities forced on them that spell consequential terror of the ultimate kind.

If there are people who cannot agree with us in this mission, then we take it that you haven’t the faintest respect for human rights and even more, the rights of children and young people. You just cannot be with us and share the ideals of the Subidcham mission to which we have totally dedicated ourselves.

Please ask yourselves, whether you are in Sri Lanka or are a part of the Tamil Diaspora anywhere in the world, as to why there are no campaigns against those who employ children and young people as soldiers and slaves. If there is a nation or even a community that abuses children in this way, such a state of affairs is repulsive and repugnant. If we overlook and ignore such a horrible situation, we have no right to raise any issue in matters related to fundamental rights that affect us.

Children are precious and their interests are sacrosanct. The word Subidcham means a determined emergence into a new world of hope. This is our commitment.

www.Subidcham.de

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