CAUTION: Tamil Lobby for a Kosovo
like Eelam
Asoka Weerasinghe Gloucester,
Ontario Canada
March 24, 2008
To
Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, MP, Prime Minister of Canada Hon. Stockwell
Day, MP, Minister of Public Safety Hon. Maxime Bernier, MP, Minister
of Foreign Affairs Hon. Peter MacKay, MP, Minister of Defence Hon. Jason
Kenney, MP, Minister of State for Multiculturalism Hon. Art Hanger,
MP, Chairman, Justice Committee House of Commons Ottawa.
Honourable Gentlemen:
CAUTION: Tamil Lobby for a Kosovo like Eelam
Permit me to address you as a ground-roots member of the Conservative
Party, on the concerns that I have of Canada recognizing Kosovo’s
declaration as an independent state, and the implication it has on the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE aka Tamil Tigers) wanting their
separate, mono-ethnic, racist Tamil state, Eelam in Sri Lanka.
I am prepared to bet my last dollar that this would be the next step
by the Tamil Diaspora in Canada who has been supporting their Eelam
cause, and has been collecting two million dollars each month for their
Tamil Tiger war chest during the 13-year reign of the Liberal party,
and will now lobby the Conservative government to recognize their Eelam
if they declare UDI in return for their votes at the next federal election.
And fortunately for the Tamil Tiger sympathetic Tamil Diaspora, they
have gained one more Liberal party parliamentary player in Bob Rae joining
the likes of Jim Karygiannis, Maria Minna, Derek Lee, John McKay, Judy
Sgro and others as the Liberal Party Foreign Affairs critic, who will
speak claiming to be an authority as he went to Sri Lanka a few times
promoting the Forum of Federation’s Canadian federalism to the
Tamil Tigers, and helped to oversee Constitutional discussions between
the Government of Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers. But what he may not tell
you is that the Tamil Tigers added Bob Rae’s ‘Canadian federalism’
into their terrorist lexicon as an “F” word.
Lobbying by the Tamil Tigers for their Eelam is a natural progression
and it makes sense, as you all have created a precedent with accepting
Kosovo as an independent state and Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier defending
Canada’s decision by stating “/It’s why today, in this
context, that Canada acknowledges the new international reality and
will recognize Kosovo as an/ /independent state.”/ But, most
importantly, what would be Maple syrup to the lips of the Tamil Diaspora
lobbyists are these words by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, /“Kosovo
was born out of a war that brought great suffering to its people that
prompted an intervention by the international community, which essentially
created a separate state/.” It is a known fact that the international
communities are trying their utmost to get their fingers into the Sri
Lankan pie.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Louis Arbour who was
forced by your Conservative government to resign her post due to her
criticism of the U.S. treatment of detainees in the war of terror has
been the Pied Piper in this movement against Sri Lanka.
Why am I writing to you all specifically? It is because I know that
everyone of you has been briefed of the Tamil separatist cause and there
are 100,000 Tamil votes in the Greater Toronto Area for the taking if
it is supported, and that Ministers Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney are
on top of this file.
Since such lobbying by the Tamil Tiger sympathizers will win some sympathy
for their cause from a few Red Tories seeking their votes, let me caution
you as to why Sri Lanka should not be equated to Kosovo, and that Kosovo
is no precedent to an Eelam in Sri Lanka.
1. To argue that the North and East of Sri Lanka is a Tamil Homeland
has little truth in it.
Historical facts and archaeological evidence will disclaim such
a position. Professor Karthigesu Indrapala of the University of Jaffna,
a Tamil, in his article titled ‘Early Tamil settlements in Ceylon”
makes an honest and a poignant observation/. “Looking back on
a body of evidence that is available to us, we have to conclude that
there were no widespread Tamil settlements before the tenth century.”/
And he concluded that /“However, the majority of the settlers
appear to have migrated to that region (Jaffna peninsula) in the latter
half of the 13^th Century”./
And so would the records left by the Dutch missionary Phillipus Baldeus
(1658) the Dutch Governor, Ryckloff Van Goens (1663) and the Portuguese
historian De Queyros (1626) disclaim the position of a Tamil homeland.
/
/2. / /In case you decide to respond positively to the Eelam lobbyists,
and yet not wanting to understand Sri Lanka’s ethnography, hydro-geomorphology
and caste oriented-sociology among the Tamil communities in the North
and East of Sri Lanka, it will demonstrate the lack of responsibility
on the part of the Conservative government, and will be considered as
interference with Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.
2.1 The request for an ethnic-based devolution is a mine filed, and
one has to learn lessons from recent past incidents in the Asian continent.
Neither partition of former British India nor ethnic-based devolution
under the Indian Constitution have been able to prevent not only periodic
Hindu-Muslim violence and bloodshed during the past 60 years but also
the secessionist movements in Kashmir and Punjab.
2.2 What you need to be aware is that the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress
leader Rauf Hakeem is already calling for Muslim separatism and trying
to drag Muslims down the same destructive elusive Tamil Eelam path.
Such a movement will undoubtedly have support from the Islamic countries
of the Middle-East. The concentration of Muslims is in the eastern province
which is also been claimed by the Tamil separatists as their homeland.
And one third of the population in the Eastern Province also happens
to be Sinhalese. That is what this can of worms looks like and it is
not for Canada to open it. This Tamil ethnic separatist issue is neither
that simple nor easy to comprehend. Thus it is not morally right for
the Canadian Conservative government to ignite other satellite disruptive
feuds by supporting a Kosovo type Eelam for the want of 100,000 Tamil
votes in the Greater Toronto Area.
2.3 If the Eelam lobbyists are trying to convince you that the North
and East is their homeland due to the presence of an ethnically pure
Tamil population, what you ought to know is that they have achieved
this to some extent through ethnic cleansing which missed the radar
of the international community. Perhaps it was because Sri Lanka was
a non-entity which could not influence anything substantive for the
betterment of the world. Between 1971 and 1981 the Tamils terrorized
and kicked out 27,000 Sinhalese from the Jaffna peninsula where they
had been living for generations. And in 1990, they removed 100,000 Muslims
within 24 hours from the North. In 1977, the Tamils stoned and chased
400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers from the Jaffna University
thus making it a pure-Tamil University, while all other universities
in the South were multi-ethnic campuses including an open door policy
to register Tamil students.
2.4 The latest Census shows that the 3.9% of the Tamil population of
the
21 million are spread all over Sri Lanka. You will be surprised to know
as I was that the majority ethnic group living in the capital Colombo
is the Tamils and not the Sinhalese (74%) as one would have expected.
In such a circumstance, creating a separate ethnic-based Tamil enclave
in the north-east will, no doubt, create a similar scenario that the
partition of British India had in 1947. As politicians, I am certain
that you all are aware of that chapter and verse of Indian history.
2.5 Hydro-geomorphology of the island will have a provocative side
if there is a creation of a Kosovo style Tamil Eelam which should be
recognized and acknowledged.
The watershed from the rivers and streams that flow into the dry zone
lands where the Eelam lobbyists are seeking for their Eelam flows down
from the central hill country of the island.
We have watched the near-violent dispute for the waters of the Cauvery
River which has half of its watershed in Karnataka and the rest in Tamil
Nadu in southern India. When the monsoons failed to feed the Tamil Nadu
side of the watershed, threats of violence advanced into violence and
a mini-war which needed the central government intervention.
As for the water-war between Pakistan and Kashmir, the book “The
Final Settlement” by the Strategic Foresight Group of the International
Center for Peace Initiatives in Bombay says, that the water-war between
Pakistan and Kashmir is inevitable in the future. Pakistan has stated
that it would be prepared to use nuclear weapons over the issue. The
cause of the problem has been the Mangla dam of the Indus River at Mirpur
revolutionizing agriculture in Punjab, at the cost of Kashmir’s
deprivation. There are lessons to learn here for any country who wishes
to poke its nose into Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.
Water-war is nothing new to the Tamil Tiger terrorists as they initiated
it by cutting off the water supply to 30,000 Sinhalese farm families
by shutting off the Mavil Aru anicut in July 2006, when the government
forces intervened to stop the possible death of these people from water
starvation, and thus began the Eelam War IV resulting in the kicking
out of the Tamil Tigers from the Eastern province which they controlled
for
14 years as part of a /de facto/ state.
The Eastern Province which was liberated last year saw the first local
government democratic election in the Batticaloa District installing
the first Tamil woman Mayor, Sivageetha Prabhakaran earlier last week.
This liberated Eastern Province will hold the Provincial elections in
May.
These democratic events prove positive that the Sri Lankan government
is not seeking a military solution for this feud. And on no account
should the Sri Lanka government be penalized for this democratic initiative,
nor should there be even a passing consideration of a penalty for the
sake of winning 100,000 Tamil votes by supporting a Kosovo style Eelam.
This would be disingenuous and immoral by your Conservative government.
2.6 Let us not let the Tamil lobbyists deny the fact that the Tamil
caste system has its place in Tamil politics.
The caste system of Jaffna-Tamils (Northern Province) epitomizes the
social formation which is rigid and redolent of the hierarchical ethos
compared to the Batticaloa-Tamils (Eastern Province). There is a big
divergence of castes from the Brahaman the highest to the lowest scavenging
Paraiyar caste. Numerically predominant in areas endowed with the lion’s
share of the land, the dominant caste believes itself to be entitled
to rule the villages in which it resides and does not shrink from the
use of force and maintain what it sees as its legitimate privileges.
The differences between the Jaffna Tamils and the Batticaloa Tamils
came to play when Colonel Karuna Amman, the second-in-command of the
Tamil Tigers cut his ties from them in 2004 taking many of his fighters
with him. His major complaint was that disproportionate numbers of the
cadres from the East that he was commander of were being sacrificed
on the battlefield while the Tamil Tigers from the North controlled
the terrorist organization, LTTE. A pecking order in play from the Jaffna
Tamils (Northern) above down to the Batticaloa Tamils (Eastern).
The bottom line is, Canada should not be part of creating a separate
state Eelam in Sri Lanka when caste oriented regional Tamil politics
is staring at your faces.
3. Geopolitical implications are very real in the creation of a
Kosovo type Eelam. Not to acknowledge it for the want of Tamil
votes is not intelligent and is juvenile. India, Sri Lanka’s
closest neighbour will not entertain the provision of a separate,
mono-ethnic, racist Tamil state, Eelam for the Tamils for the very
reason that India’s Central Government enacted a law in the late
1930s banning political parties and individuals demanding
independence from India. This was when the Dravida Kazhagam (DK)
was agitating for a separate independent state Dravida Nadu in
South India for 60 million Tamils.
India has shown great interest to keep an eye on the LTTE, even though
its terrorism was created by Indira Gandhi’s India having trained
this bare footed guerilla outfit in 1983-84 in the military camps in
India, graduated them into terrorists and sent them back fitted with
jack boots, fatigues, festoons of ammunition around their necks and
cradling Kalashnikovs, as they believe that the LTTE goals are harmful
to India’s strategic interests. The LTTE’s bonding and cooperation
with the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), Naxelites, PWG, DK
and Maoists in Nepal, and their woman suicide bomber blowing up Rajiv
Gandhi makes this terrorist organization anti-India in a sinister way,
they believe. Hence Canada should not become torch bearers for a terrorist
organization which it has banned, to help them create their Eelam, when
India is waiting to pounce on this Eelam and kill it as it could fatally
harm their own unity in its vast land.
So let me Caution you how India would react so that you won’t
be as frivolous as the Liberal Party parliamentarians if you have any
inclination to promote a Kosovo style independent state Eelam in Sri
Lanka.
4. Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended Kosovo recognition as an
indeopendent state as a unique case.
/“Canada’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence was
born out of a very unique situation that does not create any parallel
with Quebec” /Prime Minister Harper said on Wednesday, March 19,
2008, speaking to reporters in London, Ontario. I very much like to
believe him as the gleeful Quebec separatists say that independent Kosovo
sets a precedent for their Province to unilaterally secede.
Similarly, I hope Prime Minister Harper will find that Kosovo does
not create any parallel with Sri Lanka either. And I also hope that
he and his caucus will agree with U.S. Secretary of State, Condolezza
Rice, when she said /“Kosovo cannot be seen as a precedent for
any other situation in the world.”/
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