The Conflict of Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam in the island of Ceylon

Can you give us the title and author of the paper or the link so that we can see it online.

My posts in the Venezuela threads are just to counter lies and misinformation. This however is a thread I have a great deal of interest in and have been posting in since it started. I have also posted on all the previous Sri Lanka threads here, and prior to thirusuj's arrival also started all the threads on the topic on Babble since signed up here. I don't recall your participation in those threads and for you to suggest that I'm posting in this one just because you did is idiotic.

I'm here because I care about the subject at hand; I posted my response to you because as usual you were engaged in spreading falsehoods. I'm not certain what noble work you and Sven and Stockholm and Babble's other historical pro-imperialism posters think your doing but if you're going to post in this thread could you try and add some value to it? Otherwise you're just wasting space.

In this thread? Your first comment perhaps:

Though I'm not sure how you couldn't put that together on your own, since I replied and said as much immediately.

I won't repeat my comments from the other thread but I certainly wish those at the rallies (or trying to attend them) well.

Troy I am curious about your interest in the subject; I'm not a Tamil myself, just a supporter, how about you? That is if you don't mind sharing your reasons for following this subject (its not really a popular one afterall).

News about the Rally to be held in Washington

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blnus/10181420.htm

Watch the rally live on another website:

 http://eurotvlive.com/

Video streaming on the front page.

Thanks for sharing, and welcome to babble troy! I agree about the difficulties in getting the word out, the MSM's coverage of Sri Lanka  (or lack thereof) is abysmal. Good luck spreading the word, I do my part here in rural Nova Scotia but let me tell you theres a lot of work to be done here! Its nice to see we have two bonafide Tamils here now, I hope you stick around and get a chance to participate in babble's discussions, thirusuj has done a good job already (in this thread for example) at getting the word out.

Yes. I heard about that. They are trying to misrepresent our message. The government of Sri Lanka is always behind these problems. They have people in the international community who cause these problems. Usually the brains behind these operations in Canada is Lankan Counsel General in Toronto Bandulla Jayasekara and the Sri Lankan Embassies.

Today, they know that the Tamil people are all going to be there at Washington. Therefore, they are trying to reduce the amount of people who can attend the rally by making sure buses don't pass the US border to protest infront of the White house.

Turning people away from demonstrations is awful and bad enough (though it happens a lot here in North America) but to think that people in Sri Lanka (who have a hard enough time getting access to free media as it is) would be presented with news of these rallies and tricked into thinking that the rallies are in support of the Sinhalese regime... disgusting! I doubt many people would be taken in by it though, afterall who demonstrates in favor of the genocide of their own people? I suppose this is for their Sinhala-supporter audience.

Disgusting, I wish you could translate the whole article though, but I know thats a lot to ask... I'm never going to be able to learn that language!

ETA: might as well remove the instructions...

Flag's terrorism links under question
http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=64&id=5396

Police called after Sri Lankan flag set on fire after rally
http://excal.on.ca/cms2//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6801&Itemid=2

Gwynne Dyer:

Sri Lanka After the War
                                                           
        The greatest mistakes are made on the morrow of the greatest
victories.  Sri Lanka is now approaching a decisive victory in its 26-year
war against Tamil separatism, and it is about to make a very big mistake.

        "While separatist terrorism must be eradicated," wrote Lasantha
Wickrematunge, editor of the Sunday Leader, "it is important to address the
root causes of terrorism, and urge government to view Sri Lanka's ethnic
strife in the context of history and not through the telescope of
terrorism. We have agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war
against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only
country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens."

        Wickrematunge left that on his computer, to be published if he was
murdered, which he duly was last month. He knew it was going to happen, and
he believed that he knew who would be responsible: the government. Which is
why he addressed President Mahinda Rajapaksa directly in his post-mortem
article.

. . .

        "In the wake of my death," Wickrematunge wrote, "I know you
(President Rajapaksa) will make all the usual sanctimonious noises...but
like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of
this one. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death, but
dare not call his name. [Almost certainly Defence Secretary Gotabaya
Rajapaksa, the president's brother.] Not just my life but yours too depends
on it."

        Like the United States under President Bush, Sri Lanka has ceased
to respect the law in its fight against "terrorism". Since the Tamil
minority began fighting for a separate state in 1983, over 70,000 people
have been killed in Sri Lanka, the majority of them civilians -- and since
President Rajapaksa took power in 2004 fourteen journalists have been
murdered by unknown assailants.

        Rajapaksa is now on the brink of destroying the rebel army, the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ("Tamil Tigers"). Even one year ago they
still controlled some 15,000 sq. km (6,000 sq. mi) in the north and
north-east of the island, where they maintained all the institutions of a
sovereign state. But the relentless offensive of the Sri Lankan army has
now reduced them to only a couple of hundred square kilometres (less than a
hundred square miles) of territory.

        Within a week or two, that will be gone too, and what remains of
the Tamil Tigers will no longer control a pseudo-state. Good riddance, for
they were brutal extremists who killed their own Tamil people, in order to
enforce unquestioning obedience, just as readily as their suicide bombers
killed the majority Sinhalese population. But that doesn't mean that Sri
Lanka can just go back to the kind of country it was before the fighting
began in 1983. The Tamils had a reason to revolt.

        Tamil-speaking Hindus have been part of Sri Lanka's complex ethnic
and religious mosaic for centuries, but they are only 12 percent of the
population. They got along well enough with the Sinhalese-speaking,
Buddhist majority when the island was first united under British imperial
rule in the early 19th century, but after that the relationship went
rapidly downhill.

        The British, in typical divide-and-rule style, favoured the Tamil
minority in education and in civil service jobs. Sinhalese resentment grew
rapidly, and the first Sinhalese-Tamil riots were in 1939. As in the
subsequent bouts of killing, most of the victims were Tamils.

        Once independence arrived in 1948, the Sinhalese used their
majority to pass laws giving members of their own community preference for
university entrance and government jobs, and Sinhala was declared the sole
national language. As Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic nationalism grew more
extreme, some of the riots in the 1960s and 1970s verged on anti-Tamil
pogroms.

        By the late 1970s the process of setting up a shadow Tamil state in
the north and north-east had begun. Open war broke out in 1983, with the
Tamil Tigers rapidly eliminating the rival Tamil separatist groups and
establishing totalitarian control over the population under their rule.

        Twenty-six years later, the Tamil Tigers' army has finally been
crushed, and the Sri Lankan state (in practice, the Sinhalese state) is
triumphant. But the 12 percent of the population who are Tamils will still
not accept unequal status, and they are not going away.

        This is the time when a peace that gives the Tamils equal rights
and autonomous local governments in the areas where they are a majority
could secure the country's future, but it is most unlikely to happen.

        Sinhalese nationalism is as intolerant as ever, and now it is
triumphalist to boot. Moreover, the rapid growth of a "national security
state" under President Rajapakse has undermined democracy and largely
silenced criticism of government policies. The forecast, therefore, is for
a reversion to guerilla war in the north, and continuing campaigns of
murder by both the government and Tamil extremists in the rest of the
country.

AJ,

Nice article, but I would argue with some of his points