Sri Lanka: A Regime Whitewashes Its Dirty History

The Sri Lankan regime has carried out repression against the Tamil people — a minority nationality on the island — for decades, and this article from a Ceylonese Maoist leader outlines how the LLRC (copy of the commission’s report), a “truth and reconciliation commission” set up by the regime, has served as an effort to whitewash the government’s history of attacks on the masses. The question of national liberation (as among the Terai people in Nepal or adivasis in
India) is a central concern of communist revolutionaries in many places in the world.

“If the war on the side of the Regime and the State was
waged based on a political ideology and an accompanying military doctrine aimed at militarily liquidating the LTTE, along with its political-military leadership, and to annihilate the political status of the Tamil nation, if the war was waged under a military
doctrine with no regard for collateral damage in order to achieve this
objective; and with that, to consolidate a Sinhala-Buddhist
hegemonic-chauvinist-militarist State that would feed into the
political agenda of perpetuating the Rajapakse dynastic regime,
then the war itself is on trial.”

The original post appeared at Democracy and Class Struggle. Thanks to Joseph for pointing it out, and writing the introduction.

The LLRC Report: A Process of Reconciliation or Perpetuation of a

Dynastic Military Junta?

December 29, 2011

by Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe, Secretary, Ceylon Communist Party – Maoist

The LLRC Report has served to polarize an already, irrevocably, polarized society, placed barriers in bringing about reconciliation and opened the country to even more foreign intervention.  Here was a golden opportunity for the State and the Regime to come clean, on which basis the bridges of reconciliation could have been built and all foreign powers that intend to pursue their geo-political agendas by exploiting the situation would have been silenced. This issue affects all of us. It is our collective honor and dignity that is at stake. As citizens, as the supreme People of Lanka, we do not want our country to be seen as a morally degenerate banana republic. The country belongs to us, its citizens. It cannot be held hostage to any particular political agenda or regime. This issue affects our collective moral conscience, our shared sense of justice, our collective identity as a civilized human community. Therefore, we must pursue the debate, however consequential it may be.

From Sri Lanka’s Communists: Triumphant Reaction, Its Ideas & Global Context

Following are excerpts from two articles, “Global Politics and the Sri Lankan Trajectory” and “A Contribution to the Debate between Rajpal Abeynayake and Malinda Senevirathne on the Role of the Moral Police,” submitted by Surendra Rupasinghe, Secretary of the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist).

These selections focus on the interrelationship on the one hand between the political and economic situation in Sri Lanka and international developments, and on the other the relationship between all this and a campaign being waged in the ideological sphere by the regime of President and Commander-in Chief Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has acquired enormous political power in the wake of the defeat of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE).

Thanks to the A World to Win News Service for sending these excerpts to Kasama for posting.

Sri Lanka: the global context and ideology of a triumphant regime

Introduction

The imperatives and the options of the Sri Lankan regime have to be identified within the logic of motion of the global political-economic-strategic order.

The present regime is trying to optimise the range of its policy options within the context of dramatic changes in the global political-economic-strategic order. The undisputed hegemony exercised by the U.S. as the sole superpower has entered into a new spiral of crisis.

Basanta: The Volcano of Revolution in South Asia Today

The Maoist revolution has made a major forward leap — after the initiation of people’s war in Nepal in 1996 and the merger of two major revolutionary streams to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist), in 2004.

The Nepalese people’s revolution has now reached to the threshold of seizing central political power.

In the present era, the proletarian revolution does not remain a phenomenon merely of a single country.

South Asia is becoming a front of collision between two fronts: one formed of the proletariat and their class allies national and international and other alliance formed of the imperialists and their lackeys from the individual countries. A new world in South Asia is now gestating in the womb of this contradiction.

The victory of revolution in South Asia will have a far-reaching implication and become a harbinger to spread the flames of revolution all across the world.

On the other, its defeat will result in a complete demoralisation of the people not only of this region but those all across the globe. In this situation, a strong solidarity to the revolution in South Asia is the need of the day.

The following talk was given on July 2, in Istanbul, during the European Social Forum’s seminar on South Asia’s revolutions.

By Basanta (Indra Mohan Sigdel)
member, Politburo of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Dear comrades and delegates, revolutionary greetings!

I would like to take this opportunity to extend our revolutionary salutation on behalf of our party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), to the organiser, the European Social Forum, who invited our party to attend this august programme in Istanbul, Turkey.

In addition, I would like to extend our revolutionary greetings to the entire delegates participating in this seminar. I feel honoured to be here with all the delegates from around the world.

But, more than that I would like to utilise this opportunity to share experiences that the working class all across the world has gathered through their valiant struggles against imperialism and its anti-people and neo-colonial policies like privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation, and as well the ruling classes subservient to it.

Over 100,000 Tamils Still Held in Detention Camps

This article appeared on the World Socialist Website on February 19, 2010.

Thousands Of Tamils Still In Detention Camps

Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians, who fled the fighting in the final days of the military’s offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), remain in squalid detention camps in northern Sri Lanka. The official total is 106,000, with around 80,000 people still in the Manik Farm camps near the town of Vavuniya.

After the LTTE’s defeat last May, the army rounded up 280,000 men, women and children and put them in detention centres surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers. No one was permitted to leave. Visitors were heavily vetted. Thousands of young men and women were interrogated by police and military intelligence officers, and incarcerated in other, undisclosed centres as “LTTE suspects”.

Sri Lanka: US-China Rivalry Behind Intra-Ruling Class Struggle

Chinese-financed container port under construction in Colombo

This article appeared on the World Socialist Web Site on January 29, 2010.

Behind Sri Lanka’s political infighting: US-China rivalry

Peter Symonds

In the wake of Tuesday’s presidential election in Sri Lanka, Colombo has become a hotbed of rumour and intrigue as the two factions of the ruling elite backing the winner, Mahinda Rajapakse, and the loser, General Sarath Fonseka, manoeuvre and position themselves for open political warfare. Far from putting an end to the campaign brawling, the election has set the stage for deepening instability.

The extraordinary events of the past three days have included: the surrounding of Fonseka’s hotel by heavily-armed troops, government accusations that he was planning a coup, counter-accusations by Fonseka that the government was about to arrest or assassinate him, a demand that the election be annulled and threats of legal action from both sides.

What is behind this bitter rivalry? The two men have essentially the same domestic program. General Fonseka was part of President Rajapakse’s inner cabal as it ruthlessly prosecuted the communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in the LTTE’s defeat last May. Fonseka now pledges to renew Sri Lankan democracy, but like Rajapakse, he is responsible for war crimes and gross abuses of democratic rights. If he fears assassination, it is because he is intimately acquainted with the operations of the pro-government death squads that murdered hundreds of politicians, journalists and ordinary people over the past four years.

Sri Lanka: UN Official Calls for Investigation of Executions of Tamil Rebels

This article was published in Al Jazeera on January 8, 2010.

UN official urges Sri Lanka inquiry

A UN human rights official has urged Colombo allow an impartial investigation after he concluded that video footage allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing Tamil Tiger fighters last year is authentic.

 Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told Al Jazeera that Sri Lankan arguments used to dismiss the video, aired on Britain’s Channel 4 in August 2009, were flawed.

“Sri Lanka has consistently denied the authenticity of the footage, but two of their investigators were members of the Sri Lankan military,” Alston said on Thursday. “That is why I decided to commission an independent report by experts with no connection to the conflict.”

The mobile phone footage was shot during the final stages of the Sri Lankan army’s conflict against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Sri Lanka: Common Left Manifesto for 2010 Presidential Election

President Rajapakse and his generals

This article was posted on the website of the Gandhi Unity-Progress Party on December 26, 2009.

Common Left Manifesto for Freedom, Democracy and Self-Rule.  We All Support Dr. Bahu [Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratne], NSSP!! Presented for the 2010 Presidential Election

Beloved People of Lanka,

Let us not be pawns in the deadly game of chess played by the two equally blood-drenched, chauvinist representative of Global Capitalism: So, once again, at the cost of some Rs 12 billion of public funds, we have to face a Presidential election. Two equally bloody, corrupt and parasitic Capitalist Alliances have come forward for the contest, represented by Mahinda Rajapakse and Sarath Fonseka.

This Presidential campaign is going to be a bitter and deadly fight between two equally reactionary camps of the ruling class as to who is going to feast on the blood of the Tamil nation, and that of the proletariat and all exploited and all oppressed classes and nationalities and communities, and exercise chauvinist oppressive dictatorship over the people. Let us not become mere pawns in a deadly game of chess played by two rival camps of the very same Capitalist ruling class.

Let us hold this State and this ruling class accountable for the crimes willfully committed against the people and against humanity. Let us do so as a basis to mobilize mass protest and agitation against the prevailing Capitalist political order which represents the interests of global Capitalism, by building resistance and revolutionary struggle to defeat the militarist-chauvinist agenda represented by both ruling class candidates.

Ceylon Maoists on the Upcoming Election in Sri Lanka

President Rajapakse (above) and General Fonseka (below), butchers of the Tamil people

Transcurrents, December 2009

Mahinda, Sarath and their monstrous crimes against people and humanity

News Up-Date by the Election Campaign Committee (ECC) of the Common Left Candidate- Com. Dr. Vickremabahu

On behalf of the Propaganda Committee of the ECC,, Com. Surendra, Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)

Dear Comrades, Friends, Colleagues,

This up-coming presidential election would be comical, if not for the fact that it is deceptively diabolical. The contention between incumbent president Mahinda Rajapakse and retired General Sarath Fonseka and the arguments being drawn up by both sides are simply degenerate.

They expose the depths to which this neo-colonial political order has been despoiled and degraded. We reject both these candidates, since they represent two sides of the same coin- or as Comrade Vickremabahu, the common candidate of the independent progressive, democratic, revolutionary alliance has aptly said, they represent two heads of a viper, both with deadly fangs.

This election is a deadly trap to sacrifice the oppressed masses, including the Sinhala-Buddhists and all other exploited and oppressed classes, nationalities and ethnic-religious communities, at the alter of Global Imperialist Capital. Most of all, it is a diabolical trap to deceive and ensnare the oppressed Tamil nation.

Tamil People’s Liberation Army Formed in Sri Lanka

LTTE soldiers

The Times,December 7, 2009

New Tamil group People’s Liberation Army vows to start fresh war

A Marxist group of Tamil militants with connections to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Cuba is preparing to mount a new insurgency in Sri Lanka six months after the Government declared an end to the 26-year-old war there.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was founded in eastern Sri Lanka four months ago and has vowed to launch attacks against government and military targets unless its demands for a separate Tamil homeland are met.

“This war isn’t over yet,” Commander Kones, head of the PLA’s Eastern District military command, told The Times during a night meeting in a safe house in the east of the country last week.

“There has been no solution for Tamils since the destruction of the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] in May. So we have built and organised the PLA and are ready to act soon. Our aim is a democratic socialist liberation of the northeast for a Tamil Eelam [the desired Tamil state].”

Sri Lanka: 11,000 Tamils Still Held for “Rehabilitation”

DNA India, December 6, 2009

11,000 Tamil ‘fighters’ held in secured Lankan camps

London: Over 11,000 Tamil ‘fighters’, including children, were held by Sri Lanka without charge in highly secured “rehabilitation centres”, despite claims by authorities it had lifted restrictions on the movement of all displaced persons, a news report has said.

According to The Times newspaper, more than 11,000 Tamil prisoners are being held without charge in closely guarded “rehabilitation centres”, even as the government claimed it had released all Tamil civilians from detention centres last week. It said children are among 11,000 Tamil ‘fighters’ held in rehabilitation.

According to the report, the prisoners, whose exact number has been unknown due to the government placed restitutions, is allegedly a “combatant category” that includes former LTTE fighters. However, the definition of “Tamil Tiger” is unclear. Apart from the hardcore LTTE cadres, many of those in the camps are thought to be Tamil youths, their family members and civil administrators, forcibly conscripted by the Tigers in the final stages of the war.

A History of the Tamil Struggle for Self-Determination in Sri Lanka

Radical Notes, November 19-20, 2009

Tamil Eelam: Historical Right to Nationhood

by Ron Ridenour

We are running  four articles in a five-part series which trace the settlement of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka and the development of the modern Tamil struggle for self-determination. They also expose the cabal of imperialist and reactionary powers that have fortified the Sinhala-chauvinist Sri Lanka regime, and describe the horrific conditions in the so-called “welfare villages” that now hold close to 300,000 Tamil refugees. Finally, the author draws apt comparisons with Israel’s oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon in English, and Serendib in Arabic (which gave rise to the word serendipity) is commonly referred to as the “pearl of the orient” due to its beauty and wealth of natural resources, flora and fauna. Today, it is a land torn apart by hatred: racist government policies, ethnic cleansing, and terror war just ended albeit continuing in the form of incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Tamil people in the north. A key reason for this brutal hatred is the dispute over whether a minority of its people, the Tamils, should have: equal rights with the majority Sinhalese, and if this is denied (as will be shown it has), should they have the right to their own autonomous territory.

Sri Lanka’s first aborigines with continuous lineage are the Tamil people. It is not precisely known when they came to the island, but perhaps as many as 5000 years ago. Archaeologists date the first humans in Sri Lanka to some 34,000 years. Scientists call them Balangoda people, the name of the location where artifacts were found. These hunting-gathering cave dwellers have no current lineage.

Indian Maoists Pledge Support for Renewed Tamil Eelam Struggle

Tamil refugees behind barbed wire.

Asian Tribune, October 23, 2009

Indian Maoists pledge support for armed Eelam struggle

Indian Maoists have pledged support for another armed struggle by the Sri Lankan Tamils for an independent Eelam.

Indian website thatstamil.oneindia.in has quoted Maoist general secretary Muppala Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathi as having told a pro-naxalite website in an interview that the Eelam struggle has not died down with the passing of LTTE leader Prabhakaran. “It is still alive and we shall support it with arms”.

Apparently keeping in mind the Indian experience where naxal groups like Maoist Communist Centre, the People’s War and others have come together and are controlling vast areas in Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal, he said: “The battle for Tamil Eelam is not lost yet. Eelam will blossom one day if all the (Tamil) groups come together and, with changed strategies, resume the struggle”

Mr Ganapathi said: “We shall smuggle in sophisticated arms in ultra-modern boats to the rebels to revive the armed struggle in Sri Lanka and nobody can stop us. We are formed groups for this”.

People’s Truth: Tamil Eelam Struggle and its Lessons, Part 2

This article was published in People’s Truth #7. Thanks to Banned Thought for making it available. Part 1 appeared here yesterday.

Tamil Eelam Struggle and its Lessons: Part 2

Ravindran

The role of Indian Expansionists

Since the beginning, the Indian government always intervened in Sri Lanka keeping its expansionist interests in mind. While paying lip service to the plight of Tamils the Indian government extended tacit support to the Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist ruling classes.

In 1949, after the Sinhalese ruling classes assumed power, it colluded with them in disenfranchising the plantation workers of Indian origin and agreed to promulgate the Citizenship Act 1949 that made more than a million Tamil plantation workers stateless. In 1971, when the Sirimao Bandaranaike government was in imminent threat from the JVP uprising, the Indian government provided all help to quell that rebellion because it did not want to lose its prominent status to China in Sri Lanka. Again in 1974, for the same reason, it ceded Katchattivu, a fishing island port of Tamil nadu from time immemorial, to Sri Lanka, brushing aside opposition from the people of TN and the state government. Today, as a result of this, more than four hundred fishermen from TN were killed and thousands were arrested and tortured and their fishing boats, nets and other equipments worth millions of rupees were destroyed by the Sri Lankan navy. Hundreds of protests and strikes by the Tamil fishing community and appeals from different sections of the people and all political parties to take necessary steps to protect the fishermen were simply ignored by the Indian government on the pretext that these fishermen are conduits for the LTTE.

In order to serve its expansionist interests the Indian government sought either to appease the Sri Lankan chauvinists or to pressurize them through the Tamil issue. In 1983, when anti-Tamil riots broke out in Sri Lanka, the Indian government, which was waiting for an opportunity to intervene, immediately stepped into the scene and provided arms to the LTTE and set up training camps in India. In 1985, on the pretext of opposing the bombing of Tamils in northern Sri Lanka, Indian Air Force jets entered Sri Lankan territory and dropped food and medicines violating all international law and norms.

People’s Truth: Tamil Eelam Struggle and its Lessons

This article is part 1 of a 2 part series. This article was originally published in People’s Truth #7. Thanks to Banned Thought for making it available.

Tamil Eelam Struggle and its Lessons

Ravindran

On 18th May 2009, the president of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapakshe declared that the three decades of war against the LTTE has come to an end. He declared that the Sri Lankan army won a final victory against the Tigers.   The Sri Lankan army and the government also claimed that the LTTE leader Prabhakaran and many of his lieutenants were killed in the battle and showed the photographs of the dead body of Prabhakaran in the electronic and print media. On 20th, the Sri Lankan government declared a national holiday to ‘celebrate’ this ‘victory’.

The timing of this declaration created suspicion amongst the people who are closely watching the developments in Sri Lanka, in India and all over the world. It appears that the Sri Lankan government deliberately spread this news after the announcement of parliament election results in India. While the Sri Lankan government and the UPA government led by the Congress party celebrated this, millions of sympathizers/supporters of Tigers and Eelam struggle all over the world were shocked in disbelief that the struggle for a separate Tamil Eelam would come to such an end. Within 24 hours, the Tigers rubbished the Sri Lankan government’s claim and published that the Tiger’s chief and many leaders of the LTTE are safe and the struggle for Tamil Eelam would continue until realizing its goal of achieving a separate homeland for the Eelam people.

Tamils all over the world held protest demonstrations, and in Tamil Nadu (TN), some violent incidents also took place. Although the claim by the Sri Lankan government that they have achieved a conclusive victory over the LTTE and the armed struggle for a separate homeland for Eelam can be disputed, at least for the present, there is no doubt that the Sri Lankan army achieved a major military victory over the LTTE.

How could one of the most powerful guerrilla forces, the LTTE, have faced such a defeat and how was the Sri Lankan army able to inflict such a defeat? With this defeat, whether the three and half decades of armed struggle for self-determination come to an end? Whether the Sri Lankan government will fulfill the genuine national aspirations of the Eelam people? Whether the Tamil people in Sri Lanka can live as equal citizens along with the Sinhalese? What will be the future of Tamils in Sri Lanka? These are the important questions for all those who fight for freedom, national liberation and for people’s democracy and those who genuinely support the cause of Tamil Eelam. To understand the struggle for Tamil Eelam it is necessary to look into its origin and its growth.

People’s Truth: Support the Liberation Struggle of Tamil Eelam People!

This article was published in People’s Truth.

Oppose the genocidal war on the people of Tamil Eelam by the Rajapakshe government!

Support the Liberation struggle of Tamil Eelam people!

-Ravindran

After a long gap of eighteen years the struggle in support of Tamil Eelam is engulfing the whole state of Tamilnadu for the last four months, particularly from January 2009 onwards. Showing the ghost of Rajiv Gandhi, the democratic right of the Tamil people to extend their solidarity to their brethren in Tamil Eelam was suppressed with an iron fist by the successive governments at the centre and in state for the last two decades. Now, as the genocidal war against the Eelam Tamils in the name of ‘war against LTTE’ in Srilanka has intensified killing and injuring thousands of people, the protests against such killings and solidarity movements for Tamil Eelam are spreading like a wild fire throughout Tamilnadu. It has become the most important political issue in the state. The stand taken by the political parties, particularly the treacherous support extended by the UPA government led by the Congress to this war; the double-dealing by the DMK, i.e. while condemning the killings of Tamils in Srilanka extending all support to the Congress; the fascist Jayalalitha who openly said that the killing of civilians is inevitable in the ‘war against terrorism’; the howling of CPI (M) that “we should not support the ‘separatist’ slogan of Tamil Eelam’ in the name of killing of Srilankan Tamils, enraged the people of Tamilnadu. All sections of the broad masses- workers, peasants, students, youths, traders, lawyers, women, dalits etc. are participating in this solidarity movement. At present the struggles are spearheaded by the students and the lawyers.