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.

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.