The Speaker of the Indian Parliament, Meira Kumar, conceding to an objection from a Congress member, altered the topic of discussion in the parliament from “Alleged killing of Sri Lankan Tamils by the island nation’s Lankan army in 2009 as recently revealed in a United Nations report” to “On the steps taken by Government of India for relief and resettlement of Tamils in Sri Lanka and other measures to promote their welfare.” The deviated discussion scheduled for last Thursday has also been postponed to coming Tuesday. But whether in war or in post-war, New Delhi cannot escape answering for its partnership in committing genocide and structural genocide of Eezham Tamils, commented Tamil political circles in the island, citing the activities of India-partnered SL Army in the war and its aftermath.
Where was genocide and where is genocide, ask Colombo and the establishments in complicity, because any acknowledgement of genocide would justify the independence of Eezham Tamils.
But who could hide the fact that the state Army in the island is virtually a Sinhala Army and the victims of mass killings by it numbering well more than 200,000 in the three decades of war were Eezham Tamils.
The UN panel report figure of 40,000 in the last war alone is a conservative figure. As pointed out by the Bishop of Mannaar, a figure of 146,679 people has gone unaccounted in Vanni just in 7 months time.
The SL government’s official statistics for the Vanni districts in October 2008 was 429,069 and at the end of the war in May 2009, only 282,380 were registered alive in the barbed-wire internment camps of the SL Army, according to UN records.
The surviving people, their incarceration, inhuman treatment and systematic subjugation even after release are no evidences for the absence of genocide as claimed shamelessly by some.
Who could hide the fact that the SL Army fought the war with genocidal intentions and orientation, as the commander of the SL Army during the war, Sarath Fonseka, has gone on record saying that the island belongs to the Sinhalese.
* * *Some academics in India by bringing out an analogue between the state killings during the JVP rebellions and the Eezham war try to project that state authoritarianism in the island is the problem. But they fail to project the difference amounting to genocide and on-going structural genocide in the case of the latter, for they have to concede solutions logical to genocide that will go beyond unity of state in the island.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) that voices the inner thinking of the establishments in the West is naked in implying that it is not merit but context that matters and the context doesn’t favour liberation of Eezham Tamils, which shamelessly means context could ignore or allow genocide.
It is with such an orientation organizations like the ICG were setting the opinion platform for the war in the island that took a genocidal course but they now chose to blame the diaspora for not demanding the LTTE to tell the people to surrender to the SL Army.
Some vicious elements even interpret it as Jaffna-dominated diaspora’s preparedness to sacrifice the people of Vanni to save the LTTE leadership.
A large part of the people trapped in Vanni was either from Jaffna or of Jaffna origins. The diaspora had its kith and kin among them. The diaspora’s demand to the international community was to stop the war and directly take charge of the people. The diaspora’s concern was that the people should never get into the hands of the genocidal Army.
The IC and India didn’t want to do it and the diaspora’s concern is proved by the way the war was ended and the way the remaining people were treated by the genocidal Army.
* * *The subsequent developments show that India and the IC were prepared not only to ignore or allow genocide in war but also prepared for the ensuing structural genocide.
By strongly and adamantly backing a process of leaving the land and people of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the hands of the same genocidal state and Army, the establishments are now in complicity to structural genocide that is worse than the genocide in war.
The New Delhi establishment is the foremost partner of Colombo in the genocide as well as in the structural genocide, because New Delhi’s role in setting the decision-making ‘context’ referred to by the ICG is predominant compared to others.
The role played by New Delhi in the genocide in war is still nebulous to public knowledge. But New Delhi’s role in setting stage for the structural genocide to the extermination of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the aftermath of war is very evident from the way it backs the Rajapaksa regime and its military from the UN Human Rights Council to ‘Army to Army’ talk between the regimes.
Last Thursday the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalitha has rightly observed how the stand of India encourages the ways of Sri Lanka.
The Indian Prime Minister continues to maintain that the problem in the island was only ‘terrorism’ and as that has been vanquished what remains is resettlement and some political devolution.
The SL Army has come to stay, proclaim, the commander of the occupying Army, Maj. Gen Hathurusighe as well as SL defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, while engaging in establishing permanent military cantonments and camps in the length and breadth of the Tamil country.
The existing constitution is more than enough and there is no need of any further political devolution says Gotabhaya, while the regime swiftly carries out Sinhala colonization for demographic genocide, administrative Sinhalicisation to make any political devolution meaningless, economic programme using ‘development’ aid to keep Tamils subservient, military occupation to keep them subjugated and a captive leadership to justify that the winner’s genocidal whims and fancies have to be accommodated and even collaborated.
Those in the Colombo regime who ask where is genocide will conduct an ‘international course’ on how to conduct genocide and structural genocide in a few years time, and those in the other establishments who now play the chorus asking where is genocide in Sri Lanka will attend it to ‘learn lessons’.
* * *Army and Archaeology to Army and Agriculture is a typical example how the structural genocide is carried out in the country of Eezham Tamils, leaving no stone unturned.
The cultural genocide committed through thousands of newly constructed Buddhist enclaves in a land where there are no Sinhala-Buddhists except that of the occupying Army is already on record.
Now, hereditary agriculturists forcibly uprooted in the country of Eezham Tamils, especially in Vanni, complain that they are unable to compete with occupying Army’s vast scale cultivation and horticulture that use development funds channelled from outside.
The occupying Army now cultivates the lands of Eezham Tamils and markets the produce.
A small but significant example to understand that to what minute level the genocidal attitude of the occupying Army could go is that whenever the Army handed over house premises to owners, it took care of bulldozing the houses to the foundation.
Resettled people in the Valikamam High Security Zone felt their blood boiling when they saw their houses razed down just before handover so that they have to begin their lives from nothing. In most of the lands only the wells and toilets were remaining as the occupying Army was using them. In some cases the wells were filled-up.
In resettled parts of the HSZ, whenever people hear demolition sounds in their prohibited neighbourhood they recognize it as preparation for handing over the lands.
* * *If New Delhi wants to discuss not the genocide or logical solutions to it, but ‘relief, resettlement and welfare’ then those who twist the agenda should know that no relief, welfare or resettlement with dignity could take place as long as a genocidal Army occupies the land of Eezham Tamils.
It is reported that the Speaker of the Indian parliament ‘corrected’ the agenda, as discussion on the killings by the SL Army would be interfering in the internal affairs of a neighbour.
But in a sharp contradiction, last month the outgoing Indian Foreign Secretary and India’s new ambassador to the US, Nirupama Menon Rao said that India has to be directly involved in resolving the situation in the island, keeping it within the region and avoiding any third party’s involvement.
That means India is primarily answerable for the genocide and the structural genocide in the island resulting from its policies and it can’t shun away any discussion on this matter in the Indian parliament or among the Indian public with dubious excuses of non-interference.
Peoples in the island, both the Eezham Tamils and the Sinhalese are carefully watching what New Delhi is actually caring in the island from KKS harbour to oil in the Palk Bay by promoting militarism and genocide.
Even while the entire Tamil Nadu State Assembly was up in arms against the New Delhi-boosted regime in Colombo, New Delhi was busy in its land and sea acquisitions in the island.
While the Palk Bay drill started in the recent days, Indocean Developers, a firm backed by an Indian property group of Kolkotta connections, chaired by RS Agarwal, signed an agreement on Thursday with Sri Lanka’s Urban Development Authority for a 40 million US dollar real estate venture in Colombo.
Of all the powers poking their noses in the island, because of its prime responsibilities India will face the first brunt of any revolt coming in the island resulting from the use of genocide and militarism as means to achieve economic and strategic interests, and that is what perhaps China wants to see.
Whether contemporary India has gone ideologically bankrupt in conceiving alternative ways of achieving its goals by setting ‘context’ compelling the world to appropriately attend to genocide and militarism in the island is the question that needs discussion in India.
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