[Blog] THE TAMIL GENOCIDE

By Rama Valayden SC

According to historical research, the Tamil people have the most in-depth presence on the island of Sri Lanka. Tamils are indigenous to Sri Lanka. By United Nations’ definition, the Tamils constitute “bel et bien” a nation as they have a distinct culture and a distinct language. 

The British colonization

When the British colonizers arrived on the island in 1795, the Tamil people lived in the North and East of the island while the Sinhalese people occupied the South of the island as entirely separate kingdoms. The British seized the totality of Sri Lanka, joined these two nations in 1832, and ruled the island called Ceylon for their administrative convenience. 

The British left the island in 1948 and since 1948 successive Sinhalese people have systematically destroyed the Tamil nation. The Tamil people, since 1948, have been continuously and deliberately targeted for annihilation for seven decades which constitutes genocide. 

What is genocide?

The term genocide was coined in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who defined genocide as the deliberate, systematic destruction in whole or in part of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Genocide is universally regarded as the most severe of all international crimes. 

It is apposite to note that in 1948, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

All the Sri Lankan governments led by the Sinhalese people were mainly elected based on the propaganda which led to many pogroms against Tamil people. The Tamils were subjected to rape, sexual humiliation, mass murder, torture, destruction of Tamil-owned property and business all over the island including in the capital, Colombo.

Successive racist Sinhalese-led governments instigated major pogroms in 1956, 1958, 1961, 1977, 1983, and more frequently after that. 

From 1983, with the help of the Israeli government, the genocide of the Tamil people took a new turn with aerial bombardments of Tamil villages and towns, which rose to a crescendo frenzy leading up to 8th May 2009. The aerial bombardments remind us of the bombardment of the Spanish population by General Franco during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 which triggered Picasso to draw “Guernica”. Guernica is a town in the Basque Country in Northern Spain which was bombed on the 26th of April 1937.

While the bombing was going on, the Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka urged the Tamil people to go into designated “no fire zones”. After herding them (i.e. thousands of Tamils who were conned to believe the Sinhalese Army), the Sinhalese army used internationally banned chemical weapons and multi-barrel rocket launchers to attack the unarmed Tamils.

The number of Tamils who were killed is roughly estimated to be around 70,000 according to United Nations accounts. The Sinhalese army unashamedly broadcast trophy video footage and were proud of the massacres committed against unarmed Tamilian people including women, children, and babies. Worst of all, the Sri Lankan governments continue to celebrate May 18th as “Victory Day” while the Tamils commemorate 18th May as a day of genocide. It is now known as “Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day”. 

The Rajapaksa brothers (Gotabaya and Mahinda) were the main instigators of the Tamil Genocide. Please note that the mythical leader of the Tamil Tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was assassinated after he surrendered to the Sri Lankan fascist army.

There is no big difference between the genocide of the Palestinians and the genocide of the Tamils. The strategy to build new settlements in the North and North-East Sri Lanka has as main objective to change the demographic makeup of the Tamil homeland. The Sri Lankan government is now waging a colonization war against the Tamil nation by establishing Sinhalese settlements in traditional Tamil areas. In the meantime, the Tamils continue to face systematic discrimination.

The last genocidal element I would like to inform the Mauritian people of is the imposition of measures to prevent birth within the Tamilians. In 2007, a leaked report from the US Embassy in Sri Lanka stated clear evidence of pro-government paramilitary doctors enforcing abortions on Tamil women who were under the impression that they were receiving genuine medical checkups. The Tamil women were denied medical treatment for them and their families if they refused contraception.

Despite clear evidence of genocidal acts against Tamils, countries were still treating successive Sri Lankan governments as innocent democratic governments and recently we received a minister from Sri Lanka without raising for a nanosecond the plight of the Tamils.