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| Religious leaders and locals commenced a signature campaign calling government to release Tamil political prisoners in custody even after fifteen years passed since the end of war. Pix: Northeastern Monitor |
By Suresh. K.Premachandran
During the recent Presidential election campaign, the newly elected president and the other members of NPP made a promise to the people of this country particularly to the Tamil people, that the provincial council system will be protected, elections to the councils will be conducted soon and constitutionally devolved powers to the Councils will be fully implemented. Among the various other promises that were made, this promise is the most significant and of paramount important to the Tamil People.
The newly elected government now declares that there is no place for racism and religious discrimination in this country. It tries to give a distorted interpretation of the results of recently concluded Parliamentary elections, especially in the North and East provinces in which 6 Tamils were elected from NPP, by saying that racism that existed hitherto among Tamil people is now defeated.
The Anura government and the Peoples Liberation Front (JVP) must clearly understand one important fact. That is, since independence all the governments that came to power and ruled in Colombo have pursued a policy of racial and religious discrimination against Tamil People and unleashed a wave of oppression that very often were violent in nature.
The disenfranchisement of upcountry Tamils in 1948, state-sponsored pogroms of Tamils in 1958,1977,1981 and 1983 often downplayed as minor ethnic riots, and the enactment of the Prevention of Terrorism Act targeting the Tamil youth, are some in the long list of discriminatory policies pursued by the governments that compelled the Tamil people to resist this real threat to their very existence and struggle against this brutal and inhumane oppression.
Resistance to, injustice, oppression and existential threat is not racism, on the contrary, the pursuit of a policy rooted in a Sinhala Buddhist hegemonistic ideology aimed solely at destroying the language, culture, education and religion of a people on the basis of race is real racism. Attempts to change the demography and destroy the very identity as a Nation through economically non-viable state-sponsored Sinhala colonization schemes in the traditional habitat of Tamil people is racism at its core and we agree that this racism needs to be eradicated.
Seven years have elapsed since the last Provincial Council elections were held. The administration of the provinces are now run by loyal bureaucrats appointed by the government. The newly elected government is not showing any indication of holding the election soon, Instead some vague utterances are made that they are planning to hold this election in the last part of 2025 or early 2026.
On the other hand, the General Secretary of JVP Tilwin Silva has clearly stated that the 13th amendment is an unwanted burden and will be abolished. The J.V.P ‘s stand on the National question is well known, and that is, there is no racial or religious conflict between the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people and we are all Srilankans. By constantly repeating this they are trying to establish that Sri Lanka doesn’t have a national problem and therefore no need for a resolution. A simple and naïve explanation of a complicated and serious problem.
The strong Sinhala-resistant leaders like Vimal Weeraansa, Uthaya Hammampila and Sarath Weerasekara also want to abolish the 13th amendment to the constitution and they are totally against the power-sharing arrangements. On the devolution matter what is the difference between JVP and the above so-called Sinhala resist leaders.
It must be clearly stated here that, the Indo-Lanka accord was signed between the governments of India and Sri Lanka, primarily to resolve the longstanding National question. The then Sri Lankan President J.R Jayawardene signed on behalf of Srilanka and the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed on behalf of the government of India and the Tamil People. To implement the agreed provisions of the accord, the 13th amendment to Sri Lankan constitution was introduced. Although the primary purpose of the Accord was to address the national question and envisage a resolution of it through the devolution of legislative, administrative and executive powers to, the North and East provinces as one unit, which were acknowledged in the Accord as the historical habitat of Tamil people.
The government introduced a provincial council system to the entire country including seven provinces that never demanded any devolution. EPRLF who formed the first provincial government in the merged North and East provinces wrote several letters to the government in Colombo pointing out the inadequacy of the devolved powers and the need for enhancement beyond the 13th amendment. The chief minister had 13 meetings with the president to discuss this but failed to enlighten him on this issue. All the other presidents who came to power after JR accepted the inadequacy of the 13th Amendment and promised action to rectify it.
President Premadasa appointed a parliamentary select committee to study the issue and submit a report recommending measures to address the inadequacy of devolved powers. President Chandrika Kumaranathunge submitted a proposal envisaging a union of regions as a model of devolution which was thwarted by the combined opposition. President Mahinda Rajapakse appointed an all-party commission headed by Thissa Vitharana and they also studied the issue and submitted a report on devolution. Then during the so-called period of good governance under President Srisena attempts were made to draft a new constitution that will adequately address the national question. The present President Anura Kuramara Dissanayake was also an active participant in that process. All these attempts were purportedly made to find a solution on based power sharing, that goes beyond the 13th Amendment accepted by all to be inadequate.
Unfortunately, the new Marxist Leninist center-left government is showing signs of completely abandoning the power-sharing model with enhanced devolution beyond the 13th amendment as a meaningful solution to the National question and denigrating the legitimate aspiration of Tamil people as a symptom of economic disparity and under-development. At this juncture, it is important to remember that just after independence the Communist Party of Ceylon passed a resolution at their national convention that the Tamil people of North and East must be given powers to govern themselves which they later abandoned as they gradually morphed into a Sinhala Nationalist party.
Likewise, when the Sinhala-only bill was tabled at the Parliament, Kolwin. R. de Silva the leader of the Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party declared that two languages means one country one language means two countries and warned if Sri Lanka to remain as one country the Sinhala and Tamil languages must be given parity of status. But he too as the principal architect of the new republican constitution failed to keep the provisions of article 29 from the previous Donaughmore constitution which was included as a guarantee and safety for the rights of Tamil people. Then another leftist leader of the Nava Sama Samaja Party, Vasudeva Nanayakara who once said that the Tamils have the right to self-determination including secession later changed his stand to say that the Tamils do not need any power-sharing arrangements. This is the short history of Sri Lankan leftist’s metamorphosis from firebrand Marxist to deplorable racists.
From the outset, JVP the self-declared Marxists held an openly anti-Indian and anti-Tamil view and their political rhetoric reflected this mindset. During their first insurrection in 1977 and the second in 1987/1988, they did not have any Tamils in their membership. According to them the main enemy of the Sinhala people is the scourge of Indian expansionism and their agents, the Tamils of Sri Lanka , who pose an existential threat to their two millennium-old Sinhala civilization. At the peak of their anti-Indian frenzy in 1988 they even forced the traders and vendors to change the name of onions from “Bombay Onions” to Red Onions.
Therefore just because they carry a label of leftists doesn’t mean they will bring justice and equality to Tamil people. The Tamil intelligentsia and the academics who believe that since NPP is a leftist organization they will offer a just solution to the sufferings of our people, must not forget the past history of these recently enlightened saviors. The J.V.P must first acknowledge and unequivocally tell the Tamil people that in Srilanka there exists a question of Nationalities and that needs to be resolved to the satisfaction of the reasonable aspirations of the Tamil people.
Until a framework for a reasonable settlement is reached, the 13th amendment to the constitution which is an inseparable part of the Sri Lankan constitution, must be fully implemented, elections to the provincial councils in North and East held immediately and the administration handed over to elected representatives from the two provinces. The last remaining constitutional safeguard for Eelam Tamils is the 13th Amendment and the provincial council system. All attempts, covert and overt, to remove this last remaining safeguard, like what the Sinhala rulers successfully did with the 29th clause of the Donougmore constitution, must be exposed and resisted.
Many say that although the provincial councils have existed for the past 37 years, people did not have any benefit from them and it is a white elephant that has to be disposed of. But one should not forget that the government waged a brutal civil war for 21 years and after the war ended, all governments who came to power in Colombo including the present one, continued to keep the land under military occupation and the people under constant surveillance using the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act. During the past 15-year period of absence of armed conflict and after much persuasion and pressure from the international community, only one election to the Northern province was held and people had only 4 years of administration run by elected representatives. Instead of encouraging and helping with resources to establish a vibrant provincial administration the Colombo regimes spent much of their time and resources in designing and implementing administrative mechanisms and actions to undermine the limited autonomy the provinces had.
It is high time, that the Tamil political parties discard the puerile notion that talking about the 13th amendment is a sacrilege, and demand the implementation of the 13th amendment in full until a meaningful solution satisfying the just and legitimate aspirations of our people is negotiated and agreed upon. For the first time since independence, the Tamil people of North and East have entrusted their future to the hands of a Sinhalese-dominated political party and it is up to the leadership of NPP and their Tamil elected representatives from North and East to work diligently to fulfil the aspirations of our long-suffering people. Will they do it?
The writer is a former Member of Parliament (MP) and leader of the Eelam Peoples' Revolutionary Front (EPRLF- Suresh Wing).
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