Tamils find their voice after war
March 23, 2010 07:36 am
The editor of one of
On a recent Saturday night in February, somebody smashed the entire plate glass front of his newspaper offices, apparently to protest against an editorial decision.
An anonymous phone call came Sunday morning, blasting Logendralingam in
Tamil for not writing about a meeting that recently took place between the
Canadian-Sri Lanka Business Council and
No one was hurt by this protest but the editor of the moderate weekly is frustrated at being threatened, yet again, particularly for something he didn’t publish.
“I’m a victim for doing nothing,” he says.
Such is the state of play in a community still riven by the aftershocks of a civil war, even one thousands of kilometres from the actual field of conflict.
It has been almost a year since the Sri Lankan army crushed the insurgent
Tamil Tigers, ending a 26-year civil war and only now is the international
Tamil community — in
Accustomed to bullying
At this point, it is not known who smashed up Uthayan’s front windows.
But, says
That bloody war ended in May 2009 with a crushing blow to the Tigers and the dreams of nationhood in pieces — at least for the foreseeable future.
Back in
The collapse of the LTTE seems to have also brought about a sea change for a people used to being boxed in by extremist propaganda and pressure.
But even as the public conversation among Tamils opens up, there are worries that remnants of the Tigers movement could still cause trouble.
The International Crisis Group, one of the world’s pre-eminent think tanks, says, in a report released in February, that the rebels’ defeat has left Tamils around the world feeling “powerless, betrayed by the West, demanding justice and, in some cases, wanting revenge.”
The report goes on to say that there are no signs that any remaining LTTE adherents are planning attacks. But it quotes unnamed Canadian law enforcement authorities who are concerned that, if left unchecked, a few remaining Tigers could carry out publicity seeking atrocities on a large scale. A huge blow
That view has been dismissed as speculation by the Canadian Tamil Congress,
an organization that claims to be the voice of
But Logendralingam, for one, says that there is no doubt the Tigers’ demise
is a huge blow to many Tamils and Tiger sympathizers in
“They were thinking, when LTTE existed that we were are very close to a separate state,” he says. “They thought tomorrow or next year.
“They had a navy, a small air force and an army. They had support from all over the world and thought they could achieve it. That’s why they gave their support. That’s why they gave money.”
But it’s not the only reason Tamils gave money to LTTE.
Tiger supporters in
With the Tigers’ defeat, fear is lifting, according to Ignatius Selliah, one
of a handfull of Tamil journalists in
When the war ended last year, “there was a huge crack in the opinion of the
diaspora,” Selliah says, noting that the numbers of Tamil demonstrators in
“Now there are different opinions,” he says. “There is debate.”
Selliah says he is now hearing things like “We can’t talk about a separate state,” or “We wasted so much money!” Topics that were virtually taboo in the past.
Global forum
To keep the dream of self-determination alive, a Global Tamil Forum was held in London at the end of February, a forum attended by Britain’s foreign minister and members of the Canadian Tamil Congress.
Canadian officials did not attend but the federal government has said
In early March, Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to the Foreign
Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, met with
Obhrai also urged
Resettlement is one of the Global Tamil Forum’s main aims as well. But the
forum’s leadership is still pushing for self-determination for Tamils in their
traditional areas in the north and east of
“If they uphold those principles they can ask the international community to push the Sri Lankan government to do the same thing,” says Manjula Selvarajah, media coordinator for the Canadian Tamil Congress.
But Tamils who rejected the LTTE may not rush to the Global Forum as one of
its founders is a Tamil Catholic priest, Father J.S. Emmanual, who once likened
Tiger suicide bombers to martyrs. No less attractive may be the Transnational
Government of Tamil Elam, which was set up by the overseas wing of the LTTE
last July to pursue self-rule, an idea that has no support among foreign
governments or among defeated Tamils in
The provisional government has been mocked in Tamil newspaper columns and called a dangerous exercise “cornering the Tamils again into the pernicious politics of half truths.”
For the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, a group founded in
A moderate voice, the SLDF, is calling for the democratization of
For Toronto Tamils, having been promised so much in the past by expatriate leaders and then seeing how much Tamils are still suffering, they’re more cautious about where they put their support, says Logendralingam.
Tamils want a change in
“They used to support everything. Now, whenever somebody wants support they
think first. They are thinking whether it will work or not.”