Human Right #30
No One Can Take Away Your Human Rights
THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY, JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY IN SRI LANKA
This year marks the twentieth death anniversary of Rajini Thiranagama, doctor, lecturer, feminist and human rights defender, and the first death anniversary of human rights lawyer and political activist Maheshwari Velauthan. The former was shot dead by the LTTE as she cycled home to her children after presiding over an Anatomy examination, the latter shot dead by the LTTE as she cared for her sick mother. They were among thousands of Tamils killed by the LTTE simply because they did not agree with it. For Tamil progressives like them, the defeat of the LTTE mitigates one source of terror.
The LTTEs claim to be the sole representative of Sri Lankas Tamils could be sustained only by the physical liquidation of all those who disagreed with, criticised, or simply posed a challenge to its leadership, even from within the organisation. This meant that all Tamils with a different vision of the struggle for equality, justice and democracy had to choose between risking their lives (and, like Kethesh Loganathan and T. Subathiran, all too often losing them), accepting security cover from the government of Sri Lanka (which obviously crippled their capacity to criticise that government), and exile. Any Tamil who believed in the possibility of Tamils living alongside people of other communities in a united Sri Lanka was considered a traitor and sentenced to death. Probably the first of such traitors to be executed by Prabakaran was Alfred Duraiappah, the popular Mayor of Jaffna, who was killed in 1975; Neelan Thiruchelvam and Lakshman Kadirgamar came later. Standing up for freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to vote in free and fair elections were all aberrations punishable by death. Parents who resisted the forcible conscription of their children received violent punishment. Indeed, questioning the decisions of the Supreme Leader in any way was an act of treachery. In fascist Tamil Eelam, internal terror was all-pervasive.
Could an organisation which destroyed the freedom of Tamils fight for their liberation from oppression? Clearly not. Could an entity which stood for an exclusively Tamil nation, in which Muslims and Sinhalese would be massacred or ethnically cleansed, pose an ideological challenge to exclusivist Sinhala nationalism? Hardly. The LTTE was simply a Tamil translation of the most reactionary Sinhala fascist politics. Where Sinhala nationalists stereotyped all Tamils, Tamil nationalists stereotyped all Sinhalese. Where the former claimed exclusive ownership of the whole of Sri Lanka, the latter claimed exclusive ownership of a third of the island. The politics of both harked back to the days of absolutist monarchies. Far from helping Tamils in their struggle for democracy, the LTTE created a further obstacle to be overcome. From this perspective, although its demise has occurred in the most horrific circumstances, prospects for the struggle for democracy in Sri Lanka have improved.
Link : http://www.groundviews.org/2009/05/27/the-struggle-for-equality-justice-and-d...
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