Dr Donald Chandraratna Australia

Reading the exhortations of the Tamil Diaspora who are now crestfallen it is time to reflect on their agitation around the European countries. This is an opportune moment to grasp the hidden motives because what happens from now on by way of reconciliation and reconstruction is implicated in this cacophony. Many are still in a state of denial which is natural but the natural process of grieving must see its finality in the realisation of the truth. We must understand that the Sri Lankan Diaspora is one of the most educated of all ethnic groups who have sought refuge in the Western countries. The Sri Lankan Tamils too, who have settled in these countries, be they economic migrants, refugees, asylum seekers or family migrants are equally well placed. Out of all migrants in the world over the last fifty to sixty years the Sri Lankan migrants are, professionally qualified and mostly not ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”English challenged’.

How did this happen? The international community ought to know that Sri Lanka, even today, is the most robust welfare state in the world. The Tamils as much as the Sinhalese had the basic human rights such as education and health (which are since proposed by the UN Covenants) from the 1950’s onwards ( soon after the English colonialists left) . We all have benefitted and the Tamils benefitted even more in the field of education for they had the additional luxury of the Missionary schools set up by the imperialists, established not necessarily for altruistic purposes. I am sure this is no secret. They were able to benefit by the welfare state to such an extent that until the LTTE drove the wedge and weaned all Tamils away from the state beneficence in the late seventies to wage war against a democratically elected state, there was virtually a preponderance of Tamils in every possible vocation and profession. The accurate reading of statistics kept in Census Departments will bear testimony. In this short piece I cannot list them but none can deny the factuality. The Tamils in the CCS (SLAS), the Medics, Lawyers, and Engineers were nearly 40 percent in the professions which is more than double their numbers in the population. When any public policy in a poor country is evaluated it has to be seen in the light of ethnic proportions as the state sector is unable to satisfy aspirational needs of everybody for lack of scarce resources. Hence the talk of discrimination is untrue.

No law in the land barred anybody reaching out to or competing for these privileges and the Tamils were renowned as hard working, studious individuals who reaped these benefits. These traits of competitiveness were passed on to them by the forebears some of whom were oppressed by the Tamil casteism who realised that their liberation was through the state benevolence. A comparative socio economic analysis of the contemporary Tamil Diaspora will demonstrate this to any person of average intellect that most of the individuals who are leading the Diaspora are those elites who benefitted by the state largesse. If anyone can prove that they were intentionally discriminated any more than a Sinhalese or Muslim is untrue and I stand to be corrected. (Not the Tamil Net statistics please) Why the Diaspora is so vocal and could organise themselves so well is directly a result of the benefit of a first class technical and tertiary educational system courtesy of the Sri Lankan welfare state. Free education, health and welfare from the cradle to the grave. Mind you, to my knowledge there is no country in the world even to this date in the region which has such a good welfare state as Sri Lanka. Not many of the Tamils who lead the demonstrations are from the few private elite schools in Sri Lanka and the majority are the successful products of the Sri Lankan welfare state namely, free education

Since I am talking only on the subject of the Diaspora I need to desist from digressing to other topics here, though they are more topical today. The organisational strength of Anti Sri Lanka organisations and the ferocity of the wily propaganda machine call for another explanation. When people come out of Sri Lanka to countries in the West they are virtually like a nation cut adrift. Many migrants feel less comfortable outside the native patch. That is the nature of the humane being. Being compelled to live outside ones native soil one generally feels lonely and alienated. The Tamils countered or even triumphed these sentiments of alienation by being preoccupied with something integral to their Sri Lankanness and that is to be engrossed in the anti Sri Lanka machinations or LTTE movement. Whether they are employed, and many in fact are not, they were gainfully employed psychologically for a superior cause. The more revengeful they are they become the cynosure of the Tamil migrants. We must understand that these are not extraordinary behaviours of a human group. The oxygen that is needed to prevent disenchantment with life is partly to be engrossed in a putative cause. I.e. the separate state.

To make that objective sacred you need to deny the truth. What are these truths? These are, wild allegations of discrimination with no proof, the denial of atrocities committed by the LTTE on other Tamils in Sri Lanka, suffering by non Tamils, inhumanity towards Tamil children, narco trade, destroying the Tamil culture of the literati, the real reasons for organised Tamil migration to the West and many more. .

The denials can be one of three or any combination of literal, interpretive or implicatory. In literal denial, you deny the fact and knowledge of an event. For example in literal denial you dismiss outright that the Tamils were suffering because of the LTTE, the atrocities, suicide bombings, mass murders of innocent civilians, conscription of very young children, the benefits the Tamils enjoyed through exclusionary legal provisions in law, the educational advantages they had over the others. They deny that it was the Sinhalese who protected Tamils in the hands of the mob instigated violent in 1983 by the LTTE for their ulterior motives. The Diaspora denies that there was no ethnic hatred in the country till the time of the LTTE. The fact is that a Sri Lankan Sinhalese to date never ever murdered a single individual because he was a Tamil. I cannot even recall a single instance where a Sinhalese was ever implicated in the murder of a Tamil in the annals of murder cases in Sri Lanka (mob violence instigated by conspirators does not come in as a rebuttal here).Talk of ethnically instigated murder and rape is sheer fabrication. Literal denial therefore is blatantly the refusal to acknowledge facts.

In interpretive denial, the LTTE atrocities are reinterpreted as deserved by the Sinhalese at home given the context in which they are carried out. They will argue that LTTE atrocities are nothing compared to the enormity of the murders committed against the Tamils. Or they are not normal crimes but acts which are reprisals for state violence. Or they need to be reinterpreted in the light of the larger picture, so called years of murder and rape. Since Mrs Clinton is implicated in the Sri Lankan affair the following example from a text book is useful here. One can say that Mr Clinton never had oral sex but only inappropriate sexual behaviour, not real sex or he has no experience with drugs because though he smoked cannabis he did not inhale. (Example is not mine but from a well known criminologist Stan Cohen). The final form of denial is implicatory denial which is the attempt to keep you pure by stating that one is doing the right thing as a true Tamilian and state that one does not know and does not care what others do in the name of the cause.

This brings me to the final point. For all intents and purposes the Tamil Diaspora is far removed from the truth. They are now sufficiently brainwashed to be able to grasp the reality of the ground scene in Sri Lanka and has lost any credibility to be of use in the reconstruction agenda. That is to state categorically that neither the protesting Diaspora nor any outside agency be it a nation, country, community or an institution that has been brainwashed by them has the right to suggest political solutions just as much we did not offer any for the Irish question or the Quebec problem then. In fact those who shouted for separate homelands or the countries which wanted to Balkanise the country have no right ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”period’ full stop. .The task of rebuilding is the prerogative of Sri Lankans who fought the war, endured the war, suffered by the war. They and none else are the stakeholders. They need to decide together a consensual solution, if one is needed. What is relevant to one community must be the equally appropriate for the other community. In a representative democracy you cannot have two or three separate variants. In fact there are no such templates. Any proposed political solution should not be the beginning of another problem. Why Sri Lanka can never ever allow two separate states is because the factions will for all intents and purposes be at war eternally. No country can ever waste its human resources that way. We do not have the land mass, a low density population, and clear cut boundaries to allow such an artificial state. It is too small to be partitioned; its rivers and waterways, air and space cannot sustain two nations. You have only to see the simmering issues in the so called Kosovo solution at the moment, though we cannot be even cast in that light. True that the international club and those who are euphemistically labelled the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”I enjoys’ translated as INGO’S in Sri Lanka for good reasons, does not like to see the end of this crisis or for that matter any crisis anywhere in the world. These people like to see crises such as poverty and war in perpetuity especially in countries where they can enjoy a salubrious existence. They love Sri Lanka as it the greenest pasture for temporary abode , (out of all Third World countries where education and other facilities such as the cuisine, hotels, beaches and toilets are good) until their kids are ready to go to the Universities in their own countries. The incessant demand to attend to the IDP’s is because they see it as a fantastic opportunity to squander monies donated by the people in the European countries for themselves by way of fat salaries and per diem allowances to travel to Killinochchi and back as before. Where are the millions that the INGO’s allocated for humanitarian work in the North and the East in the last three decades? They should account for the Trillions of dollars that only wrecked such havoc on the civilians and the soldiers We are experienced enough in the INGO sector to know these first hand. The humanitarian workers are scared of losing this green pasture If anyone can tell me what they can offer which Sri Lankans have not got to work in the IDP centres I am not only surprised but flabbergasted. Generally the intellect that they bring is so poor that it is a shame that the sanguine terms such as International, UN, or Consultant will be sullied by these cohorts if the UN authorities are not careful. But on the other hand these authorities are also silly character like Clintons, Millibands and Kouchners who were the cause of unnecessary suffering by the Tamils due to their Piccolo diplomacy, double standards and vested interests mostly for personal gain. Unfortunately we cannot expect anything better! As Sri Lankans of whatever ethnic hue we owe our leader the Honourable President an eternal debt of gratitude for putting a stop, once and forever to this carnage

Since most of our enemies are from outside our borders it is imperative that Sri Lanka must play the cards right, in exactly the way it treated the call for the ceasefire made ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”in the name of the civilians’. If not these crest fallen guys who are like vultures on the carcass will descend on us once again in the name of civilians, but of course, business class, from no where .Intrepid, statesmen like political leaders rarely fall for these tricks. Sri Lanka is an intelligent nation in the subcontinent.