As DBS pointed out in his recent post @ Transcurrents the so called Safe Zone has been anything but that...
Hasn’t that been true of the whole of the north and east? Wasn’t that the whole point of the LTTE? To free the Tamil people from the unhappy union with the rest of Sri Lanka and to create a “safe zone?” Isn’t that what ‘eelam’ was supposed to be?
The same LTTE that claimed it was the sole representative of the Tamil people for the last two and a half decades, must take exclusive responsibility for the plight of the same Tamil people it sought to represent exclusively.
Nobody can dispute that the Tamil people in Sri Lanka are worse off today than when the LTTE first took arms.
Not only do they not have access to education, land and equal opportunity - they are also subject to unprecedented brutality and misery by government forces and their appendages (paramilitaries). More children are dying a violent death today then they did prior to 1983. More women are raped, more men gone missing, more lands confiscated or rendered useless by land mines, more schools destroyed and more jobs lost, than before.
Tamils are made to feel like pariahs in all parts of this country - the land of their birth. Forget the nonsense that Tamils and Sinhalese live harmoniously outside of the North and East. That is only true of the whiskey drinking Tamils and Sinhalese who never have to step into a police station to register themselves or visit a grama sevaka’s office to get some citizen services.
The Government of Sri Lanka has repeatedly (from JRJ to DBW to Sarath Fonseka) reminded us that Sri Lanka is a land that does not belong to the Tamils. The Tamils have been told to behave like guests or face the consequences. The government has consistently backed up the words of those leaders with action. The LTTE, has not.
When the going got tough - the tough got going...
... and even as cluster bombs and MBRLs decapitate and cripple innocent civilians on that beach in Mullaithivu district, flag waving LTTE supporters demonstrate bravely in the 'safe streets' of North America, Europe and Australia.
Appu wonders if any of the young men waving LTTE flags, on the streets of Toronto, Canberra and London, would like to swap 'safe zones' with the young man in this video?
Monday, April 20, 2009
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