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Thursday, March 28, 2024

An appeal to the Tamil Community and its civil and political representatives

Since the end of the war in May 2009, it has become important for all ethnic communities of Sri Lanka to re-examine and re-evaluate their past. It is through this process of self-reflection that some of the major issues that confront state and civil society today can be meaningfully reconceived and reconfigured for the future.

While the war has drawn to a decisive close, the ethnic conflict is far from over and demands solutions short- and long-term. The quest for a viable political solution from a majoritarian state is a primary concern for the Tamil community today.

Continued insecurity in the face of militarisation is an urgent matter. Armed militancy and a political culture of violence have further eroded into the democratic fabric of society. Resettlement and rehabilitation remain unresolved problems. Distribution of land, access to state and social networks, language parity, devolution of power, inter-ethnic reconciliation and the continued presence of gender, class and caste stratifications are a part of the political landscape today.

It is in this regard we raise the question of the eviction of the Northern Muslims 21 years ago. In October 1990, the LTTE evicted roughly 80,000 Muslims from the north in the wake of increasing hostilities and armed conflict in the north and east. The LTTE, which was militarily dominant in the north at that time and controlled large swathes of territory, ordered an entire community to leave the province in two days. In the Jaffna peninsula they were given just two hours’ notice. Subsequent to the eviction, several attempts were made by institutional mechanisms to facilitate the return of the communities to their original lands. During the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), there were renewed attempts, particularly through the Secretariat for Immediate Humanitarian and Rehabilitation Needs (SIHRN), to negotiate the return of the Muslims with the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE.

In the current political landscape, the eviction of Muslims from the north and their return and resettlement pose a distinct political challenge to civil and political societies of the Tamil community. While from the time of the CFA, Muslims had been trickling back to their homelands in the north, the conditions for their return had not been congenial. Those who have returned have received hardly any state support for resettlement, and have been met with a certain level of bureaucratic hostility. The erasure of Muslim culture and institutions in the north in the last twenty years has made return less acceptable to the host community, and especially fraught for the returnees.

While recognising that the Tamil community has been under intense stress during and after the war, it is important to remember the plight of the forcibly evicted Muslim community in the north who were subjected to similar privations. The Tamil community’s sufferings and hardship cannot become reasons to sideline the issue of Muslim eviction. As much as we struggle for our survival in the face of external and internal pressures, it is paramount that we re-examine the politics of our own actions, assertions and silences.

The eviction represents one of the worst instances of the narrow, exclusivist thrust of the Tamil nationalist political campaign of the past thirty years. The failure of our civil and political leadership to understand and acknowledge this has prevented us from dealing with our own past, and with our own moral and political responsibility towards minority communities that live amidst us. An examination of how we have contributed to the polarisation of relations between our two communities has not been forthcoming even after the end of the thirty-year war.

We must realise at least now that there is no exclusive political solution for the Tamil community, and that the question of political power sharing and equal rights confronts all minority communities. Inter-ethnic reconciliation and dialogue between communities, in particular the Muslim and Tamil communities, are essential processes to arrive at a sustainable political solution. The document The Quest for Redemption: the Story of the Northern Muslims, prepared by the Citizens’ Commission on the expulsion of Muslims by the LTTE recently made a most damning pronouncement about the silence of the Tamil community on the eviction. We need to break through this silence if we are to move toward a genuine process of reconciliation.

Today, as we are compelled to forge new paths of activism for our own survival, we need to formulate responses that are borne out of dialogue with different communities. This is essential if we are seeking a just and democratic political solution. As a step toward this, there has to be a public disavowal of the eviction. We shall wholeheartedly say that never again will such a heinous act as the eviction take place amidst us. Never again shall we condone such acts of ethnic cleansing. Importantly, it is necessary for us as a community, while revisiting this event and its continuing legacy, to set up an inter-ethnic mechanism to bring about dialogue and facilitate an easy return and resettlement process of the Muslims in the north.

Tamil society can no longer be isolationist and act on its own without paying heed to the concerns of other communities. We shall engage in questions of marginalisation, discrimination and injustice touching upon any community. And we shall unreservedly pledge our support to promote the pluralist character of society at all levels in our midst, and embrace a politics of inclusivity in the interests of democracy, justice and equality.

Signatories:
 1. Ms. Jovita Arulanantham
 2. Ms. Kundhavi Balachandran
 3. Mr. Sivakolunthu Buvanakumar
 4. Dr. Godwin Constantine
 5. Dr. Kumar David
 6. Mr. R. Devarajan
 7. Ms. Cayathri Divakalala
 8. Dr. S. Ganesan
 9. Mr. Shaseevan Ganeshananthan
 10. Mr. P. B. Gowthaman
 11. Dr. Rajan Hoole
 12. Ms. Sithiravel Ithaiyarani
 13. Mr. T. Antony Jeganathan
 14. Ms. Vasuki Jayasankar
 15. Dr. T. Jayasingam 1
 16. Mr. D.B.S. Jeyaraj
 17. Mr. Ahilan Kadirgamar
 18. Mr. Silan Kadirgamar
 19. Ms. Niyanthini Kadirgamar
 20. Ms. Sarvam Kailasapathy
 21. Ms. Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai
 22. Dr. S.V. Kasynathan
 23. Mr. Thirukovil Kaviyuvan
 24. Mr. Sathy Kulasingam
 25. Mr. Prithiviraj Kulasingham
 26. Prof. Vijaya Kumar
 27. Ms. Maha Luxmy Kurushanthan
 28. Mr. K.C. Logeswaran
 29. Mr. S. Manisegaran
 30. Mr. Chandrasekaran Manimaran
 31. Mr. P. Muthulingam
 32. Mr. V. Nandakumar
 33. Ms. Malini Paramaguru
 34. Ms. Nirmala Rajasingam
 35. Ms. Vasuki Rajasingam
 36. Mr. Sanjayan Rajasingham
 37. Mr. C.Rajeshkumar
 38. Ms. A. Renu
 39. Ms. Kumudini Samuel
 40. Ms. Rani Samuel
 41. Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
 42. Dr. Muthukrishna Sarvananthan
 43. Ms. Ambika Satkunanathan
 44. Mr. Shyam Selvadurai
 45. Rev. Jothini Seenithamby
 46. Dr. T. Shanaathanan
 47. Ms. M. Mangaleswary Shanker
 48. Ms. C. Shanthini
 49. Mr. Shobashakthi
 50. Mr. P.N. Singham
 51. Ms. Vasuki Sivakumar
 52. Mr. K.S. Sivakumaran
 53. Dr. Sumathy Sivamohan
 54. Mr. Subramaniam Sivathasan
 55. Mr. Balasingam Skanthakumar
 56. Mr. M. Sooriyasekaram
 57. Dr. K. Sritharan
 58. Rev. M. Jude Sutharshan
 59. Mr. H.D. Thampoe
 60. Ms. Priya Thangarajah
 61. Mr. Kandiah Thanikasalam
 62. Mr. R. Thevamaran
 63. Prof. S. Thillainathan
 64. Dr. Sharika Thiranagama
 65. Mr. M. Thiruvarangan
 66. Mr. Uma Varatharajan
 67. Mr. Godfrey Yogarajah
 68. Mr. Ronnie Yogarajah
TC

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