While the Nazi-style registration of people in the north by the occupying SL military is challenged in the SL courts by Tamil politicians, the SL Army is now engaged in another way of registering people by a census it is conducting on its own, forcing Tamil school teachers and through them exploiting school students. Earlier the military tried the registration through village officers and in some instances military personnel directly conducted it. The forms now distributed by the military to teachers have no column on the cause of the death of family members and the teachers are embarrassed in facing people in taking the ‘census’. The SL Army is trying to bury facts through statistics, while it is estimated that more than 200, 000 Tamils have directly been killed in the war of 3 decades in the north alone, politicians in Jaffna allege.
While Colombo has conducted a regular census quite recently, people are suspicious why this military census now.
Teachers are forced and intimidated by the occupying military to undertake the present census. The teachers are unable to answer the questions of the people why there is no reference in the census on the cause of death of their family members.
As no census taken in the north cares for the cause of the death of the people, the public is concerned that the war deaths are never going to be acknowledged and that is going to affect getting proper death certificates and making claims on behalf of several thousands. It is believed now that in the Vanni war alone more that 100, 000 have been killed.
The genocidal military is engaged in the current census taking as a pre-emptive measure against any international scrutiny, politicians in Jaffna said.
Meanwhile, in revising the voters list recently, Colombo has deleted the names of 350, 000 people of the north, saying that they had ‘left’ the place.
The tragedy of Eezham Tamils is two-fold in this context: on one hand, hundreds of thousands have been killed in a genocidal process and the international community allows the same genocidal state to hide it by leaving everything under its control; on the other hand, by treating Eezham Tamils as ‘minorities’ and not as a nation having its territory, the international community is giving encouragement to the genocidal state to make the ‘minorities’ of the island as further ‘minorities’ even in their own land, politicians in Jaffna pointed out.
The world has to realise that there is no end for the tragedy of Eezham Tamils unless they and their land are completely liberated from the genocidal state of Sri Lanka, the politicians said, adding that what is more important than the war crimes investigation is the investigating the intention behind the war crimes.
Responding to the comments made by some Malaysian parliamentarians on the plight of Eezham Tamils after their recent visit to the island, the politicians in Jaffna said that they highly appreciate the solidarity shown, but they are sad that Free Malaysia Today while reporting labelled the nation of Eezham Tamils as “Sri Lanka Tamil minority.”
The first step to free us from our tragedy is stopping to look at us as a ‘minority’ but seeing us as a nation needing liberation, the politicians further said.
TN