WRITING on LTTE chief Prabakaran's Heroes' Day speech in the Sri Lankan English-language newspaper Daily Mirror, Champika Liyamaarachchi says: "If consistency is a strong point of Velupillai Prabakaran, his annual Heroes' Day address is a clear manifestation of his steadiness." As in previous years, the much-awaited, much-hyped `Maveerar' commemorative speech proved to be so predictable that it left many wondering once again why they ever looked forward to it.
A closer look at the key elements of Prabakaran's 2006 speech shows how remarkably similar it is to the 2005 message in which he is supposed to have given a year's `grace period' to President Mahinda Rajapaksa either to resolve the ethnic conflict or to face the consequences. The only difference is that in 2005 Prabakaran paid a left-handed compliment to Rajapaksa by calling him a `realist committed to politics of pragmatism'. But this year he denounced the President as yet another Sinhala chauvinist warmonger.
The following are some notable paragraphs from his 2006 and 2005 speeches:
"We are at a crossroads in our freedom struggle. Our journey has been long and arduous, and crowded with difficult phases. We are facing challenges and unexpected turns that no other freedom movement had to face. Unprecedented in history, we are dealing with war and peace talks at the same time.
Six years have passed since we dedicated ourselves to finding a solution to the ethnic conflict through peace talks." (2006)
"We have now reached a significant historic turning point in our struggle for self-determination. The ruling elites of southern Sri Lanka will never recognise our people's right to self-determination. The Tamil right to self-determination will never find space in the entrenched majoritarian Constitution and in the political system built on that constitutional structure. Our people have, therefore, realised that they have no alternative other than to fight and win their right to self-determination. Self-determination entails the right to freely choose, without external interference, our political life." (2005)
"The Sinhala nation remains misled by the mythical ideology of the Mahavamsa and remains trapped in the chauvinistic sentiments thus created. Unable to free itself from this mindset, it has adopted Sinhala Buddhist chauvinistic notions as its dominant national philosophy. This notion is spread in its schools, universities and even its media. The domination of this Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism is preventing its students, intellectuals, and writers from stepping out of and thinking free from its domination. This, unfortunately, is preventing the Sinhala nation from undertaking a genuine attempt at resolving the Tamil national question in a civilised manner." (2006)
"The Sinhala nation continues to be entrapped in the Mahavamsa mindset, in that mythical ideology. The Sinhalese people are still caught up in the legendary fiction that the island of Sri Lanka is a divine gift to Theravada Buddhism, a holy land entitled to the Sinhala race. The Sinhala nation has not redeemed itself from this mythological idea that is buried deep and has become fossilised in their collective conscious. It is because of this ideological blindness that the Sinhalese people and their political and religious leaders are unable to grasp the authentic history of the island and the social realities prevailing here. They are unable to comprehend and accept the very existence of a historically constituted nation of Tamil people living in their traditional homeland in north-eastern Sri Lanka, entitled to fundamental political rights and freedoms. It is because of the refusal by the Sinhala nation to perceive the existential reality of the Tamils and their political aspirations that the Tamil national question persists as an unresolved complex issue." (2005)
"The Sinhala government has unleashed a two-pronged war, military and economic, on our people. Our people are subjected to unprecedented assaults. Arrests, imprisonment, torture, rape and sexual harassment, murders, disappearance, shelling, aerial bombing and military offensives are continuing unchecked. At the same time our people are subjected to an inhuman economic embargo on essential items including food and medicine." (2006)
"A strange low-intensity war has been unleashed against us taking advantage of the conditions of peace effected by the ceasefire. Disarming the Tamil paramilitary groups is an obligation of the state under the terms of the Ceasefire Agreement. Having failed to fulfil this crucial obligation, the Sri Lankan state has been utilising the Tamil paramilitaries as instruments of this subversive war against our liberation organisation. This is a serious war offence. This is similar to a treacherous act in which one stabs you in the back with one hand while pretending to embrace you with the other. This behaviour clearly demonstrates that the Sinhala ruling elites have no genuine interest in peace and ethnic reconciliation. The Sri Lanka state has not given up the military option but rather transformed the war into a new mode of state terror under conditions of peace" (2005).
"Both our liberation movement and our people never preferred war to a peaceful resolution. We have always preferred a peaceful approach to win the political rights of our people. We have never hesitated to follow the peaceful path to win our political rights. That is why we have tried to hold peace talks beginning in Thimph right through to Geneva on several occasions, at various times, and in many countries. The current peace efforts, with Norwegian facilitation and with the blessings of the international community, taking place in the capitals of various countries are unique." (2006)
"As far as the Tamil people are concerned, the concepts of peace, ceasefire and negotiations have become meaningless; concepts that do not correspond to or reflect reality. A shadow war conducted under conditions of peace, military occupation perpetrated in violation of the terms of ceasefire, an international subversive network woven during political negotiations, are the distorted ways the peace process has been abused. Because of these factors our people have lost faith in everything. Our people have lost faith in a peace process that has failed to secure them a real, peaceful life; they have lost faith in a ceasefire that has failed to remove the occupation army from their homes; they have lost faith in the talks that have failed to resolve their long-standing problems." (2005)
"The Wickremesinghe government, which refused to solve the humanitarian problems facing our people, secretly worked to marginalise our movement on the world stage. Even before setting up a working administrative structure in the Tamil homeland, it conducted donor conferences to obtain aid for the south. By failing to facilitate our participation in the donor conference held in Washington, it marginalised and humiliated our movement. As a result we were forced to stay away from the Tokyo conference. The Wickremesinghe regime did not stop with this. It plotted to trap our freedom movement in an `international safety net' and destroy us." (2006)
"I need not go into the details of the peace negotiations we had with Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe's government in various world capitals under Norwegian facilitation. It is suffice to say that Mr. Wickremesinghe's administration was unable to resolve even the basic existential hardships and urgent humanitarian needs of our people. Adopting delaying tactics, Ranil's government was primarily focusing on setting up an international safety net aiming at decommissioning our weapons. An international aid conference was organised in Tokyo in June 2003 as an essential element of this subversive scheme. Having realised the implications of the international safety net we decided to boycott the Tokyo conference and eventually to suspend the peace talks" (2005).
"The Rajapakse regime, while conducting genocide of the Tamils, is portraying our movement which is waging a struggle to save the Tamils from this genocide, as a terrorist organisation. It has launched a malicious propaganda campaign to defame our movement. Ignoring the unanimous opposition of our people and the objection of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the European Union and Canada have yielded to diplomatic pressure from the Sri Lankan government and listed our movement as a terrorist organisation. They isolated us as undesirables." (2006)
"Having carefully examined his policy statement in depth, we have come to a conclusion that President Rajapaksa has not grasped the fundamentals, the basic concepts underlying the Tamil national question. In terms of policy, the distance between him and us is vast. However, President Rajapakse is considered a realist committed to pragmatic politics; we wish to find out, first of all, how he is going to handle the peace process and whether he will offer justice to our people. We have, therefore, decided to wait and observe, for some time, his political manoeuvres and actions." (2005).
The forewarning in 2005 was: "If the new government rejects our urgent appeal, we will, next year, in solidarity with our people, intensify our struggle for self-determination."
True to his word, in 2006, reminding the people of the "final call in last year's Heroes' Day statement", Prabakaran called on not only the Sri Lankan Tamils but the "world Tamil community" to support his struggle now that Rajapaksa too has let him down.
Interestingly, a special mention has also been made to a support base in Tamil Nadu: "We express our gratitude to the Tamil Nadu people and leaders for voicing their support and ask them to continue their efforts to help us in our freedom struggle."
B. Muralidhar ReddyCOMMents
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