THE TOKYO TALKS
The loan talks began in Tokyo without the LTTE, though however not without any incidents. According to the news items that have been carried by the media, some JVP sympathisers have protested against the Prime Minister as well as Ven. Banagala Upathissa Thero at the Lanka Viharaya. There is nothing wrong in protesting but apparently some demonstrators have attempted to manhandle the Prime Minister. If that was the case then it has to be deplored and the Japanese government is entitled to deport them if the allegations against them are proved. The Prime Minister has apparently also told the demonstrators that he was trying to bring the LTTE also into the democratic parliamentary stream the way the JVP has been brought in.
However, the comparison is limited, if at all, only to the so called aim, even if we were to believe in it, and could not extend beyond that. When the JVP took up arms against the government, there was no "international community" to facilitate, mediate and interfere with the so called peace process. In fact there was no peace process as such. There were no loan talks to develop Hambantota or any other district that could be considered as a JVP stronghold. Nobody, certainly there was no Solheim or GL Peiris going behind Mr. Rohana Wijeweera to persuade him to attend the loan talks or peace talks. As far as I can remember GL Peiris was preaching against the violence of the JVP and was only interested in punishing the JVP members. Even later, after the JVP had been defeated in the University of Colombo at the elections to the student council, when there were problems in the University of Colombo, mainly due to his inefficiency, he was interested only in punishing not only the students but the lecturers whom he thought were behind the students. He was wearing his mask as a paragon of virtues and was calling for the "blood" of all whom he thought was "creating trouble". There was no peace talks with the students and the then JVP government was behind him. These students had not killed anybody and compared to the fascist murderers in the LTTE tigers were kitten.
During the JVP period there were talks of torture chambers not only in Batalanda but in the University of Colombo as well. However, when the PA came to power in 1994 there was no proper investigation into these allegations for some reason or other. By this time it has to be remembered that GL Peiris was an important cabinet minister in the PA government. Why the PA government failed to investigate into the unlawful killings of the JVP is still a mystery. There were rumors that some important members of the PA, especially some who belonged to the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party were involved with killing squads such as PRRA that operated with a free hand during that period.
The international community was probably having a vacation at that time and we did not here of any moves from the NGOs and the others to facilitate peace talks with the JVP. Everybody who was somebody wanted the JVP to be annihilated. Finally Mr. Rohana Wijeweera was killed in custody and the PA government failed to investigate how it could have happened in the Dharmishta Era. I am not condoning the violence by the JVP but where were all those organisations and individuals who now preaching against state violence. The BBC that never calls the LTTE a terrorist organisation had no inhibitions whatsoever in identifying the JVP as a terrorist organisation. It is clear that the UNP government in 1987 - 1990, in which the present Prime Minister was a cabinet minister, had a different conception when it came to the democratisation of the JVP. It must also be remembered that the JVP was banned in 1987 giving some silly excuse accusing them of something for which they were not responsible. The UNP should be reminded that unlike in the case of the LTTE the proscription of the JVP was never lifted.
It is only hypocritical to say that the JVP has now adopted the democratic parliamentary methods and that the same opportunity should be given to the LTTE. The JVP and the LTTE are two different organisations as far as the non national class is concerned. The non national, may I say the thuppahi following Mr. Philip Gunawardane, the so called father of Marxism in Sri Lanka, who realised soon that he had failed by the people by introducing Marxism, looks at the JVP as a challenge to their system, ways of life etc., while the LTTE is treated with a friendly attitude. The LTTE is most probably a "friend" of the Thuppahi class as the former is only a threat to the Sinhalathva in the country and not to the latter. In fact the Thuppahi class is also a threat to the Sinhalathva and as such there is no wonder that the LTTE and the Thuppahi class find themselves on the same side of the barricades together with the so called international community. No wonder that the barricades have been removed and now there is discussion on the high security zones in the Jaffna peninsula.
What are the aims and objectives of having talks either peace, lone or both, with the LTTE. Is it simply to bring the LTTE to the democratic process? What is the price that has to be paid for the LTTE to come to the "democratic process"? Why did the government allow the special unit of the army that operated from the Millennium City Complex to be raided? The LTTE has since then killed the Tamils who served in this special unit and is the government prepared to take the responsibility for those killings? The thuppahi or the non national class (this classification of class is based on nationality, culture, chinthanaya etc. and not on the so called production process as in Marxism. In any event the so called working class could be found only in the heads of some agents of western cultural colonialism such as Vasudevas, Vickramabahus and Handagamas who still think that everything could be reduced to economics) has links with the LTTE that also serves the international community in the final analysis.
The Tokyo loan talks began without the LTTE and will end without the LTTE at the table. However, the LTTE is present through their "friends" in the international community and of course through the so called government that is tied with constitutional constraints when it comes to giving what the LTTE wants. The LTTE is only nominally keeping away from the talks knowing very well that they are not losing anything by them being not present. In fact they expect to gain by not participating at the Tokyo loan talks.
Let us face it. The LTTE wants an interim administration for the northern and the eastern provinces, the so called traditional homelands of the Tamils, that came into existence only in 1889 with the demarcation of the country into the present provinces by the British, solely for themselves and outside the constitution. The government is prepared to give them what is known as an Apex body that was rejected earlier by the Sinhala organisations. The government is not concerned with the Sinhala opinion for the simple reason that the latter does not have the backing of the so called international community. The international community with the English speaking Tamils is playing a different ball game altogether. They back the LTTE knowing very well that it is a terrorist organisation for a different purpose. The LTTE, I suppose is also aware of what is happening, and is trying to defeat the "international community" in their own ball game.
The "international community" supports only Tamil racism and not the LTTE as such. They in the form of the British imperialists created Tamil racism way back in 1833 by nominating one member each to represent the Sinhalas and the Tamils in the legislative assembly ignoring more than two thousand year history of the Sinhalas. They equated the two thousand year history of the Sinhalas in this country with two hundred year history of the Tamils. There is no history of Tamils written by a Tamil in this country before the authour of the poems that were published as "Yalapana Vaipava Malai", was commissioned by a dutch officer in Jaffna to write the history of the Tamils. The Tamils in Jaffna, including the so called influential families, are mostly descendants of those who were brought by the Dutch for the tobacco cultivation. The Tamils in Sri Lanka have nothing to show as their conscious contribution to the culture of the country. There is not a single Tamil classic produced by a Sri Lankan Tamil. If the Tamils have a history of more than two thousand years as claimed by the Tamil racists, then why was that not a single classic was written by a Tamil in Sri Lanka during such a long period of history. The Tamil spoken in Jaffna does not differ very much from the Tamil spoken in Tamil Nadu and has not evolved into at least a dialect in a "history" of two thousand years. My latest findings strengthen my interpretation of the origin of the Tamils in Sri lanka, which I will present in due course.
Tamil racism is a creation of the British based on the "history" commissioned by the Dutch, and from the very beginning the British played the English speaking Tamils against the English speaking Sinhalas. The English speaking Sinhalas who became Thuppahi as a class (They came not only from Royal, S. Thomas' and Trinity but also from Ananda, Nalanda, Mahinda and Dhrmaraja. In fact some of the worst Thuppahis such as Vickramabahu are from these so called Buddhist schools. Of course there were and are some exceptions and all these schools have produced very good nationalists.) were prepared to play the game according to the rules laid down by the British. To cut a long story short the British were able to turn a less than 12 percent minority into a majority by giving privileges to the Tamils. Though the percentage of the Tamils with respect to the national population was low their percentage in the English speaking class was very high. Finally what mattered for the British was not the national percentage but the percentage of the Tamils in the English speaking class.
The English speaking Tamils began to lose their privileges with the universal franchise given in 1931. The importance of the national population was marked with this change as members to the state council were elected not only from the English speaking class. 1956 only accelerated the process begun in 1931 and the Tamil racist leaders by 1947 had realised that they would not be in a position to hold to their "share" of power, in excess of their percentage in the national population, that was given to them on account of their percentage in the English speaking population. In 1947 in the form of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (Lanka Tamil State Party) that presented itself as the so called Federal Party, Tamil racists demanded a separate state in the northern and the eastern provinces as demarcated by the British. The leadership of Tamil racism has been passed from the English speaking Tamils to Prabhakaran and Thamilselvan and the other terrorists who armed themselves in order to achieve what the English speaking Tamils had wanted as far back as in 1947. The English speaking Tamils, especially of the Vellala caste have not given up hopes and they are only using the LTTE to become the masters of the northern and the eastern provinces. The international community supports this class rather than the LTTE faction of Tamil racism and would wipe out the LTTE if and when Tamil racism achieve its objectives.
In Tokyo the LTTE is represented by the international community that however has a different agenda at present. The LTTE wants to gain the maximum out of the talks even in their absence, knowing that the international community cannot achieve what they want without the LTTE. The LTTE wants much more than the Apex body, a body that was carried by GL Peiris even during the PA regime, and would bargain for an interim administration, ironically by not being present in Tokyo. They want the interim administration only for them and if given they would make sure that the English speaking Tamil leadership is annhilated before the international community begin their campaign, thus forcing the latter to support them against Sinhalathva.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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