Tamil statehood?

Applying the “self-evident” truths celebrated in the Declaration of Independence, the United States should recognize the right of Sri Lanka’s long oppressed Tamil people to independent statehood from the racial supremacist Sinhalese.

To deny the statehood right — sought by the Tamil people since 1976 — would mark one of the United States’ most ill-conceived hours. Double standards beget enmity or contempt, a steep price even for a superpower.

To borrow from the Declaration, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

In 1948, Sri Lanka achieved nationhood from British colonial rule with a population of about 10 million. The commanding majority were Buddhist-Sinhalese. A Hindu-Tamil minority approximated 2 million.

Immediately upon independence, the Sinhalese denied citizenship and disenfranchised a staggering 1 million Tamils, which reduced them to a politically impotent ink blot. There has never been a Tamil president, prime minister or head of the military.

In the last two years, four Tamil parliamentarians under the ostensible protection of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) have been assassinated. Sri Lanka’s signature became predation, repression, and state sponsored race riots against Tamils, the first organized on May 27, 1958.

Take the grim fate of Tamil Jayantha Gnanakone, whose story speaks for all Tamils. Beginning in 1958, his family’s businesses were thrice looted and burnt by Sinhalese while police and firefighters played spectator. His best friend was burned alive and, Jayantha was forced to flee to the United States for safety. No prosecutions were forthcoming nor compensation paid.

As an international airline pilot, Jayantha’s career was stymied for balking at aping the Sinhalese. His shipping and transport business was crippled by the GOSL for protesting Tamil subjugation; and, the Parliament concocted allegations he was smuggling drugs and guns.

The GOSL similarly manufactured a criminal charge against Jayantha’s mother, likening her to Colombia’s notorious Pablo Escobar. She died of a heart attack in her home caused by stress during the appeal of her conviction and life sentence. In 2005, Jayantha’s brother was arrested and falsely accused of complicity in the assassination of Sri Lanka’s foreign minister.

Jayantha’s homes have been regularly raided and ransacked by the police or military without warrants. His wife was arrested in 2000 on suspicion of assisting the Tamil Tigers. Even his minor children, who are U.S. citizens, have been threatened with arrest on more than one occasion while visiting Sri Lanka.

The 1958 Sinhalese Only Act was a landmark in the history of Tamil oppression. It generally excluded or handicapped Tamils in public or private employment, education, housing or welfare. Roads, schools, hospitals and public utilities were shortchanged in Tamil areas, which reflected a Sinhalese policy of “separate and unequal” that has persisted for 50 years.

Budget revenues have been spent exclusively on Singhala and Muslim areas; and, only three industries — cement, chemicals and paper — were founded in the Tamil region, and they have been shuttered for two decades.

In 1961, Tamils began a nonviolent, Gandhi-like protest in favor of regional autonomy. The Sinhalese government answered with assaults on the demonstrators, mass arrests, detentions of Tamil members of Parliament, torture and shootings. The firehoses and cattle prods used by white policemen in the United States against civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s were gentle in comparison.

In 1978, then Prime Minister Junius Jayewardene unilaterally rewrote the Sri Lankan constitution to the exclusion of Tamil representatives. It created an omnipotent presidency, an office which President Jayewardene employed to enact the 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act. The law enables the Sinhalese police to arrest, search or punish any Tamil who might question Sinhalese supremacy without judicial review or supervision.

In 1983, the Sinhalese government originated raced riots that culminated in the slaughter of 4,000 Tamils. No prosecutions were brought against the Sinhalese culprits. No Tamil was compensated. Crimes of violence against Tamils by Sinhalese are never pursued, reminiscent of black lynchings in the United States during Jim Crow.

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