Sri Lanka Betrayed

An article in the Hindu newspaper of 02 December 1999 mentions that there are over 5,000 websites answering to "Tamil" and 2,500 answering to "Tamil Eelam". It rightly concludes that Eelamists have won the cyberspace propaganda war against the fumbling efforts of the Sri Lanka Government. Even the presidential candidates in Sri Lanka are said to be quoting from TamilNet. While most Sinhala expatriates couldn’t care less whether bombs are exploded in Colombo or rural villagers are slaughtered in cold blood and only think of Sri Lanka to oragnise a dinner-dance or a college old boys reunion, the Tamil diaspora are devoted to a massive propaganda war against Sri Lanka. Is it that Tamils in general are more socially conscious than the Sinhala people? Past experience in Sri Lanka does not bear this out. While every group has altruistic people, most people in any society are motivated by personal gain, the more immediate the better. And this is the motivation of the Tamil diaspora. The more Sri Lanka is painted as a vicious society persecuting Tamils, the better the chance of Tamils obtaining immigration into developed countries which provide better economic opportunities.

The biggest economic activity of Sri Lankans is foreign migration for work. Half a million poor laborers and nannies work under appalling conditions in the Middle East, with many more aspiring to go there. Sri Lankan immigrants are found in almost every European, North American and African country, apart from the Middle East and Australia. There problem is not political but economic. This is borne out by the fact that the immigrants are either manual workers or educated people, rarely business people. Tamils still hold a leading position in the business community in Sri Lanka and these people are very happy to remain there.

The progressive collapse of the Sri Lankan economy since the 1950s is the result of the changing global market with the dominance of transnationals from the developed countries. UNCTAD studies in the recent World Development Reports have detailed how the developing countries have been marginalized in the new world economic order. Sri Lankan governments focussed on the extension of peasant agriculture through schemes like Mahaweli and, later, on low tech low wage industries, while the developed world moved into the electronic age from their advanced industrial position. Income from both export agriculture and small-scale farming collapsed. Middle class professionals and public servants were reduced to poverty while a small class of business people flourished. Public service, which attracted many educated Tamils in the past is no longer an attraction. An entry level executive job for a university graduate in the public service pays less than $100 per month, while living costs in Sri Lanka have become high. After 35 years service, a government servant can hope to earn $300. It is not worth the investment in education. In the 1950s, an executive recruit to the public service could hope to buy a car and have a nice home with a few servants. Today, even a senior public servant cannot aspire to this standard of living unless he or she is in a favorable position to obtain illicit incomes.

The poor need a living and the educated need jobs with incomes that match their skills. The educated have an edge. Thanks to free education of a high standard in Sri Lanka since 1945, the educated can migrate if immigration rules in other countries permit. But immigration rules are being tightened everywhere. The LTTE seized on this business opportunity and runs a worldwide immigration service for Tamils for high fees. Agents in African countries and in Eastern Europe, where the rules can be bent with the right incentives, obtain visas and even manufacture passports and visas. Sri Lankan passports were regularly lost and replacements are asked from embassies. The "lost" passports were doctored with new names and photos. While some "refugees" remained in Africa and Eastern Europe, most were moved from there to North America and Western Europe. Many obtained entry through the loopholes in political asylum laws.

Immigration is a lucrative business for the LTTE and it is an opportunity for the educated Tamil diaspora. The more Sri Lanka is villified, the easier it becomes for Tamils to gain entry into the West as immigrants. They have put aside the thought that it is Sri Lanka that gave them free education, free health services and dignity. Living in foreign countries may make them second-class citizens but it provides opportunities for financial gains that Sri Lanka simply cannot provide at this juncture.

02 December 1999.