Press Release by The Action Group of Tamils, dated 05 December 1999

Press Release by The Action Group of Tamils, dated 05 December 1999

We publish below, in full, the press release by The Action Group of Tamils (TAGOT), clearly an LTTE front operating in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Blessed are the members of the TAGOT: they live a free and tolerant democratic society where they are allowed to ridicule the democratic system of Sri Lanka, carry on racist propaganda and repeat their same litany of lies to cause social unrest. Though Sri Lanka has banned the LTTE as a terrorist organization, like the USA, India, Malaysia, they clearly tolerate them in the heart of Kotte, right near the Sri Lankan Parliament. When the Black Panthers in the USA uttered such terrorist threats in the past, the FBI made sure that they ceased to exist. Democracies tolerate dissent, but no government today tolerates terrorists.

It is interesting that TAGOT reserves its fiercest attacks for the TULF. When that great TULF leader, Armirthalingam, became disenchanted with President Jayawardena and gave up his post as Leader of the Opposition in the Sri Lanka Parliament, he wrote to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, recommending Indian assistance for the incipient LTTE terrorist organization of that time. Mr. Prabhakaran returned this favor by assassinating the entire TULF leadership in his grab for sole leadership of the Tamils, in the process killing many unfortunate Sri Lankan police personnel guarding these Tamil leaders. The latest victim was Neelan Tiruchelvam, a severe critic of the government who yet wanted to work within the democratic process. Now, who says that the government should have peace treaties with the LTTE?

Leave aside treachery, let any of these Tamil spokespersons express their mildest dissent with any of Mr. Prabhakaran’s decisions and let them come back to tell the tale!

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From: "Sachithanandam Sathananthan" tagot@hotmail.com
Subject: Message from TAGOT
THE ACTION GROUP OF TAMILS (TAGOT)
Kotte, Sri Lanka
Tel: [+ 94 1] 877220
Email: tagot@hotmail.com

PRESS RELEASE

5 December 1999

TAMIL PARTIES: REARRANGING THE DECKCHAIRS ON THE TITANIC

The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) politicians are once again trying to juggle the votes of Sri Lankan (earlier Ceylon) Tamils. They are doing so with a practiced elan that comes from almost five decades of bartering Tamil political support to either of the two main Sinhalese parties, the Sri Lanka

Freedom Party (SLFP) and United National Party (UNP). In return, they are as usual scheming to feather their nests; they are seeking political patronage from the preferred Sinhalese party.

At the forthcoming presidential election, scheduled for 21 December, many Tamil voters reportedly favour the UNP candidate Ranil Wickremasinghe. But the TULF has discouraged Tamils from voting for both the UNP and the SLFP-led Peoples Alliance (PA) coalition.

The Action Group Of Tamils (TAGOT) cannot help but ask: what do the TULF politicians stand to gain (keeping in mind that the TULF is NOT in the business of defending the national rights of the Tamil people)?

Since Wickremasinghe refused to go beyond the 13th Amendment or abandon the unitary State, the UNP obviously did not offer the TULF a tenable horse deal. On the other hand, in November TULF’s General Secretary R Sampanthan went to London patently as an emissary of the PA candidate (and SLFP’s deputy leader) President Chandrika Kumaratunga. He contacted LTTE’s political advisor Anton Balasingam and attempted to lure the LTTE to commence "talks" with the PA Government BEFORE the election. Sambandan’s transparent ploy was to help the PA salvage the tattered "peace image" of President Kumaratunga and enhance her re-election prospects among Sinhalese as well as Tamil voters. Evidently the SLFP must have offered the TULF a face-saving horse deal.

However, the Leader of Liberation Tigers of Tamils Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran, in his November Heroes Day message firmly signalled opposition to President Kumaratunga’s re-election by underlining the unprecedently bloody military campaign waged by her PA Government against the LTTE-led Tamil national movement. Unable to directly back the PA candidate, the TULF attempts indirectly to strengthen Kumaratunga’s hand; it is backing the independent candidate Vasudeva Nanayakara, hoping to draw Tamil votes away from the UNP and thereby reduce the electoral support for Wickremasinghe.

So, the TULF’s apparently even handed approach of backing neither the UNP nor the PA is in fact a duplicitous manoeuvre to discourage Tamils from voting for Wickremasinghe and thereby bolster President Kumaratunga’s re-election prospects and indirectly support the SLFP. Most other collaborationist Tamil parties lack TULF’s political finesse to mask their crass opportunism. They have sided directly with one or the other Sinhalese party.

We in TAGOT are convinced that, in order to justify their collaboration, Tamil parties have once again kicked off the sterile debate on how Tamils could use their votes to best advantage. Should they send a strong "message of condemnation" to the PA by voting to defeat President Kumaratunga? Or should they underline the "decisive influence" of Tamil votes by helping the election of Wickremasinghe? And so on.

These questions have been raised with monotonous regularity at each presidential election. Every time, Tamils had the satisfaction of influencing the outcome but not much more. After each election, IRRESPECTIVE of whether or not Tamils voted for the winner, the new President has with equal regularity heaped even greater injustices upon Tamils.

Nevertheless, collaborationist Tamil parties continue to delude Tamils into believing that their votes somehow count in the long run. As for the election at hand, they drum up the hackneyed theme of supporting the "lesser-of-two-evils" although each time the winning candidate proved to be a greater evil for Tamils than the defeated one. The future is unlikely to be any different.

Most Tamil parties have, however, been amply rewarded for their assistance. They are well funded by the ruling Sinhalese party, which allowed them free rein to stuff ballot boxes at parliamentary elections to "elect" their own members as Tamil "representatives" from the North-East Province (NEP). These Tamil "representatives" prop up the Sinhalese Government and help it to wage the genocidal war against the LTTE-led Tamil national movement; they grow fat on parliamentary salaries and perks and retire into comfortable oblivion, unless they lose their lives prematurely.

Basically, collaborationist Tamil parties purvey the canard that Tamil support for the winning candidate would induce the new President to re-consider his/her stand on Tamil national rights. The related canard is that the Sinhalese President is somehow above the rest of the chauvinist members of his/her party. But, as we have argued before, votes carry political representatives to power; classes keep them in power. Irrespective of how Tamils vote, the Sinhalese leaders will remain an integral part of, and beholden to, their ruling classes, which include the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, armed forces and Buddhist clergy. They share the world-view of these classes, which call the shots, and must rely on them to stay in power. The past has demonstrated conclusively that Tamil support for Sinhalese politicians will have no effect whatsoever in compelling the pathologically anti-Tamil Sinhalese ruling classes, and consequently their political representatives, to recognise and accept the national rights of Tamil people.

In fact, Wickremasinghe and Kumaratunga have accused each other of plotting to hand the NEP over to the LTTE one for two years and the other for ten years. This is a remorseless brandishing of the "Tamil card", or Tamil baiting. It is clear that both of them are mired in Sinhalese chauvinism.

Indeed, during the past five years President Kumaratunga metamorphosed from a docile "peace dove" seeking a "Political Solution" into a grotesque "war dragon" breathing "War for Peace". She anointed her "War for Peace" or Dharma Yuddha with a potent symbol of Buddhist worship, the Sudu Nelum (white lotus), when she launched the movement under the same name in August 1995, to legitimise the war as a Buddhist Dharma Yuddha or Holy War against the non-Buddhist Tamil people. This extreme Sinhalese chauvinism is unprecedented in the five-decade old conflict.

Today, the Sinhalese ruling classes are baying for Tamil blood. Especially after the success of LTTE’s Operation Oyatha Alaigal 3, these classes are busy forging a "national government" to unite Sinhalese forces against Tamils. They are intensifying the genocidal war by denying food and medicine to Tamil people in the Vanni under the pretext that Operation Oyatha Alaigal 3 has interdicted supply routes into the Vanni.

TAGOT can categorically state that the ruling classes are more than ever before implacably opposed to a political solution; they demand an undiluted military solution. The assertions by their political representatives the UNP and SLFP presidential candidates - that they would work towards a political solution are vacuous rhetoric.

Since Tamil votes are simply irrelevant for securing Tamil national rights, obviously Tamils must boycott the election. But the small minority of die-hard Tamil supporters of either Sinhalese party will vote for their traditional choice. Most Tamils who are thirsting for vengeance would probably insist on voting out President Kumaratunga.

On the other hand, if Tamils could be convinced that they must boycott the election, would they do so? The answer unfortunately is "No". A majority of Tamils would still vote but for a very different reason: FEAR. The voting pattern in each polling booth area indicates to whom the voters living in the area are loyal. If Tamils in a particular area boycott the election, the Police will mark them out as LTTE loyalists; and Tamils are petrified of the consequences. Many Tamils especially those living in Sinhalese-majority areas vote almost exclusively to ensure their physical safety. They are a people under siege, a captive voter population.

The shibboleth dredged up by Tamil parties about the so-called "effectiveness" of Tamil votes cannot mask this cruel reality. The shenanigan over changing alliances between the Tamil parties on the one hand and the UNP and SLFP on the other is little more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The only way ahead for Tamil parties is down.

The Action Group Of Tamils (TAGOT)
S Sathananthan

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Dr S Sathananthan, Secretary