With deep anger, People's Voice condemns the genocidal war unleashed by the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. The armed forces of the state are bombing highways, hospitals and schools in the Jaffna Peninsula. They are forcibly pushing civilians trying to escape the civil war into military detention camps right in the conflict zone. They are refusing to allow humanitarian aid agencies, including Red Cross, access to the civilians trapped in the conflict zone. Over 3 lakh people are reported to be trapped between the forces of the Sri Lankan state and the remnants of the LTTE forces.

A spokesperson for the World Food Programme has declared that the entire population of Vanni is facing a food crisis. Some 250,000 people there are completely dependent on humanitarian aid, but the WFP has not been able to get a supply convoy into the conflict zone since January 16, she said. The Sri Lankan Government has refused permission to WFP convoys to enter the region and distribute food.

The Sri Lankan armed forces and government are crowing about soon achieving “final military victory” over the LTTE. Keheliya Rambukwella, the government’s defence spokesman, said the campaign against the LTTE will not be stopped. “Nothing will be discussed with the LTTE. The LTTE will be militarily destroyed,” he said.

The Sri Lankan government is carrying out propaganda, that the target of the army, navy and air force is the LTTE, and not the Tamil population. This propaganda is belied not only by the bitter historical experience of the Tamil population of Sri Lanka. It is belied by the current developments. What is being waged is a no holds barred war by the army on a people it is treating as alien. Lasantha Wickramatunga, publisher of the Sunday Leader, a Sri Lankan newspaper, writing in his editorial published posthumously in January 2009, titled “And then they came for me” has pointed out how journalists, rights activists, and all those who have demanded an end to state terrorism, and a political solution to the Sri Lanka Tamil problem, have been harassed, threatened, forced into exile, or killed. In a damning indictment of the government, he has accused the Sri Lankan state of being responsible for his assassination. He has declared “We have also agitated against state terrorism in the so-called war against terror, and made no secret of our horror that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world routinely to bomb its own citizens. For these views we have been labelled traitors, and if this be treachery, we wear that label proudly.”

The same Sri Lankan state which wants to eliminate LTTE, has actually negotiated ceasefire with this organisation, a number of times, the last one between 2002 and 2008. LTTE, de-facto, has been ruling first in the Northern and Eastern provinces in this period, and later on, after the Sri lankan government regained control of the Eastern Province, it has been ruling in the North. Now, the Mahinda Rajapakse government has launched a “war to the finish”,  for a military solution to suppress the Sri Lankan Tamils. It has carried out assassinations of LTTE leaders through “precision bombings”, in the manner in which the US has carried out its genocidal war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel has now been bombing Gaza. It is openly and publicly treating all Tamils, even those in rest of Sri Lanka, as aliens and enemies. This is a continuation of the discriminatory policy towards Tamils pursued by successive governments since the end of colonial rule 60 years ago, but it is now being taken to a higher plane.

Denial of the root of the problem

According to the Sri Lankan government, the problem in Sri Lanka is “terrorism”. It is carrying out a “military solution” to this problem. It denies that there is a long standing Tamil national question festering in Sri Lanka, which demands a political solution.

The Tamil people in Sri Lanka have waged a long struggle, against the Sri Lankan state, against oppression and discrimination, for their national rights. This struggle has taken various forms, but the existence of this struggle cannot be denied. Either the state of Sri Lanka is reconstituted to guarantee the democratic rights of all nations and peoples inhabiting the island, including the Tamils. Or else, the present reactionary state of the bourgeoisie, based on exploiting not only workers and peasants, but also the various nations and peoples, will continue. At the present time, there is a convergence of interests amongst various big powers, including US, India, China, Britain etc. in defending the present Sri Lankan state and advancing their own interests within this situation. Under the guise of “war against terror”, the Sri Lankan government has tried to neutralise any opposition to its genocidal war, internationally as well as within its own country.

Indian government has supported this genocidal civil war

Indian foreign Minister Pranab Mukherji visited Sri Lanka just after Republic Day to commend the Sri Lankan state on its “war against terror.” MK Narayanan, national security advisor to the Prime Minister, has described the Sri Lanka military leader General Fonseka as “the world’s greatest Army commander.”   

According to Maj-Gen Ashok K. Mehta (retd), India has helped with crucial intelligence inputs.  It played a double game — outwardly calling for restraint, and ending the war, to placate Tamilnadu politicians, while quietly supporting Colombo with crucial intelligence and coordinated operations on the high seas. It assisted the Sri Lankan Navy in 2008 to sink all the eight LTTE merchant vessels that ferried replenishments from overseas. According to Mehta, “this was the turning point in the war. Air supremacy, precision guided attacks taking out top LTTE leaders and drying of funds from diaspora led to Tiger operational capacities dipping to an unprecedented low level, the trigger for the Northern offensive.”

India’s Sri Lanka policy in the years immediately before Rajapakse came to power was described as “exercising decisive influence without direct involvement”. This was the policy pursued after the Indian government withdrew the IPKF from Sri Lanka. There has been a strategic change in this, with India actually supporting the military campaign. After the military victories, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon on a visit to Colombo praised Sri Lanka’s role in “combating terrorism” and characterised India-Sri Lanka relations as “having reached unprecedented level of depth and quality today” and “having withstood the test of time and adversity”. On another occasion he described relations as “never so close, so warm and so deep”.

People's Voice expresses its deep anger at the support of the Indian state in the genocidal war being carried out by the Sri Lankan state. The Indian state sheds crocodile tears about the fate of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, but this is only to fool the gullible. Just as it has no compunction to slaughter Indian people, as it is doing in Kashmir and the North East and other places, so too it has no problem with the slaughter of Tamils in Sri Lanka. It only wants to ensure that its strategic interests in Sri Lanka are protected. This means, at the present time, that it wants to ensure that China and Pakistan, its main rivals in South Asia, who have also been assisting the Lankan government’s military campaign, do not get an upper hand there. The Indian state is coordinating its Sri Lanka policy with the US, which has also openly supported the Sri Lankan government’s genocidal war.

The Indian working class and people resolutely condemns the Sri Lankan government’s genocidal war against its own people. We condemn the Indian state for its support to the Sri Lankan government in this war. We support the struggle of all those in Sri Lanka who are opposing state terrorism and fighting heroically for a political solution to the problems facing their country.