{"id":156894,"date":"2016-02-04T15:03:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T09:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=156894"},"modified":"2016-02-08T00:22:20","modified_gmt":"2016-02-07T18:52:20","slug":"the-face-of-despair-the-black-day-that-is-sri-lankan-independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-face-of-despair-the-black-day-that-is-sri-lankan-independence-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The Face Of Despair & The Black Day That Is Sri Lankan Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Usha S Sri-Skanda-Rajah<\/span><\/a> \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Usha<\/a>

Usha S Sri-Skanda-Rajah<\/p><\/div>\n

Black Day for Tamils<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Sinhalese and some self-deprecating Tamils will be celebrating the 68th anniversary of Sri Lankan independence on Feb 4, 2016. On the other hand in stark contrast, Eelam Tamils who have their dignity, self-pride and self respect intact will be marking it as a Black Day. If independence is explained in the dictionary as self-government,\u00a0self-rule,\u00a0home rule,\u00a0separation,\u00a0self-determination, sovereignty, autonomy,\u00a0freedom,\u00a0liberty, self-sufficiency,\u00a0self-reliance,\u00a0etc., (Google it and see what you get), then it goes without saying what Tamil got on that fateful day in February in 1948, is a far cry from any of the synonyms here mentioned, and with the benefit of hind sight, a long way away from what we should have demanded as our human and political right!<\/p>\n

It was on this Black Day, that Tamils moved from a white colonial master, quite decent in comparison, to serving a brown colonial master and were thrust into a suffocating Sinhala Buddhist hegemony and bigotry without our knowing the extent to which it would show its ugly face, until it hit, hit hard!<\/p>\n

What happened to us?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What happened to us? We foolishly and naively trusted the Sinhalese, agreeing to a unitary system that resulted in them having a majoritarian stranglehold in parliament, and a Sinhala government at the centre. It was too late to reverse our misfortunes when we found these Sinhalese turned out to be scoundrels, wolves in sheep’s clothing more like, resulting in us Tamils ending up, in effect, losing our traditional homeland, our sovereignty and our rights. That’s what happened.<\/p>\n

February 4th 1948 is indeed a Black day any which way we look at it and already a month before, I was starting to feel a bit heavy in the heart – remembering everyone who died for freedom, feeling the pain, and the horrors of the genocide perpetrated against Tamils that intensified during the month of May 2009!<\/p>\n

Face of Despair<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what’s the story behind this “Face of Despair” you see here:<\/p>\n

let me tell you ..While my mind was in turmoil and engrossed in past horrors and feeling guilty for living on safe ground, I remembered the article I wrote same time last year, a must read: “Acts of Betrayal that Broke the Letter and Spirit of Independence<\/span><\/a>“.<\/p>\n

It struck me that nothing had changed, one year on, since President Sirisena took office. There was no discussion on any power sharing arrangement forthcoming, other than a plan to draft a new constitution and a constituent assembly – oh no not again I thought – a repetition of what happened in 1972, the main thrust of my article last year. Neither was there a change to the Unitary State system narrative, nor demilitarisation, nor significant return of people’s lands, nor relaxing of the government’s hold on state land which should in reality belong to the people at the provincial level; no marked reversal of fortunes towards a better quality of life for Tamils, no move to releasing most of the Tamil detainees incarcerated without charge under the PTA – except a bombshell from the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe in his interview with Channel 4’s Jon Snow, that the disappeared “are probably dead”, virtually asking Tamils to live with it.<\/p>\n