{"id":68328,"date":"2013-01-09T09:30:58","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T09:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=68328"},"modified":"2013-01-11T10:05:50","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T10:05:50","slug":"student-remembrance-triggers-tamil-rebirth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/student-remembrance-triggers-tamil-rebirth\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Remembrance Triggers Tamil Rebirth"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Phil Miller and\u00a0Andy Higginbottom<\/a><\/span> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On 27 November, students at Jaffna University lit a lamp in the womens\u2019 dormitory. Their simple act of commemoration unwittingly sparked events that have unfolded into the most significant confrontation with the Sri Lankan state since the massacre of Tamils in May 2009.<\/p>\n

The lamps were to remember as heroes those Tamils who gave their lives fighting for \u2018Eelam\u2019, an independent homeland in the north and east of the island. Sri Lankan soldiers were already on standby outside before they forced entry to the hostel, attacked the students and extinguished their lamps. The next day state force broke up a sit-down protest on the university campus, attacking two journalists and\u00a0injuring twenty students<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0BBC reported<\/a>\u00a0the army\u2019s claim that the students provoked them by throwing stones, but eyewitnesses report a\u00a0different sequence of events<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 stones were only thrown in self-defense\u00a0after<\/em>\u00a0the students were set upon. Over the next two weeks up to 50 Tamil students and youth across the Jaffna peninsula were rounded up. Four student leaders were processed at the\u00a0<\/strong>Joint Services Special Operations (JOSSOP) camp in Vavuniyaa, notorious as a torture centre, and are now in the Welikanda military detention camp where former LTTE Tamil Tiger rebels are\u00a0<\/strong>detained and interrogated<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The students are held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allows Secretary to the Ministry of Defence,\u00a0Gotabhaya Rajapaksa<\/a><\/span> (who is the President<\/a><\/span>\u2019s brother) to order suspects\u2019 detention for eighteen months. \u00a0Rajapaksa claims that the Jaffna students are in custody for \u2018rehabilitation and counselling\u2019. However, as the crackdown spread, Amnesty International issued an urgent action\u00a0expressing their concern<\/a>\u00a0that several students \u201care held incommunicado, putting them at much greater risk of torture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has occupied territory formerly held by the LTTE with a saturation presence of one soldier for every five residents. Despite the risks, the students\u2019 symbolic act of defiance has been supported by a wave of social movement protest. Lecturers at Jaffna University went on strike for half a day and have\u00a0demonstrated<\/a>\u00a0their support. The student body is boycotting classes indefinitely.\u00a0 Tamil students in the UK and in six other countries coordinated emergency vigils on 4 December and marched on Downing Street on Saturday, 22 December.<\/p>\n

At time of publishing (8 January) the students have not been released. Worse, the Sri Lankan state has targeted those Tamil\u00a0civil society and political opposition groups<\/a>\u00a0who protested the students\u2019 detention. Jaffna University\u2019s Vice Chancellor has told staff they must not speak to the press and the Sri Lankan military are pressing students to\u00a0break the boycott<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Tamil diaspora is pressing for Sri Lanka\u2019s massacre of their relatives three years ago to be recognised as a genocide. The UN\u2019s own\u00a0Petrie report<\/a>recognises that it was wrong to pull out from the conflict area in September 2008 just as the government\u2019s offensive was entering its final lethal phase of shelling civilians; and that in the first months of 2009 senior officials suppressed reports from their own aid workers of civilian casualties. By March 2009 they knew that\u00a0<\/strong>five thousand Tamils had already been killed. The report notes (para 63) that the UN\u2019s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide raised concerns but \u201cfavoured quiet diplomacy and told the [Sri Lankan] Government he would \u2018not speak out\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 By this point excessive pragmatism turned into an outright betrayal.<\/p>\n

The brutal crackdown on commemoration ceremonies shows that the Sri Lankan regime is determined to eliminate any collective memory of genocide. At the end of May 2009 Tamil deaths had reached tens of thousands, estimates range\u00a0from 30,000 to 140,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is reason to believe that the UN’s treachery was not just an institutional cock-up, but symptomatic of an even more worrying conspiracy between major powers to finish off the Tamil Tigers, no matter what the cost in civilian lives.<\/p>\n

The island\u2019s location makes Sri Lanka a prime target for the US and China\u00a0seeking control<\/a>\u00a0of the Indian Ocean\u2019s sea lanes. These geo-strategic implications were first pointed out by the Tamil analyst\u00a0Dharmeratnam Sivaram<\/a>, then by\u00a0Robert Kaplan<\/a>\u00a0in the neo-conservative US journal\u00a0Foreign Affairs<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rival powers in the UN Security Council are all courting favour with the Rajapaksa government. Evidence to the \u2018Peoples Tribunal on Sri Lanka\u2019 held in Dublin\u00a0argued even further<\/a>\u00a0that the US in particular deliberately collapsed the Norwegian brokered peace process that had lasted from 2002 to 2006. In this crucial period, rather than holding out for a negotiated settlement, the EU fell in line with a military solution and, under UK prompting,\u00a0banned<\/a>\u00a0the LTTE as a \u2018terrorist organisation\u2019 whilst continuing to\u00a0arm<\/a>\u00a0the Sri Lankan regime. The claim that international actors scuppered the peace process is in sharp variance with the standard interpretation, as for example the\u00a0evaluation commissioned by Norad<\/a>, which highlights the intransigence of the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE.<\/p>\n

Certainly, it is not only the UN that is now turning a blind eye to the genocide and its aftermath of military occupation. The UK government is pushing ahead with a controversial deportation program of failed asylum seekers to Sri Lanka. It is already\u00a0well documented<\/a>\u00a0by several human rights groups that people returned to Sri Lanka\u00a0have been tortured.<\/a>\u00a0The UK Border Agency\u2019s own\u00a0policy bulletin<\/a>\u00a0notes (para 4.1) that the Sri Lankan \u201cgovernment has stopped investigating cases of torture as a matter of policy, and since 2009 no cases have been investigated or prosecuted\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet the UK Border Agency has increased the frequency of its deportation flights to Sri Lanka.\u00a0 On 23 October, the\u00a0Guardian reported<\/a>\u00a0that last ditch legal efforts successfully saved a number of Tamils from deportation; but nonetheless the flight went ahead. Sri Lanka\u2019s Ministry of Defence boasts that\u00a028 deported asylum seekers<\/a>\u00a0arrived on the flight to Colombo. The latest flight on 6 December saw 25 more Tamils deported. These flights should stop immediately.<\/p>\n

By sending refugees back to torture by their persecutors, the UK is intimidating Tamils from speaking openly about their past and their continuing aspiration for Tamil Eelam. Yet all the signs are that neither in Jaffna nor in the diaspora will the Tamils be silenced. The real question is who will join them?<\/p>\n

*Andy Higginbottom is Principle Lecturer at Kingston University.Phil Miller works for the\u00a0Stop Deportations Network<\/a>. This article is first appeared in OpenSecurity<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":44779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nStudent Remembrance Triggers Tamil Rebirth - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/student-remembrance-triggers-tamil-rebirth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Student Remembrance Triggers Tamil Rebirth - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/student-remembrance-triggers-tamil-rebirth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-09T09:30:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-01-11T10:05:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Tamil-Diaspora.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"332\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/student-remembrance-triggers-tamil-rebirth\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/student-remembrance-triggers-tamil-rebirth\/\",\"name\":\"Student Remembrance Triggers Tamil Rebirth - 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