Forgotten and discarded:the Sinhala refugees

By Kumbakarna

What is clear from all this is that the so-called 'Tamil homeland' is an area which is not open to non-Tamils. For the purpose of performing this ethnic cleansing, the terrorists have carried out 127 attacks against non-Tamils since 1983. These have claimed the lives of about 3500 Sinhalese and 550 Muslims.

Despite this, what we still hear are lamentations about "Black July", and "the genocide war against the Tamils" and "the plight of the Tamil refugees". It would appear that there are no non-Tamil refugees. The fact is of course that there are, but as they are not Tamils, the "Eelam porpagandists" and their various backers do not even mention them.

Of these, the Sinhalese refugees are the most neglected. The Muslims have a member of parliament, Ilyas to speak for them, and Minister Ashraff to 'rehabilitate' them. The Sinhalese refugees have no official representation as far as the Government is concerned, they do not exist. No Government institution bothers even to keep any records. The Sri Lanka Government, it seems, does not bother with Sinhalese.

Let us first consider what happened in Jaffna. In 1971, the Sinhalese population was 20,402 or 2.9%. With the riots in 1977, '78, '81 and '83 most of this population was permanently driven out. The ethnic cleansing was completed on October 6, 1987, when the last Sinhalese were chased away. Unlike the Tamils who returned to Colombo a few months after the '83 riots, these Sinhalese people have never been able to return to their homes. But nobody, of course, talks of a "Black October". Apparently things turn 'black' only when Tamils suffer.

It was the same in Mullaitivu. In 1981, the Sinhalese population was 3948 or 5.9%. Today, the only Sinhalese people in the Mullaitivu District are the few hundred living in the Weli Oya area.

From Trincomalee town itself, 12,000 Sinhalese people have been chased out. This is particularly significant in view of the fact that Trincomalee (rather than Jaffna) is to be the capital of the proposed state of 'Eelam'. A total of 18,000 Sinhalese have been displaced in the Trincomalee District alone.

In Mannar, there were 8,700 Sinhalese in 1981, and in Vavuniya there were 15,816. As far back as 1946, there were 11,850 Sinhalese in the Batticaloa District. With the violence inflicted on them in the riots of 1957, which were orchestrated by Chelvanayakam, this figure came down to 6,580 in 1963. By 1971, it had increased again to 11,281.

Considering the number of Sinhalese people who lived in these districts before 1981, allowing for natural increase, and with the 6,000 to 8,000 displaced from the Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura and Ampara Districts, it is apparent that there are about 90,000 Sinhalese who have been driven out of their homes in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. But there are no foreign funded NGOs to wail about their 'human rights.'

Why has the Tamil racist campaign been aimed so specifically at removing the Sinhalese presence in the Northern and Eastern Provinces? The answer is simple. In the face of unshakable historical evidence that these areas have always been inhabited by Sinhalese, the only way in which the "Tamil Homeland" myth can be maintained is by driving the Sinhalese out and destroying all evidence of their presence.

The government, subservient as always to the demands of Tamil racism, makes no attempt to re-settle these Sinhalese people in their homes. In the face of opposition from various racist Tamil groups, even the so-called "liberated" areas remain out of bounds to the Sinhalese who lived there. The plight of these Sinhalese refugees is an indication of the influence that these Tamil groups exert on the Sri Lankan government.

inside the glass house:

Non-Alignment breaks down over Kosovo

By: thalif deen at the united nations

Called the Yugo, the vehicle had such a widespread notoriety for breaking down in suburban streets that it was facetiously dubbed the "unaligned car from a non-aligned country." 

Last week the 114-member Non-Aligned Movement, the largest single Third World political group at the UN, was itself following on the track marks of the Yugo — showing signs of a potential breakdown even as it struggled to come up with a collective political stand on the Kosovo crisis.

The once vigorous NAM, whose stalwarts include India, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Zambia, Cuba, Cyprus and Sri Lanka, has split right down the middle as Third World nations failed to reach a consensus on how to respond to the bombings and the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia.

After a series of closed-door meetings, held against the backdrop of two weeks of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, NAM couldn't agree even on a one-page statement on Kosovo because of sharp internal differences. 

The overwhelming majority of the 56 Islamic states in NAM has been backing the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) primarily because the victims of Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo are mainly Muslims.

Simply put, the issue has boiled down to a single argument - which is more worthy of NAM condemnation: ethnic cleansing by Serbs or NATO violation of Yugoslav's national sovereignty.

A group of NAM members, including Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, Kuwait and other Gulf states in the Middle East, want ethnic cleansing to take precedence over the sovereignty issue. But another group of NAM countries, including Cuba, Belarus and India, want the political equation turned around.

One draft statement, favoured by Muslim nations, "condemns the perpetration of all acts of destruction, repression, abuses of human rights and other atrocities, specifically ethnic cleansing, carried out by the parties to the conflict, but caused mainly by the Yugoslav authorities, leading to an escalation of fighting in Kosovo and the failure of the cease-fire agreement."

A second draft, favoured by Cuba, Belarus and India, shifts the emphasis and "condemns the military force applied by NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without the authorisation of the Security Council, and stresses that any humanitarian intervention under international law must not affect the political independence or territorial integrity of any state."

As a result, NAM has remained deadlocked throughout the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. A watered down NAM statement is currently in the works.

The deadlock is all the more tragic considering the fact that Yugoslavia - the subject of the unresolved debate - is a founder member of the Movement. The first NAM summit was held in Belgrade in 1961 and was hosted by Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia. The cast of characters included Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, India's Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah.

The Muslim nations in NAM say that the US, which has often unleashed its military fury on Islamic countries— including Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan— is now bombing an European country in order to protect a Muslim minority.

A US State Department "hit list" of countries designated "terrorist states" is also weighted heavily against Islamic nations. Of the seven, the majority are Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Libya. The only two non-Islamic "terrorist states" on the list are Cuba and North Korea.

On March 26 a draft resolution, submitted by Belarus, Russia and India condemning the NATO attack, failed to get the necessary votes in the 15-member UN Security Council. The resolution was rejected by 12 votes to three. Malaysia and Gambia, the two Muslim countries in the Council, voted with the US to reject the demand for an end to air strikes against Yugoslavia.

One of the few Muslim countries that sent troops to Bosnia in its war against the Serbs, Malaysia has traditionally taken an anti-US and anti-West stand on sensitive political issues at the United Nations. But this time around, even Malaysia has joined forces with the US against the Serbs.

Meanwhile, the hawkish Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon— running true to form— has expressed fears that an independent Kosovo would result in a "greater Albania that will turn into a centre of Islamic terrorism in Europe." So what else is new?

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