Reader Comment on Sri Lanka (letter to People's Voice)

Reader comment on Sri Lanka

(Letter to People's Voice October 16-31, 2011)

I am gravely concerned about the Labour Day issue’s article “Indian Communists Debate Tamil Issue” in the People’s Voice which states “Sri Lanka’s Tamils were largely brought from Tamil Nadu by the British as labourers.” Even the chauvinist Sri Lankan government’s own census shows this is simply not true, the last complete census (1989) shows Tamils who had been in Sri Lanka since ancient times outnumbered Tamils brought by the British from India by over 2 to 1 (2.1 million vs under 1 million). As the CPI(M)’s Ramdass discussed in his article “Developments in Sri Lanka” in the theoretical journal The Marxist (Vol. 3, No. 2, April-June 1985)  “The Jaffna Tamils had emigrated to Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, about 2000 years ago”. The root of the problem is that the Sinhalese consider Sri Lanka to be their country where the Tamils have no business to be.”

Unfortunately the People’s Voice article not only suggests a misrepresentation of the position of the Indian Communist Parties, let alone facts on the ground, but does so in a way that plays right into the hands of the most reactionary chauvinists.

As Ramdass explains, “What is generally referred to as the `ethnic problem’ is in fact the problem of a minority nationality - the Sri Lanka Tamil people - whose aspirations and legitimate demands have been denied by the ruling classes.” Although the Indian communists are against Tamil separation,

Ramdass explains who has true responsibility for this demand: “But it should not be forgotten that it is the refusal of successive bourgeois-landlord governments to concede autonomy to the Tamil majority areas, the breaking or scuttling and again of agreements arrived at that finally brought the separatist slogan to the forefront.”

Two years ago thousands of Tamils, some waving LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elaam) flags, blockaded highways in Toronto to bring attention to the genocidal war (CPI Tamil Nadu state secretary D. Pandian called it that in the party’s New Age Weekly Jul. 9, 2011 “CPI for Solidarity with Sri Lankan Tamils”), concentration-camp roundups of the Tamil people and, whether one agrees with them or not, the leading force for their national liberation which is the LTTE.

The Canadian government targets for deportation Tamils who have ties to the LTTE and the struggle for national liberation. We must refrain from any dodges on the facts of nationhood and the principle of self-determination, whether abroad or in Canada.

Asad Ali, Niagara Falls, ON