TNA seeks India’s help for ‘corrective steps’
Tamil National Alliance, an umbrella group of Tamil political parties, today complained to External Affairs Minister S M Krishna’s about Lankan government’s “lethargic” attitude in talks for evolving a political solution to the ethnic crisis and sought India’s help for “corrective steps”.
A delegation of leaders of TNA led by its Parliamentary Party Chief R Sampanthan met Krishna, who arrived here on a four-day visit, and said “no progress” has been achieved during the dialogue that the group has been holding with the Sri Lankan Government for the past one year.
Sources said the Minister assured the delegation that India is firmly committed to ensuring political settlement, including devolution of powers, to address the aspirations of Tamil community and will discuss the matter with the highest levels of the Sri Lankan government.
During a 45-minute meeting, the TNA leaders told Krishna that India should play an “active role” in taking the process forward to arrive at a political solution to the decades-old ethnic problem.
“The talks with the Indian Foreign Minister were cordial. We briefed him about the talks we have been holding with the Sri Lankan Government. We can’t say that any progress has been made in the past one year and this is because of the lethargic attitude being adopted by the government here,” Sampanthan said after the meeting.
He said Krishna gave a patient hearing to them and said India would take everything into consideration.
During its talks with the Lankan government, the TNA, which has emerged as the main political force representing the Tamils especially after the 2010 Parliamentary polls, has been demanding that police and land powers be vested with the provincial government as envisaged by the 13th Amendment.
However, the Lankan government has rejected the demand.
Sampanthan said the delegation also told the Indian leader that some “collective action” is needed in evolving a political solution that is acceptable to the Tamil-speaking people of Sri Lanka.
Sampanthan said India is keen to ensure that Tamils in Sri Lanka live with “self-respect and dignity” and that the delegation asked New Delhi to play its role to achieve that goal.
“We also impressed upon the Indian side that corrective steps needed to be taken if the talks have to be set on proper course,” he said.
Later, Krishna also received a delegation from the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress, which represents Muslims who speak Tamil who briefed him about the current political situation in the country, PTI reports.
Courtesy: Ada Derana
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“Sampanthan said India is keen to ensure that Tamils in Sri Lanka live with “self-respect and dignity” and that the delegation asked New Delhi to play its role to achieve that goal.”
These TNA fools never elaborated exactly what is causing the Tamils to lose “self-respect and dignity”. It appears that TNA wants “devolution of powers” as a solution to a non-existing problem.
Since their masters who they complain to are in India, a quick solution is to migrate to India with their kith and kin so that they can live with “self-respect and dignity”.
Dear Manjula,
I whole-heartedly agree with your intelligent comment.
TNA was a mouthpiece/proxy of VP and LTTE. Majority Tamils throughout SL have not complained they are not treated with respect and dignity by the other communities. Sampanthan is just mincing words. Do the Tamil Nadu Tamils complain that the Malayalees of Kerala ill treat Tamils living among them? Infact, within TN itself many million Tamils live below the poverty belt and are not treated with respect and dignity. All these TNA lunatics who moan with false complaints should migrate back to their native land, Tamil Nadu, and leave ordinary Tamil citizens of SL to get on with their lives in peace, which have been vastly improved since the LTTE were totally eradicated by the heroic forces of SL under our valiant Hon President.
It is VP and the LTTE who denied own Tamil people in SL their self respect and dignity by keeping about 350,000 of them herded like cattle, for their children to be used as gun fodder and as suicide bombers.
It is the attitudes of persons demonstrated in Blogs 1 & 2 that gave rise to the 30 year long civil war on the ground.
The war continues in other arenas and I refrain from comment on the progress of the war.
I am astonished to note Mr Dias drawing examples of community behaviours in India.
India is a socially and economically corrupt nation. Ruling families, dynasties, mafiosi and men of god are the order of the day. An associate who recently visited India had to bribe ‘gate controllers’ to gain access to Hindu and Christian places of worship in Northern and Southern India.
This does not mean we abandon India and become bedfellows with the noodle-eaters.
Gen Y and Gen Z are seeking corrections of social and economic inequality all over the world.
Can we expect authors of Blogs 1 & 2 to recognise the needs of the new generation and correct their thoughts.
Nelson,
Are you assuming those who needs to recognise the needs of the new generation and correct their thoughts are only Sinhalese Gen Y and Sinhalese Gen Z? Why not involve Tamil Gen X and Tamil Gen Z also and get them to correcvt their attitudes the same way?
Reconciliation cannot happen only from one party. You need two hands to clap. Without complicating the issue with silly western terminology such as gen X and Y, I can exxplain in lay person’s words that only realistic people can reconcile regardless of their generation. If one community is racially biased and full of selfish expectations you have only two options to explore:
1. Majority give up their legitimate rights and reconcile for the (fake) sake of reconciliation.
2. Stand your ground and do not reconcile with anybody who cannot be fair and reasonable.
Both options have their own merits and disadvantages to both parties involved. No one option is devine and only full of merits. At the end of the day the majority will have decide which option they want to take and therefore enjoy its merits and suffer from its disadvantages.
In the absence of TNA’s elaboration of what exactly are the problems faced by Tamils in Sri lanka that are not faced by Tamil or Chinese or any other minorities in USA or UK (or even tamils live in other states of India other than Tamilnadu), I invite Nelson to kindly elaborate those problems for the sake wideer community’s understanding.
As Nelson admits, if India is a corrupt country, then we should not follow their footpaths for our progress. We have travelled in different paths and currently in two different states of society. Therefore asking us to follow corrupt India’s foot steps in their own political methods (eg: federalism) is foolish. We are geographically, demographically, socially, culturally and religiously different and therefore we have to have our own different method to settle our problems (if any).
Always “the other” is right attitude is moral slavery, but not wrong, its one’s choice.
I whole-heartedly agree with Manjula’s well-reasoned arguments, in reply to NA.
The problem here is TNA, the political proxy of LTTE. The TNA is still adhering to the methodolgy/deviousness of LTTE, even after its demise. TNA pretends to enter into negotiations with GOSL, for the world to see that TNA is being amenable. LTTE did the same, to mark time till they have built up their strength again, after a set-back. TNA is marking time now, pretending to negotiate, for the day USA and NATO would intervene militarily as in Libya, on TNA side, to partition the SL to grant them autonomy, for USA to build the biggest military base in SL to dominate the SE Asia.
TNA is strongly nationalistic. It does not want any peaceful solution except complete autonomy for their so-called ‘Tamil Nation’, to be located in the regions in N & E, identified by LTTE, for a mere 3-4 million SL Tamils. As I have said before so many times, let the Tamil Nation be built in Tamil Nadu for its 70 million Tamils. TNA and their ilk can then join the Tamils in Tamil Nadu, if they are so keen to have a Tamil nation. I am sure, most ordinary SL Tamils are not nationalistic and are happy to live in SL in peace with the other communities, to lead a happy contended life in dignity, which they were denied by the LTTE and are most likely to be denied by TNA, the proxy of LTTE.
India should not interfere on the complaints of TNA, to impose on GOSL any solution based on TNA objectives. India should encourage TNA to enter into negotiations with GOSL honestly to find a peaceful soultion than partition and autonomy, without demanding land and police powers to be granted to them also, without demanding SL army bases in the N and E to be removed also.
Dear Nelson,
I accede you are an intellect.Your cooments are informative and most times well balanced but I feel your pseudo nationalism has taken over the powers of rational thinking.You very unkindly accuse the attitudes of manjula and ND as the cause for the 30 yr. old civil war. Dear Nelson you have a poor memory of our immediate history. It all started with G.G.Ponnambalam’s infamous cry for the 50-50representation in all the spheres of the govt.Amiable old DS tolerafed him in his Cabinet while vily GG as Minister of Industies put his slogan into action by positioning ALL his industries in the north and east. Naturally the south was feeling the pinch. Till then we all respected Tamils as equals and had great leaders like Arunachalam and Doraisamy. When GG started his 50-50 policy naturally it had a backlash.Things were made worse when our PM JLK visited Delft(island famous for donkeys) and promised to give Tamil Language parity of status. SWRD grabbed the opportunity and took short cut offerning the Sinhala Only’The South waiting silently, retaliated with a landslide victory for SWRD.But SWRD knew his boundaries and freezed his Bill and brought his BC Pact with Chelvanayagam.JR’s infamous march to Kandy put all hopes of an amicable settlement into disarray.Things followed is recent history.It is no use in pointing the finger at each other.When a house is on fire it is of no use asking Who and why he did it.Let ud douse the fire and be happy.
Dear AUJ,
I am glad you are continuing to make valuable and intelligent contributions to this forum. I am glad the Udurawana (fake) idiot has not set you back. The Administrator quite rightly acted immediately on my complaint to remove all those obscene comments Udu made. I am sure he will continue to show “ZERO TOLERANCE” to Udu, even were he to re-surface in any other guise.
Though NA writes rationally on some topics, he tends to be irrational in defence of ‘Tamil nationalism’ and TNA rabid demands from GOSL for ultimate autonomy of a merged N+E, as per LTTE map, which they falsely claim as rightly Tamil territory historically.
TNA is devious in trying to achieve their ultimate goal of sovereignty in steps. That is:
1. Merge N & E depicted in LTTE map as Tamil territory historically.
2. Grant total control of land rights in this territory to TNA for Tamils only (racial discrimination)
3. Total control of a police force of Tamils only (racial discrimination)
4. Official language in this territory limited to Tamil only, with English only as second language (Racial discrimination)
5. All official sign boards and road names in Tamil with English transliteration beneath
6. All roads in their merged so-called ‘eelam’ territory to be re-named in Tamil after LTTE ‘heroes’ etc.
7. Right to conduct official business in Tamil only (racism)
8. Education according to Tamil curricula for Tamil children only (racism)
9. Other communities such as Sinhlalese and Muslims proscribed from buying property and settling, conducting businesses and finding employment in merged N & E. (racism)
10. Properties and businesses of existing other communities such as, Sinhalese and Muslims, to be taken over by the TNA rulers and these owners forced out of the territory, to migrate to the South, with no adequate compensation (racism), as conducted in Israel against Palestinians.
11. SL military bases in N & E to be closed and moved out to the South.
12. TNA rulers to form their own military forces, army, navy and air force.
This is the step by step, 12 point agenda/road map of TNA nationalists, on their path to complete autonomy/sovereignty. TNA attends meetings with GOSL only to achieve these objectives, step by step. Otherwise, they will call-off negotiations and rattle their sabres with diaspora Tamil help and military threats through imperialist West.
Incidentally, NA and other Tamil nationalists call the 30 year terrorist insurrection a ‘civil war’. This was certainly not a civil war between ALL the Tamils (mainly) against ALL the Sinhalese. Hence, I am against this terrorist insurrection of the LTTE being called a ‘civil war’ by them and the ignorant West. I call it by its rightful name, “Terrorist insurrection”.
Once TNA attains their goal of sovreignty, they will print their own currewncy and ‘eelam’ postage stamps (which they have dared to do already).
I would not be surprised at all, if they encourage Tamil migration from Tamil Nadu, to eventually build up a huge military force, well artmed, equipped and trained to attack and conquer the whole of SL, for a home for so-called Tamil nation, which will then be recognised by UN.
ND
It is all yours now mate! Enjoy in your twilight years praising the goons. That is how intelligent you are as aptly described by departing NA, bird brains. I would say pea brains. Enjoy while you geriatrics last. Keep on patting one another ‘true patriots’.
Dear Manjula,NA & ND,
Thank you very much for your heartfelt concerns about my health. It may not necessary be due to the fake Udurawana’s unexpected filthy bash at me but I was in bed for just one day due to an infection on one of my operated leg. Like Mr.Jiggs in the famous English cartoon strip I too have a leg with a problem.With the assistance of my family doctor I am back again redy to meet you.For that little absence I appreciate your concerns and your prayers for a speedy recovery of an ailment you had no knowledge at all.Even my family doctor takes about three days to put me out of my bed.But this time it is over within a day.I feel your prayers also aided my recovery.A special THANK YOU for all.
Then what is this talk of separatism? Do we want to live in an atmosphere of insecurity? Lots of unanswerable questions as pointed out by ND.We can be friends once again. We both stand to gain in the procedure.I want to visit Jaffna once again and be a respected guest of one of my several Tamil friends as I have done once earlier.Let unity and amity prevail all over.”SABBE SATHTHA BAVANTHU SUKI THATHWA” ! May all beings be happy.
Dear Udurawana, I am extremely sorry I have not addressed you by name in my entry No.10 by an oversight.I had a special word of heartfelt thanks for you .You were one of the few who sympathesised with me when I was mercilessly floored by your fake and encouraged me to forget the imposter. You even added a special prayer for a speedy recovery that very same night. I am highly moved by your sincere feelings and offer my hand in gratitude.
However your suggestion for us to keep on supporting goons tastes bitter.We shall not swallow it.You will also agree with us MR and company liberated Sri Lanka from the clutches of the most ruthless outfit in the world.To that we support him and appreciate his courage. We are with him in his development programs. We love Sri Lanka.
Dear AUJ,
Please don’t be misled by Udurawana. From the style of his writing I don’t think there was a ‘fake’ Udu. This is one and the same guy, twisting and turning to mislead us.
India faced rising Tamil nationalism and even threat of break-up of Tamil Nadu (Madras State), in the time of Indira Gandhi. Kashmir, Punjab, Assam and Nagaland were also agitating for autonomy.
In SL, Chelvanayagam, who was a Tamil migrant from Malaysia, demanded ‘federalism’. VP rose to power in this background, to seek autonomy through militancy. He formed the LTTE. They struck by ambushing and killing 13 SL soldiers. They fled to India where Indira Gandhi provided them refuge.
Indira was an opportunist, who saw a solution to her own problem of rising Tamil nationalism in TN, in the LTTE. She conspired with Tamil nationalists to establish a country for Tamil Nation in SL, thus diverting their attention to SL. She hoped the demand for Tamil Nadu autonomy will subside then.
Indira trained, funded and armed LTTE in Tamil Nadu through RAW and the Indian army. The LTTE militants were then released on SL like a deadly virus. The Sinhalese and Muslims who lived in their traditional homes in N & E were brutally massacred. Suckling babes were dashed on rocks. Pregnant mothers had their wombs ripped open. Old men and women were slaughtered. The few who managed to flee, escaped with no belongings. They were provided refuge in the South. It was wanton, brutal genocide not condemned by UN or India or the West. Infact, India continued to support LTTE with funds, arms and training. VP identified the territory he claimed as ‘eelam kingdom’ and published map of it. It was 2/3rd of SL maritime area and 1/3rd of SL land area, for less than 4 million Tamils in the whole island, where the population is 21 million.
VP invented the suicide jacket and suicide bombing as an effective tool of terrorism. He conscripted Tamil children to his ‘army’. He formed the ‘Black Tiger’ unit to carry out suicide attacks. Car/lorry bombs were perfected by him using semtex and C4 as a powerful terrorist weapon to destroy infrastructure and slaughter ordinary citizens in the South, in waves of terrorist attacks. SL economy was sabotaged, ruined and stagnated. The country struggled, heavily in debt. VP had the country by its throat. Indira and TN continued to support the LTTE.
Rajiv Gandhi pursued his mother’s policy towards SL. He welcomed VP in India and conspired with him. He presented VP with an ivory-handled, gold plated pistol. When VP and the LTTE were surrounded in Vadamarachchi and was going to be massacred, Rajiv intervened on the side of VP, to help him and the LTTE escape, by ordering JRJ to release them. Indian air force invaded SL air space to drop dry rations to the LTTE (parippu drops). Rajiv forced JRJ to make the 13th ammendment to SL Constitution, to form Provincial Councils with wide powers of self-governance.
However, VP was not placated by this. He wanted nothing less than complete autonomy, to the territory he had identified as country for the Tamil nation. This led to the arrival of Indian Peace Keeping Force in SL. In the military confrontation with the LTTE many died on both sides. IPKF eventually withdrew to India. VP assassinated Rajiv in revenge.
Norway then took up the role of peace monitor. They were however, on the side of LTTE, who they called ‘freedom fighters’. Norway secretly funded, trained and armed LTTE in devious means. They also provided political aid. After the Al Qaeda attack on twin towers in USA, LTTE were proscribed by USA. Some countries in the West followed suit. India too proscribed LTTE after the assassination of Rajiv. It was a set-back to the LTTE.
What was the real, hidden agenda of LTTE and its supporters? It was not mere autonomy for the identified territory in SL as ‘eelam region’. That was just the beginning, the starter dish. The real plan was to conquer the WHOLE OF THE ISLAND for the Tamil nation, with Tamil migrants from Tamil Nadu flooding SL. There would have been a brutal genocide on a scale never witnessed in world history, not even in Ruwanda and in Cambodia! UN and the West would have turned a blind eye, as they did during Ruwanda and Cambodia genocides. USA had vested interest in SL in helping LTTE. LTTE would allow USA to build its largest military base in SL to confront China and India, to dominate Asia. This was LTTE’s reward to USA.
LTTE would then export its terrorism to India to assist Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Assam, Kashmir and Nagaland to break way from India as sovereign states. All these plans were thwarted by the timely action of one man. His Excellency the President of SL, Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected President. With his brother, Hon Gotabhaya Rajapksa, as Defence Secretary, and with the loyal military aid of China, VP and the LTTE were totaly defeated by the heroic Defence Forces of SL. India helped by keeping out of it, in retaliation for killing Rajiv. MR and GR also exposed to India the threat to India’s sovereignty if LTTE were allowed to win.
However today, US foreign policy remains the same, to dominate Asia and the Pacific regions against China. USA still may use diaspora Tamils, the TNA, rump LTTE and the JVP/JAM to acheive its objectives by toppling the MR govt of SL and building a huge base in SL. India should not fall victim to the deceit of USA and the imperial West. India is still in danger of break-up into separate sovereign States. Its superpower aspiration will be nipped in the bud then. India should therefore not accede to TNA demands and instead side with GOSL of MR, to unite SL as ‘ONE COUNTRY ONE NATION’.