2ND LEAD (Update)

Unity between Eezham Tamils and Muslims key to true freedom: Exiled Sinhala academic

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 April 2019, 18:43 GMT]
Whoever carried out the Easter Sunday attack seems to have implemented, knowingly or unknowingly, the grand plan of fully integrating the Sri Lankan state into the geo-strategic imperial complex led by USA, UK, India and China by sharpening the globally imposed imperial faulty lines, says Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in a comment to TamilNet on Wednesday. With the Easter Sunday attack on Christians (Sinhala and Tamil), many have lost their lives. The entire Muslim community has been demonized and Islamophobia has been heightened. Sinhalese do not know what they do – really like those who carried out the attack on Easter Sunday, he says. “The only wake up call can come from a strong unity between the Eelam Tamils and Muslims on the island who can truly resist the colonially carved state,” says the exiled Sinhala activist who hails from Negombo.

Christians too can contribute to liberating the island by drawing inspiration from Latin America, Professor Jude Lal says in his comment.

Full text of the comment follows:

Easter Sunday reflections emerging from the living memory of my hometown Negombo

The military victory of the Sri Lankan state over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was achieved as part of reintegrating the island as a strategic and military asset of the USA-UK axis, which was also supported, by China and India for different reasons.

Since then the rising tide of anti-Muslim attacks led by the triumphalist Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists were not the work of a few isolated groups but the logical outcome of the military victory that the Sinhala supremacist state achieved with the full support of their global backers.

It is claimed that the Islamic militants were behind the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks on the Christian churches ( both Sinhala and Tamil), which claimed nearly 400 lives.

Why didn’t the so-called Islamic militants attack the Buddhist worshippers, but the Christians?

Whoever carried out the attack seems to have implemented knowingly or unknowingly the grand plan of fully integrating the Sri Lankan state into the geo-strategic imperial complex led by USA, UK, India and China by sharpening the globally imposed imperial faulty lines; Muslims vs. Christians or Islam vs. West or Islam vs. the Rest.

As the Sri Lanka security forces believed that they were guarding the pristine Sinhala Buddhist nation by destroying the LTTE, the so-called Islamic militants might have believed that they were engaged in a jihad not withstanding the fact that both entities were meticulously implementing the grand agenda of the most oppressive global powers on earth.

In this sense, not only the USA and UK, and the rest of Europe which is moving towards right-wing politics, but also Narendra Modi’s India which demonizes Muslims and Xi Jiping’s China which is repressing Muslims in Uyghur Province could jubilantly thrive on further strengthening the Sinhala supremacist unitary state as their best strategic and military asset in the Indian Ocean.

Immediately after the attacks the USA and UK have openly come out with their full support to the Sri Lankan state while shedding crocodile tears over the bodies of Christians.

Naredra Modi who oversees a government that has heightened the attacks on Christians, Muslims, Dalits and many others in India is utterly happy as the Easter Sunday attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka have given him new ammunition for his election campaign against the Muslims.

In this way, under the grand imperial narrative of Islam vs. the Rest the decades long attacks led by Sinhala racists gangs and Sinhala Buddhist security forces on Tamil speaking Hindu, Christian and Muslim places of worship, as part of a genocidal process, could be further absolved by constructing a ‘Muslim enemy’.

The memory of the genocidal climax of this onslaught which led to the massacre of at least 70,000 in the last phase of the war could be further suppressed. Militarization, Buddhicisation and Sinhalacisation of the Eelam Tamil homeland, as part of structural genocide, could be expedited with international aid.

The genocide caused against Eelam Tamils by the Sri Lankan state was necessitated by the desperate need of USA and UK to reclaim the strategic Sri Lankan unitary state in the midst of invasion of Iraq and in the move to encircle and mitigate the growing influence of China in the Indian Ocean.

The Tamil national liberation struggle under the LTTE dismantled this imperial asset that subjugated the Eelam Tamils and achieved balance of power through the 2002 peace process.

The LTTE also formed a broad coalition with the Muslim and Up Country Tamil political parties and thereby weakened the Sinhala supremacist and imperially strategic state bringing in unity amongst the most oppressed peoples on the island.

It also provided the Sinhalese for the first time in their British colonial/postcolonial history to consider abandoning the unitary state that makes them blind with racism.

It was exactly at this point that the above powers mainly the USA and UK decisively intervened in dismantling the peace process and contributed immensely to the final genocidal process of Eelam Tamils.

One of the steps of destroying the peace process was dividing the Eelam Tamils and the Muslims eventually making the Muslim political parties to support the genocidal war drive.

A majority of Sinhala Christians too, led by their religious hierarchy who earlier on supported the peace process, later wholeheartedly supported the genocidal war. They falsely believe that peace has been achieved by the military victory as they have idolized the unitary state.

With the Easter Sunday attack on Christians, both Sinhalese and Tamils have lost many lives.

The entire Muslim community has been demonized and Islamophobia has been heightened.

For what? To make the unitary state ever more stronger by securitizing it further according to the grand plan of the global powers.

The individual charges leveled against the high military command of the Sri Lankan security forces including its former defense secretary could not only be relativized, but perhaps be forgiven by the same Western powers who highlighted human rights violations (of course not the genocidal state structure) and aided a regime change simply because the Sri Lankan state was leaning towards China after the military victory.

After the Christians were attacked the Sinhala Christian leadership harps on glorifying the genocidal peace achieved 10 years ago and sing from the same hymn sheet of the Opposition.

The Christian leadership, particularly its Roman Catholic Sinhala hierarchy of Colombo pleads with the state to give them back the peace achieved through the military victory in 2009. It means they are demanding to implement the very same grand agenda of those who orchestrated the Easter Sunday attack ( I am not referring to the direct attackers here but the major global powers behind them).

Above all they deliberately forget that in Mullaitivu district alone there are 60,000 soldiers for 120,000 Eelam Tamils!. What more to securitize for the Eelam Tamils?

It is the moment to come to true senses.

Remember that the Tamil homeland is an open prison with an ongoing genocide. Remember both Tamils and Sinhalese lost their lives on Easter Sunday and the Muslims have been vilified.

The ground is being prepared for further massacres.

In the absence of formidable Eelam Tamil resistance, Sinhalese (both Buddhist and Christian) love their colonially carved state as it gives them supremacy, but claim that they are anti-imperialists.

They are ready to align with any power in the world to crush their Tamil and Muslim sister and brother.

Sinhalese do not know what they do really like those who carried out the attack on Easter Sunday do not know.

If I stretch the argument further the Sri Lankan unitary state and its accompanying Sinhala Buddhist supremacist ideology as well Islamic militancy are both products of the Christian West led by USA/UK and regionally backed by Israel, Saudi Arabia and India.

The only wake up call can come from a strong unity between the Eelam Tamils and Muslims on the island who can truly resist the colonially carved state.

Christians too can contribute to liberating the island from Herods and Pilates who are agents of Caesar if they truly reflect on the life of their savior who was crucified for defying the Roman empire and the religious hierarchy of his day.

This was the critical reflection and realization of many Latin American churches and liberation theologians in their countries in the face of repressive states that were aided by the US.

It is not difficult for Latin American Christians to see that both Jesus and Mohammed are prophets of justice and peace; peace with justice.

It is by entering into that kind of openness of heart, that unites Christians and Muslims, that the Christians can truly give meaning to those who lost their lives on Easter Sunday.

Without such a conversion of heart the blood spilled in utterly be in vain. That is the biggest loss indeed.

Chronology: