Advertisement

News

Op-ed: Sri Lanka president hasn’t answered for war crimes against Tamils

Sri Lanka president Gotabaya Rajapaksa (left) meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

The president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, (as well as Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe) has been forced to resign after months of protests regarding his corrupt leadership, which resulted in an economic crisis and country-wide shortages of essential goods and services that affected everyone in the country for months.

What’s frustrating to me, as the eldest daughter of a Sri Lankan Tamil immigrant and refugee, is that the reporting on Rajapaksa tends to skip the fact that he’s a war criminal who had a significant leadership in the 2009 genocide of Tamils

So much of our reporting on low-income countries that find themselves in a state of turmoil or corruption erases the current state of affairs in these countries that directly correlates to the occupation of their land by European colonizers. For years, the media labelled state-sanctioned violence and systemic oppression against the Tamil minority following independence from the British as a “civil war.” After this, to ignore the 2009 genocide of an entire community of people is sloppy journalism at best and erasure of an entire community’s struggle at worst. 

In 2009 the international community largely ignored (as in they heard the reports, and just didn’t care) the rapidly escalating violence in Sri Lanka. Tamils today often reference the Mullivaikkal massacre when speaking of this period. I’m oversimplifying, but the Sri Lankan government took an aggressive approach to exterminate the Tamil Tigers (or LTTE), an organization that formed in response to the state-sanctioned violence and discrimination experienced by Tamils since the independence of Sri Lanka in 1948.

The Tigers get a lot of criticism, notably from people who have never had to fight to protect their human rights and Indigenous land. I’ll accept that the Tigers were an imperfect organization, but being a freedom fighter is a messy job where morals are often blurred as you try to gain justice and human rights for your people. What I find frustrating with popular criticism of the Tigers is that people often act like if the Tigers just politely asked the government for the liberation of Tamils that it would have been granted.

The events in 2009 were an opportunity for the government to exterminate Tamil civilians under the guise of finding and charging the Tamil Tigers. The government bombed hospitals, captured and executed the 12-year son of the LTTE leader and stripped civilians and soldiers when they were captured and then executed them when they were naked and blindfolded. Soldiers raped women and children and bombed civilian bunkers. Around 300,000 people were in displacement camps, which at the time was the largest in the world. Most infamously, the government declared regions a no-fire zone and encouraged civilians to move there for safety before bombing these very regions. Entire multi-generational families were wiped out, children orphaned, hundreds of thousands injured – and people are still missing to this day.

Leaked U.S. Embassy documents show discussions between the then security of defence – now president, Rajapaksa – where the U.S. embassy urged the Sri Lankan government to accept a mediated surrender, to which Rajapaksa said “we’re beyond that now.” He was asked to allow for time to evacuate the wounded and dead and rejected it. It was clear to anyone watching that the government had the Tigers and innocent Tamil civilians on their knees and instead of ending the war, they decided to try and end my people.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, by definition, is a war criminal. And yet he took over for his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa as president and remained such until recently being ousted. The ousting of President Rajapaksa and the Prime Minister will likely end the Rajapaksa dynasty (many members of his family hold prominent cabinet roles in his administration) that had been masquerading as a democracy for decades. 

My father said something interesting to me yesterday, in a rare voicing of a reflection of his experience in the 1983 riots. He said he was happy Rajapaksa had to flee his home as protestors took over it. He said he was happy that Rajapaksa had to have that fear, however brief, that so many Tamils have experienced in Sri Lanka to this day. The fear for your family’s safety, your belongings, your home, your dignity and personal safety… the terror and trauma that creates in your heart.

For many in the Tamil diaspora, myself included, seeing Rajapaksa being forced to flee has been oddly cathartic – and yet, still a poor substitution for the justice our community deserves.

As you talk about and report on these protests that resulted in Rajapaksa’s resignation, I ask that you please not erase his active participation and leadership in the 2009 genocide of the Tamil people, because Rajapaksa’s corruption, violence and failures as a leader predate this current economic crisis.

Samanta Krishnapillai is the founder, executive director and editor-in-chief of @OnCanadaProject. This is an edited and condensed version of an article originally published at oncanadaproject.com. Read the entire article here.

@SamKrish_

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted