Tamils
Australian Tamils call for ceasefire in Sri Lanka -- sign the crisis statement
In an attempt to put an urgent stop to the humanitarian catastrophe, a group of young Tamil Australians have written a Sri Lankan Crisis Statement for the wider Australian community to sign.
From March 2, 2009, they will take it to the media and the Australian government to raise their concern for this largely unreported war.
If you want to sign this
statement, please email fastuntoaction@hotmail.com as soon as possible, or visit http://fastuntoaction.wordpress.com/sri-lanka-crisis-statement-of-support
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Sri Lankan Crisis Statement
We are Australian citizens who share a deep concern about the escalating civilian crisis in Sri Lanka.
We call on the Australian government to demand the Sri Lankan authorities and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam declare an immediate ceasefire.
We are deeply concerned about the lack of medical staff and aid agencies serving the estimated 250,000 civilians trapped in the conflict zone.
Sri Lanka: Genocide of the Tamil minority
By Brian Senewiratne
January 23, 2009 -- There is a humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil minority in the island’s north and east are facing annihilation at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated government.
This article will deal with the current crisis, with the more fundamental problem of the legacy left by colonial British rule (1796-1948) dealt with in later articles. These colonial administrative structures will need to be reversed of there is ever to be peace or prosperity in Sri Lanka.
I am a Sinhalese, from the majority community, not from the brutalised Tamil minority. I quit Sri Lanka in 1976.
Who runs that country is of no concern to me, as long as it is run without serious violations of human rights. Sri Lanka was tossed out of the UN Human Rights Council in May last year due to its human rights record, and the drift of a democracy to a fascist politico-military dictatorship, none of which have been publicised internationally.
Current problem
Sri Lanka: Behind the genocidal war against the Tamils
By Tony Iltis
January 17, 2009 -- The January 14 announcement by the Sri Lankan government that its forces had completed the capture of the Jaffna Peninsular, effectively bringing all of the historic Tamil nation in Sri Lanka’s north-east under military occupation, was a grim reminder that the Israeli assault on the Gaza ghetto is not the only holocaust at the start of the new year.
The Tamil people have been fighting for independence from Sri Lanka since 1983 when an island-wide pogrom (the most violent of several that had regularly occurred since 1956) convinced Tamils that they would not attain equality or security under the Sinhala-chauvinist state that has ruled Sri Lanka since independence in 1948.
Sinhala is the first language of 74% of Sri Lankans. Most of the remainder are Tamil-speaking. Tamils form the majority in the north and east of the island (Tamil Eelam).
While the government has declared that the group leading the armed resistance, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), is finished as a military force, this is not the first time their demise has been announced. However, it has undoubtedly suffered a serious setback as a result of the sustained military offensive by the Sri Lankan army.
Stop the war in Sri Lanka! The Tamil national question in demands a political solution!
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation central committee statement on developments in Sri Lanka.
The Tamil question in Sri Lanka
By Chris Slee
October 5, 2008 -- On January 2, 2008, the Sri Lankan government formally renounced the ceasefire agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which a previous government had signed in February 2002. But by the beginning of 2008 the ceasefire already existed only on paper. Violence, which had been escalating for several years, had by then reached the level of full-scale war.