Going Global

Makes this shocking accusation

By establishing a civil administration with its military personnel, under the guise of reconstruction and development the Government is attempting to change the demography of Tamil homelands in favour of the majority Sinhala population.

Like you mean, replace all the Tamils in there with Sinhalese? Or ensure that the 300,000 soldiers we have in the army settle down and marry into the Tamil population there and keep their crotch rockets firing long enough to out-reproduce the Tamils? Or are they planning vast re-movements of the population, moving in people from the South to dilute the concentration of Tamils in one place?

This has a more chilling note;

The Sri Lankan Government is also moving forward with schemes that will disable the socio-economic infrastructure of the Tamil people from being self reliant as one that would be controlled and made dependent on Sri Lanka’s South.

What he's trying to say perhaps, is that the government is trying to proactively restrict economic development in the North. By presumably denying opportunities for the North to prosper socio-economically in its own right through strong industries like tourism, trade and manufacturing.

This is unlikely because if the government were to do this, it would cripple and hold back the whole nation. The North-Eastern areas offer tremendous resources and capability for serious development.

If he is implying that the government, through the imposition of ownership rights and discriminatory laws, will deny the North-Eastern population ownership, property, entreprenurial and cultural rights then this gets more serious. But aside from being completely impractical if the goal is actual development, there is absolutely no evidence that this is going to happen.

KP seems all excited about his new venture

In this advanced cyber era I soon realised that it was possible (sharing of opinions) through a blog posting. This is why have I chosen to out to you using this method.

But he can at least make sense. And have credible statements to back up his claims.

So whats the relationship? Does oppression necessarily result in fundamentalism? This is a theme explored in a book i'm reading right now. As per the authors and evidence put forward there is a clear correlation between the rising of fundamentalist groups and the opression of those classes of a society.

This is plainly obvious generally, one has just got to look at numerous examples all over the world like the Uighurs, the Iraquis, Hezbollah, Christian fundamentalists in the US and not to put too fine a point on it; the LTTE.

Tamils in Sri Lanka are still, if not opressed, a very restricted group in terms of movement in society. Take their representation in the government and public sector for instance, this has spiralled down at an alarming rate since the de-nationalization of the Tamil language since 1956; an act seen by many Tamils as aimed at disowning the Tamil speaking population from Sri Lanka.

Now there is only scant representation of Tamil youth in Sri Lankan governance and none of it can be called particularly strong. Older and more powerful tamil politicians are few and far between.

Language is a major issue here. Its almost impossible to get anything done at most public services if you cannot communicate in Sinhalese or perhaps English. This arguably, is one of the first issues that needs to be addressed, along with the issue of the devolution_of power. (TEDx Colombo will be hosting a talk by Dr. Rohan Samarajiva on language policy for the future, this weekend.)

More power to provincial governments will give them incentive to serve the local population. In turn giving more power to voters in deciding who they want to take office. These are but some of the changes brought on by the 13th ammendment and its many modifications aimed at promoting diversity rather than supressing it; which has seemed to be the general overall trend of politics since independence from the Brits.

Barriers to devolution like strong vested interest in the Executive Presidency continue to bar progress. the EP is almost a tyrannical representation of everything wrong with the current system of governance to some; above the law, all powerful, unquestionable. It throws the concept of a government that 'serves the public' right out the kitchen window.

Change is needed, and it is needed now. Opression at this point will only create outlet to more fundamentalism and resentment among the unfairly treated. The LTTE is down, but not completely out. They still have support from the diaspora who burn from the wounds suffered a long time ago.

If the government avoids making serious long term policy changes to secure equality and yeilds to the easy way out and decides to rule the country with an iron fist-like approach by supressing dissent; perhaps it wouldn't not that far fetched to imagine a re-emeregence of the LTTE or some other similar group in the next few decades, if they manage to raise enough grassroots level support from a group of people that feels 'left out' of Sri Lankan society.