Tag: Mullivaikkal

Applying the Sri Lanka Genocide Model in Gaza 5

~ The Koboi Project

According to Peter Adams of the BBC, an estimated 2.2 million people are now crammed into the southern two-thirds of the Gaza Strip. Conditions are dire, with many ill, injured, and traumatized by the indiscriminate Israeli bombing campaign, in the name of eviscerating Hamas. This terrible situation has been exacerbated by winter rains and flooding. Further, Adams notes that Israeli authorities have been urging these desperate Gazans to move into an even smaller “safe area” called al-Mawasi on the coast, near the Egyptian border. Al-Mawasi is estimated to be only about 2.5km wide by 4km (2.5 miles) long. In a sinister but wholly predictable development, the IDF’s Arabic social media is reported to have messaged that al-Mawasi would provide “the appropriate conditions to protect your loved ones.” In light of Israel’s promise to resume its assault on Hamas at the end of the present ceasefire, the implication that other than this tiny sliver of land, the rest of Gaza is unsafe, raises the terrifying spectre of an impending massacre. (Update : The Ceasefire ended on the 30th Nov and Isreal has indeed resumed its assault with a vengance).

I am a Jaffna Tamil and, this relentless heading and corralling of the population of Gaza into progressively smaller ‘safe areas’, brings memories of my people being forced into that narrow seaside strip in Mullivaikkal in the Mullaitivu District, towards the end of the Fourth Elam War in 2009. This area was declared a “no fire zone” to protect civilians during this final battle in the Government of Sri Lanka’s relentless war to eradicate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). However, in the aftermath of this battle the Government is accused of indiscriminately, even deliberately, shelling this “safe zone” and the LTTE, in turn, of using the desperate civilians as human shields. The UN has estimated a civilian death toll of 40,000 in the last days of this war but a UN internal inquiry has acknowledged that the number that up to 70,000 deaths were possible. However, when World Bank spreadsheets for 2010 are set against Statistical Handbook Numbers for 2007, the difference suggests that 101,748 people are unaccounted for in the Mullaitivu District.

I fear that Israel might be on the way to applying the Sri Lanka Genocide Model as a solution to the conflict in Gaza. As of December 4th, (UPDATED), 15,523 have been killed, 41,316 injured and 6,800 are missing. Of the 15,000 who have been killed so far, 6,600 children and 4,300 are women. Israeli attacks are as follows. Those of us who live in nations that continue to stand with Israel regardless of the illegality and the inhumanity of its actions must impress upon our leaders that, regardless of how Israel’s negotiations develop vis-a-vis Hamas (Update : The Ceasefire ended on the 30th Nov and Isreal has indeed resumed its assault with a vengance), this genocide must not continue. What happened at the end of the Elam War should not be allowed to happen in Gaza.

Image: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67518819

Image: https://mandalaprojects.com/ice/ice-cases/lanka-climate.htm

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/frances-harrison/one-hundred-thousand-peop_b_2306136.html

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/live-updates-temporary-cease-fire-expires-israel-hamas-105297622

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker

On Being Malaysian Tamil 5

~ The Koboi Project ~ 1 Comment

12 Indian detainees wait for trial in Malaysian prisons on LTTE related charges under the ambit of SOSMA with draconian restrictions of their rights to a fair and open trial. Terrorism is a matter of legal definition and that the LTTE was not designated as a terrorist organization in Malaysia until 2014. Until this time, most Tamils in Malaysia as in the wider diaspora would have seen the LTTE as a violent separatist movement born of the exhaustion of peaceful and democratic negotiations with the majority Sinhalese. Velupillai Prabhakaran was doubtless identified as a ruthless leader but admired for his incomparable courage, determination and military prowess.

This admiration is a very different matter from believing that he and his Tigers were right in their methods and even their goals. I for one have always been against a violent struggle for Elam. I have feared that the goal of a Tamil nation on the island of Lanka, while being historically justified, may just be a vanity project for the diasporic community. An edifice that can only be built out of the blood and tears of those left behind. Even if the men and women of the armed movement of liberation may have been cognisant and willing, it is the civilians would have been unwittingly and unknowingly been made to pay. Further, the middle classes were the best equipped to exit the situation as expatriates and refugees, while the working classes and the poor did not have that choice. Offering material support form the safety of the international diaspora would, in my view, have meant foisting blood and sorrow upon those who had no agency. Ultimately, I could not see Elam a sustainable geopolitical entity. Even with all of Prabhakaran’s prowess, he could only deliver Elam as a temporary domain, as a stage in a South Asian game of thrones in which the real players were bigger than the Tamils and the Sinhalese – India, the US and China!

Although I have never supported the LTTE , I do see them as having taken up a valid stance among the options available to the Tamils in their time. Towards the end of the Elam war in 2009, with Tigers and civilians trapped on the beach at Mullivaikkal, I stood with a small crowd of Tamils outside the CBC offices in Vancouver trying to impress upon that estemend news agency, that they were obliged to report on the plight of Tamil civilians caught between the ruthless Tigers who were using them as a shield and the merciless SLA who seemed about to attack with genocidal abandon. News of his situation was, it seemed, being systematically suppressed. Amongst those with whom I stood in solidarity that day, as a member of the Tamil diaspora, were flag waving supporters of the LTTE. It was at that moment impossible for me to extricate the furtherment of the cause of Tamils from that of the Tigers.

For all intents and purposes the LTTE ceased to exist with the Mullivaikkal massacre by the victorious SLA. It can not be denied that to Tamils across the world, even to those who find the their methods despicable and their project erroneous, the Tigers and their leader are champions of the Tamil race. They are the latest signifiers in an ancient stream of heroes and conquerors that flows through the heart of the Tamil identity. While they will not be forgotten as myth they are gone as an organization, and so, even though I make no assumption about the guilt or innocence of the 12 Malaysian Indians, I must note that in charging them with possessing printed literature and propagating the LTTE on social media, the onus is on the state to show that these men were furthering the organizational agenda of the LTTE rather than celebrating the myth . Further the state is obliged to prove that the organization still exists and/or that these men were involved in actually trying to revive an entity that is contiguous with the LTTE that was extinguished in 2009. … More in On Being a Malaysian Tamil 6