The Tigers have reaped what they've sown
Jonathan KAY
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Civilians
have moved into safety. Picture by Rukmal Gamage |
The conflict between the Sri Lankan Government and the Tigers has
deep, tangled roots. But to a rough order of magnitude, the moral stakes
can be reduced to a single act of terrorist savagery that took place on
July 29, 1999 - the day Neelan Tiruchelvam was blown out the side of his
Nissan sedan by a female suicide bomber riding a moped.
Tiruchelvam was a Sri Lankan Tamil, but not the kind that makes
excuses for terrorism, or for the nihilistic death cult led by Tiger's
chief Velupillai Pirapaharan. Instead, he sought to bring justice and
self-determination for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority through negotiation
and constitutional reform. In Sri Lanka, he was an elected
Parliamentarian and the founder of two major think tanks.
In the United States, he taught at Harvard University, enlightening
Western students about human-rights abuses committed in Sri Lanka - by
the nation's military and the Tigers alike.
He was a moderate, in other words - the Tamils' answer to Yitzhak
Rabin or Nelson Mandela. And that's why he was assassinated: The Tigers
despise any Tamil who does not share their commitment to war and
terrorism. Tiger propaganda - including the terrorist group's own "poet
laureate" - spent years vilifying Tiruchelvam as a traitor prior to his
assassination. Muzhakkam, a Tiger-controlled newspaper here in Canada
joined in the campaign.
The act serves as a grim metaphor for the war itself. Much as many
Tamil-Canadians claim that the Sri Lankan Government is engineering a
"genocide," the greatest threat to the country's Tamils has been their
professed protectors. The Tigers are the ones who have assassinated
moderate Tamils, erected a murderous mini-dictatorship in the northern
part of the island, abducted Tamil children to serve as terrorists and
soldiers, and stolen tsunami-relief money to fund military operations.
Now that the Tigers are cornered in Northeastern Sri Lanka, the
Tigers are holding tens of thousands of Tamil civilians as human shields
- shooting them in the back as they seek to flee.
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Neelan
Tiruchelvam |
Tiruchelvam's sacrifice is remembered in the highest places -
including right here in Canada. In fact, it helps explain why Michael
Ignatieff has decisively reversed the Liberal party's traditionally soft
stand on Tiger terror.
In the late 1980s, Tiruchelvam and Ignatieff were Harvard colleagues,
preaching human rights from the same hymn book. When Tiruchelvam was
blown up, Ignatieff travelled to Sri Lanka to deliver a lecture in the
man's honour. A year later, he described the experience in a speech at
the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression awards dinner in Toronto.
Neelan Tiruchelvam, Ignatieff declared, was "a man whose memory I
revere." But that wasn't the prevailing view among many of the noisiest
members of the Canadian Tamil community: "When the word got out that I
was going to give a lecture in Colombo in his honour, I began to get
very extraordinary bits of Tamil literature, mailed to me with a
Canadian postmark. And the sum and substance of these newsletters was
basically to say that Neelan, my good friend, got what he deserved. This
was a man who'd spent his entire life seeking peace and reconciliation
on that bloody and tragic island. And it shocked me deeply to discover
that the people who wished and rejoiced in his death were fellow
citizens of [Canada] ... Don't think it doesn't put a chill down your
spine when you get mysterious little missives like that."
A decade later, with Igantieff leading the Liberal Party, those
hatemongers are now reaping what they've sown. And so are the Tigers
themselves, whose last-ditch positions are now set to be overrun by Sri
Lanka's military.
Ten years after the group killed Neelan Tiruchelvam, an opportunity
to implement his vision of peaceful reconciliation may finally be at
hand. National Post
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