Sri
Lanka! Armed Resistance
Or Terrorism?
By Thulasi Wesley Pillai
09 May,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Batticaloa: When the state is involved in demolishing peace in the country there then is a serious problem. Furthermore, when the state forces are caught planting bombs and claymore mines then it calls for serious action. Sadly, that is the state of affairs in Sri Lanka.
State terror is a reality. That is something that the international community has chosen to ignore. When a state is hell-bent on ‘secret’ ethnic cleansing, head-hunting human rights activists, journalists, intellectuals, parliamentarians, vocal clerics and witnesses of state crimes then what is the duty and responsibility of the citizens?
It is in this context one has to review the Tamil struggle in Sri Lanka. The struggle for liberation against the Sinhala hegemony is seen by the West-dominated international community as terrorism. It is an easy cop-out arising out of intellectual laziness and political convenience and international game plan. The Sinhala state spins its ploys in a word play. It has conveniently hopped into the band wagon of “war against terrorism.” It is a concealment strategy of its cardinal sins against its own citizens.
Is the armed resistance of the Tamils terrorism? Or is it a potent irritant against hegemony?
Even the UN is yet to arrive at a convincing and coherent definition of terrorism. When the Sri Lankan Armed forces kill human rights activists; or when they engage in indiscriminate air raids which claims hundreds of innocent lives of women and children what is often the response of the international community? Silence.
In a politically correct post-modern world why is it that “State terror” is still unacceptable as opposite reality? What gives the state the immunity from crimes against humanity? When a resistance movement engages in an armed struggle (as a measure of counter terror!) against the tyranny and terror of a state why is that only the liberation movement is branded as a terror out-fit? The state terror is given the legitimacy to engage in atrocious illegal actions against its citizens using abominable terror tactics but still it is deemed as righteous force?
We put these above questions in order to provoke re-thinking.
Within the international frame of reference, the definition of a state has to be re-defined. Its actions has to be tested against what is moral and immoral. What is lawful and what is illegitimate. And what are the crimes against humanity and what is deemed to be legitimate force employed by resistance movements.
It is only after working out and arriving at a considered response
to such questions can some one advance an intellectually cogent discerning
of what is not terrorism but a legitimate armed resistance.
Until such time, the whole-sale tarnishing of the Tamil struggle for
liberation as terrorism, particularly by Western nations is tragically
ill-liberalism and political opportunism.
Thulasi Wesley Pillai is an active member of the
Tamil Women for Human Rights International.
