{"id":19660,"date":"2013-04-07T04:15:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T08:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=19660"},"modified":"2013-04-07T11:33:40","modified_gmt":"2013-04-07T15:33:40","slug":"war-and-violence-have-been-excuses-for-many-tamils-to-present-their-economic-migration-aspirations-as-political-asylum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=19660","title":{"rendered":"War and violence have been excuses for many Tamils to present their \u2018economic migration\u2019 aspirations as \u2018political asylum\u2019,"},"content":{"rendered":"

by<\/p>\n

N. Sathiya Moorthy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Military Spokesman Brig. Ruwan Wanigasooriya\u2019s exposition that Sri Lanka will need foreign help to determine the number of deaths in \u2018Eelam War IV\u2019 stands to reason. He has said, and rightly so, that many have migrated through the years of ethnic conflict; some among the 300,000 freed from the LTTE\u2019s clutches during the closing weeks of the war or hospitalised at the time had escaped to foreign countries. There is nothing new in the claim for it to be dubbed an imaginative, post-Geneva initiative.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is anybody\u2019s guess if this also contributed to the \u2018international\u2019 part of the \u2018independent and credible\u2019 inquiry that some in the global community wanted before the US sponsor dropped the term from the UNHRC resolution last month. Yet, it beats simple minds why Colombo did not tell the international community precisely what it felt about it all, and what it did and did not know about the \u2018missing persons\u2019 through the past years \u2013 and has now said so not in Geneva, but only in Colombo, that too between one in a series of anticipated dust-storms on \u2018war crimes\u2019 and \u2018accountability\u2019.<\/p>\n

Almost simultaneously with Brig. Wanigasooriya\u2019s declaration, the Census Department too has said that it plans to conduct a survey of those dead in the \u2018Second JVP Insurgency\u2019 (1987-89) to figure out how many were dead. Past estimates (rather, guesstimates, in the absence of any genuine government acknowledgement of the dead when \u2018Press censorship\u2019 and a ban on \u2018independent investigations\u2019 of the \u2018Eelam War\u2019 kind were among the worst in the country) had put the dead in those two years between 60,000 and 100,000.<\/p>\n

It is acknowledged that many JVP leaders and cadres had escaped to foreign countries, though not in droves as the Tamils had done, the latter only too visible in overseas protests, politics and elections in their adopted homes. The arrest and subsequent exit of ex-JVP Tamil leader, Premakumar Gunaratnam, travelling under an alias as an Australian citizen, around this time last year, has lessons for all sides, if nations of the world too are genuine about their concerns about tracing the \u2018missing\u2019 Tamils in Sri Lanka. \u2018Col\u2019 Karuna\u2019s exit and that of another person months later also hold lessons, but such cases were very, very few to affect \u2018large-scale\u2019 disappearances.<\/p>\n

\u2018Economic migration\u2019<\/p>\n

War and violence, particularly of the State-sponsored type, have been an excuse for many Tamils in Sri Lanka to present their \u2018economic migration\u2019 aspirations as \u2018political asylum\u2019, almost since the \u2018Sinhala Only\u2019 protests and violence, and even after the \u2018ethnic war\u2019. Sri Lankan Tamils who have obtained local citizenship (leaving out their children born in those lands) have numbers enough to tilt local electoral scales in many countries. Their numbers add up to a million, again, according to some claims.<\/p>\n

Illegal Sri Lankan Tamil migrants in Europe and elsewhere have been widely acknowledged. Post-war news reports indicated Ministers and even Sinhala soldiers may have been involved in \u2018human-smuggling\u2019 from IDP camps. The \u2018boat people\u2019 caught off the Australian coast too are a drop in the ocean. Leave the early UN report that put the war-dead at 7,000 and the Darusman Report that gave 40,000 dead, local Tamil institutional probes that gave a high 180,000-plus should help the Government reconcile the \u2018dead\u2019 and \u2018missing\u2019 with those they could trace to foreign lands.<\/p>\n

Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa has since said that the Cabinet has now fixed an 18-month deadline for implementing the LLRC Report. He has not said if it included the \u2018accountability\u2019 part being handled by the armed forces themselves, which could throw up figures, big and\/or small. For their part, the Diaspora Tamils should ensure that their own \u2018dead\u2019 and \u2018missing\u2019 are counted, if they are genuine in their demands and if they are not to use the tickled global consciousness to further \u2018economic migration\u2019 in the name of \u2018political asylum\u2019, all over again.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that there may be no truth in the charges about \u2018war crimes\u2019 and \u2018accountability issues\u2019. Yet, tallying and reconciling numbers as Brig. Wanigasooriya has said alone will give an idea about the size and seriousness, both of crime and punishment.<\/p>\n

In Sri Lanka\u2019s case, the UN Secretary-General\u2019s office, the UNHRC and the rest stand discredited in the eyes of the Colombo government, but that bridge needs to be crossed.<\/p>\n

The government has to prove its credibility and genuineness even more. In the light of the JVP demands for a probe into the \u2018Matale mass-graves\u2019 supposedly dating back to the \u2018Second Insurgency\u2019, the Government has to prove that the Census effort, for instance, is not aimed at embarrassing the Opposition UNP that was in power at the time \u2013 but is a genuine first step ahead of a global Tamil head-count. It would also help to restore lost credibility, nearer home and afar.<\/p>\n

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation)<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by N. Sathiya Moorthy Military Spokesman Brig. Ruwan Wanigasooriya\u2019s exposition that Sri Lanka will need foreign help to determine the number of deaths in \u2018Eelam War IV\u2019 stands to reason. He has said, and rightly so, that many have migrated through the years of ethnic conflict; some among the 300,000 freed from the LTTE\u2019s clutches …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘War and violence have been excuses for many Tamils to present their \u2018economic migration\u2019 aspirations as \u2018political asylum\u2019,’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19660"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19660"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19690,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19660\/revisions\/19690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}