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Imperialism and the Tamils

The government of Sri Lanka has proclaimed victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, a guerrilla army that for a quarter century has fought to create a separate state for the oppressed Tamil people in this fertile island country off the southern tip of India. The military campaign against the Tamil Tigers has been a very bloody one, with thousands of Tamil civilians dead after being trapped on a peninsula where they suffered air strikes, starvation and disease. The full extent of the casualties is still not known—the Sri Lankan government has barred journalists from the area—but reports from doctors and others on the terrible situation have filtered out.

More than 100,000 Tamils living in Britain, Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere have held passionate demonstrations and hunger strikes appealing for these countries to stop the slaughter. Early in April, 100,000 protesters marched through central London to protest the abuses against Tamil people in Sri Lanka. And later that month, even as thousands of Tamils occupied London’s Parliament Square, the British Tamils Forum called on the government there to “take the matter to the U.N. Security Council to get a ceasefire implemented.”

The authorities in these imperialist countries have put on a sympathetic face and basically told the demonstrators, “We feel your pain. But there’s nothing we can do.”

This is sheer hypocrisy. Britain and the U.S. can—and do—take vigorous action when their imperialist interests are threatened. Just in recent years, their militaries have intervened, at great cost, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They didn’t go there to stop genocide. In fact, they made up lies and excuses in order to get the necessary congressional/parliamentary go-ahead. They have terrorized the people but not been able to break the resistance, whose support among the population has grown stronger. At the bottom of it all is the U.S. and British imperialist design to control this resources-rich area of southwest Asia.

In addition, they have pushed resolutions through the U.N. Security Council to impose harsh sanctions on Sudan and Zimbabwe, supposedly because of “human rights” violations but in reality over what is dearest to imperialism: profits.

Sudan has oil and is developing its resources with the aid of other countries, including China. Because of sanctions, it does not trade with the U.S. In Zimbabwe, the government finally told the white farmers who held all the most valuable land to leave. It allowed veterans of the liberation war to take back what had been stolen from their ancestors by the invading British colonizers. Before taking this step, the government had waited for years for Britain to live up to its agreement and buy out the rich farmers, but that didn’t happen.

Sanctions on these countries were accompanied by indignant noises in the Security Council about defending human rights. But when the Sri Lankan military slaughters an oppressed people, the imperialists are suddenly “unable” to do anything about it.

It is up to the progressive, anti-imperialist movement around the world to take up the cause of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka for self-determination. The imperialists are the last ones to be sincere about it.