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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Israel advises Sri Lanka on
slow-motion genocide </h1>
<div class="field-author"> <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/krisna-saravanamuttu"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Krisna
Saravanamuttu</a><br>
<small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-advises-sri-lanka-slow-motion-genocide/12644">http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-advises-sri-lanka-slow-motion-genocide/12644</a></small></small><br>
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<div class="field-publication-date"> <span class="date-display-single"
property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2013-07-30T17:27:00+00:00">30 July 2013</span> </div>
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class="file file-image file-image-jpeg media-element file-full"
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<p>Towards the end of 2008, I joined thousands in Toronto to protest <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/operation-cast-lead">Israel’s
attack on Gaza</a>. Like people all over the world, we called for an
immediate end to the war. At <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/york-university">York
University</a>, where I was a student, we mobilized the campus to
defend Palestinian rights.</p>
<p>A few months later, bombs were falling on my own people — in the
Vanni region of northern Sri Lanka. And once again, we hit Toronto’s
streets in protest.</p>
<p>I realized then that even though our homelands are oceans apart,
Palestinians and Tamils have much in common.</p>
<p>Through the “war on terror,” the Israeli and Sri Lankan armies have
waged war on civilian populations.</p>
<p>The Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal has commissioned an <a
href="http://www.ptsrilanka.org/images/M_images/documents/peoples_tribunal_on_srilanka.pdf">independent
report</a> that finds the Sri Lankan state guilty of bombing hospitals,
humanitarian operations and even government-declared “safe zones,” in
clear violation of international humanitarian law (“<a
href="http://www.ptsrilanka.org/images/M_images/documents/peoples_tribunal_on_srilanka.pdf">Preliminary
report</a>,” January 2010 [PDF]).</p>
<p>A United Nations report estimates that from January to May 2009,
between 40,000 and 75,000 persons were killed (“<a
href="http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf">Report
of the secretary-general’s panel of experts on accountability in Sri
Lanka</a>,” 31 March 2011).</p>
<p>The Sri Lankan government’s own statistical data reveal that almost
147,000 persons remain unaccounted for: no one knows if they are held
in prison, injured, or dead (“<a
href="http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=33380">146,679
Vanni people missing within a year of war: Bishop of Mannaar</a>,”
TamilNet, 12 January 2011).</p>
<h2>Major arms supplier</h2>
<p>But there are more direct connections.</p>
<p>Israel has been a major arms supplier to Sri Lanka’s government, as
well as providing it with strategic military advice. With permission
from the United States, Israel has <a
href="http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=152">sold
Sri Lanka consignments of Kfir jets</a> and <a
href="http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2009/files/SIPRIYB0907.pdf">drones</a>.</p>
<p>Israel has also supplied the Dvora patrol boats to Sri Lanka, which
have been used extensively against Tamils (“<a
href="http://www.defence.lk/news/Sri_Lanka_Navy.pdf">Sri Lanka learns
to counter Sea Tigers’ swarm tactics</a>,” <em>Jane’s Navy
International</em>, March 2009 [PDF]).</p>
<p>And Israel has also provided training to the <a
href="http://www.police.lk/index.php/special-task-force-/267">Special
Task Force</a>, a brutal commando unit in the Sri Lanka police.</p>
<p>The similarities don’t end there. Both Palestinians and Tamils have
been subjected to a process of settler-based colonialism.</p>
<p>In the 1980s, Israel offered advice to Sri Lanka as it built
Sinhala-only armed settlements in the eastern province, which aimed to
create buffer zones around Tamil-majority populations (the Sinhalese
are the ethnic majority of Sri Lanka) (“<a
href="http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=35097">Sinhala
academic blames US-UK axis for genocide in Tamil homeland</a>,”
TamilNet, 15 April 2012).</p>
<p>The strategy employed was the same as Israel’s in the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/west-bank">West Bank</a>: to
destroy the local population’s claim to national existence and render
invalid any political solution based on popular sovereignty.</p>
<p>Just like in Palestine, land seizures and settlement programs in Sri
Lanka are fragmenting the Tamil people’s national and social coherence
throughout their historic homeland in the north and east of the island.
As exiled journalist and human rights worker Nirmanusan Balasundaram
wrote earlier this year, the effect is to undermine any possibility of
creating a contiguous national homeland (“<a
href="http://www.jdslanka.org/index.php/2012-01-30-09-31-17/politics-a-economy/314-sri-lanka-the-intentions-behind-the-land-grabbing-process">Sri
Lanka: The intentions behind the land-grabbing process</a>,”
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, 30 April 2013).</p>
<h2>Sham dialogue</h2>
<p>Within the occupied West Bank, this process takes place against the
backdrop of “dialogue,” which more and more Palestinians see as a sham
as <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-settlements">Israeli
settlements</a> spread across their land. After the 2009 war, the Sri
Lankan government used the rhetoric of “reconstruction” and
“redevelopment” to obscure its process of rapid colonization.</p>
<p>For Tamils, “post-war development” has become another form of
counter-insurgency warfare, whereby Sinhala settlements, state-led
militarization and the open gerrymandering of constituencies all
threaten the Tamils’ historic relationship to their homeland.</p>
<p>The Palestinian experience — in particular, the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/oslo-accords">Oslo accords</a>
signed by Israel and the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/plo">Palestine Liberation
Organization</a> in 1993 — has been instructive for Tamils.</p>
<p>An international agreement with <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/india">India</a> foresees Sri
Lanka holding elections this September for a Northern Provincial
Council, supposedly another gesture of reconciliation. The US is
backing the election, despite serious reservations within Tamil civil
society and the diaspora.</p>
<p>The council, if elected, would provide Tamils with only the
perception of self-determination — similar to the experience of the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinian-authority">Palestinian
Authority</a> — while the military occupation continues to dominate
every aspect of civilian life. The council’s powers would remain under
the control of the Sinhalese-dominated government in Colombo, Sri
Lanka’s capital, and its governor would be a direct appointment of the
Sri Lankan president (see “<a
href="http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/much-ado-about-nothing-2/">Much
ado about nothing</a>,” <em>Colombo Telegraph</em>, 21 April 2013).</p>
<p>Regardless of the façade of self-government, the crime of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid">apartheid</a>
remains a fact of life for Tamils in Sri Lanka, as it does for
Palestinians under Israeli rule.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka’s treatment of the Tamils in the north and east of the
island meets the definition of apartheid contained in the 1973 <a
href="http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html">International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid</a>.</p>
<p>Apartheid involves the domination of one racial or ethnic group over
another. The convention is not restricted to the particular
manifestation of apartheid in South Africa or to majorities being
oppressed by minorities. Instead, it condemns practices that resemble
apartheid — of which there is more than one version.</p>
<p>Without a doubt, there are critical differences between the
oppression faced by Palestinians and the oppression faced by Tamils
(and by black South Africans, for that matter). Nevertheless, both
Israel and Sri Lanka are characterized by discrimination, repression
and territorial fragmentation through stolen land.</p>
<p>The unitary Sri Lankan state structure constitutionally places all
power of the state exclusively in the hands of the Sinhalese people,
while denying Tamils equal access to education, their own language,
their land, and self-determination.</p>
<h2>Common experience</h2>
<p>In light of this common experience, the Palestinian and Tamil
peoples are enduring a slow — but relentless — genocide. The massacres
in Gaza and the Vanni were carried out to kill civilians, cause serious
bodily and mental harm, and impose conditions of life that produce
partial and gradual physical destruction — all with little meaningful
opposition from global capitals. Both can be considered cases of
genocide, as it is <a
href="http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cppcg/cppcg.html">defined by
the United Nations</a>.</p>
<p>In the case of Sri Lanka, as long as it uses the language of
“reconciliation,” it will continue to pursue the same strategy and
enjoy praise from major powers.</p>
<p>But the realization of our peoples’ aspirations does not depend on
the whims of foreign governments. It rests with the Tamil people — as
the aspirations for a liberated Palestine rest with the Palestinians —
and the support of a mobilized and engaged international solidarity
movement. By supporting each other’s struggles, and by learning from
each other’s histories, we can get one step closer to a more just world.</p>
<p>For both Palestinians and Tamils, the attacks of 2008 and 2009 were
part of a broader history of dispossession, occupation and genocide.
Our people have a lot in common in the struggle for peace and justice.
In fact, our oppressors appear to have lots in common too.</p>
<p><em>Krisna Saravanamuttu is an activist based in Toronto, Canada. He
is a member of the steering committee of the Canadian Peace Alliance,
and is the spokesperson of the National Council of Canadian Tamils.
Follow him on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/KrisnaS85">@KrisnaS85</a>.</em></p>
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