Professional Documents
Culture Documents
With the genocide of the Tamils almost complete, no time is being lost to
culturally change the face of the Tamil homeland with xenophobic zeal.
When the war was raging in the traditional Tamil homeland, many
countries around the world, including India, raised their voices to say that
Tamil aspirations should be fulfilled peacefully. Things have changed.
With the LTTE silencing their guns in May last year, the Sri Lankan
government is taking every opportunity to destroy the Tamils and their
culture through various methods including grabbing their lands for the
Sinhalese from the south with hundreds of thousands of Sinhalese
plunging into Tamils’ cultural city Jaffna with malicious a agenda, and new
Buddhist temples being erected on a daily basis throughout Tamil home
lands.
The Sri Lankan government’s agenda to eliminate the Tamils by
destroying their culture follows the adage that “if you want to destroy a
particular ethnic group, destroy their culture and their concept of a
homeland”. With this in view, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
brother, Basil Rajapaksa, a renowned racist and Minister for Economic
Development and Chairman, has been entrusted with the task.
Presidential Task Force for Development, Resettlement and Security in the
Northern Province has come up with the agenda in order to achieve the
Sinhalisation of traditional Tamil homeland for which Tamils have fought
over 60 years both peacefully and militarily until the defeat of the LTTE
last year.
The latest instance was the unauthorised entry into the Jaffna public
library by some Sinhalese people from the South who demanded that they
be allowed because they had come from the presidential secretariat a
classic example of how the unauthorized Sinhalese people could once
again desecrate cultural centres with government patronage and with
impunity.
On Saturday, 23, October 2010 a group of Sinhala visitors from the South
rushed into library while the All Ceylon Medical Association sessions were
in progress. The group was a section of Sinhala tourists who had arrived in
more than 30 buses to the main entrance of Jaffna Public Library. Although
there was a sign board in three languages – Sinhala, Tamil and English --
on display that no visitors will be allowed during the usual visiting hours
4:30 pm to 6:30 pm on account of the conference, the Sinhala visitors
had demanded from the security guard and the only unarmed policeman
to allow them in. Following a heated argument, the visitors smashed the
sign board and overpowered the guard and stormed into the library where
the seminar was in progress. Meanwhile, the policeman had alerted the
Jaffna police station. The local headquarters inspector arrived on the
scene, but was threatened by a member of the group claiming he was
from the Presidential Secretariat. The Inspector was forced to withdraw
from the scene. Later, Jaffna Town Commander and Civil Affairs Co-
ordinator, Major Bandara, arrived at the scene. He, too, failed in his
attempt to control the crowd. The visitors who stormed into the library
had torn some of the Tamil newspapers displaying photographs of Tamil
politicians. They also threw into disorder the books in the Library shelves
which were systematically arranged according to standard procedure. The
mob spent nearly three hours inside the Library, defying rules of the
library. This is instance of the serious threats to Tamil culture in the
future.