March 30th, 2012
by Kim Petersen
The twenty-first century calamity that happened in Sri Lanka augurs unpropitiously for the Palestinians in Palestine. In 2009, the Sinhalese majority — backed indirectly by many nations of the world including Canada, the United States, China, India, Iran, Arab states,1 Israel, and (what author Ron Ridenour and other solidarity activists find most surprising) Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua — militarily defeated the Tamils.
by Kim Petersen
The twenty-first century calamity that happened in Sri Lanka augurs unpropitiously for the Palestinians in Palestine. In 2009, the Sinhalese majority — backed indirectly by many nations of the world including Canada, the United States, China, India, Iran, Arab states,1 Israel, and (what author Ron Ridenour and other solidarity activists find most surprising) Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua — militarily defeated the Tamils.The plight of the Tamils is chronicled in Ron Ridenour’s book, Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka (Chennai: New Century Bookhouse, 2011). The oppression and genocide experienced by the Tamils is not as well-known as the occupation, oppression, and genocide experienced by the Palestinians even though it is of much longer duration.
I had known that many Tamils lived in Canada having escaped persecution back home. However, in 1997, I became more intimately familiar with the civil war in Sri Lanka while working in Maldives. Many of the workers — and some of my colleagues — were from Sri Lanka. I heard complaints that Tamils were discriminated against because of their language and religion. Worse were the tales of bloodthirsty pogroms of Sinhalese against the Tamils, including torture, murder, rapes — all this committed by Buddhists, people supposedly seeking enlightenment.
