The Future Of The Tamils And The Challenge For The Tamil Diaspora
By Brian Senewiratne -May 15, 2014
Dr. Brian Senewiratne
This dual title has a reason. When I was first asked (3 April 2014) by theTamil Writers Guild (of which I was a member) whether I would come and deliver the 2014 C.J.T. Thamoderam Memorial Lecture, I was asked to speak on the first of these. When I found that it was physically unsafe for me to do so because of the long reach of the murderous Rajapaksa regime, I was asked to send a 12 minute recording on the second of these titles.
I will try and deal with both.
Let me sum up each one in a sentence.
The Tamils have no future under the Totalitarian virulently chauvinistic regime that now runs Sri Lanka. Those who think otherwise are not on the real world.
As for the Challenge for the Tamil Diaspora, the answer is that they have a crucial role to play, if the Tamil people are to be saved from extinction (a word used by the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts).
I would like to slightly expand this to “The Challenge for ALL of us – Tamils, Sinhalese (such as myself), Muslims and non-Sri Lankans (such as Geoffrey Robertson QC, Professor Francis Boyle and many others) who have supported the right of the Tamil people to live with equality, dignity and safety (and now to live at all) in the country of their birth.
