Sri Lanka will reject any political settlement with Tamils - editorial

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 November 2010, 12:27 GMT]
“If [India's External Affairs Minister S M] Krishna is intending to take up the issue of a political settlement during his visit to Sri Lanka, he will get short shrift in Colombo. President Mahinda Rajapakse has already made his response clear in an interview with The Hindu newspaper this week: there will be no such thing,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper said in its editorial this week. “It is in this way that a long-standing contradiction between the Sinhala establishment and the international community, which had been masked by Indian and Western hostility to the Tamil armed struggle, is now coming clearly to the fore.”

“It is often forgotten by the international community that Tamil political demands grew in the sixties and seventies - from powersharing in the centre, through autonomy and federalism, to outright independence - not only because of increasing Sinhalisation of the state, but also because of Sinhala leaders’ blanket refusal to heed their protests.”

“The three decade-long history of the Federal Party and its Gandhian campaign of civil disobedience was marked not only by outright Sinhala rejection of any Tamil demand, but also punitive violence.”

“The same contempt is today manifest in the Sinhala state's responses to international demands for a political settlement. Any such suggestion Mr. Krishna brings, for a start, will get short shrift from Colombo. But then, we doubt he will be surprised.”

“President Rajapakse's vehement opposition to sharing power with the Tamils is not merely victor's hubris. Rather, it is an ideological, even theological, commitment to turning the island into a Sinhala-Buddhist bastion,” the editorial said.

“Of course, this argument has often been summarily dismissed as Tamil nationalist exaggeration. But we are confident it won't be long now before it is thoroughly vindicated.”

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