Jude Lal Fernando’s Sputnik interview exposes unfolding British duplicity on KMS ‘investigations’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 September 2020, 15:41 GMT]
The UK investigative journalist Phil Miller has revealed with an immense amount of details how the UK’s security company, Keenie Meenie Services (aka KMS), was involved in training the SL commando force, the Special Task Force (STF), which massacred, abducted and tortured scores of Tamils in the island. However, British paramilitary forces like Keenie Meenie give ‘credible deniability’ to the British state. Even the use of the word ‘mercenary’ is misleading, says Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in an interview to Sputnik on Thursday. The exiled Sinhala academic and activist, who has been actively engaged in seeking global justice to Tamil genocide, claimed that the British paramilitary was operating “only within the interests of the British state and as part of the state”.

Now, by “isolating Keenie Meenie the British state is attempting to hide its responsibility in indirectly and directly arming the Sri Lankan security forces”, Jude Lal told the Sputnik.

“Moreover the UK banned the LTTE in 2001 at a time the LTTE had clearly indicated the need for political negotiations by declaring a unilateral ceasefire and then the UK led the EU ban on the LTTE in 2006 when the LTTE had entered into a ceasefire agreement with the Sri Lankan state,” he pointed out.

The People’s Tribunals on Sri Lanka which were held in Dublin in 2010 and Bremen in 2014 thoroughly investigated the political and military support given by these states to Sri Lanka in the war against the Tamils, Jude Lal noted in his interview.

Drawing on Phil Miller’s findings of the British state’s Keenie Meenie operations in the island and the People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka’s findings in 2010 and 2014, Jude Lal narrated the deep-rooted structural relationships between the Colombo regimes and the various global powers complicit in Tamil genocide.

Addressing the colonial derivations of the genocidal unitary state apparatus, he contextualised the strategic implications on Tamils’ right to Self-Determination.

“This nexus between the unitary state, Sinhala supremacist politics and British control continues to this day – albeit Britain is now playing second fiddle to its ally, the USA”, he said.

“There is a coordinated move by the powers who are complicit in the war against the Tamils to reduce the violation of collective rights of the Tamil people to mere individual rights,” the Dublin based Sinhala academic observed.

Whilst the British state had supposedly launched investigations into the Keenie Meenie’s operations in Sri Lanka, the deep structural relationship between Colombo and the SL State would not be impacted. However, it would somewhat be concealed from the public eye as it remains the main factor contributing to the genocide of the Tamils.

The British state was attempting to deceive the public through engaging in such investigations to, “appear impartial, victim-friendly and democratic”.

“In concrete terms, the British governments want to distance themselves from the actual crimes committed against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka while strongly supporting the Sri Lankan unitary state”, Jude Lal told the Sputnik news site.

Consequently, he reminded Tamil activists that they could not expect the powers who are complicit to help them.

“They should expose not simply the individuals who were involved in a range of crimes committed against them, but also the political entities that directly and indirectly orchestrated these crimes.”

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Sputnik:

UK Complicity in Sri Lankan War Crimes Formed Part of 'Securing its Imperial Interests', Expert Says