End U.S.-backed campaign against Tamil people

The following excerpted statement was issued by the youth group FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together. Visit www.fistyouth.org.

FIST calls for the immediate end to the U.S.-supported campaign against the Tamil population of Sri Lanka and stands in solidarity with the struggle of the Tamil people for liberation.

The strife between the primarily Sinhalese ruling class and the Tamils is not a struggle between ancient religious forces. It is a struggle of class and for liberation of an oppressed nationality.

About a million Tamils were forcibly brought to the land presently known as Sri Lanka from Tamil Nadu, a state in the southern tip of India. British imperialists used the Tamil people as indentured slaves in the country’s tea plantations. In 1948, when British imperialists lost control of Southeast Asia, they handed the country to the Sinhalese majority. The Sinhalese continued their chauvinist tactics, making Sinhalese the only official language and restricting access to resources and services, such as health care, schools, civil service and political participation

The Western capitalist media depict Tamil suicide bombers as terrorists who kill civilians. However, they fail to report on the horrible atrocities and conditions that forced the Tamil people into armed struggle to defend themselves.

The U.S. government has provided the Sri Lankan army with napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, artillery shells and other weapons along with satellite technology and other military aid. Without the aid of the U.S., this genocide would not have been possible. The United Nations estimated that 60 Tamils were being slaughtered per day inside a “no-fire” zone alone. The Times of London reported that the Sri Lankan Army killed more than 20,000 Tamil civilians in the last weeks of its offensive. Independent journalists, human rights monitors and international aid groups have been banned from Tamil villages in the northern part of the country.

On May 2, one day after the military declared that their troops had cornered Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels, the Sri Lankan Army fired artillery shells on the only remaining hospital at Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, a Tamil village. At least 64 civilians were killed, and 87 were wounded. Yet this was not reported on by the mainstream Western media.

On May 18, the Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was reportedly killed by the Sri Lankan army. Sinhalese mobs paraded through the streets of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, and through Tamil villages claiming victory while harassing and humiliating Tamils in the streets.

FIST supports the right to self-determination of the Tamil people and calls for an end to U.S. intervention in Sri Lanka. We demand that Tamil refugees be permitted to return to their lands; that the Sinhalese ruling class immediately cease the genocide of Tamils; that reparations be paid to the impoverished Tamil community of Sri Lanka for the years of imperialist intervention; that the U.S. cease the supplying of illegal weapons to aid ethnic cleansing efforts in Sri Lanka; and that there be no further imperialist intervention by the U.S. or Indian governments.