Sense of insecurity among
the Tamils

As an old man and a lover of little children, I shared the collective grief the people of Batticaloa exhibited on Monday when they protested against the killing of Thanushika, an 8-year-old school girl. Schools were all closed, shops and government offices were shut and public transport ceased while parents and children shouted: Ensure the safety of children.
Thanushika was the eldest of the two daughters of Nithiya Rajani, an employee of the Batticaloa Regional Commissioner of Local Government. Her husband Sasikumar disappeared two years ago. The child’s grandfather S. Muthuvel took her to school, Kottamunai Senior School, as usual at 7:30 a.m. on April 28. When he went back at 12:50 p.m. to fetch her, she was missing.
News spread that she had been abducted by an armed group and by late evening the family received a request to pay a ransom of Rs. 300,000. The family pleaded inability to pay, but was told to sell their property and raise the money.
The body of the child was found in an abandoned well, about 1,500 metres from the school on May 2 evening and Police investigators say the child must have been killed on the night she was abducted. No one was arrested.
A similar child murder took place three months ago in Trincomalee where six-year-old Varsha was abducted from her school and killed when her parents found it difficult to pay the ransom of Rs. 1 million. The public reacted with horror and administrators vowed not to permit a repetition of that event.
Abduction of children for ransom and their slayings are symptoms of the prevailing culture of violence in the Eastern Province where cold-blooded murders and abductions are daily happenings. On Monday a Tamil daily reported that auto driver Sithamparapillai Sangaravel, 35, who went on a hire on Sunday was missing.
The law and order situation in the Eastern Province is causing concern to everyone including government supporters. EPDP (Eelam People’s Democratic Party), a government ally, said in a statement Sunday: “The continuing incidents of abduction of children and murders have instilled fear and insecurity among our people.”
JVP’s Parliamentary group leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said that his party would call for a debate in Parliament about the growing “culture of violence” in the Eastern Province.
Added to this is the mounting concern about Sinhala colonisation. R. Thurairatnam, member of the Eastern Provincial Council, has complained to Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan about an attempt to settle Sinhalese in the traditional Tamil village Kevuliyamadu. He informed the Chief Minister that Kevuliyamadu was a traditional Tamil village in the Paddipalai Pradeshiya Sabha from which Tamil villagers were chased out by the Army in 1990. Since then some Sinhalese had illegally occupied part of the lands owned by the Tamils. An attempt is now being made to regularise their occupation by annexing Kevuliyamadu to the adjoining Sinhala majority Uhana Pradeshiya Sabha. Thurairatnam has asked the Chief Minister to reverse the annexation of Kevyliyamadu to Uhana.
This event has made the members of the Eastern Provincial Council more suspicious about the intention of the government’s attempt to enact the amendment to the Local Authorities Act which gives the Minister of Local Government power to determine the area of local authorities including Pradeshiya Sabhas. That power has been allocated to the Provincial Councils under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
The amending act will be discussed by the Eastern Provincial Council on May 12 and most of its members have announced their opposition to it in its present form. Dharmalingam Sitharthan, Leader of the PLOTE, a group that supports the government, summed up the Tamil fear as: “The 13th Amendment, which the government is pledged to implement, lays the base for the devolution of power to the Provincial Councils. This amendment seeks to disturb it.”
Tamil Hindus are also disturbed by a dispute that had led to the cancellation of the annual ther (chariot) festival of the century-old Sri Muthumari Amman Temple of Rakwana in the Ratnapura District. The festival falls on Chithra Pournami day, a holy day for Hindus and Buddhists. Sinhala Buddhists observe that day as Vesak Day.
Buddhist extremists objected last year to the Hindus holding the their festival on the Vesak Day, but the event took place. This year the festival commenced on April 29 with the flag hoisting ceremony and was scheduled to end on May 8, the Vesak Day. Buddhists informed the trustees of the temple to discontinue the celebrations and efforts by the Police to work out a settlement had failed.
The trustees have stopped the festival and have arranged a special pooja on that day. Hindus are hurt that Chitra Pournami and Vesak, which had been one of the uniting forces of the Hindus and the Buddhists is now being turned into a day of conflict.
While Sinhala-Tamil estrangement is furthered in Sri Lanka, in Tamil Nadu Tamil extremists have attacked a military convoy thinking that that was transporting weapons to the Sri Lankan Army. Though 15 of those activists had been arrested, MDMK Leader Vaiko had declared that the Tamils would not allow the Indian Army to help Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, ADMK Leader Jayalalitha is continuing her campaign in support of the creation of a separate state of Tamil Eelam in north-eastern Sri Lanka. She told an election meeting in Coimbatore on Sunday that she would honour her promise on Eelam. She said: “Eelam is the only solution possible to bring an end to the suffering of the Sri Lankan Tamils. I will accomplish that.” She added that if she was in a position to influence the formation of the government in Delhi she would bargain for the dispatch of the Indian Army to help create the Tamil Eelam.
Bharatiya Janata Party has opposed the creation of the Eelam and the sending of the Indian Army to Sri Lanka. The Communist Party of India and the Marxist Communist Party have kept silent about those matters.
Jayalalitha had suddenly emerged the darling of the Tamil Diaspora. They have informed her of their support, and if Jayalalitha wins the election next Wednesday, it looks that she would wrest the leadership of the Tamils from Karunanidhi.