<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Dear Dr. Schiffman,</div><div><br></div><div>A friend of mine sent me this link to an interesting article regarding Language Policy</div><div><br></div><div><span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118191§ionid=3510212">http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118191§ionid=3510212</a></span></div><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><br><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Harold Schiffman <hfsclpp@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> lp <lgpolicy-list@groups.sas.upenn.edu><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Mon, February
8, 2010 6:37:09 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [lg policy] Sri Lanka: Cry for Self-Rule by Tamils Is Muffled by Reality<br></font><br>
February 8, 2010<br>Cry for Self-Rule by Tamils Is Muffled by Reality<br>By LYDIA POLGREEN<br><br>JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Jaffna is a city of ruins. Some are physical, like<br>the overgrown jumbles of mold-streaked concrete where graceful<br>buildings used to stand. But perhaps the biggest ruin of the Tamil<br>Tiger insurgency against the Sri Lankan government is the very thing<br>the Tigers wanted most: any hope of self-rule. After 26 years of war<br>that ended with a decisive government assault last May, Sri Lanka’s<br>Tamil minority seems no closer to winning a measure of autonomy in a<br>Sinhalese-dominated nation, and Tamil nationalism, the cri de coeur of<br>the Tamil Tiger insurgency, seems all but dead. “All of this armed<br>struggle, so many dead and wounded, for what?” said P.<br>Balasundarampillai, who leads the Citizen Committee in this city on<br>the claw-shaped peninsula of the northern Tamil heartland. “In many<br>spheres of public
life our role is very much reduced. Economically we<br>are weak, and politically we are weak.”<br><br>Just how little power Tamils have was made plain in last month’s<br>presidential election. Though the Tamil Tigers’ war for a separate<br>homeland in the north and east of this island nation has dominated<br>life in Sri Lanka for nearly three decades, the question of how to<br>address the root causes of the conflict — perceived discrimination by<br>the Sinhalese majority against the Tamils — barely figured in the<br>campaign. Instead it was a contest between two men claiming the mantle<br>of war hero for vanquishing the Tigers, President Mahinda Rajapaksa<br>and his former military chief, Gen. Sarath Fonseka.<br><br>The main Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance, cast its lot with<br>General Fonseka, betting that a fragile coalition with disaffected<br>Sinhalese and Muslim voters could dislodge the popular incumbent. The<br>gamble failed,
and Mr. Rajapaksa rode to a resounding 17-point<br>victory. Now more powerful than ever, Mr. Rajapaksa has given vague<br>assurances about unifying the country. He has made clear, however,<br>what is not on the table. Federalism, the starting point for virtually<br>every Tamil party, is not acceptable, he said. Nor is he willing to<br>merge the provinces in the north and east to create a large,<br>Tamil-dominated state. Mr. Rajapaksa has, however, said he would cede<br>some powers to the existing provinces, which was required by a<br>constitutional amendment but never fully put into practice.<br><br>This leaves many Tamils wondering where this shattered community will<br>go from here. The Jaffna Peninsula, the cultural heart of Tamil life,<br>lost hundreds of thousands of residents over the course of the war.<br>About 100,000 are dead, but many more have fled. Far from Colombo’s<br>shimmering seaside skyscrapers, the hollowed-out city of Jaffna
seems<br>stuck a generation behind the rest of the country. For every inhabited<br>house stands an abandoned, weed-choked one. Many buildings still bear<br>bullet scars even though the last fighting here was in 1996. Its<br>famous university, once among South Asia’s best, is crumbling.<br><br>These ghostly vistas are a stark contrast to the camps just south of<br>here where at least 100,000 people live in squalid detention camps,<br>awaiting the government’s permission to go home. A political<br>settlement to what is known here as “the Tamil question” remains as<br>elusive as ever. Professor S. K. Sitrampalam, a historian who is also<br>a senior member of one of the largest Tamil political parties, said<br>that there was “a history of broken promises and missed opportunities”<br>between the government and the Tamils. Part of the problem for the<br>Tamils is that the war left few political leaders standing. Many<br>talented and skilled Tamils
fled to exile in Canada, England, the<br>United States and elsewhere. Velupillai Prabhakaran, the ruthless<br>rebel commander and self-proclaimed leader of the Tamil people, was<br>killed in the Tigers’ last stand. Before that, his forces had<br>systematically purged dissident leaders in a series of chilling<br>assassinations.<br><br>Other Tamil political parties have joined forces with the government,<br>seeing little point in struggling against the majority. Douglas<br>Devananda, a former Tiger who has become a powerful minister in Mr.<br>Rajapaksa’s government, said it was better to work with those in power<br>to gain something rather than remain on the sidelines achieving<br>little. Still, asked what he had achieved for the Tamils, the<br>barrel-chested former fighter seemed at a loss. “It is difficult to<br>say,” he said. “There are a lot of achievements. Ask the people. They<br>will tell you.” But he conceded that the Tamils,
having overwhelmingly<br>opposed the president’s re-election, were in no position to make<br>demands from the government.<br><br>For young Tamils the frustration is even greater. “With the defeat of<br>the Tigers the political power of the Tamil people is gone,” said S.<br>Arihan, president of the student union at the University of Jaffna.<br>Like many Tamils in the north, he said he hoped that international<br>pressure would force the government to act. But such hopes are<br>unrealistic, said Ahilan Kadirgamar of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum,<br>an organization that is trying to reconcile the country’s ethnic<br>divides. Hard-line nationalists “just keep waiting for the<br>international community, but it is not going to deliver,” he said.<br>Indeed, much of the ideology of Tamil nationalism was formed in the<br>1970s and ’80s, when Tamils were facing pogroms and fleeing the<br>country by the thousands.<br><br>An armed struggle for an
independent state had a certain logic then,<br>analysts say. But in postwar Sri Lanka the situation is less black and<br>white, and many Tamils are focused on recovering from war. “People<br>have been so battered by the war that the basic issues, like<br>resettlement and jobs, that is what is foremost in their minds,” Mr.<br>Kadirgamar said. “It is not that the desire for a political solution<br>is gone; it just needs to take account for the ground realities of<br>today.”<br><br><br><span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/world/asia/08lanka.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/world/asia/08lanka.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print</a></span><br><br><br>-- <br>**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to<br>its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner<br>or sponsor of the list as to the
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