Since President Rajapakse came to power, many hundreds of Tamil civilians have died in deliberate Sri Lankan military attacks. The violence, as many Tamil observers have repeatedly protested, has been unambiguously directed at civilians.



Although these attacks are flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, the international community has failed to publicly and unequivocally condemn the Sri Lankan government’s policy of deliberately targeting civilians.



Many Tamils were initially bewildered by this international silence. But it is now apparent that the studied indifference to Tamil suffering is part of a wider, familiar, strategy.



Through their silence, international actors are allowing a space for the Sri Lankan government to pursue a strategy demoralisation the Tamils of sufficient intensity to induce them to despair. It is clear to all, including the Colombo government, that the international community intends to let the Tamils endure the military’s collective punishment until they resolutely turn away from the LTTE.



The central assumption made by those hectoring the Tamils about terrorism while they are bombed and starved is that international support is painfully critical to the Tamil struggle. The reality is, of course, that the Tamil struggle has never enjoyed even a fraction of the international sympathy and indulgent support afforded to the Sinhala Buddhist polity and the state.



In short, the Tamil project has come this far in the face of open and consistent international hostility and contempt.



Indeed, from as far back as the late 1940’s, when Tamils first began pressing their demands for territorial devolution, international actors have consistently adopted a policy of supporting the Sri Lankan state regardless of the consequences this has for the Tamil people.



For all those muttering about democratic pathways, international actors even backed successive Sri Lankan governments that unilaterally abrogated agreements made with the Federal Party, the Tamils’ then elected representatives.



Even through periodic bouts of state sponsored anti-Tamil violence that began in 1956 and punctuated every decade since, the Sri Lankan state enjoyed the unstinting support of its international friends.



Particularly telling was international community’s conduct immediately following the July 1983 anti Tamil riots in which thousands of Tamils were massacred in six days of undisguised and organised rioting.



Almost as soon as the flames had died down and the bewildered and brutalised Tamils began stumbling to their bloodied feet, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary visited the island. He hailed the strong relations between his country and Sri Lanka and congratulated the Sri Lankan embassy in Washington on the excellent job it was doing countering ‘Eelamist’ propaganda.



Within a year the Sri Lankan President, J. R. Jayawardene, was invited on a state visit to the United States, where he held discussions with President Ronald Regan on their common fight against, as troublemakers like Tamils were then known, ‘communist terrorism.’



As the war escalated and Sri Lanka imposed its economic blockage of the Tamil areas including the densely populated Jaffna peninsula, the US stepped up its military assistance, as did Britain (remember who set up and trained the STF which massacred so many Tamils – not to mention the Sinhala youth of the JVP era?)



In the same year that President Jayawardene was feted as an anti-communist and anti-terrorist hero in Washington, the British and Commonwealth Affairs Minister, Baroness Young, visited the island and said that Britain ‘sympathised with the Sri Lankan government efforts to combat terrorism.’



It goes without saying, of course, that there was very little sympathy for the Tamils, even amongst the self-styled leaders of the free world.



The international community’s determination to ignore Tamils’ suffering and view their struggle through the lens of terrorism is therefore nothing new. While the callous indifference is obviously hurtful it is no longer shocking – except perhaps for the new generations of Diaspora Tamils raised on a staple of democracy, human rights, etc. etc.



Since its inception in the 1940’s, the Tamil struggle has thus fallen on the wrong side of international priorities.



But in fact the Tamil nationalist project has become so multifaceted and mature precisely because of implacable international opposition.



When the international media failed to present a balanced picture of the Sri Lankan situation, the Tamils set up their own media outlets. As international organisations failed to respond to the humanitarian crises created by the economic embargo and Sri Lankan bombardment of the Northeast, the Tamils created and supported their own institutions, such as the Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO).



The international community’s duplicitous and partial use of liberal humanitarian norms has turned Tamils from all walks of life into well-seasoned cynical analysts, dissecting international statements for omissions and betrayals and international positions for hidden interests and loyalties.



The limited progress that has been made towards a just political settlement to Sri Lanka’s ethnic question is therefore entirely down to the Tamils themselves.



Even international actors recent discovery of Tamil ‘grievances,’ is itself thanks to the determined efforts of Tamil activists through the decades and not the result of some newfound international magnanimity or sympathy.



Indeed, notwithstanding their pretensions to omnipotence, the international community have proved themselves entirely incapable of forcing the Sri Lankan government to enter into a substantive engagement with Tamil demands.



Arguably its consistent attitude of hostility towards Tamil demands goes hand in hand with the international community’s complete lack of leverage over the Sri Lankan government that they have over the years so assiduously pampered.



Meanwhile, the international community’s record on the Tamil issue has convinced Sri Lankan politicians that the norms of liberalism and democracy are more or less convenient sticks with which to beat the Tamils. And that’s all they are.



The real and tangible substance of international engagement with the Tamil issue has always been in the language of fighting terrorism and noxious separatism. Even something as simple as the Post Tsunami Operational Management Structure (PTOMS), with its incontrovertibly humanitarian in intent, could not be delivered by Sri Lanka’s loyal friends.



Despite their evident lack of leverage over the Sri Lankan state, the international strategy of providing the Sri Lankan armed forces with a breathing space in which to brutalise the Tamil population out of its nationalist preoccupations looks set to continue.



The Times of London recently addressed the Tamil Diaspora in a hectoring editorial calling upon the Tamils to turn away from the LTTE and its evil, tyrannical terrorism. The Times magnanimously noted that the Tamils had legitimate grievances but told them in no uncertain terms that they ‘would not find peace until they turned away from the LTTE.’



This echoes statements made by the US ..Richard Boucher who has said that while his government recognised Tamil rights, it was completely determined to fighting all forms of ‘terrorism,’ whether it ‘emanates from the mountains of Afghanistan or the fields of Vanni.’



International humanitarian organisations are also in the chorus. The mealy mouthed comments made by UNICEF after visiting the bombed out remains of the Sencholai children’s home indicate a latent willingness to condone collective punishment of civilians in the greater interest of fighting the LTTE menace.



Although admitting that the victims were not LTTE cadres but schoolgirls on a residential first aid course, UNICEF pointedly wondered who was organising the course. Like it makes a difference.



But by suggesting that the civilians might have been consorting with the LTTE, she condoned the atrocity as just punishment for such association - even when for the purposes of first aid training.



Similarly the failure to condemn the killing of MP Joseph Pararajasingham as well as Vigneswaran, the elderly activist nominated to replace him, clearly demonstrate that even those who peacefully advocate the Tamil nationalist cause are fair game.



The slightest taint of association with the LTTE becomes the mark of a deserving victim. The irony of this policy being sanctioned by the very people who attack the LTTE for allegedly assassinating political opponents is not lost on the observant Tamils.



No doubt this type of rank hypocrisy and wilful misinterpretation was evident during earlier phases of Sri Lanka’s post-independence history.



We can just imagine the insightful editorials the Times might have written following each pogrom, telling the Tamils in no uncertain terms that their woes would not end until they stopped being such bad sports, abandoned the secessionist Federal Party and joined the political mainstream.



UNICEF might have wondered whether the children caught up in the riots were being indoctrinated with poisonous Tamil separatism by the youth wings of the Federal Party and later the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF).



As the current phase of the conflict escalates the Tamils will undoubtedly have to brace themselves for further suffering.



Meanwhile international actors will deliver pious lectures to the Tamils on the paramount importance of liberal humanitarian norms - even as they ignore the collective suffering caused by the Sri Lankan military’s embargos, bombings and massacres.



But it is thus that Tamils and their struggle will grow. For Tamil resistance to oppression has always included confronting international contempt and hostility.