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Reflections on Sivakumaran's sacrifice

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Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran is remembered as the first in a relentless stream of politically active Tamil youth who gave their lives to the struggle, exasperated at the ineffectual politics taking place at the time.

The deaths of Tamils at the World Tamil Research conference, and the Sri Lankan state’s brutality at the event, only exacerbated the prevailing dissatisfaction amongst Tamil youth, that saw political negotiations with a state intent on ruthlessly destroying the Tamil identity as pointless. As the state's violence against Tamils escalated over the subsequent years, the overwhelming growth of Tamil armed resistance was all but inevitable.

Four years since the end of the armed conflict, the Tamil nation, once again, finds itself reaching a point of political stagnation and impotency. Despite the Tamil nation’s calls for justice and accountability, there has been no credible response to the massacre of at the very least 40,000 Tamil civilians. Instead, the accumulative grievances of the Tamil nation continue to grow, and all the while the Sri Lankan state systematically dismantles the Tamil identity, its homeland and the nation. In fact, the end of the armed conflict has only allowed the government’s subjugation of dissenting opinion to increase unchecked.  The Sri Lankan government, whilst forcefully appropriating land and shamelessly trying to destroy a distinct Tamil nationalist polity  thereby continues to oppress and undermine the Tamil nation’s existence. 

The absence of a Tamil armed resistance movement, coupled with the international community’s continued failure to protect, accentuates the vulnerability of the Tamil nation, and once again, the futility of political engagement with an unyielding, unrepentant and uncompromising Sinhala state.

As Tamil youth across the world remember Sivakumaran’s sacrifice today and mark Maanavar Eluchi Naal on June 6th, recalling the mass Tamil student uprising that followed his death, they look to emanate his commitment to seeking justice for the Tamil people, and the emancipation of the Tamil nation.

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