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Tamils will not sell their birthright – C V Wigneswaran

 In an address to parliament, C.V. Wigneswaran, stressed that Sri Lanka current economic woes are driven by the government’s failure to meet the demands of the Tamil nation.

Chastising the attempt by Sri Lanka’s President to sweep over the underlying issues for Tamils, Wigneswaran states:

“The President wants us to leave our kith and kin, leave those who voted for us, leave those who are awaiting their freedom from Sinhala hegemony in the North and East, leave those who have lost their lands to Government Departments and the Armed Forces and join him to take bread to our people!”

“Man does not live by bread alone” he adds.

He further lambasts President Rajapaksa stating:

He thinks “if the Tamils are forced to live within an occupied territory, if they are deprived of even the existing feeble political rights, if they are sufficiently terrorized, if they are stifled and starved, the Tamils would sell their birthright to a pot of porridge”.

He also criticises the inflated military budget nothing that, “nearly a fifth of the Country’s wealth is utilized even today for so-called security and to pamper the Military”.

Wigneswaran also describes the genocide of Mullivaikkal as a continuing process noting the ongoing expropriation of land by the Sri Lankan military and deprivation of Tamil fishermen. In the northern province, the state holds over 65,000 acres to house a massive military in the area despite it contravening both the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Wigneswaran concludes his statement calling on the government to:

  1. Immediately halt all actions and activities that are being systematically undertaken by the Archaeological department, Forest department and Wildlife department and some other departments with the sole objective of destroying the ethnic and cultural character and demographic composition of the Northern and Eastern provinces and thereby prevaricate and re–write history.
  2. Abrogate the much-abused Prevention of Terrorism Act.
  3. Free all Tamil speaking political prisoners presently behind bars under the provisions of the draconian PTA.

He further stressed that these are prerequisites towards a new federal constitution.

Read the full letter here

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