Reprinted from Tamil Net
‘INSTEAD of making connections with the illegitimate opposition of Sri Lanka, Venezuela should be strengthening the hand of an ally that is also suffering imperial aggressions,’ says Eva Golinger, a friend of the President of Venezuela and English editor of the Venezuela government newspaper Correo del Orinoco.
Writing a feature filled with factual and perceptual errors, Golinger says, Rajapakse, who is supported by left and communist parties, put an end to the LTTE that has strong ties with the CIA.
Tamil circles don’t believe that the reputed left-wing writer failed to do her homework on Sri Lanka or on the Eezham Tamil struggle.
Instead, they think that in a world where the villains and the heroes are together nowadays, some forces are working on luring Latin America into entering South Asia from the wrong direction, hanging onto the deceptive red shawl of Rajapakse soaked in genocidal blood.
Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American attorney and writer, is the English editor of the Correo del Orinoco, a paper backed by the Venezuelan government.
She became popular for her publication The Chavez Code, which cracked the code of intervention of the United States in Venezuela.
Golinger wrote the piece last month, advising the government to strengthen the Rajapakse regime and not to give any hearing to Eezham Tamils, when some representatives of an organisation called Canadian Hart (Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for Relief of Tamils, a group organised by Canadian university students) visited Venezuela.
A few days before Golinger wrote her opinion, Sri Lankan ambassador in Cuba, Tamara Kunanayakam, rushed to Venezuela to spearhead a diplomatic campaign and misinformation campaign against the struggle of Eezham Tamils.
The ambassador in Latin America, whose Tamil surname is misused in the game of deception, gave an interview last week, denying the existence of a liberation struggle of Tamils, genocide, concentration camps etc in the island.
She painted a rosy picture of the Rajapakse regime, which in her luring words is working for one of the fastest growing economies and ‘a feeder to rapidly growing China and India’, and thus could become a regional centre and ‘major gateway to India’.
The blatant lies and outbursts showing the spirit of a newly converted coming from the ambassador, a servant of Colombo and a second generation Sinhalicised Tamil of the Colombo-centric culture, sharing a historical interest in preserving the Colombo-dominated capitalism of the island, can be ignored.
Not even the Sinhalese are going to respect what she says.
But, many leftists all around the world were puzzled at what made Eva Golinger a well-known anti-imperialist twist facts and views in favour of an ethnic-chauvinistic state that demonstrated to the world for the first time that a genocidal war could be fought without witnesses and a long-standing national question of a people could be crushed, by having all the imperialists on its side to abet or actively participate.
Golinger, outlining the potentialities and prospects of Sri Lanka in her article, wrote: ‘Rajapakse, a Buddhist leader, is supported by a coalition of parties of the left, amongst them the Communist Party. In May 2009, it was able to end the civil war, putting a stop to the armed organisation the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
‘The LTTE has strong ties with the CIA, and Washington negotiated an agreement with them to establish a military base in its country, were they able to get to power. Soon after their defeat, the LTTE established numerous organisations – fronts in different countries around the world, searching to create a ‘government in exile’ and to be able to isolate the current Government of Sri Lanka.
‘Last week, representatives of one such front, Canadian Hart, passed through Venezuela. They met with government functionaries looking for support in an attempt to weaken relations between the two governments,’ was Golinger’s simplified understanding of one of the most complex crises of contemporary world polity.
‘Instead of making connections with the illegitimate opposition of Sri Lanka, Venezuela should be strengthening the hand of an ally that is also suffering imperial aggressions,’ she concluded.
In fact two months before Golinger wrote her article, Sri Lanka’s ambassador Tamara came out with almost identical points on the potentiality, prospects and US designs involving the LTTE, while addressing Centre for Studies on Asia and Oceania in Cuba, appealing to the audience that Cuba and Sri Lanka are on the same boat in resisting the US imperialism.
As Golinger is considered seriously because of her contribution to Latin America’s anti-imperialist struggle, many leftists cared to come out with responses.
‘Eva Golinger’s misinformation endangers exiled Tamils’ fight for freedom,’ said five Latin American solidarity groups in Canada in a joint statement.
Writing an editorial, VHeadline News Editor, Patrick J.O’Donoghue said, Venezuela president should not take Golinger’s word on the Tamils and should be properly briefed before entering the minefield of Sri Lankan politics.
The USA also drew up an agreement with Sri Lanka for military relations and had declared the Tamil Tigers a terrorist organisation despite the Tigers having been combating the Sri Lanka state dominated by the Sinhalese for decades, he said.
It is not the first time that the Venezuelan President Chavez has been caught out internationally, and it is hoped that his government will study the case of Sri Lanka with care, he further wrote.
The most detailed and extensive response has come from Ron Ridenour, a veteran US-born but now Denmark-based leftist and anti-imperialist, who voiced against the US aggression on Cuba in 1961, was jailed in the US for his views on several occasions and contributed extensively to the study of Latin America.
Ron Ridenour, a veteran journalist, author and editor, who worked for decades for anti-imperialist ideology with a special focus on Latin American affairs, is author of several books including Cuba Beyond the Crossroads (2006) and Cuba at Sea (2008).
Ron Ridenour hits the bull’s eye, explaining why Golinger’s brand of anti-imperialism differs from others outside of Latin America.
Bringing out her factual errors, explaining how the US supported the genocide of Tamils, revealing how the US didn’t want to be seen in the forefront operated in the war against the Tamils through Israel, where the Latin American ALBA countries let down Tamils and discussing the war crimes of Sri Lanka, Ron Ridenour says, ‘Instead of opposing the Yankee Empire, Golinger’s position is allied with imperialist United States and its allies Zionist Israel, the United Kingdom and other former European colonialists, as well as the emerging superpower and worker-exploiter China.
‘As solidarity activists, we advocate the right to resist and the necessity to conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to induce oppressive governments to engage in a process aimed at justice and equality—such is the case in Sri Lanka with the Tamil people, just as surely as it is in Palestine.
Solidarity activists have no choice. We must support the Tamil people,’ Ron Ridenour said.
When the Eezham Tamil struggle stood up all alone against all the imperialists of the world, this test case of human civilisation was ignored by the so-called anti-imperialists of the Golinger brand and was allowed to end up in genocide, Tamil circles commented.
Some of the establishments of the anti-imperialists even ganged up in the UN Human Rights to save the Sri Lankan state that received all support from all the imperialists of the world in the war.
Now both the imperialists and anti-imperialists alike want to strengthen the genocidal state of Sri Lanka and want to compete for the dividends coming from the winner. . .’
