THE News Line hails the heroic resistance of the Tamil Tigers to the armed forces of the Rajapakse military dictatorship, which is seeking to smash and destroy the Tamil people.
This is proven by the enthusiasm that the Rajapakse regime and its military chiefs have shown for shelling and bombing the so-called ‘safe’ or ‘secure’ zones to which they have directed Tamil people, allegedly for their safety.
The reality is that these same zones are now being fired on, 24 hours a day, menacing the lives of very large numbers of Tamil men, women and children.
The Sri Lankan regime has spent well beyond its means to procure armaments and military equipment and to finance the offensives that have been hurled against the Tamil people.
They have been forced to conscript children as they begin to run out of willing cannon fodder, and have had to pay a huge price in casualties, destroyed military equipment, and in the growing demoralisation of an army that has suffered 6,000 desertions.
To keep the war going the Rajapakse regime has had to declare war on the Sinhalese people as well, with notable journalists having to flee for their lives, after the assassination of the editor of the Sunday Leader, a one time political friend of Rajapakse.
The white vans are everywhere and the numbers of disappeared and jailed are growing on a daily basis.
At the same time Rajapakse has declared that workers and their trade unions who want wage increases and who are defending their jobs against the effects of the world crisis are terrorists, who will pay a price for their crimes.
The more that Rajakpakse seeks to crush the Tamil people the more a military police state emerges to try to put handcuffs onto every worker and youth.
This developing situation brings to mind the remark of Karl Marx in an 1870 circular of the General Council of the First International on the Irish question. He declared that ‘A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.’
However Rajapakse is not acting alone. He is acting as a representative of the imperialist powers especially the UK, the US, and the Indian bourgeoisie who want to see the speedy crushing of the Tamil people to safeguard their investments in Sri Lanka and to secure Trincomalee as a major US military base. The Indian bourgeosie are terrified that the Tamil revolt will spread throughout India in the form of a socialist revolution.
The UK, the US, India and Israel are arming, training and equipping the Sri Lanka armed forces, while even countries like Iran, who should know better, are supporting Rajapakse.
It is this unholy alliance that is keeping the Rajapakse regime in place and keeping the war going.
This is why the BBC, the ‘democratic’ media arm of the British imperialist state, sees no evil, hears no evil, and certainly shows no evil as far as the doings of the Rajapakse regime are concerned.
Nevertheless this alliance and their Sri Lankan puppet have not been able to defeat the Tamil people and the Tamil Tigers, and they will not be able to do so, despite any momentary ‘victories’.
The News Line urges the Sri Lankan trade union movement to ally itself with the Tamil people and call a general strike to stop the war and bring down the blood-soaked regime.
They must fight for a workers and small farmers government in Sri Lanka under which the Tamil people and the working class of the island will be able democratically to decide on their future.
We also urge the trade unions in the UK not to stand on the side and just watch as the Tamil people are butchered and the Sri Lankan workers jailed.
The TUC must demand that the Brown government ends all its support for Rajapakse and instructs it to end the war and declare a permanent ceasefire.
It must also demand that the proscription of the Tamil Tigers as a ‘terrorist organisation’ is lifted.
If the government will not do this the TUC must begin a campaign of industrial and political action against the Brown government and in support of the Tamil people and the Sri Lankan workers.
