CURRENTLY the UK and US supported Sri Lankan army is mounting an all-out assault on the besieged Tamil Tiger forces and the over 100,000 Tamil people that they are defending in the Vanni region.
Despite the fact that the Rajapakse military police regime has given an assurance to the ‘international community’ that it would not use heavy weapons on the Tamils in the area, the Sri Lankan armed forces have been shelling, and bombing the Tamils from the land, from the sea and from the air, without restraint or mercy.
The British Foreign Minister Miliband, along with the Foreign Ministers of France and Sweden, is due in Sri Lanka today. The Sri Lankan government has refused to allow the Swedish Foreign Minister into the country. He is not thought to be reliable enough to stomach the slaughter of the Tamils without question.
Miliband is however being allowed in. Far from being a neutral, his job will be to try and negotiate the Tigers’ surrender, on the grounds that the entire ‘international community’ is opposed to the Tamil people having the right to self-determination, and further struggle is hopeless.
It is a fact that the UN Security Council refused to pass a resolution instructing the Rajapakse regime to cease fire.
This is because the imperialist powers, the Stalinist bureaucracy and the national bourgeoisie are united on the issue.
The imperialists, especially the UK, have major investments in Sri Lanka, and look to the Rajapakse regime to police the working class. Rajapakse is their man. He has been allowed to slaughter the Tamils and imprison thousands without trial or charge, from both the Sinhalese and the Tamil communities.
The Rajapakse regime has been imposing law and order for the imperialist powers through death squads who travel in white vans and are answerable to nobody.
The UK and US, champions of human rights, have not only refused to make any protests at the atrocities of their regime, they have continued to finance it, and see that it is well armed and well supplied to fight what is a major war.
As well, the UK and the US covet the strategic position of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean area and the Trincomalee naval base.
The UN security council has watched all this happen without even attempting to intervene.
China, Russia, India and even Iran have refused to condemn the atrocities against the Tamils because they are afraid that a victory for the Tamils would encourage oppressed minorities at home.
India has stood for the crushing of the Tamils for many years and fears that freedom for the Tamils would start a revolution in Tamil Nadu.
So the Sri Lankan government has been financed and armed and supported by this coalition of imperialists, Stalinist and the national bourgeois.
Nevertheless, the Rajapakse regime has been strained to breaking point by the war. Their forced advances have been at a tremendous price. Their victories have been pyrrhic. They have also been badly hit by the world crisis and can no longer get aid from the bankrupt western banks.
They have had to turn on the working class with a privatisation and mass sackings programme, at the same time as there have been huge rises in the cost of living, and wage cuts for tens of thousands of clothing workers.
The Rajapakse state apparatus is now the enemy of the working class of the whole of Sri Lanka.
The reality is that the Tigers cannot be eradicated because the Tamil people cannot be eradicated.
The struggle will continue and develop, and will take the form of the struggle for the unity of the Tamil and Sinhalese workers to overthrow the Rajapakse regime to go forward to a socialist Sri Lanka. This will give the Tamil people the right to secede. The Tamil right to self determination will only be achieved by the victory of the Sri Lankan socialist revolution.
