In Sri Lanka, Muslims Replacing Tamils as Perceived Enemy

The Muslims are replacing the Tamils as the future enemy. With that they hope to convert Sri Lanka into a Buddhist state.

5pillarz.com

(MELBOURNE) - The Sinhalese leaders had a clear plan on how to convert Sri Lanka from a multiracial country into a Buddhist country. At the time of independence in 1948, there were three distinct races. The majority were Sinhalese Buddhist composing about 69%, Then came Tamils, most of whom were Hindus,but were classified as Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils. both of them made up about 22% of the population. The last group was the Tamil speaking Muslims, who amounted to 9% and wanted to classify themselves as Muslims, rather than Tamils.

The weakest of these groups were the Indian Tamils, who were about 10% of the population. The Sinhalese leaders in 1948 disfranchised these people and made them stateless in the very year of independence in 1948. In this they had the support of some Sri Lankan Tamils, led by G.G.Ponnampalam. Thantai Chelva broke off from the Tamil party and formed the Federal Party. Some of the Sri Lankan Tamils did not have the foresight to realize that their turn was next.

It didn't take the Singhalese long to go for the Sri Lankan Tamils; The Sinhala Only Act introduced in the SL Parliament in 1956 set in motion the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka that ended in the Mullivaaikkal Genocide in May 2009. Having accomplished the second stage of the Sinhalisation of Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese have now turned there sight to the Muslims.

The Tamil national leader, Prabhakaran, had the foresight to unify the Tamils of Hindu, Muslim and Christian background to fight the Sinhalese army. He took in cadres from all the religious groups to fight the Sinhalese. When the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) withdrew from Sri Lanka, the LTTE attacked Baticoloa to capture it from the Indian Quislings. in the battle 18 cadres died - 5 of them were Muslims. Such was the relationship between the 3 religious groups.

Then what went wrong? Some Muslim leaders influenced the Muslim cadres in the LTTE to move over to the government forces. Quite a number of the Muslim cadres not only went over to the government forces, but also showed them where the LTTE ammunition dumps were. This infuriated Prabhakaran, who ordered the Muslims to leave the Northern Province.

This was a monumental mistake on the part of the Tigers, for which they apologized during the Ceasefire in 2002 to the Muslims and they asked them to return back to their homes. As some ill-informed Tamil politicians claimed, Prabhakaran never practiced ethnic cleansing of the Muslims. Nevertheless, quite a number of Muslims were informers of the Sri Lankan army, before and after 2002. As Farook has stated in the link, they are very loyal to the government.

Now, the Sinhalese have decided that the Muslims have to be dealt with. The Muslims are replacing the Tamils as the future enemy. With that they hope to convert Sri Lanka into a Buddhist state.

Visvanathan

Please follow the link and read the rest.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/01/13/in_sri_lanka_muslims_replacing_tamils_as_perceived_enemy.html