By ARAN MYLVAGANAM
I AM among hundreds of Dandenong residents shocked to be branded recently as terrorists by the Sri Lankan Government through membership of peaceful Tamil community organisations in Australia.
The groups listed are Australian Tamil Congress, Tamil Youth Organisation, Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation and the Tamil Co-ordinating Committee. I’m one of the committee members of ATC and have been a member of two of the other groups. The general objective of these groups is to promote Tamil culture and help millions of Tamils suffering in poverty in Sri Lanka.
The worldwide list of 16 groups and 424 individuals, which included nine Australians, has been exposed as a joke and a sham, not least because it contains at least one 90-year-old, a dead person and a member of the ruling government party. The UK, Canadian and US governments have dismissed it, saying they will continue to deal with the Tamil community and have seen no evidence that any of these groups are even remotely connected with terrorism. In fact, the UK and Canadian governments warned against misusing terrorism laws for political purposes.
Unfortunately, although the Australian government has said the Australian groups are not terrorist organisations, it has not joined with its traditional allies in condemning the Sri Lankan regime.
This is because Australia puts its “stop-the-boats” policy above its commitment to human rights. It seems strange that while the US and UK have been major drivers of the current UN investigation into Sri Lankan government war crimes at the end of the civil war in 2009, Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, never stops praising the regime and has been accused of publicly condoning its well-documented torture of Tamils – all because he has an arrangement with Sri Lanka to stop asylum-seekers from coming here.
At 13, I arrived from Sri Lanka as an asylum-seeker with bad memories. My school was bombed by the Sri Lankan Air Force. I saw many children die that day, including my brother and three of my cousins.
The terrorism designation of our groups is a ploy by the government to do two main things. It wants to silence all Tamil activists within Sri Lanka and it wants to break the connection between the worldwide Tamil diaspora and the brutally-oppressed Tamil population in Sri Lanka.
Under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which remains in force five years after the war ended, as does the military occupation of the Tamil homeland in the north and east of the country, the Sri Lankan government can jail anyone it deems a “terrorist” for up to 18 months without charge or access to a lawyer.
It means that if I went back to Sri Lanka tomorrow, I would most likely be locked away in a cell for months, and probably be tortured. The same goes for any Australian citizen who has anything to do with these organisations, which are doing no more than raising funds for hospitals, schools and war-devastated families.
Last month the government propagandists started fear-mongering about a revival of the long-dead Tamil Tigers. It is no coincidence that the terrorism label was unveiled at the same time. They arrested scores for ‘terrorist activities’, charges which respected human rights bodies have said are fabricated. They shot dead three Tamil men and arrested their relatives, as well as a 50-year-old woman and her 13-year-old daughter, who had been campaigning for the release of their missing son and brother taken by the Sri Lankan army. They still don’t know where he is.
For all this bluster about terrorism from the Sri Lankan government, Tamils will not be cowed. They will continue to speak out against the genocidal regime.
The people who have remained there have no voice. As a Tamil who still has a voice, it’s my responsibility to speak for them.
