Continuous defaming of Eezham struggle using Muslim drift on space is getting old. Sympathy extended to the other party is not given to Eezha brothers who were speaking. They were told not to defend why the overflow of empathy towards the other part was crocodile tears. As I said before if you want to eliminate your political enemy or revamp your name, use other means. Stop starting drift between Tamils in Eezham. People like Shanakiyan are working hard to close the gap.
They started pitting Muslims against us knowing some leaders prefer religious identification over linguistic one. They started using eezha Muslim leaders to their benefit. As Quaid-E-Millat [Mohammed Ismail] was fighting for Tamil rights in India, Razik Fareed played a major role in the Sinhala imposition in Sri Lankan government. Politician by the name Ahamed Lebbe Sinne Lebbe was the first MP to accept the Sinhala-only representation flag as the national flag of Sri Lanka. When Tamils from the Hill region were denied of their right to citizenship in Sri Lanka, Muslim leaders like Dr.MCM Kaleel and Tuan Burhanuddin Jayah were the first to vote in favor of it.
Now you may ask me what did other Eezha Tamilar do for Tamils who came from India. Please be aware that Thanthai Selva criticized Ponnabalam for his lack of support and left his party to form his own. Yet again Muslim leaders stood with Sinhala leaders to deny the right of another group of Tamils. After over 30 yrs of oppression & massacre, as Tamils were strengthening their voice against oppression, a 1983 riot happened: Killing & displacing Tamils. Yet All Ceylon Muslim League leader M.C.M Kaleel said such riots will happen if Tamils fight against oppression
During this time, Tamil Nadu Muslims were acting in favor of Eezha tamilar which was heavily criticized by Kaleel. In 1986, Tigers condemned EPRLF's attacks against Muslims- brief summary: In this statement, the Tigers condemn EPRLF(Padhamanabha group that Karunanidhi supported) for launching a series of attacks against Muslims in the East. In this statement, the Tigers say that they would take military action against the EPRLF if it doesn't stop its anti-Muslim attacks. This happened 4 years before the Kattankudi massacre. This proves that the Indian R.A.W along with EPRLF and TELO has been attempting to disrupt the communal harmony of Tamils for a very long time in the East, and it was only the Tigers who stood by the Muslim people at that time.
In 1988 the Tigers entered into an agreement with the Muslim leadership of the East on how to devolve powers between both communities. At that time the IPKF along with EPRLF & other groups continued to attack Muslims and Muslim home guards of the military were attacking Tamils. It was a concerted effort from all parties to disrupt the political agreement between the Muslim leadership and the Tigers. Tamil space twitter who are so heavy on Kaatankudi massacre failed to see there were many massacres against Tamils before that by the Muslim armed force. This is in no way justifying the death of innocent people or agreeing to the eye for an eye concept.
This is our side of the story. An important point to note is that Kaatankudi was under Sinhala army control - how could few people get into the village - massacre - would create chaos and cause attention- but manage to get away without being caught when they have oor kaval thurai and lankan army there. It clearly seemed well-planned to turn it against LTTE. LTTE never shied away from taking responsibility for all their acts & R. Gandhi murder & Kaatankudi incidents r two they never claimed responsibility for Udumbankulam massacre was an attack carried out by Muslims against Tamils in 1986. Tamils were this area are the displaced Tamils from Southern Batticaloa due to forced Sinhala colonization. Tamils and Muslims were pitted against each other in this area. As Tamils were flourishing, the 1983 anti-Tamil riot took place changing the non-violence fight to an armed struggle that leads to major violence in the Northeast by the Sinhala army.
In 1985, the Sinhala army went into the village & men were mercilessly hacked with machetes and beat up with logs. Some were knifed to death. Skulls were cracked with heavy blows from thick logs. The men were helpless, as their hands and feet had been carefully tied up. Women were asked to remain in the huts. They ordered many of them to lift up their sarees and beat them on their genitals with sticks as they screamed in pain and begged to be spared of the humiliation, said Velmurugu Manoharan, who escaped the roundup and hid in the jungle. He was a boy of 13 who had gone to harvest paddy with a relative.
“Women who heard the death screams of their men tried to run up to the threshing floor, shouting for mercy. They were shot at and chased away. Before returning to camp the marauders set the threshing floor on fire and left a mangled pile of smoldering human entrails. People in the adjacent areas were too scared to get close to Udumbankulam.“One of the boys who fled with me into the jungle recognized his father’s body in the pile when we returned the following morning. The man’s burnt hands were still wound up with barbed wire. Later the boy went with the LTTE and we heard that he became a Black Tiger, said Manoharan.”
Witnessing such a tragedy made us not uptake ahimsa because it only got us killed over 2 decades. Sinhala army did not come through the jungle unaided. They needed a guide or a tracker. The survivors identified the guide as Saheed from the Muslim village of Addalachenai. Saheed was a calculated invention to further exacerbate tensions between the Muslims and Tamils in the district. That a Muslim was responsible for gruesome massacres in Batticaloa enraged many Tamils and led to incidents that rent sunder
and deeply divided society in the east to the advantage of the Sri Lankan military. What the Sinhala government did in the past is what Tamil space members are doing on Twitter - pitting Tamil Muslims against Tamils to revamp their political idols. Though everyone lost something in Lanka, we have lost everything since 1956. Let us heal, let us rebuild, and let us rehabilitate our young generation. Don’t bring in your dirty politics to turn Muslims against Tamils or Tamils against Tamils once again.
