Indian Congress Government’s Involvement in Tamil Eelam Genocide ..

Dear Friends,

Julian Assange’s revelations have put India on a spin both in the domestic and international sphere. Domestically, Manmohan Singh now faces new corruption charges over vote-buying to win a crucial parliamentary vote on the US atomic deal. Internationally, the treacherous and criminal role Sonia and her coterie played in the genocide of 60,000 Tamils in the Mulliavaikkal towards the week ended 19 May 2009 has now come into focus. The fact that this comes from the land of Mahatma Gandhi is a disgrace. When it was done with scant respect for the eighty million Tamils worldwide is unforgiveable.

 

The Congress Party winning the general election in 2005 was the turning point in Eelam history.  Since then the events that occurred in Mullaivaikkal was an Indian engineered genocide. The BJP government, which was in power up to 2005, though observing a ‘hands off policy’ in Sri Lanka, did its best to solve the intractable ethnic problem in Sri Lanka. It did nothing that would hurt the Tamil Tigers or the Tamils.

The perennial problem in SL politics was that none of the winning parties was willing to yield even a few of the rights demanded by the Tamils, as they would be perceived as favoring the Tamils. As a result all agreements reached between the successive Sinhala governments and the Tamil leaders were abrogated before implementation. The infamous speech delivered by President Jayawardene after July 1983 riots, when 5,000 Tamils were slaughtered in three days and their properties destroyed still remain fresh in Tamil minds. “I don’t care for the feelings of the Tamils any more. If I were to kill all of them the Sinhalese will be happy,” he said after observing three days of total silence. Mind you, this was the solace the Tamils got after a bloody carnage. Do you expect anything better from President Rajapaksa, after he claims he has finished the Tamils off once and for all?

These are not information unknown to the Indian politicians, and surely Sonia would have been well versed in it, as she was close to Indira Gandhi. Nehru and Indira did much more for the Sri Lankan Tamils than the leaders who came thereafter; in fact the leaders since Rajiv Gandhi were bent on finishing off the Tamil rebellion. After Indira’s death the Indian Intelligence, RAW, poisoned the mind of Rajiv Gandhi that a separate state of Tamil Eelam would be the forerunner for a separate state of Tamil Nadu. That was the beginning of Eelam Tamils’ miseries.

WikiLeaks revelations now enlighten us on the thinking of the BJP government before Congress Party came into power in 2005. At that time President Kumaratunga and the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe were from different parties and they were having a ‘cohabitation’ crisis in late 2003 and this was hampering progress in the peace process between Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. As the president was the Commander in Chief of the army, it wouldn’t take orders from the Prime Minister, Ranil. As a result terms agreed between the negotiating parties couldn’t be implemented as the army would find excuses on why it should not be brought into operation.

Therefore, India was forced to step in, through Indian High Commissioner Nirupam Sen, to resolve the ‘cohabitation' crisis in Sri Lanka between them by suggesting that the Defence portfolio be split so that Ranil could have effective control over military affairs in the north and east as he remained in charge of the stalled peace process. Indian High Commissioner Nirupam Sen's suggestion did not convince Mr. Wickremesinghe; obviously he didn’t want to be seen as yielding rights to the Tamils. However, according to the contents of a conversation between Milinda Moragoda, a senior Cabinet Minister who was coordinating the peace process from the government side, and Jeffrey J. Lunstead, the U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister had no objection to India trying to sell the proposal to the President while she was in Islamabad for the SAARC summit in January 2004. What I am reproducing below are extracts of WikiLeak revelations as reported in the Hindu. It is a bit messy; I hope the readers will bear with it.

Mr. Lunstead reported the development in a cable dated December 29, 2003. The context was the lengthy stalemate in the peace process after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) withdrew from the peace talks in April 2003 and, six months and hundreds of ceasefire violations later, came up on October 31 with a controversial proposal for an ‘Interim Self-Governing Authority' for the northeast. Four days later, Ms. Kumaratunga, marginalised in the decision-making regarding the peace process and left with the feeling that her presidency was not given the respect it deserved, divested the Defence, Interior and Information Ministers of their portfolios. This resulted in the ‘cohabitation crisis' reaching a point of no-return. Mr. Wickremesinghe thought he could not pursue peace without control over the military – as maintaining the ceasefire was the foundation of the process – and believed that a fresh parliamentary election was the only way out.

On December 26, Mr. Moragoda met Mr. Lunstead to review his upcoming visit to the U.S. and told the latter that the only effort to resolve the political stalemate “was a proposal being brokered by Indian High Commissioner Sen following his consultations in Delhi.” The Ambassador said: “Sen was pushing the idea that the regional commands (for the North and the East, presumably) could be carved out of the Defense Ministry and put under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's control. This would give him the operational control he needed to resume the peace negotiations. Milinda [Moragoda] did not know if this idea would fly. Even the PM was not fully convinced it was useful, but he was willing to let Sen try it out on the President. Milinda thought that the Indians would push this idea with President Chandrika Bandarnaike Kumaratunga (CBK) at the SAARC summit in Islamabad in early January.”

In a cable sent two days later, on December 31, 2003, containing a report on the handing over of a letter from Secretary of State Colin Powell to Mr. Wickremesinghe , Mr. Lunstead said he had asked the Prime Minister if there was any chance of Mr. Sen's initiative succeeding. “PM said he did not think this would go anywhere, and even if he liked it, he did not think the Service Chiefs would accept it.” This is an example of a typical Sinhalese intransigency.

According to a cable sent on January 5, 2004, Mr. Lunstead spoke on January 2 to Mr. Sen, who, “without any prompting,” said: “The technical means of squaring the circle are available. The problem is that Ranil does not want that much – he wants everything. She (the president) is willing to compromise; the problem now is his objection to accepting any piecemeal solution”.

Mr. Sen explained that the President was looking for a way out by offering to delegate a number of defense matters to the Prime Minister, “but the PM was trying to get everything.” He added that External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee might raise the issue with the President during the SAARC summit.

Throwing light on what exactly Ms. Kumaratunga's ‘way out' was, Mr. Lunstead said in another part of the same cable, while recounting his meeting with Ms. Kumaratunga to deliver a separate letter from Mr. Powell, that she was willing to make Mr. Wickremesinghe Minister of National Security and turn over to him parts of the Defence portfolio related to the peace process.

Mr. Lunstead's own comments show that the U.S. did believe that the Prime Minister could not be blamed for the impasse, but at the same time he should be told that he should “give some meaningful role to the President, if he expects her to give him back operational control over defense.”

“We have urged her to compromise, and will continue to do so, but she will not listen to us if we ask her to consent to her own political oblivion,” he observed.

When Mr. Moragoda said on December 26 that during his U.S. visit he planned to convey to the Deputy Secretary [Richard Armitage] that the international community should understand that the President caused the crisis and was prolonging it with her obstinacy, Mr. Lunstead replied that the U.S. understood that the President had caused the crisis but its public statements had to be relatively even-handed.

The Indian efforts, however, did not bear fruit as Ms. Kumaratunga dissolved Parliament soon and called fresh elections that were held in April 2004 and brought her party back to power. This is a typical Sri Lankan style of solving the ethnic problem. However, it must be remembered that BJP, while still observing the ‘hands off’ policy, did its best to bring an end to the civil war. Now let us look at the other side of the story when Sonia’s Congress Party came into power.

As soon as the Congress came to power in Delhi, there were a series of shuttle diplomacy between Delhi and Colombo, as if politicians on both sides had found new vigour to seal up a life-long friendship. The unsuspecting Eelam Tamils did not realise that they were scheming a new plan to end the LTTE insurgency in SL once and for all. Since then Sri Lankan servicemen were taken in batches to the best military academies in India to be trained in all branches of jungle and land warfare. Radars against LTTE aerial attacks were supplied by India. Maritime security and aerial surveillance were also provided. Most of these were done at no cost to Sri Lanka. Arms were leased. This enabled Rajapaksa to purchase heavy weapons from China and Pakistan. As a result by 2006 the balance of power shifted heavily in favour of SL.

By 2008 the Tigers were withdrawing from Jaffna, Northern Province and finally from the East. When the LTTE started withdrawing from Kilinochi it was apparent to most of the Tiger leaders the battle was lost, but they were hoping foreign intervention would bring about a ceasefire. Most of the civilians fearing reprisals from the Sinhalese dominated army withdrew with the Tigers. This is when the Europeans and US, concerned of the rising casualties, put into operation plans to save the 400,000 civilians, but Sonia’s Congress were looking for ways of preventing US and allies from stepping into Sri Lanka.

Confidential U.S. Embassy cables released by WikiLeaks shows how New Delhi played all sides and discouraged international attempts to halt the operations and save the civilians. If not for India, international pressure on Sri Lanka would have halted military operations and forced both parties to the negotiating table in the final days of the war in 2009. The cables revealed that India conveyed its concern to Sri Lanka several times about the “perilous” situation that civilians caught in the fighting were, but it was not opposed to the anti-LTTE operations - that is, like Hitler, they planning a final solution to the Tamil fight for liberation.

The cables also show that India was worried about the Sri Lankan President's “post-conflict intentions,” though it believed that there was a better chance of persuading him to offer Sri Lankan Tamils an inclusive political settlement after the fighting ended. Now it is two years since the fighting ended; surely India cannot be unaware that sufferings of the people since then have multiplied. No political solution is in sight. The only scenario visible to all is that Tamil lands are being colonized and the people are facing extinction in their homeland.

After its efforts to halt the operation failed, the international community resigned itself to playing a post-conflict role by using its economic leverage, acknowledging that it had to rope in India for this. In the closing stages of the war, New Delhi played all sides, always sharing the concern of the international community over the humanitarian situation and alleged civilian casualties in the Sri Lankan military campaign, but discouraging any move by the West to halt the operations.

In January 2009, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee made a “short notice” visit to Sri Lanka. The Indian Deputy High Commissioner in Colombo, Vikram Misri, briefed the U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission and other diplomats about the visit, in a cable dated January 29, 2009.

At a two-hour meeting at President Rajapaksa's residence, attended by the army chief, defense secretary and other top officials, Mr. Mukherjee stressed he was in Colombo with “no objective other than to ensure that human rights and safety of civilians were protected,” indirectly giving them license to finish LTTE and the hardcore Tamils.

Mr. Misri told the diplomats that while domestic political considerations were a factor in the Indian calculus, “New Delhi is deeply worried about the humanitarian crisis in the Vanni. He added that Indians throughout the country, not just in Tamil Nadu, are troubled by the high level of casualties sustained by Tamil civilians caught in the crossfire.”

From Mr. Mukherjee's statement at the end of his visit, it was clear that India did not oppose the operations. “I stressed that military victories offer a political opportunity to restore life to normalcy in the Northern Province and throughout Sri Lanka, after twenty three years of conflict. The President assured me that this was his intent.”

This was to remain the Indian theme, except for a brief period in April 2009, when New Delhi, under pressure in the context of elections in Tamil Nadu — the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a partner in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), was feeling the heat of the Sri Lankan operations — made an attempt to press for a pause in the operations, if not a cessation, while Karunanidhi was performing his pseudo fasts.

In a meeting with U.S. Embassy Charge d'Affaires Peter Burleigh on April 15, 2009, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said the Sri Lankan government had made clear it “did not want a UN Envoy in resolving the conflict with the LTTE, nor was the GSL interested now in direct negotiations with the LTTE or in a cease-fire”, which is in a cable sent on April 15, 2009.

The Foreign Secretary told Mr. Burleigh that the Indian government had advised Sri Lanka against rejecting all such proposals out of hand and “offered a suggestion that the GSL consider offering an amnesty to all but the hard core of the LTTE.”

But he also pointed out there were questions about what constituted the LTTE's core and what modalities would be used to make such an offer. According to international law, guilt of prisoners was decided once the war was over, but not in the battle field. After all it is not a crime if one was a hardcore LTTE; they were fighting for liberation. Here Menon’s aim was that all Tamils associated with the liberation movement must be killed. Using the same yardstick, if wanting to be free is such a sin, all the Indians involved in the Indian liberation movement should have been killed.

The Foreign Secretary “acknowledged that the space for such discussions was small and flagged President Rajapaksa's electoral considerations as militating against anything that could be viewed as a concession to the LTTE. ‘Quiet diplomacy' outside of Sri Lanka faced serious challenges and the Sri Lankan government would have to ‘be dragged, kicking and screaming' to talks.”

Mr. Menon highlighted another problem: in “India's view, the group was sending conflicting signals and there was a real question as to who spoke for Prabhakaran”. He also questioned whether Prabhakaran understood the situation he faced. What was the situation he faced? He wanted his people to be free. Was that a crime?

Ruling out the possibility of Indian involvement in any such process between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, Mr. Menon told the U.S. official that the ongoing elections in India made such efforts “impossible.” So what is important is not the safety of the 400,000 civilians, but Congress winning the elections in India.

Still, he left Mr. Burleigh with the impression that India was not opposed to the idea of talks at that late stage. (I suppose when all the Tamils are dead.)

“He asked whether the U.S. was interested in such talks and said India would think about participation, perhaps with other states under UN auspices, in an effort to obtain a peaceful conclusion to the conflict,” the charge wrote in the cable.

Three weeks later, U.K. Special Envoy for Sri Lanka Des Browne, visiting New Delhi on May 6-7, heard from Foreign Secretary Menon and National Security Adviser (NSA) M.K. Narayanan(cable, May 13, 2009), that while there was “domestic political pressure” on India to do more on Sri Lanka due to the ongoing elections (the Tamil Nadu Assembly election was on May 13), “there was little anyone could do to alleviate the fighting as Sri Lanka government forces moved towards the end game of defeating the LTTE.”

A British High Commission contact briefing the U.S. Embassy political counselor on this meeting said the Indian officials were concerned about the humanitarian situation, but “were more upbeat on chances to persuade President Rajapaksa to offer Tamils a political solution once fighting had ended.

The two Indian officials were “slightly more optimistic of the chances to persuade President Rajapaksa to offer the Tamils a genuinely inclusive political settlement once fighting had ended. It was the Indians' impression that President Rajapaksa believed this was his moment in history, i.e., a chance to bring peace to the island for good, but that the Sri Lankan Army was an obstacle, having been emboldened by its victory over the LTTE.” They told Mr. Browne that if Sri Lanka did not implement the “13th Amendment Plus” devolution plan quickly, a new terrorist movement could quickly fill the vacuum left by the LTTE's defeat. (The only problem duo were concerned with was the Indian elections and future trouble from the Tamils. The security of Eelam Tamils was the least on their agenda.)

Their advice to the British special envoy: it was “useful to have Sri Lanka on the UNSC's agenda, and to issue periodic Presidential Statements, but it would be counterproductive for the UN to ‘gang up' on Colombo; providing Rajapaksa with a rationale for fighting off international pressure would only serve to bolster his domestic political standing.”  That was why India blocked all efforts by the West to make Sri Lanka accountable in Geneva.

On May 15, the U.S. Charge met Mr. Menon again for “a discussion on the urgent humanitarian situation” in Sri Lanka, in a cable sent on May 15, 2009.

Acknowledging the “dire situation,” the Foreign Secretary said pressure needed to be put on the Sri Lankan government to avoid civilian causalities. But once again, “he cautioned that bilateral diplomacy would be more effective than highly public pressure in the UN Security Council or the Human Rights Council.”

By then, under pressure from UPA coalition partner and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, New Delhi had already tried to get the Sri Lankan government to go easy on the war-front.

On April 23, Mr. Burleigh wrote (in cable 203792 ) of his meeting that day with the Indian Foreign Secretary. Mr. Menon told him that in a phone call to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later that day, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee would propose that the U.S. and India coordinate an international effort to force the Sri Lankan government “to take appropriate political steps to bring stability to Sri Lanka and a return to normalcy in the Tamil regions.”  Has India done this to date?

He told Mr. Burleigh that the Indian Cabinet had decided to make “a new appeal to pause military operations” and provide relief to civilians trapped in the war zone. This was an attempt to save their skin in the Tamil Nadu elections.

Mr. Menon and Mr. Narayanan then made a quick visit to Colombo on April 24. On their return, the NSA told Mr. Burleigh, in a cable sent on April 25, that the Sri Lankan President had “more or less” committed to “a cessation of hostilities”.

Mr. Rajapakse would make the announcement on April 27 after consulting his Cabinet. Mr. Narayanan asked the U.S. to “keep quiet” about it until it came.

The announcement did come, but not for a cessation of hostilities. Declaring that combat operations had ended, the Sri Lankan government announced heavy-calibre weapons would no longer be used. The Defence Ministry warned this was not a cessation of hostilities or ceasefire, and said the push into a 10-km swathe of land where the LTTE leader and the members of his inner circle were holed in would continue.

Briefing Delhi-based diplomats during his May 6-7 visit, Des Browne, the U.K. special envoy, said he believed Sri Lanka could be forced through monetary inducements to accept a post-conflict role for the international community, according to the cable sent on May 13, 2009.

“At the end of the day they'll want the money,” Mr. Burleigh quoted the U.K. special envoy as saying. Mr. Browne noted that the government had expended “vast resources” for the war, and emphasised India's “unique role” in the post-conflict scene.

But it appears that the U.S. was worried India might shy away from such a role (that is exactly what has happened), and Mr. Burliegh suggested in his cable that “the time is ripe to press India to work more concretely with us on Sri Lanka issues.”

The Indian leaders would not have dreamt that all their wicked manipulations would be revealed to the world this soon. Mahatma Gandhi experimented with the truth. I do not know what lessons the Indians learnt from those experiments. Julian Assange did not waste his time experimenting with the truth; he just revealed the truth and we Tamils should be eternally grateful to him.

The latest set of India-related cables released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks include some that have a potential to embarrass India's power elite. The cable on March 15 describes MK 'Mike' Narayanan as a long-time Gandhi family loyalist who is part of the traditional "coterie" around the Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Narayanan along with Principal Secretary TKA Nair, the cable states, constitute a Keralite "mafia" in the Prime Minister's Office. "In a bureaucratic culture dominated by North Indian Hindi speakers, this Keralite lock on the PM's inner bureaucratic circle represents something of an anomaly, which could in the long term create new faultlines around the Prime Minister," the leaked document elaborates on the impact of the "Keralite mafia."

The cable goes on to state that Narayanan is from a Kerala Nair (non-Brahmin, upper caste) family. A classified cable of the US embassy in India shows that the US embassy made a particular note of the bias of M K Narayanan, the former National Security Advisor (NSA) of India, against the LTTE. “US Consulate General Chennai officials recall his repeatedly expressed and profound distaste for the LTTE,” notes the cable. Narayanan was the chief of India’s Intelligence Bureau during the IPKF times and was the NSA during the Vanni war. He and the present NSA, Shiv Shankar Menon, handled India’s role in the war and in the way the war ended. During the war, both were accused of wielding ‘extra-parliamentary’ powers.

In addition to the Keralite mafias mentioned above two more have come into scrutiny. They are brothers Vijay Nambiar and Satish Nambiar. Charges submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the US-based Tamil’s Against Genocide (TAG) and the Swiss Council of Eelam Tamils (SCET) refer to Vijay Nambiar’s time as the UN’s Chief of Staff when he was sent to Colombo to aid negotiations towards an end to the country’s lengthy civil war.

Following instructions from Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in May 2009 Nambiar told surrendering Tamil Tigers that they would be safe to cross no-mans land if they hoisted a white flag. “Just walk across to the troops, slowly! With a white flag and comply with instructions carefully. The soldiers are nervous about suicide bombers,” said a text from foreign secretary Palitha Kohona, sent via the Red Cross.

But in what has come to be known as the ‘white flag incident’, all were gunned down in what observers say would be tantamount to a war crime. Nambiar’s complicity or involvement in the incident is yet to be fully investigated. The submission by the two groups, TAG and SCET, asks “whether VIJAY NAMBIAR was in fact an innocent neutral intermediary or in fact a co-perpetrator within the negotiation-related community.

It also pours doubt on the efficacy of Nambiar’s presence there, given that his brother, Satish Nambiar, was at the time working as an advisor to the Sri Lankan military, as well as questioning his “subjective knowledge” of the Sri Lankan Army’s “widely (or routinely) adhered to policy of executing surrendering [Tamil] combatants, after generally blindfolding and stripping them naked”.

Last week Mrs Gandhi, following her Commonwealth lecture in London, at the reception for invited guests, senior members of the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) raised issues regarding the plight of Tamil women in Sri Lanka. Mrs. Gandhi said that she was very concerned about the situation in Sri Lanka. She said that the Congress lead coalition government has asserted their serious concerns to the Government of Sri Lanka. She said that Tamils from the war torn parts of Sri Lanka must be rehabilitated without further delay. Replying to evidence of breach of international law and crimes against humanity, Mrs. Gandhi said “I have myself, seen that video and we are very concerned”. After viewing what has she done?

When asked whether she would support an international investigation into war crimes alleged to have been committed in Sri Lanka, Mrs. Gandhi very politely asked them to refer that question to Mr. Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary General . What has Sharma to do with war crimes? In is for India to do something? This clearly showed that she had no intention to make SL accountable. When members told Mrs. Gandhi about the militarised north and the crimes including systematic rape of women by the military, again Mrs. Gandhi said that “I am very very concerned about the situation in Sri Lanka. Tamils should have their rights restored and it’s their rights you know. We are with the Tamils, you must know, we are with the Tamils.” She can’t be unaware that India was the one who the Tamils to that state.

If GTF members thought that Mrs. Gandhi would ever help the Tamils, they must be wallowing in a sweat dreamland. It must be remembered, after the slaughter of 60, 000 civilians and the defeat of LTTE, Sonia’s daughter, Priyanka, said that it was natural to take revenge. Her son, Rahul, arrogantly said that his attitude on LTTE was well known, as if his opinions mattered so much. No one disputes that sooner or later the Tamils will have to come to terms with India. US and Europeans have assured the Transnational Government of Tamil Ealam that they were aware of the plight of the Tamils, but India has to be brought into the equation for a solution. If the Tamils place any hope on Sonia’s Congress, or for that matter Karunanidhi, they are in for a rude shock.

A former respected Indian diplomat,M.K Bhadrakumar, lamented as follows:-

“As the curtain comes down and we leave the theatre, the spectacle continues to haunt us. We feel a deep unease and can't quite figure out the reason. Something rankles somewhere. And then we realise we have blood on our hands.

Not only our hands, but our whole body and deeper down, our conscience -- what remains of it after the mundane battles of our day-to-day life is also dripping with blood.

Prabhakaran's blood. No, it is not only Prabhakaran's, but also of 70,000 Sri Lankan Tamils who have perished in the unspeakable violence through the past quarter century.

All the pujas we may perform to our favourite Lord Ganesh each morning and evening religiously before we march ahead in our life from success to success cannot wash away the guilt we are bearing -- the curse of the 70,000 dead souls.

Our children and grandchildren will surely inherit the great curse. Oh, God, what a bitter legacy!”

However Shivshanker Menon dismissed the Indian genocide as if it is a thing of the past. A couple of months ago he remarked that the Tamils in the progressive Tamil Nadu will have no time for Eelam Tamils as they did in the past. These people may be high caste Hindus. They may be well versed in the Hindu scriptures and that is where their knowledge ends. The Hindu religion preaches Love and Compassion, not only for human beings, but also for animals. For a Hindu or a Buddhist killing a chicken is a sin, but for these people massacring 60,000 men, women and children in cold blood in one week is a thing of the past. Truly power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely. May the souls rest in peace.

Visvanathan