Sri Lanka A Home For Everyone

The Northern Province in Sri Lanka was a part of the ancient kingdom of Raja-Rata from around 548 BC to 1300 AD with the capital at Anuradhapura and later Polonnaruwa. A Sinhalese community flourished in Yapa Patuna which is today known as the Jaffna peninsula.

As a result of Tamil invasions from South India, the central authority based in the capitals Anuradhapura and later Polonnaruwa collapsed and the Sinhalese withdrew in to the interior (South) of the island. Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Kurunegala, Dambadeniya, Kotte and, after the arrival of the Portuguese, Kandy.

The movement of the Sinhala polity to the south of the island (and later to the centre at Kandy - abandoning the coastal areas to the Portuguese and Tamil (mainly fisherman) settlers from South India) and the weakening of central authority resulted in the emergence of nine small kingdoms - one of which was the Kingdom of Jaffnapatnum. Jaffna by this time had a predominantly Tamil population consisting of the remnants of the invading armies from South India and slow, continuous settlement from South India.

Since Independence, Jaffna, an ancient Sinhala homeland, was the home for Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese. In the last twenty years the murderous LTTE and their collaborators have ethnically cleansed Jaffna of first the Sinhalese and then the Muslims. ["LTTE insurgents expelled some 46,000 Muslim inhabitants from their homes in 1990 - virtually the entire Muslim population"] (extract from US state department Human Rights report on Sri Lanka - published March 1996)

If the present peace proposals fail to bring peace to Sri Lanka, more radical steps must be taken to break the back-bone of the separatist Eelam movement. There is growing support amongst the Sinhalese and the Muslims to reverse the ethnic cleansing carried out by the LTTE by re-settling a million, if necessary, armed, Sinhalese and Muslims in the Northern Province. We must ensure that Sri Lanka is the home for all its various ethnic and religious groups. This is so in every corner of the country except Jaffna, which has been ethnically cleansed by the Tamil Tigers and their collaborators who have themselves now been chased out.

This course of action is both numerically and economically feasible. The Northern Province which is the hot-bed of separatist terrorist activity has between half and one million Tamil inhabitants while the Sinhalese population in the country is over 13 million, outnumbering the Tamils in the Northern province more than 13 to 1. Furthermore all the economic resources in the country are outside the Northern and Eastern provinces- i.e.- tea estates, rubber estates, factories, most of the railway systems, road systems, almost all the water reservoirs which supply agriculture and generate hydro-power, the wet zone, the best agricultural land in the country, the tourist areas, the airports, ports etc. Jaffna's contribution to the nation has been tobacco, onions, chillies and educated men and women admired by the whole nation but later replaced by terrorists.

It is important that Sri Lankans should stop allowing our country to be held hostage by a bunch of northern terrorist barbarians, and if necessary to pursue a more radical path. Extraordinary problems always need extraordinary solutions.