Cuba–ALBA Let Down Sri Lanka Tamils

Summary of 5-part Series: www.ronridenour.com/articles/2009/1114-rr.htm

By Ron Ridenour*

HAVANA TIMES,  Dec. 1 – “Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are our enemies… Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers,” President Fidel Castro told writer-photographer Lee Lockwood, “Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel”, Macmillan, 1967.

I think that the governments of Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua let down the entire Tamil population in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as well as the “exploited…all over the world”, by extending unconditional political support to Sri Lanka’s racist government.

Cuba did so-along with the Bolivian and Nicaraguan governments of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America-on May 27, 2009 when signing UN Human Rights Council Resolution S-11/1, which praises the government of Sri Lanka for “the promotion and protection of human rights”, while only condemning for terrorism the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which fought the government in a civil war since 1983 until their defeat on May 19, 2009.

During the last year of war the Sri Lankan government illegally and brutally interned nearly half-a-million Tamil civilians in several “welfare centers”. Half-a-year later, more than half remain entrapped. Their conditions are the opposite of “promotion and protection of human rights”. Hundreds have died and are dying for lack of food, water, basic health care. Scores have been murdered and hundreds brutally raped by Sri Lanka’s military.

In this five-part series, I present the case that Sri Lanka’s governments practice genocide. I also speculate about why the three ALBA countries on the UN Human Rights Council have decided to ignore this reality, why they disallowed an investigation into abuse of human rights, and why they support such a cruel, chauvinistic regime.  I also sketch the history of the Sinhalese and Tamils; outline the right and necessity for Tamil nationhood; delineate their struggles for equal rights; and show the geo-political power game being played out between the west and its’ sometimes antagonistic counterpart regimes in China and Iran; and conclude with the present state of affairs for Tamils.

Is it possible that the developing countries, which back Sri Lanka’s racist regime against the Tamil population, do so out of economic reasons?  China and Iran provide needed investments and technology and thus one must not criticize them politically when they back such rogue states as Sri Lanka.  Is that the case? Is this consistent with our humanitarian principles and socialist ideology?  Cannot one be a trading partner without cowing politically?

ALBA countries condemned the Tigers for using terrorism in their struggle for liberation but then they support the more brutal terrorist state.  This contradiction does not hold. I find that most if not all armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even acts of terror in the long course of warfare.

Cuba’s struggle for liberation was different, exceptionally so, but only lasted two years. FARC and PFLP have sometimes used terror in their 40+ years of struggle. But I support them in their righteous struggle. They are up against, as was the more brutal LTTE, much greater military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically.  The ANC, in South Africa’s war for liberation, acted much the same.

*Other articles by Ron Ridenour about Cuba include: Freedom of Expression and Socialism in Cuba and Fifty Years On: Cuba’s Challenges