Sri Lanka was a country that was torn apart by civil war. The Tamil minority in the north and east of the country were denied their democratic rights, including the use of their language, and suffered attacks by the Sinhala majority police force and violent nationalists, including the burning of their library in Jaffna in 1981. Subsequently the Tamil minority was forced to take up arms to defend themselves and fight for their right to decide their own destiny.
The subsequent civil war saw many thousands of Tamil people killed, displaced, tortured and disappeared.
The government has increasingly attacked civil society, newspaper editors who were critical of the war were killed by masked gunmen. Trade Unionists who opposed the fighting were murdered.
Now the fighting has ended, and the triumphant government is refusing to offer any concessions to the Tamil people. Hundreds of thousands of Tamils are kept in refugee and detention camps in the North of the country, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon described the conditions in the camps as “appalling.”
All the way through the war only a handful of groups opposed the war against the Tamils. One of the trade unions, the Jhangara Joint Health Workers Union was vocal in its opposition to the killing, now they are helping to send medical workers into the camps to alleviate some of the suffering. This work is dangerous, as is continued criticism of the governments anti-humanitarian policies.
The Sri Lanka Trade Union solidarity campaign aims to raise much needed funds to assist with the essential work that trade unionists are doing in Sri Lanka. The aim of the trade union movement, to foster co-operation and solidarity between workers of all nationalities and ethnicities, is a crucial message in a country like Sri Lanka, so divided by war and national oppression.
Your donation is not an act of charity, it is an act of solidarity with people struggling to unite against war, racism and poverty. Please contribute