The Chief Minister of the Tamil-majority Northern Province of Sri Lanka, C.V.Wigneswaran, admitted that “some unfortunate incidents” of the past had broken the unity of Tamils and Muslims but urged the Muslims to join the Tamil struggle for a federal constitution, promising that his outfit, the Tamils’ Peoples’ Council (TPC) will ensure that in a united North-East Tamil-speaking province under a federal system, the Muslims will be given a separate autonomous unit.
Notably the Northern Chief Minister did not refer to the LTTE or apologize for some of the atrocities committed against the Muslims when the Tamil Tigers controlled the North-East and expelled 75,000 to 90,000 Muslims at gunpoint in 1990 while 143 Muslims who were praying in a mosque in Kattankudy in Batticaloa were massacred in the same year.
Despite the lack of an open apology, the Northern Chief Minister, called upon the Tamils and Muslims to bury the past and unite to fight for their rights as minorities and as Tamil-speaking people.
Supporting his plea for a Tamil-Muslim joint front against Sinhalese majoritarianism, Wigneswaran reminded the Muslims that in the years after Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948, Muslims leaders from the North and East had routinely fought elections as members of the Tamil party, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) and that Muslim leader MHM. Ashraf had attended the Tamil United Liberation Front’s Vaddukoddai conference in 1976, which passed a resolution calling for an “independent Tamil Eelam”.
The Chief Minister said that federalism can be attained if ‘Tamil-speakers’ across religions unite in Sri Lanka and secure international support. Detailing out the current post conflict situation of Tamils, Wigneswaran said that while promising a new constitution, the leaders of the majority Sinhalese government have reiterated that a federal structure or a secular constitution cannot be granted because these provisions will not be accepted in the mandatory referendum. He stated that the Tamils of Sri Lanka are not asking for an independent state but only a federal system akin to what is found in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland.
