S.B.C. Halaldeen  

An expatriate formerly of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service  

Sri Lanka is the latest addition to the list of countries where Muslims are being persecuted and chased from their homes where they have been living for generations, peacefully with members of other communities. The reason is that they did not submit to the evil designs of the Zionist lobby which is very active in some quarters of Sri Lanka today.  

Many Muslims have been murdered, their women raped, the children abused and their properties looted or destroyed by terrorists and the so-called Peace Keeping Force. According to available statistics, 276 Muslims have been murdered and 853 have been injured since the signing of the indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord on July 29, 1987. Losses to property belonging to Muslims exceed 5 billion rupees. Nearly 79,000 Muslims have fled their homes and had become refugees in comparatively sale areas.  

The Irony is that several Muslim families who owned land at Unnichchai, a hamlet in Eastern Province of Sri Lanka wore driven away by the Tamil terrorists and they took shorter in hastily constructed cadjan huts at Karbala Nagar in Kattankudy. It was no haven for them, for their huts and the few belongings they had were razed to the ground by the Tamil terrorists and they had to run again for their lives even from. The "safe" place.  

They are now scattered in schools mosque compounds and public places turned into refugee centres. The major clashes between the Tamils and the Muslims in Kinniya and Mutur in the Trincomalee district, the violent clashes that took place more recently between the Tamils and the Muslims at Kattankudy and Kalmunai situated in the Batticaloa district and minor skirmishes reported from other areas, appear to be just the top of the iceberg.  

That Muslims of Sri Lanka living in Eastern Province speak Tamil is a fact. But, this does not mean that they are Tamils by race For example, many non-Arabs speak Arabic but that does not make them Arabs.  

A hundred years ago-in 1888, the, then leader of the Tamil community, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan asserted both in the Legislative Council of Ceylon and in the Royal Asiatic Society (Ceylon Branch) that Ceylon Moors were Tamils by race and Muslims by religion. The Muslims were offended by this deliberate Misrepresentation or misinterpretation. The them President of the Moors Association, I.L.M. Abdul Azeez wrote a book proving beyond doubt that the Ceylon Moors were descended from the Arab traders who had settled in the island several centuries ago and that they were not Tamils.  

Soon after Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948, the leader of the Tamil Congress, G.G. Ponnabbalam once again repeated that Muslims of Sri Lanka were Tamils by race. This time, the leader of Ceylon Moors. Sir Razik Fareed took umbrage and reiterated that by no stretch of imagination could the Ceylon Moors be considered Tamils and demanded that Tamil head teachers in government Muslim schools should be replaced with Muslim hand teachers.  

More recently, when representatives of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and the Muslims had met, Vice President of the TULF, R. Sampanthan is said to have prefaced his remarks with the statement: "We are all Tamil speaking people" To this, one Muslim leader had promptly retorted. "There is no point in saying that. If you do not accept that we are separate and proceed to find a meeting point from that position, there is no point in continuing discussions about Tamil-Muslim unity".  

The simple fact is that the Muslims of Sri Lanka have a separate religious, ethnic and cultural identity. In short they have an identity of their own. Any attempt to brand them as Tamil Muslims or Sinhala Muslims will miserably fail.  

Be that as it may, there is a strong feeling among many Sri Lankan Muslims that President Junius Jayewardena should take a lion's share of the blame for the present conflict of the Sri Lankan Muslims with the Tamil Tigers. Rightly or wrongly, many feel that in his anxiety to find a solution to the Sinhala-Tamil ethnic conflict, President Jayewardene appears to have sacrificed the Muslims although at various times he promised to safeguard the interests of the Muslim community.  

According to some, the "theatre of war" between the Tamils and the Sinhalese has now shifted from Northern Province to Eastern Province but this time, the parties to the conflict are not Sinhalese and Tamils but Muslims and Tamils.  

Long before the Indo-Sri Lanka peace accord was signed the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka had proposed a separate Muslim majority provincial Council and opposed a merger of Northern and Eastern Provinces. The demand of the Muslims was that the predominantly Muslim areas in Eastern Province should be linked together as a single political and administrative entity because the Muslim dominated areas were not adjacent to each other. They pointed out that this would enable the geographically separate Muslim areas to be a single unit based on the model of the Indian Union territory of Pondicherry where Karaikal, Mate, Pondicherry and Yenam were located within the states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu etc., without being territorially contiguous and yet functioning as an entity.  

In the July 29 peace accord signed between India and Sri Lanka, there are no safeguards for Muslims of Eastern Province.  

At present 33 percent of population in Eastern Province id Muslim whilst Tamils and Sinhalese are 41 percent and 26 percent respectively. The Muslims can thus hold the balance in any political reckoning. Neither the Tamils nor the Sinhalese will be able to form a provincial government without the assistance of Muslims. But, there is a move to detach the preponderating Sinhalese area in the Ampara district, from Eastern Province. The Tamils too back this proposal. If this happens, The Muslims will be in the lurch and at the mercy of the Tamils. The Muslims will be a minority within a minority.  

If Ampara is not detached from Eastern Province, the Muslims and the Sinhalese could jointly tip the balance of scale in their favour in a referendum. It may be that the Tamil terrorists plan to force the Muslims into submission, hence the killings, looting and raping of innocent Muslims during the recent past by Tamil terrorists.  

The Zionist-dominated world press which has been very vociferous about the sufferings of the Tamils has all of a sudden become dumb evidently because the victims this time are Muslims The world at large does not know the sufferings of the Muslims living in Eastern and Northern Provinces of Sri Lanka.  

The Indo-Sri Lanka peace accord provides for two political consultations elections to a council for both the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka and later, a referendum in Eastern Province, to decide whether both north and east should be merged into one unit.  

The Muslims should be free to choose in these elections. They cannot be intimidated into accepting what is dictated to by force. It is in the interest of the Sinhalese and the Tamils to woo the Muslims and explain the merits of their viewpoints and win their support in the elections rather than using intimidatory tactics to achieve their purpose.