May 18: Tamil Genocide Rememberance Day

Today, Tamil speaking communities live in countries like Sri lanka, India(Tamil Nadu), Singapore, Malaysia and Mauritius and other Southeast asian countries.

Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamili, was used to write the early form of Tamil. The Tamili script is "oldest" known writing system of India dating back to 600 BC. While Sanskrit does not have an native writing script: from around the turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts.

Tamilians form the biggest minority in Sri lanka. Sri Lanka got its independence from the British Empire in 1948. Shortly after gaining independence, Sinhalese was recognised as the sole official language of the nation. Sinhalese people are the largest ethic group in Sri lanka. Violent persecution erupted in the form of the 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms, often carried out by the majority Sinhalese mobs with state support. This led to the birth of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam called as LTTE led by Velupillai Prabhakaran.

LTTE wanted to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the northeast part of the island in response to violent persecution and discriminatory policies against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Government. This led Sri lankan civil war fought between LTTE and Sri lankan Government which lasted from 1983 to 2009. 

LTTE possessed its own military, infantry, navy and air force, which is unique to its nature. Although most people in LTTE were Hindus, the LTTE was an avowedly secular organisation; religion did not play any significant part in its ideology. LTTE chief Prabhakaran criticised what he saw as the oppressive features of traditional Hindu Tamil society, such as the caste system and gender inequality. He also demanded international community to draw a clear and comprehensive definition of the concept of terrorism that would distinguish between freedom struggles based on the right to self-determination and blind terrorist acts based on fanaticism. LTTE used female cadres for military engagements. LTTE's recruitment of women impelled the subsequent reconstruction of the Tamil woman from the traditional ideal of the auspicious, fecund wife to the androgynous Armed Virgin. 

The Civil war which lasted for 3 decades came to an end when Sri lankan army defeated LTTE in May 2009. During the final war, over 1,00,000 Tamil civilians were struck between two sides. They confined within 3 sq.km in Mullivaikkal, a village on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka which was declared as No fire zone by Sri lankan military. But, after civilians entered the place, Sri lankan military started heavy shelling and attacked civilians with cluster bombs. According to the UN, between 40,000–70,000 entrapped Tamil civilians were killed by the actions of Sinhala Government Forces with the large majority of these civilian deaths being the result of indiscriminate shelling on the rebel held areas, including hospitals, UN hub and near a Red Cross ship by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.

According to International Truth and Justice Project's report in the year 2021, the final phase of the civil war in 2009 has resulted in the death of 169,796 Tamil civilians. In the year 2011, Bishop Joseph's team from Mannar said it believed there were as many as 146,000 Tamil people still unaccounted for during the last phase of fighting.

On 18 May 2010, Channel 4 News broadcast interviews with two Sri Lankan soldiers who claimed that they had been given orders from "the top" to summarily execute all ethnic Tamils, civilians as well as fighters.

One of the soldiers who served in the 58 Division of the Sri Lankan Army tearfully recounted the heinous crimes committed by fellow soldiers in 2009:

        "They shoot people at random, stab people, rape them, cut their tongues out, cut women’s breasts off. I have witnessed all this with my own eyes.

        I saw a lot of small children, who were so innocent, getting killed in large numbers. A large number of elders were also killed.

        If they wanted to rape a Tamil girl, they could just beat her and do it. If her parents tried to stop them, they could beat them or kill them. It was their empire.

        I saw the naked dead bodies of women without heads and other parts of their bodies. I saw a mother and child dead and the child’s body was without its head.”

Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day is observed by Sri Lankan Tamil people to remember those who died in the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. It is held each year on 18 May, the date on which the civil war ended in 2009, and is named after Mullivaikkal, a village on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka which was the scene of the final battle of the civil war.

In a 2012 internal review of UN's conduct during the last stages of the Sri Lankan civil war, it was found that various UN agencies had failed to protect Tamil civilians at every level, particularly by withdrawing its staff from the war zone and by withholding evidence of widespread government shelling. In 2016 then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged UN's failures in Sri Lankan genocide which he named as examples of its "never again" repeating itself.

However, there is no official commemoration for the thousands of Tamil civilians killed in the civil war. From 2009 till today, Sri lanka's war crimes has been strongly shielded in UN by powerful veto-wielding members such as USA, China and Russia. 

"USA, Russia and China are advocates of freedom, peace and liberty which supports Genocide, while Hamas and LTTE are terrorist organisation that fight against genocide"