29 September 2022

Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

 

PTA AND ITS OPPOSITION – GENOCIDE CLAIM

Laws are of two types. One like the Parliament, is current and they mark us right or wrong as per our current actions. The other is ancestral like the Queen/King and confirms Preventive  power. Examples of this are  the British Royalty, and ‘Buddhism foremost article’ in the Sri Lankan constitution. Both are Preventive heritages.

When invoked for current benefits, they would result in exponential costs. The global example is the disturbance to World Heritage – the Silk Road by China, resulting in the Covid Pandemic. At Sri Lankan level, the immediate past President disturbed the ‘Buddhism-heritage’ after using the Secular pathway to occupy the position of Head of State in the secular structure. This resulted in exponential economic collapse and the self-dismissal of the President.

 

Now, the Tamil National Alliance is on a campaign to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) https://www.themorning.lk/tna-led-anti-pta-campaign-ends-next-week/

 

Which of the above two does the PTA belong to,  at the level of the Tamil community – current need or ancestral protection?

Yesterday a Tamil elder shared his concerns with me as follows:

[Tamil Political prisoners arrested under draconian PTA  still in jail

PTA is misused to arrest and torture Tamil youths. ]

My immediate response was:

‘Many nations still carry LTTE on their Terrorists- listing. If we seek the energy of those nations, we need to confirm that through affirmative actions, in law and order that we are not Terrorists.’

If we believe that we as a community,  did not need PTA in the first instance, then we have to accept political killings as unpunishable by our current laws, and therefore we consider the Politicians who were killed to be part of the ‘freedom costs’.

This then gives us a recent origin, with armed rebels as our ancestors. That would be the Ancestral power that would support us naturally and exponentially. This would be only when there is a war.

If on the other hand, we consider the armed rebels ‘guilty’ of war crimes, using the same measure that we used with the Sri Lankan government at UN level, then PTA becomes an ancestral law that protects our ancestral powers in civilian life also. Ancestral powers awaken themselves to protect us when we are in need.

If therefore, the current campaign to repeal the PTA is successful, then any future attacks by other communities and foreign powers would need very strong current laws, to mark rights and wrongs. We would also need to campaign to repeal all cultural laws older than the PTA. The Tamil law of Theswalamai, Sinhalese Kandyan law and Muslim law in Sri Lanka, are all laws that protect our ancestral powers. By practicing them with respect, we strengthen our ancestral powers which naturally offset the ‘unsettled wrongs’ that have become sins.  That is how ancestral debts are settled.

I presented this as follows to the above mentioned Tamil elder who stated:

No response for the genocide of 147,000 Tamils [UN estimated 80,000]

My response:

But we as a community have not addressed Tamil rebels killing Tamil politicians. That is then the level of impunity that we have allowed ourselves. To that extent, we lost the moral authority to accuse another community of ‘genocide’.

If therefore PTA is repealed, so should the ‘Genocide’ accusation. That would be a huge loss to Tamil Politicians in National Parliament. These would apply also to Sinhalese Political parties such as the JVP who took up arms to come to power.