Tamil university students announced the launch of a new Pongu Thamil (Tamil Uprising) campaign, in solidarity with Eelam Tamils living in the Sri Lankan state, at a rally on November 9.
More than 100 people gathered at Parliament House to hear speeches and watch musical performances and dancing.
Photographs of Liberation Tigers of Eelam Tamil founder Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil flag (Puli Kodi) and maps of Tamil Eelam were featured.
Green Left was told that the Pongu Thamil campaign aims for an acknowledgement from the British government and King Charles of “the injustice of 1948”, when the British forced two self-governing nations, Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka, to merge into a single state.
“This was done without consent from Tamils,” one of the activists said. “The subsequent botched so-called decolonisation process created the conditions that enabled the oppression and Tamil people and dispossession of Tamil land by a Sinhalese elite. This resulted in the genocide of Tamil people, including pogroms, sexual violence and mass killings carried out by the Sri Lankan government.
“We want a referendum that will be supervised by the UN and conducted for an Eelam Tamil homeland in the North-East of [Sri Lanka]. We also demand full self-determination for the Tamil people.”
