22 November 2008
Hunger strike raises awareness of Tamil cause
5 September 2006
By Helen Twose: Te Waha Nui Online
The Tamil community in New Zealand recently protested against the deaths of school children in a Sri Lankan air force strike.
Three Tamil men entered the final hours of a 61-hour hunger strike, barely moving off their stretchers in Auckland’s Aotea Square.
Their minds were focused, blocking out the sounds of a nearby union protest and the “boobs on bikes” parade.
They gave up food and drink for nearly three days to bring to the attention of New Zealand the deaths of 61 Tamil schoolgirls killed by a Sri Lankan air force jet last month.
Satkunapalan Sepastiampillai, 31, said he would give up his life to secure independence for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.
Sepastiampillai fasted in memory of the schoolgirls who were killed by an air strike while attending a first-aid camp in Mullaittivu, Sri Lanka.
“I don’t care about my life,” he says. “I need to save my people’s lives.”
The protesters had regular medical checks and were advised to take liquids but refused on the basis that their family and friends in Sri Lanka were going through greater hardships than they were.
Sepastiampillai still has family in the Tamil-controlled regions of north-eastern Sri Lanka, including his wife Niroshini Pamela whom he married in January this year.
He usually phones his wife every day but curfews and power outages due to increased violence in the area have meant he has not heard from his family for more than two weeks.
The three Tamil men arrived here as refugees since 1998. All are now citizens. Fellow protester Pathmanathan Kandiah attended his citizenship ceremony on the second day of his hunger strike.
Sepastiampillai said he has two jobs to relieve the boredom while he waited for his wife to join him in New Zealand. Protest organiser Anne Uma George added many Tamils here worked hard to send money back to family.
“A lot of our boys do long hours and do two jobs because they have to support the family in Sri Lanka.”
Curfews and food shortages have pushed up the price of food in Sri Lanka said Uma George
“With the income you are getting in Sri Lanka you can’t survive,” she said. “It’s a very hard time the boys are having.”
The protest was organised by the Consortium of Tamil Association in New Zealand to raise awareness about the struggle for independence from Sri Lanka and to counter the misinformation released by the Sri Lankan government, said Uma George.
Sri Lankan army officials have disputed claims by Tamils that the site where the school girls were killed was a children’s home. The army claimed it was a counter-terrorist operation against a training camp for child soldiers.
Uma George said the Sri Lankan army was now targeting Tamil youth. “It’s a massive killing …we cannot imagine losing so many children at once. My feeling is the government is wiping out the youngsters.”
She said most of the recent killings of Tamils in Sri Lanka have been young people. “So we need to voice (that) we are not going to lose our young people, they are our future generation.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced at the end of August that more than 200,000 Sri Lankans have been displaced within their country by fighting. An additional 8,700 have fled to India.
UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told reporters in Geneva the number of people displaced since fighting flared in April between government forces and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now stands at 204,602.
Links:
- Sri Lanka strike ‘hits orphanage’
- Tamilnet – reporting to the world on Tamil affairs
- Ministry of Defence, Public Security and Law, Sri Lanka
- UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency
