Marking the 33rd Maaveerar Naal, People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) has released a statement stressing that “Maaveerar Naal still serves as a powerful display of collective defiance against the Sri Lankan state’s narrative of a defeated Tamil nation”.
In their statement, they highlight that the roots of the conflict and the current economic collapse, Sinhala Buddhist nationalism remains unaddressed.
“The Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist state-building project sustains the marginalization and oppression of Tamils in their homeland, through the suffocating militarization of the North-East, the Sinhalization and Buddhisization of Tamil lands, and the inescapable unitary system of the Sri Lankan state”, the statement reads.
It adds that “decades of resistance to Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist politics, Tamils are repeatedly punished by the failures of the Sri Lankan government and the wilful ignorance of the general electorate”.
Given “the consistent failure and incompetence of Sinhala-Buddhist decision-making, it is more than timely to let Tamils decide their own economical and political future,” PEARL maintains.
The statement concludes by noting that:
“Despite the absence of the widespread media attention that was experienced during the protests in the South earlier this year, a shared sense of nationhood and collective struggle keeps the Tamil people united in their fight for justice, accountability and self-determination. Through this, the struggle for freedom and liberation lives on”.
Read the full statement here.