Sri Lanka’s Tamil parties back US-Israel war against Iran

July 4, 20255 Mins read25

By W.A. Sunil

The criminal war waged by the US and Israel’s Netanyahu government against Iran has once again exposed the pro-imperialist character of Tamil bourgeois nationalist parties in Sri Lanka.

Israel launched the war against Iran on June 12, attacking its nuclear facilities, military installations and economic targets across the country, assassinating top military and civilian officials. The Trump administration fully backed Israel’s aggression and, on June 22, joined the war directly by bombing major Iranian nuclear sites.

More than 600 people, including children, have been killed, over 4,000 seriously injured, and much civilian infrastructure has been left in shambles. A fragile ceasefire proposed by Trump is now in operation and will hold only until Washington’s next move.

Amid its aggression against Iran, the Israeli Zionist regime has continuously intensified its ethnic cleansing onslaught in Gaza, killing hundreds, including those seeking food, and aid workers trying to serve them.

US imperialism is determined to re-establish direct neo-colonial dominance over Iran, which it lost 45 years ago following the toppling of CIA-backed Reza Shah Pahlavi in the 1979 revolution. It is part of a broader strategy to maintain control over the oil-rich Middle East and to prepare for war against Russia and China.

Hundreds of thousands of workers, young people, and the oppressed internationally have taken to the streets to express their outrage over the war on Iran and the genocide in Gaza.

During the past two weeks, however, none of the political parties of the Tamil bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka has criticized, let alone condemned this illegal imperialist war of aggression. Largely they have simply said nothing.

This includes the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), and Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), among others.

This is no surprise. All of these parties have cultivated close relations with the imperialist powers, including the US, particularly since the end of the 26-year communal war waged by successive Colombo governments against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in May 2009.

Tamil groups cravenly support the global geo-strategic interests of Washington and other powers—particularly against China—and appeal to them to pressure the Colombo regime to concede privileges for the Tamil elite, as part of a power-sharing arrangement for the North and East of the island.

ITAK MP Kaveendiran Kodeeswaran made one of the few remarks on June 19 in parliament, declaring: “Both countries supported the Sri Lankan government in the final stages of the civil war. Now Iran itself is experiencing the same situation.”

By declaring a plague on both houses, Kodeeswaran consciously covers up the fact that US imperialism and its proxy Israel waged an unprovoked war of aggression against a historically oppressed nation. Indirectly, he implies that Iran is responsible for the “situation,” equating the opportunist decisions of the Iranian regime with the Iranian masses who bear the brunt of the war.

Kodeeswaran follows this utterly unprincipled stance, by focusing on the narrow, parochial interests of the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie. He called for the Colombo government to join “other countries to support stopping the war.” Why? Not because of the criminal imperialist character of the conflict because “Sri Lanka’s economy is in a fragile situation” and must be protected.

An article published on June 22 in the Tamil Guardian entitled “Israel, Iran, and Sri Lanka” is devoted entirely to the potential economic impact of the war on Iran, proposing that the Tamil bourgeoisie exploit the situation to enhance its interests in Sri Lanka. The UK-based website is the voice of the well-off layers of the Tamil diaspora.

The article declared: “For Colombo, the fallout could have far-reaching economic and political consequences. It then added: “As global instability forces Colombo to look outward for economic lifelines, international partners must seize this moment to press for long-overdue reforms.”

By “international partners,” the Tamil elite mean the imperialist powers, including the US, that are waging wars in the Middle East, against Russia in Ukraine and are preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific against China. And moreover, these powers, along with India, fully backed Colombo’s communal war that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in the final months.

Even as it warns that the war against Iran could turn into a global conflict, the Tamil Guardian is solely concerned about the interests of the Tamil bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka, above all “meaningful autonomy for the Tamil homeland”—that is, greater scope for it to exploit the Tamil working class and oppressed masses.

Tamil oppressed workers and the poor in Sri Lanka have faced discrimination and violence by Colombo regimes for decades, which continues under the current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power government. Just as the Tamil elites contemptuously treat the oppressed masses in Iran and Palestinians in Gaza, so they regard the Tamil masses with the same contempt.

The Tamil elites propagate the same insidious and reactionary argument on the US/Israeli bombardment of Iran as they have over the Israeli genocide: no one opposed the 26-year communal war against the LTTE so Tamils should do and say nothing about the plight of the masses in the Middle East.

This is another lie. Even if we take only those final months of war, when Tamil civilians faced massacre after massacre, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in major cities of imperialist countries against communal war in Sri Lanka. It was the leaders of Tamil parties, including the LTTE, who kept making futile appeals for peace to the same powers that were providing political and military support for the Colombo government’s bloody assault.

Tamil masses are continuously campaigning to find out the truth about what happened to their loved ones who surrendered to the military, about those disappeared, and justice for war crimes.

The position of the Tamil capitalist parties is little different from that of the JVP/NPP government and the rest of the Colombo political establishment.

On June 23, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a carefully crafted three-sentence statement, avoiding any mention of the US and Israel, and making criticism of their illegal and unprovoked war against Iran. Its expressions of “grave concern” and appeals for “de-escalation” and “dialogue” were driven above all by concern not to alienate US imperialism and of the economic impact of the conflict.

Workers, youth, and students must reject both Tamil and Sinhala capitalist parties’ cynical, bankrupt and pro-imperialist positions and should take a bold stand against the imperialist criminal war drive.

The working class in Sri Lanka—Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim—stand in the same trench as their class brothers in Iran, Gaza, throughout the Middle East, including Israel, and internationally, including in the US. What is unfolding in Europe, in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific is a global conflict between nuclear-armed powers that threatens humanity with catastrophe.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and its sister parties of International Committee of the Fourth International base themselves on the internationalist and Marxist principle of defending oppressed nations from the onslaught of imperialism through the unified struggle of the working class and oppressed.

The catastrophe of world war can only be prevented by building an international anti-war movement of the working class based on a socialist program.

In Sri Lanka, the SEP fights to unite Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim workers to oppose all forms of discrimination and communalism, demand with the withdrawal of all troops from the North and East and defend democratic rights. As part of this struggle, we call on workers and the poor to rally for the fight for a Sri Lanka–Eelam Socialist Republic.

The SEP and the IYSSE have organised public meetings on the theme: Oppose US-Israel war on Iran!

We urge you to attend these meetings, which will discuss the US war drive and US-Israel aggression against Iran and how to fight it.