President-Elect Barack Obama and the Oppressed Eelam Tamils


(By Dr C P Thiagarajah, UK Tamil News, 20 11 2008) - US President-Elect Barack Obama’s own experience of racial discrimination in the US and among his age group will urge him to intervene in the Tamils problem to stop genocide of the Tamils and erosion of their Human Rights by another major ethnic group, the Sinhalese, just because the majority Sinhalese wants to be supremacists. The Sinhalese had been ruining the Tamils civilizations for the last 30 years by aerial bombardment and multi-barrel gun bombardment. The Sinhala government is not heeding to saner counseling of the UN or other NGOs like AI or the Red Cross to settle for peace. Reports from these organizations are many. This is the easiest problem to solve because Sri-Lanka is a small country and cannot afford to fight a war violating International laws. The Sri-Lankan government is fighting a war on borrowed money and denies any development of the Tamil homeland of the East and North. Almost the entire Tamil population had been displaced due to Sinhala aggression. Words cannot describe the atrocities heaped on the Tamils. It is a shame for any cultured race to allow such HR violations to go unchecked.

Barack Obama was elected president of USA on 4 November 2008 by 62.5% of the voters and will take office on 20 January 2009. This was the highest voters turn out since 1960. This is an achievement of great importance following the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to eradicate racial discrimination of the minorities in that great country. The act was in response to the famous Washington protest march previous year urging the government to change the then existing discriminatory laws.

Even after the passing of the Civil Rights Act the struggle of the black people continued to make sure that that they get the same rights and treatment as every one else. By now the ethnic population of USA had reached 45%. They also tried hard to elect a black president. A lot of people thought Obama could not win this election because of the belief that some Americans were still racist. The present young generation are liberal minded and realistic of human rights. They joined hands and as a result Obama will be the first African-American president in American history. The US has shown the world that it has come a long way in 50 years…………

President-Elect Barack Obama and the Oppressed Eelam Tamils

Barack Obama was elected president of USA on 4 November 2008 by 62.5% of the voters and will take office on 20 January 2009. This was the highest voters turn out since 1960. This is an achievement of great importance following the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to eradicate racial discrimination of the minorities in that great country. The act was in response to the famous Washington protest march previous year urging the government to change the then existing discriminatory laws. Even after the passing of the Civil Rights Act the struggle of the black people continued to make sure that that they get the same rights and treatment as every one else. By now the ethnic population of USA had reached 45%. They also tried hard to elect a black president. A lot of people thought Obama could not win this election because of the belief that some Americans were still racist. The present young generation are liberal minded and realistic of human rights. They joined hands and as a result Obama will be the first African-American president in American history. The US has shown the world that it has come a long way in 50 years.

Anybody is forced to think of the likely magic that Obama cast over the USA voters to achieve this feat. Americans themselves had not undergone any great ideological conversions. They are still a centre right society. 2004 exit polls showed that 21% of tne population were liberal left, 45% moderate, 34% conservatives. This year on Tuesday pollsters showed that there was not much of change in their views; that 22% were still liberal, 44% moderate and 34% conservatives.

The major factors that influenced the voters were a) collapsing America’s economy b) its military in two bloody quack mires, c) its government was being run by an ignorant dolt, now universally accepted as a national disaster.
The other undeniable factor was Obam’s charm and appeal to the USA voters across a cross section of voters both white and blacks. Barack Obama has spoken often of his multicultural background. He was originally named Barack Hussein Obama II, in by their parents, Kenyan born father Barack Hussein Obama I and his white mother from Kansas. They met at the University of Hawaii as undergraduates in a Russian language class. Obama’s father was 23 years and his mother was 18 years old at the time. He was thus a biracial child or “hapa”-half-and half in Hawaiian speech. He was born in Honolulu Hawaii on August 4 1961 at 7.24 pm.

His case was a case of the ‘comeback kid’. His father left his mother and Obama in 1963 when he was 2 years old and went to Harward University to do a Phd. He could not afford to take a family with him to Harward. After his parents divorced and his father returned to Africa, Obama stayed with his mother and was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. His father died in 1982 in a car crash in Kenya, which sad news he heard when he was working in New York. Obama went to Kenya in the summer of 1988 and visited his father’s grave.His mother married another Indonesian university student in. His mother died early of cancer in 1995. Physically he described himself as a skinny guy with a funny name.

He had good environment and educational background that turned him into a persuasive orator. Obama’s early education began in Indonesia,and at at Punahou school in Hawaii. Later he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California before completing his undergraduate degree at Columbia University, New York city. There he obtained a B A degree in 1983. Again he got a law degree JD from Harvard University in 1991. At Harward he became the first black president of the prestigious Harward Law Review. His first foray into politics started at this college when he made a speech at an anti-apathied rally. He lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He then took a series of jobs in New York. He then joined the Chicago law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, All these experience bestowed on him the gift of the gap.

His political activity at grass root level began in 1985 in Chicago when he started work as a community worker/organizer. Working in the City’s South Side he gained experience in advocacy work; inducing the black community to be proactive in politics from which they kept away due to discrimination and apathy brought upon them by white men’s policy of segregation. .

Obama launched his political career from the Chicago base he had established as a community worker. He had political credentials before this. He was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 and then as a Democratic U.S. senator from Illinois in 2004 beating Republican candidate Alan Keyes. and remained as one since 2005.

He was already a good writer and earned from his writings. He published the personal memoir Dreams from My Father in 1995. and published a second book, The Audacity of Hope, in 2006. The title of the latter book was also the title of his 2004 keynote speech, and both books won Grammys for best spoken word album. Obama shot to national fame after delivering the keynote speech in support of John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic national convention.

The speech established Obama as a rising star and orator in the party. Obama announced in February of 2007 that he would run for president in 2008; his last Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, dropped from the race in June of 2008, and Obama was formally nominated at the party’s convention that August. He named Delaware senator Joe Biden to be his running mate, and they defeated Republican nominees John McCain and Sarah Palin in the general election.

Will not this humble president elect help the Eelam Tamils whose human rights are being trampled by a racist Sinhala regime? In an interview to Google he was reported to have said “So part of what I believe I bring to this office is some body who tries to see the world with a variety of different races. He then went on to explain, In latest terms, if you go to Sri Lanka, what`s been fueling a vicious civil war there, even though every one looks like exactly the same ..same in Northern Ireland”. The reason he adduced for the conflict in Sri-Lanka was the difficulty one group had in recognizing the –other.

His own experience of racial discrimination in the US and among his age group will urge him to intervene in the Tamils problem to stop genocide of the Tamils and erosion of their Human Rights by another major ethnic group, the Sinhalese, just because the majority Sinhalese wants to be supremacists. The Sinhalese had been ruining the Tamils civilizations for the last 30 years by aerial bombardment and multi-barrel gun bombardment. The Sinhala government is not heeding to saner counseling of the UN or other NGOs like AI or the Red Cross to settle for peace. Reports from these organizations are many. This is the easiest problem to solve because Sri-Lanka is a small country and cannot afford to fight a war violating International laws. The Sri-Lankan government is fighting a war on borrowed money and denies any development of the Tamil homeland of the East and North. Almost the entire Tamil population had been displaced due to Sinhala aggression. Words cannot describe the atrocities heaped on the Tamils. It is a shame for any cultured race to allow such HR violations to go unchecked.

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