US Tamil Diaspora Condemns Photo-Ops with Sri Lankan Leaders: Tamil Politicians Who Fraternize with Oppressors Labeled Traitors
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States Tamil diaspora issues a severe condemnation of any political figures who engage in superficial photo-ops with Sri Lankan state leaders, declaring that Tamil politicians who participate in these meetings are betraying their people and will be treated as traitors to the liberation struggle.
This declaration follows decades of unaddressed state violence, starting from the 1983 Black July pogroms—which forced a mass migration to create an exclusionary Buddhist state—and culminating in the 2009 genocidal war that systematically slaughtered 146,000 innocent Tamils. No state administration, nationalist leader, or religious institution has ever apologized for these atrocities. Instead, successive governments have celebrated this ethnic cleansing while using the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to silence dissent and crush the Tamil struggle for sovereignty and fundamental rights.
For Tamil leaders to smile in photographs alongside the architects of this oppression is a deep insult to the martyrs and survivors. The US Tamil diaspora firmly rejects these normalization tactics and demands an immediate end to political theater that compromises the fight for accountability and self-determination.