ETA History

For two agonising weeks during August- September 1977, an insane communal violence was directed by the Sinhalese community against the Tamil community in Ceylon. During that tragic period, three million Tamils were subject to the most abject humiliation and indignities at the hands of 10 million strong Sinhalese with the assistance of the police and service personnel."

This was the opening paragraph of the annual report of Ceylon Tamils Association for the year 1978. The events described in that paragraph and the resultant loss of Tamil lives and property and the massive movement of Tamil refugees from southern parts of Sri Lanka towards places of safety in their homeland in the North and East, jolted the small number of Tamils living in Sydney into action. They formed the Ceylon Tamils Association (Australasia) in November 1977, with the aim of helping Tamils living in Sri Lanka and Australasia. A committee of thirteen, with Dr R Sivagurunathan as President, was unanimously elected to hold office for the period of 1978. The number of people who made up that committee represented almost a quarter of the number of families living in Sydney at the time. Their concern for the preservation, protection and promotion of the rights of Tamils in Ceylon was not only enunciated as such in the association's objectives, but was also demonstrated clearly in action during that year.

If the first year of the association's existence set the tone for the task ahead, it also enabled its members to challenge themselves with some fundamental questions related to their identity. The unleashing of violence on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka in 1977, the shocking statement by the country's leadership justifying that violence and the surprising silence on the part of many Sinhalese at home and overseas pushed the expatriate Tamils towards activism in the humanitarian and political arenas.

They chose to express their Tamil identity as Ceylon Tamils, much to the consternation of their Sinhala friends with whom they had shared a Sri Lankan identity until that time. The political awakening of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka and their continuing struggle for the right to self-determination, were reflected in the association's own evolution through the 80's and 90's. The association took the name of Eelam Tamil Association formally in 1982.

Then came 1983, the year that irrevocably changed the life of every Eelam Tamil, the year in which thousands of Tamils were massacred by marauding mobs armed by the very state that was obliged to protect the lives of all its citizens, the year which saw Tamils fleeing the land of their birth in the thousands to become refugees and exiles. The task of the Tamils diaspora in raising their voice to bring these injustices to the attention of the world and caring for the dispossessed became immense. The time to join hands had come. Our Association became a founding member of the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations, under the able leadership of Professor C J Eliezer, linking similar associations in other states and in New Zealand and PNG.

Today, artillery shells and bombs are still raining on the Tamil people and their land, thousands more have been killed, tens of thousands more made homeless; but in their determination to liberate themselves from oppression and to continue struggling for justice, Tamils in Eelam seek our help.

'Tamil' as one's identity is an important political statement in itself. It denotes the uniqueness of a group of people by virtue of their language and heritage. Re-emergence of 'Tamil Eelam' as one facet of the identity of Tamils living in the island of Sri Lanka was an important development in the Tamil people's political milieu. It denotes the existence of a homeland of their own. 'Eelam Tamil' then, is the personal identity of all people who originate from this land. Having established this powerful identity in our own minds and expressing it with pride and confidence, our endeavours to promote the welfare of Eelam Tamils in Eelam and elsewhere have become the commitment and the journey of Eelam Tamil Association. We are grateful to the founders of the association for their foresight and courage. We shall continue on this journey!