Key task to strengthen Tamil Solidarity campaign in 2019

Refugee Rights and Tamil Solidarity on the NHS demonstration 30 June 2018, photo Paul Mattsson, photo Paul Mattsson

Refugee Rights and Tamil Solidarity on the NHS demonstration 30 June 2018, photo Paul Mattsson, photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Tamil Solidarity campaign had a very successful Annual General Meeting on 13 January.

Reports of various aspects of the campaign were presented by the group of young Tamils who are playing a key role in the organisation.

Tamil Solidarity is a unique campaign within the Tamil community in Britain as it links the Tamil Struggle with the workers’ movement in Britain.

Since the campaign was launched ten years ago, we have developed a young leadership which is growing in confidence and putting forward boldly the demand to build a common struggle with the working class, young people, and other oppressed communities, to win rights for all.

This opening session was then followed by a political discussion on South Asia, focusing on the recent political crisis in Sri Lanka.

2019 is going to be an important year for the campaign – it marks the ten-year anniversary of the so-called end of the war in Sri Lanka, where over one hundred thousand Tamil civilians were rounded up and slaughtered by the Sri Lankan government.

As Tamil Solidarity pointed out at the time of the war, as well as since then, the brutal war and its end solved nothing.

Working-class people, young people and oppressed Tamils, have not had any ‘peace dividend’. Instead their conditions have deteriorated.

The building and strengthening of the Tamil Solidarity campaign is going to be a key task in the coming year – to win over a new layer of young people to socialist ideas.