" For more details to arrange rememberance for your family members, relatives or friends, please contact your local community organisations or community leaders "

Professor C.Jeyaratnam Eliezer's ( who has been honoured by Australian  Federal Government with the Order of Australia award ) Speech On Tamil Heroes Day, 1998

Ever present in our hearts and minds is an awareness that so many gallant men and women are dying not only defending our homes, homeland and language, but also standing between the Tamil Eelam nation and annihilation. Once a year the Tamil people spread around the globe collectively honour the Tamil heroes.

As we approach Tamil Heroes Day 1998, our minds are filled mainly with two things:

One, is the awesomeness of deep sorrow and anguish that so many of our young people have been killed. The war - memorials in different parts of the world carry the inscription:
"For your tomorrow, we gave our today"
The heroes of Tamil Eelam have given their today so that the rest of us, our sons and daughters, grandchildren and theirs after them, may have a tomorrow. The second feeling is one of great pride that our heroes were so dedicated in the love of Tamil Eelam that they gave their all to generations they will never see, know or love.

There are two pieces of wisdom I have learnt from the ancient peoples of Australia and New Zealand.

The Australian one is the epitaph on Pat Dodson's grand-fathers gravestone;

"The Sun rises, wind blows, grass grows
The tide comes and goes,
No one can ever take your land"
(Pat Dodson was Chairman of the Australian Reconciliation Commission)

The Maori saying was quoted recently by the first Maori Governor General of New Zealand, the Rt. Rev Sir Paul Reeves, at a Conference in Melbourne:

"You lose land, language and manna,
And your life force would have gone out".

These words of wisdom endorse the cause our heroes are fighting and dying for. Let us honour the memory of our heroes, and re-dedicate ourselves to Tamil Eelam at this `Ninaivu Malar'.