Sathyam Commentary
18 July 1998, Revised 2 September 2006
Revised 14 August 2007, First Anniversary of Chencholai Massacre
The Charge is Genocide - the Struggle is for Freedom...
[also
in PDF]
 
[One Year Ago on 14 August 2006:
Sri Lanka
Air force kills 61 school children]
"...Tamils
who today live
in many lands and across
distant seas know only too well that sovereignty after all, is
not virginity. If
Germany and France were able to put in place 'associate' structures
despite the suspicions and confrontations of two world wars, it
should not be beyond the capacity of an independent Tamil Eelam and
an independent Sri Lanka to work out structures, within which each
independent state may remain free and prosper, but at the same time
pool sovereignty in certain agreed areas. And to say that is not to
live in the fantasy world of the fanatic but to reject the
fanaticism of those who insist on preserving the
artificial territorial boundaries imposed (and later bequeathed) by
the erstwhile British ruler. It is to reject the colonial legacy
and to reject the continuing attempt to replace British
colonial rule with Sinhala colonial rule. The words of
Velupillai Pirabaharan, uttered
some sixteen years ago, bear repetition, yet again:
"...It is the Sri Lanka government which has
failed to learn the lessons from the
emergence of the struggles for self determination in several parts of the
globe and the innovative structural changes that have taken place...
We are not chauvinists.
Neither are we lovers of violence enchanted with war. We do not regard the
Sinhala people as our opponents or as our enemies. We recognise the Sinhala
nation. We accord a place of dignity for the culture and heritage of
the Sinhala people. We have no desire to interfere in any way with the
national life of the Sinhala people or with their freedom and independence.
We, the Tamil people, desire to live in
our own
historic homeland as an independent nation, in peace,
in freedom and with dignity.."
And so today millions of Tamils
living in many lands will remember and
honour the memory of their brothers and sisters who were
killed, raped and tortured in their thousands, for no crime
other than that they were Tamils and because, as a people, they
had
refused
to submit to alien Sinhala rule. The charge is
genocide, the struggle is for freedom..."
Twenty four years ago, commencing on 23 July 1983,
thousands of Tamils were slaughtered in the island of Sri Lanka by armed
Sinhala gangs, led in many cases by Sinhala members of Parliament and their
henchmen. It was a planned attack.
"Clearly this was not a spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred
among the Sinhala people.. It was a series of deliberate acts, executed in
accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and organised well in
advance..." Paul Sieghart:
Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on
behalf of the International Commission of Jurists and its British Section,
Justice, March 1984
It was genocide.
"..Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, acts of murder committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such
are considered as acts of genocide.The evidence points clearly to the
conclusion that the violence of the Sinhala rioters on the Tamils (in
July/August 1983) amounted to acts of genocide." -
The International Commission of Jurists Review, December 1983
Amongst the several acts of gruesome murder, one incident serves
to illustrate the horror of the ordeal faced by Tamils in the island of Sri
Lanka in July 1983:
"A tourist told yesterday how she watched in horror as a
Sinhala mob deliberately burned alive a bus load of Tamils... Mrs.Eli
Skarstein, back home in Stavangen, Norway, told how she and her 15 year old
daughter, Kristin, witnessed one massacre. 'A mini bus full of Tamils were
forced to stop in front of us in Colombo' she said. A Sinhalese mob poured
petrol over the bus and set it on fire. They blocked the car door and
prevented the Tamils from leaving the vehicle. 'Hundreds of spectators
watched as about 20 Tamils were burned to death'. Mrs. Skarstein added: 'We
can't believe the official casualty figures. Hundreds may be thousands must
have been killed already." (London Daily Express, 29th August 1983)
But Genocide '83
was not the first occasion, when the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka
were murdered by Sinhala armed gangs and security forces. Nor was it the
last.
Twenty five years before
Genocide '83,
Tarzie Vittachi wrote in
Emergency '58 -
"As panic spread, doors were closed in Sinhalese
as well as Tamil homes. The Tamils closed their doors to escape
murder, rape and pillage. The Sinhalese closed their doors to
prevent Tamils running into their houses for shelter…Among the
hundreds of acts of arson, rape, pillage, murder and plain
barbarity some incidents may be recorded as examples of the kind
of thuggery at work... At Wellawatte junction, near the plantain
kiosk, a pregnant woman and her husband were set upon. They
clubbed him and left him on the pavement, then they kicked the
woman repeatedly as she hurried along at a grotesque sprint,
carrying her swollen belly... What are we left with (in 1958)? A
nation in ruins, some grim lessons which we cannot afford to
forget and a momentous question: Have the Sinhalese and
Tamils reached the parting of ways?.."
And in 1977, the Tamils were
attacked and killed again.
"A tragedy is taking place in Sri Lanka: the
political conflict following upon the recent elections, is
turning into a racial massacre. It is estimated by reliable
sources that between 250 and 300 Tamil citizens have lost their
lives and over 40,000 made homeless...(The Tamils) have now lost
confidence in their treatment by the Sinhalese majority and are
calling for a restoration of their separate national status...
At a time when the West is wake to the evils of racialism, the
racial persecution of the Tamils and denial of their human
rights should not pass without protest. The British have a
special obligation to protest, as these cultivated people were
put at the mercy of their neighbours less than thirty years ago
by the British Government. They need our attention and support."
- Sir John Foster, David Astor, Louis Blom-Cooper, Dingle Foot,
Robert Birley, James Fawcett, Michael Scott, London Times 20
September 1977
It was all this and more that led Paul Sieghart to
conclude, 23 years ago in March 1984
"Communal riots in which Tamils are killed,
maimed, robbed and rendered homeless are no longer isolated
episodes; they are beginning to become a pernicious habit." -
Paul Sieghart: Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the
International Commission of Jurists and its British Section,
Justice, March 1984
Two years later,
in March 1986, Senator
A.L.Missen, Chairman, Australian Parliamentary Group of Amnesty
International declared in the Australian Parliament -
"Some 6000 Tamils have been killed altogether in the last few
years...These events are not accidental. It can be seen that they are
the result of a deliberate policy on the part of the Sri Lankan
government...Democracy in Sri Lanka does not exist in any real sense..."
- Australian Senate Hansard, 13 March 1986
Four years thereafter, on 19 September 1990,
Amnesty launched a three month international campaign against Sri Lanka
with a campaign poster which declared: "Licensed to Kill: State Terror in
Sri Lanka". But, two years after Amnesty's campaign Sri Lanka continued to kill
with impunity and Margaret Trawick, Professor
of Social Anthropology, Massey University Palmerston North, New Zealand was
moved to declare in agony -
"I have been struggling in my mind against the conclusion that
the Sri Lanka government is trying to kill or terrorise as many Tamil people
as possible; that the government is trying to keep the conditions of the war
unreported internationally, because if those conditions were reported, the
actions of the military would be perceived as so deplorable that foreign
nations would have no choice but to condemn them. And this would be
embarrassing to everybody. But it seems now that no other conclusion is
possible..."
Statement of 28 April 1996
Today, twenty three years after Paul Sieghart, 21
years after Senator.A.L.Missen, 17 years after Amnesty, and 11 years
after Professor Mararet Trawick, Tamils continue to be
'killed, maimed, robbed and rendered homeless' and the Sri
Lanka government continues 'to kill or terrorise as many Tamil
people as possible.' A fair examination of the
documented record
will prove
(and prove beyond reasonable doubt) that the people of Tamil
Eelam continue to be murdered and extra judicially executed in a
systematic, deliberate and planned manner by the Sri Lanka
authorities and their agents.
The massacres at
Chunnakam 1984,
Mannar 1985,
Kumithini 1985,
Tiriyai 1985,
Iruthayapuram 1986,
Akkaraipattu 1986,
Kokkadaicholai1987,
Kannapuram1990,
Saththurukondan1990,
Kokaddicholai 1991,
Inspector Etram
Milakudiyetra 1995,
Jeyanthipuram 1995 ,
Navali 1995,
Nagerkoil School
1995,
Kumarapuram 1996,
Puthukudyiruppu 1997,
Amparai1997,
Kalutara Prison 1997,
Tampalakamam 1998,
Ayithiyamalai
2000,
Bindunuwewe 2000,
Trincomalee 2006,
Mandaithivu 2006,
Vankalai 2006,
Pesalai 2006,
Vallipunam 2006,
Muthur 2006,
Vaharai 2006, and
Padahuthurai 2007 have now become a part of the history of the
suffering of the Tamil people. And these massacres have gone hand in
hand with
disappearances and individual extra judicial killings,
rape,
torture,
aerial bombardment and
shelling.
The continued attack on the Tamil people is
genocidal in intent and is taking place with
impunity
and under the cover of a controlled and
intimidated media. Successive Sri Lanka governments and their Sinhala
Presidents have refused to admit to or publicly condemn the terrorist actions of
those under their command. On the contrary, the pronouncements of
successive Sri Lanka Presidents, Sinhala Cabinet Ministers and the holding of
obscene 'victory' ceremonies have served to encourage the terrorist actions
of those under their command. Sri Lanka President
Jayawardene, famously remarked to Ian Ward of the London Daily
Telegraph in July 1983 -
"I have tried to be effective for sometime but
cannot. I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna (Tamil)
people now... The more you put pressure in the north, the
happier the Sinhala people will be here.. really, if I starve
the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy.."
Deanna Hodgin, Insight Magazine, wrote in 1990 -
''..I attended a press conference where
Defence Minister Ranjan Wijeratne told the press that there had been no
civilian casualties despite heavy bombing. When I volunteered that I had
seen many bomb-blasted bodies, and many hundreds of people injured by
helicopter strafing and more, the Defence Minister told me it was a pity I
had not been shot. That's the mentality you are dealing with - human rights
is not an idea with much currency for the Sri Lankan government....
Congressman, I'm writing to you because I am angry. You should be, too.''
Letter
dated 7 November 1990 to US Congressman Gus Yatron, Subcommittee on Human
Rights,Washington
 Three
years later, in 1993, Sri Lanka President
D.B.Wijetunga declared with equanimity, 'when there is a war, there is no
law, there is a race to kill'. And, eight years later, in 1998, the
army blockade of food
stuffs and medical supplies continued leading
Professor Jordan J. Paust to conclude
"As demonstrated in this Essay, there are
serious allegations and significant recognitions of human rights
violations in Sri Lanka relating to the right to adequate food,
the right to adequate medicine and medical supplies, and the
right to freedom from arbitrary and inhumane detention and
controls. Such denials are sustained by
governmental censorship, denials of access to certain areas
for investigative purposes, and
intimidation of non governmental organisations (NGOs), which
in turn involve violations of the human right to transnational
freedom of speech. Moreover, these denials are sustained by the
lack of adequate governmental investigations, arrests, and
prosecutions of alleged perpetrators - patterns that facilitate
an air of impunity... the
intentional withholding of medicine and medical supplies from
LTTE controlled areas is a clear violation of common Article 3
(of the 1949 Geneva Convention) and is a war crime. "
'The Human
Rights to Food, Medicine and Medical Supplies, and Freedom from
Arbitrary and Inhuman Detention and Controls in Sri Lanka',
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, May ’98)
Today, 160,000 Tamils have been displaced from their homes and Sri Lanka
President Rajapakse
blocks aid convoys
, the armed forces under his command
execute aid workers
and the tragedy of
Vaharai continues to unfold.
[see also Sri Lanka's State Terror in
Streaming Video
-
Vaharai Tamil Refugees ]
And here, it is both important and necessary to ask the
question: Why did these genocidal attacks happen? Why do they continue to
happen? The genocidal attacks on the Tamil people did not and do not 'just
happen'. Ethnic cleansing is about assimilating a people. It is about
destroying the identity of a people, as a people. And it occurs in stages. The
preferred route of a conqueror is to achieve his objective without resort to
violence - peacefully and stealthily. But when that is resisted, albeit
peacefully, the would be conqueror turns to murderous violence and
genocide to progress his assimilative agenda.
In the island of Sri Lanka, the
record shows that during the
past fifty years and more, the intent and goal of all Sinhala
governments (without
exception) has been to secure the island as a
Sinhala Buddhist Deepa. Rule by a permanent ethnic
majority within the confines of a single state is the
dark side of democracy. The Sinhala Buddhist
ethno
nation
masquerading as
a multi ethnic 'civic' 'Sri Lankan' nation set about its task
of assimilation and 'cleansing' the island of the Tamils,
as a people, by
- depriving a section of Eelam Tamils of
their
citizenship,
- declaring the
Sinhala
flag as the national flag,
-
colonising parts of the Tamil homeland with Sinhala people,
- imposing
Sinhala
as the official language,
-
discriminating against Tamils students seeking University
admission,
-
depriving Tamil language speakers of employment in the
public sector,
-
dishonouring agreements entered into with the Tamil
parliamentary political leadership,
- refusing to recognise
constititutional safeguards against discrimination,
- later
removing these constitutional safeguards altogether,
- giving to themselves
an authocthonous Constitution with a
foremost place for Buddhism,
-
changing the name of the island itself
to the Sinhala Buddhist name of Sri Lanka - appropriately
enough, on the 'tenth day of the waxing moon in the month
of Vesak in the year two thousand five hundred and fifteen of
the Buddhist Era', and
- amending the Sri Lanka constitution to
render non violent struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam
illegal and criminal
The short point is that the
deliberate genocidal attack on the Tamil people was directed to
terrorise the Tamil people to submit to alien Sinhala rule. It was
directed to quell Tamil resistance to assimilation and ethnic
cleansing.
The issue is therefore, not
simply about genocide. The issue is not simply about the
violations of the humanitarian law
of armed conflict or the
violations of the
ceasefire agreement - or for that matter
the systematic violations of human rights of the Tamil
people. The issue and the conflict in the island is about the
refusal of the people of Tamil Eelam to submit to alien Sinhala
rule. And it was this refusal which the manifesto of the
parliamentary
Tamil United Liberation Front proclaimed in 1977 -
"What is the alternative now left to the Nation that has lost
its
rights to
its language,
rights to
its citizenship, rights to its religions and
continues day by day to lose its traditional homeland to
Sinhalese colonisation ? What is the alternative now left to
a Nation that has
lost its opportunities to higher education
through standardisation and its equality in opportunities in the
sphere of employment ? What is the alternative to a Nation that
lies helpless as it is being
assaulted, looted and killed by hooligans instigated by the
ruling race and by the security forces of the State? Where else
is an alternative to the Tamil Nation that gropes in the dark
for its identity and finds itself driven to the brink of
devastation? There is only one
alternative and that is to proclaim with the stamp of finality
and fortitude that "we alone shall rule over our land that
our
fore fathers ruled. Sinhalese imperialism shall quit our
Homeland"
It was to this manifesto that the Tamil people gave
their overwhelming approval at the 1977 General Election in the
island of Sri Lanka. The national identity of the people of Tamil
Eelam is rooted in their language,
in their culture
and in their heritage. It is a
togetherness consolidated by their
suffering
and it is a togetherness that is given direction by their
aspirations for a future where they, and their children and
their children's children may live in
equality and in freedom. And today the struggle of the people of
Tamil Eelam, is not about whether alien Sinhala rule should be
benevolent or that it should be 'fair and just'. After all, the
British too offered to rule fairly and justly (and even
benevolently) but this did not prevent those on whom the British
sought to impose their alien rule, struggling for freedom.
Neither is the struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam about
devolution. Devolution is about devolving from the higher to the lower. The
higher is the ruler and the lower is the ruled. Alien rulers are not slow to
offer (from time to time) 'consultation' and 'devolution' as ways of
perpetuating their rule, pacifying their subjects and progressing the 'peaceful'
assimilation of a conquered people.
Aurobindo's caustic comments on the British
Morley-Minto
devolution proposals for India in 1907 retain their relevance ninety nine
years later:
"Mr.Morley has made his pronouncement and a long expectant world may now go
about its ordinary business with the satisfactory conviction that the
conditions of political life in India will be precisely the same as
before... We find it impossible to discuss Mr.Morley's reforms seriously,
they are so impossibly burlesque and farcical. Yet they have their serious
aspect. They show that British despotism, like all despotisms in the same
predicament, is making the time honoured, ineffectual effort to evade a
settlement of the real question by throwing belated and now unacceptable
sops to
Demogorgon."
The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam is not about
'sharing power' within the confines of a Sri Lankan state, with a Sinhala
army in command. The words of John Stuart Mill in 1872 remain
true more than a century later:
"Free institutions are next to impossible in a
country made up of different nationalities. An altogether different set of
leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. ...
Above all, the grand and only effectual security in the last resort against
the despotism of the government is in that case wanting: the sympathy of the
army with the people. Soldiers to whose feelings half or three fourths
of the subjects of the same government are foreigners, will have no more
scruple in mowing them down, and no more reason to ask the reason why, than
they would have in doing the same thing against declared enemies. (John
Stuart Mill: Considerations on Representative Government. London 1872)
The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam is not about
how best Sinhala rule may be perpetuated and legitimised. It is about freedom
from alien Sinhala rule - and the removal of the alien Sinhala army
from the Tamil homeland. And to those who would ask where is this Tamil homeland
let us reply with Sathasivam
Krishnakumar -
'Take a map of the island. Take a paint brush
and paint all the areas where Sri Lanka has
bombed and launched
artillery attacks during these past several years. When you
have finished, the painted area that you see - that is Tamil
Eelam.'
And to those who would deny that
Sinhala rule is alien rule, let us
say that it is alien rule because the Sinhala people speak a
different language to
that of the Tamil people; because
they trace their history to origins different from
that of the Tamil people; and because their cultural heritage is
different to that of the Tamil people.
Finally, to those who would deny that it is Sinhala rule,
let us say that it is Sinhala rule because the undeniable political
reality is that the political
consciousness of the Sinhala people and the way they exercise their
vote, is clearly determined by their separate language, by
their separate
history
and by their separate cultural heritage - in short by their own separate Sinhala
national identity. In the island of Sri Lanka, no Tamil has ever been elected to
an electorate which had a majority of Sinhala voters and no Sinhalese has ever
been elected to an electorate which had a majority of Tamil voters. The
practise of democracy within the confines of a single state has resulted
in rule by a permanent Sinhala majority. And nothing, perhaps,
establishes this more directly than the answer to the
simple question:
Q. Why is it that in Sri Lanka, for five long
decades since 'independence', we have always had a Sinhala Buddhist as the
executive head of government?
The answer is that a Sinhala Buddhist
ethno nation
masquerading as a
civic ' multi ethnic Sri Lankan nation',
will always
have a Sinhala Buddhist as the executive head of government. The
words of Tamil leader, Nadarajah Thangathurai
uttered in February 1983 (a few months before he was
murdered whilst in the custody of
the Sri Lanka government) serve to underline this political reality:
"...Allegations are made that we are asking for separation, that we
are trying to divide the country.
When were we
undivided after all? Our traditional land, captured by the European
invaders has never been restored to us. We have not even mortgaged our
land at any time to anyone in the name of one country. Our land has
changed hands off and on under various regimes, and that is what has
happened... What we ask for is not division but
freedom. "
In the ultimate analysis, the struggle of the people
of Tamil Eelam is about democracy. If democracy means the
rule of the people, by the people, for the people then it must
follow, as night follows day, that no one people may rule another.
The right of self determination provides the framework within which
democracy may flower. Every people have the right to freely
determine their political status and the terms on which they may
associate with another people. Democracy and the
right to self
determination go hand in hand - one cannot exist without the
other. The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam is about their
democratic right to rule themselves. Prince
Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, was right to point out in 2001 -
"...Let us accept the fact that states have
lifecycles similar to those of human beings who created them.
The lifecycle of a state might last for many generations, but
hardly any Member State of the United Nations has existed within
its present borders for longer than five generations. The
attempt to freeze human evolution has in the past been a futile
undertaking and has probably brought about more violence than if
such a process had been controlled peacefully... Restrictions on
self-determination threaten not only democracy itself but the
state which seeks its legitimation in democracy.. "
Self Determination & the Future of Democracy -
Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, 2001
Professor Margaret Moore was also right to conclude in the same
year -
"...The problem in nationally divided societies
is that the different groups have different political
identities, and, in cases where the identities are mutually
exclusive (not nested), these groups see themselves as forming
distinct political communities. In this situation, the options
available to represent these distinct identities are very
limited, because any solution at the state level is inclined to
be biased in favour of one kind of identity over another. That
is to say, if the minority group seeks to be self-governing, or
to secede from the larger state, increased representation at the
centre will not be satisfactory. The problem in this case is
that the group does not identify with the centre, or want to be
part of that political community...One conclusion that can be
drawn is that, in some cases, secession/partition of the two
communities, where that option is available, is the best outcome
overall. .."
Normative
Justifications for Liberal Nationalism - Margaret Moore,2001
It is sometimes said that to
accord international recognition to separate national formations
will lead to instability in the world order. The reasoning is not
dissimilar to that which was urged a hundred years ago against
granting universal franchise. It was said that to empower every
citizen with a vote was to threaten the stability of existing state
structures and the ruling establishment. But the truth was that it
was the refusal to grant universal franchise which threatened
stability - and in the end the ruling establishment was 'persuaded'
to mend its ways. As always, conscious evolution remains the only
alternative to revolution.
And to those
in the international community who continue to speak of their
willingness to recognise the 'legitimate aspirations' of the Tamil
people (but who refrain from spelling out what in their view is
'legitimate') the time has come to reiterate that which
Gandhian leader S.J.V.Chelvanayagam declared 32 years ago
and say that it is the legitimate aspiration of the Tamil people to
be free from alien Sinhala rule.
"Throughout the ages the Sinhalese and Tamils in
the country lived as distinct sovereign people till they were
brought under foreign domination. It should be remembered that
the Tamils were in the vanguard of the struggle for independence
in the full confidence that they also will regain their freedom.
We have for the last 25 years made every effort to secure our
political rights on the basis of equality with the Sinhalese in
a united Ceylon. It is a regrettable fact that successive
Sinhalese governments have used the power that flows from
independence
to deny us our
fundamental rights and reduce us to the position of a subject
people. These governments have been able to do so only by
using against the Tamils the sovereignty common to the Sinhalese
and the Tamils. I wish to announce to my people and to the
country that I consider the verdict at this election as a
mandate that the
Tamil Eelam nation should exercise the sovereignty already
vested in the Tamil people and become free."
- Statement by
S.J.V.Chelvanayakam
Q.C. M.P. ,
leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front, 7 February 1975
Does the international community agree that the
aspiration of the Tamil people to be free from alien Sinhala rule is
a 'legitimate' aspiration? Or does it take the view that Gandhian
leader S.J.V. Chelvanayagam was wrong and that the aspiration of the
people of Tamil Eelam to be free from alien Sinhala rule is not a
'legitimate' aspiration? If the latter be the case, has not the time
come for the international community to explain to the people of
Tamil Eelam its reasons for insisting that the Tamil people be ruled
by a permanent Sinhala majority within the confines of a single
state - with a Sinhala army occupying the Tamil homeland?
Perhaps, the time has also come for the Tamil people
to engage in a dialogue with the international community and
tell them that they may ban the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam but
they cannot ban the
cry of a people for freedom from
alien rule.
And here let us be clear. The struggle of the people
of Tamil Eelam to be free from
alien
Sinhala rule
is not about what the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam may have done
or may not have done. The record
shows that the armed
resistance
of the people of Tamil Eelam (warts and all) arose as the inevitable
response to decades of efforts by successive Sinhala governments
to conquer, subjugate, pacify and assimilate the Tamil people
and the
enactment of the 6th
Amendment to the Sri Lanka constitution set the seal by
criminalising all non violent means of struggle for an independent
Tamil Eelam state – an amendment which
also violated Sri Lanka’s obligations under international law.
"The freedom to express political
opinions, to seek to persuade others of their merits, to seek to
have them represented in Parliament, and thereafter seek Parliament
to give effect to them, are all fundamental to democracy itself.
These are precisely the freedoms which Article 25 (of the
International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights) recognises and
guarantees - and in respect of advocacy for the establishment of an
independent Tamil State in Sri Lanka, those which the 6th Amendment
is designed to outlaw. It therefore appears to me plain that this
enactment constitutes a clear violation by Sri Lanka of its
obligations in international law under the Covenant ..." - Paul
Sieghart: Sri Lanka-A Mounting Tragedy of Errors - Report of a
Mission to Sri Lanka in January 1984 on behalf of the International
Commission of Jurists and its British Section, Justice, March 1984
The time has come to engage the international
community (and that means the trilaterals -
USA, European Union &
Japan together with
India and
China) in an honest and
open dialogue as to the strategic interests that each of these IC
members themselves seek to secure in the island of Sri Lanka - and
whether they seek to prevent a resolution of the conflict
except on terms which secure
each of their own
strategic interests. After all, it will be fair to say that
there are two conflicts in the island - one the conflict between the
Sinhala nation and a
Tamil Eelam nation
seeking freedom from alien Sinhala rule, and the other the
conflict between the international actors in the
Indian Ocean region seeking, (amongst other matters) control of
the Indian Ocean sea lanes - whether
through a string of pearls or
by other means.
But all this is not to say that Tamil Eelam and Sri
Lanka
may not sit together as equals and structure a polity
where the two peoples may associate with each other in equality and
in freedom. An independent Tamil
Eelam is not negotiable but an independent Tamil Eelam can and will
negotiate. There may be a need to telescope two processes - one the
recognition of an
independent Tamil Eelam
and the other the terms in which an independent Tamil Eelam may
associate with an independent Sri Lanka, so that the national
security of each may be protected and guaranteed.
Strange as
it may seem to some, the struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam, is
not in opposition to many of the underlying interests of the parties
concerned with the conflict in the island - and that includes Sri
Lanka,
India, the
European Union, the
United States
and China.
Tamils who today live
in many lands and across
distant seas know only too well that sovereignty after all, is
not virginity. If
Germany and France were able to put in place 'associate' structures
despite the suspicions and confrontations of two world wars, it
should not be beyond the capacity of an independent Tamil Eelam and
an independent Sri Lanka to work out structures, within which each
independent state may remain free and prosper, but at the same time
pool sovereignty in certain agreed areas.
And to say that is not to live in the fantasy world
of the fanatic but to understand the unfolding political reality of
the fourth
world
and the processes that resulted in the European Union. It is also to
reject the fanaticism of those who insist on preserving the
artificial territorial boundaries imposed (and later bequeathed) by
the erstwhile British ruler. It is to reject the colonial legacy
and to reject the continuing attempt to replace British
colonial rule with Sinhala colonial rule. The words of
Velupillai Pirabaharan, uttered some sixteen years ago, bear
repetition, yet again:
"...It is the Sri Lanka government which has failed to learn
the lessons from the
emergence of the struggles for self determination in several parts of the
globe and the innovative structural changes that have taken place...
We are not chauvinists.
Neither are we lovers of violence enchanted with war. We do not regard the
Sinhala people as our opponents or as our enemies. We recognise the Sinhala
nation. We accord a place of dignity for the culture and heritage of
the Sinhala people. We have no desire to interfere in any way with the
national life of the Sinhala people or with their freedom and independence.
We, the Tamil people, desire to live in
our own
historic homeland as an independent nation, in peace,
in freedom and with dignity.."
And so today, in the
shadow of a ceasefire, as the armed forces under Sinhala Sri Lanka President
Rajapakse's command
rape Tamil women,
assassinate
Tamil Parliamentarians,
murder
Tamil journalists,
execute Tamil students,
arbitrarily arrest and detain Tamil civilians,
abduct Tamil
refugee workers,
orchestrate attacks on Tamil civilians and Tamil shops,
bomb Tamil civilian population centres,
displace thousands of Tamils from their homes,
kill
Tamil school children, and
murder Tamil aid
workers, millions of Tamils
living in many lands will remember and
honour the memory of their brothers and sisters who were killed, raped and
tortured in their thousands, for no crime other than that they were Tamils and
because, as a people, they had
refused
to submit to alien Sinhala rule.
Millions of Tamils will remember and
honour - and will renew their own commitment to the cause for which
their brothers and sisters gave their lives. The charge is
genocide, the struggle is for freedom... |
