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Commonwealth & the Tamil Struggle
Appeal to Commonwealth
Heads of Government
by International Secretariat of LTTE
20 October 1993
On 20 October 1993, the International Secretariat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam sought the support of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Cyprus for
recognition of the Tamils right to self determination. The letter was sent through the
Secretary General of the Commonwealth Office in London.
Text of Letter
Your Excellencies,
Recognition of Tamils Right to Self Determination
We seek the support of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting for the call made
by 15 non governmental human rights
organisations, in February this year, for international recognition of the right of
the Tamil people to self determination.
The gross consistent and continuing violations of the rights of the Tamil people, by
the Sri Lankan government and its agencies, have been well documented by innumerable
reports of human rights organisations and independent observers of the Sri Lankan scene. The record shows:
that the attack on the human rights of the Tamil people commenced more than forty
years ago;
that the attack was initially resisted by the Tamil people by non violent means
together with a parliamentary campaign for a federal constitution;
that this non violent resistance was met with planned Sinhala violence directed to
subjugate the Tamil people to the will of a permanent Sinhala majority within the confines
of an unitary state;
that the armed resistance of the Tamil people arose as a defence against decades of
oppressive alien Sinhalarule;
that international law recognises that the armed resistance of the Tamil people is
lawful and just;
that Sri Lanka has committed systematic violations of the humanitarian law of armed
conflict in its effort to quell the armed resistance of the Tamil people;
that Sri Lanka's sustained attack on the Tamil people amounts to genocide;
that international law recognises the combatant status of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam who today lead the struggle of the Tamil people for national self
determination ;
that the territorial integrity of the Tamil homeland continues to be defended by the
Tamil people against the planned and determined attacks of the Sinhala dominated Sri Lanka
government; and
that Sri Lanka's continued refusal to recognise the claim of the Tamil people to the
right to self determination constitutes a continuing breach by Sri Lanka of a peremptory
norm of international law.
However the Sri Lankan President, D.B.Wijetunga continues to assert repeatedly: ``There
is no ethnic problem in the island: there is only a terrorist problem.'' President Wijetunga's bland assertion that there is no
`ethnic problem' is belied by the United National Party's own manifesto on which he
himself campaigned at the 1977 elections in the island of Sri Lanka:
``The United National Party accepts that there are numerous problems confronting the
Tamil speaking people. The lack of a solution to their problems has made the Tamil
speaking people support even a movement for the creation of a separate state.... The party
when it comes to power will take all possible steps to remedy their grievances in such
fields as (1) education (2) colonisation (3) Use of Tamil Language (4) Employment in
Public and Semi Public Corporations.''
The International Secretariat of the Liberation Tigers believes that the peaceful and
constructive resolution of the conflict in the island will not be furthered by Sri Lanka's
continued denial of the underlying causes of the conflict. Neither will it be furthered by
Sri Lanka categorising the lawful armed resistance of the Tamil people, which arose from
decades of oppressive rule by a Sinhala dominated government, as `terrorist' activity.
The reality on the ground is that the lawful armed struggle of the Tamil people is
taking place under conditions of unbelievable hardship. On the one hand the Sri Lanka Army
seeks to occupy the Tamil homeland by launching offensive operations and planned massacres
of civilians, which has assumed genocidal proportions.
The Air Force continues with its indiscriminate
bombardment. On the other hand, an economic blockade has been imposed to secure
military ends. Again, emergency regulations which prohibit the transport of `soya based
food, sweets and confectionery' to LTTE controlled areas on the ground that such items are
`capable of being used in a manner harmful to national security' have been stringently
enforced in an effort to starve out the Tamil people in the North and bend them to Sri
Lanka's will.
In the East, whole villages have been emptied
and driven out by the army from their homes and occupations and turned into refugees.
At the same time Sri Lanka has increased the pace of settling armed Sinhala people in
former Tamil areas. Sinhala and Muslim `Home Guards' have been trained and armed by the
Government and function as a para military force. The attacks by the LTTE on these para
military forces and armed settlers are then sometimes falsely described as attacks on
`civilians'. Some Tamil groups are actively engaged along with the Government forces and
have been sent to infiltrate the areas within LTTE control and gather intelligence and it
has become necessary to apprehend such spies.
In sum, the Sri Lanka government is engaged in a war for land in the Tamil homeland.
It is clear that the Government's objective is to conquer the north and make the Tamils in
the east a minority in their own homeland. Recent statements of the Sri Lanka Government
that `ground conditions in the East indicate that a referendum could be held' early next
year to determine the `will of the people whether the Eastern Province should be continued
to be joined to the Northern Province' serves only to confirm that objective.
However, despite these conditions of hardship, in several areas in the Tamil homeland,
the LTTE has succeeded in establishing a stable civil administration and securing the rule
of law . In 1988, the LTTE pledged to abide by the Geneva Conventions relating to armed
conflict, and its Additional Protocols and the LTTE is mindful of its obligations as a
combatant in an armed conflict which has won recognition in international law and has
taken care to instruct its cadres accordingly and breaches in this regard are inquired
into and suitable punishment meted out.
The Sri Lanka Government often states to the international community that it ``
continues to hope that the LTTE too would see the merits of a negotiated settlement''. But
the fact is that it is the Sri Lanka government which has for the past two years and more
used the Parliamentary Select Committee mechanism as a way of avoiding direct talks with
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The Select Committee has deliberated for more than two years and the government is
content to allow this farce to continue, in the full knowledge that a Select Committee
consisting of Sinhala political parties who are at each others throats and who are intent
on positioning themselves to capture power at the next elections will do nothing to
resolve the conflict. The Select Committee mechanism provides the Sri Lanka government
with a useful cover of `reasonableness' for international consumption, whilst it continues
its genocidal military operations against the Tamil people.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have, for more than three years, consistently
declared their willingness to enter into talks with the Sri Lanka Government. However, the
Sri Lankan government has not seriously responded to the many proposals for cease-fire and
peace talks, even when presented by other concerned governments.
It rejected the Canadian Human Rights Mission, composed of members of Parliament,
religious leaders, a lawyer and a journalist as a mediating body, and that this was
followed by a failure to respond to an offer by the government of Australia to mediate.
More recently, it rejected out of hand a peace proposal submitted by four Nobel Prize
Winners.
The leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Pirabaharan, has
declared that the LTTE was prepared to consider a federal structure with the NorthEast
forming the Tamil homeland. But the Government of Sri Lanka is bent on dividing the Tamil
homeland in the NorthEast. The Liberation Tigers have repeatedly made their position clear
- if the Government of Sri Lanka persists in its determination to subjugate the Tamil
people, the Tamils will have no alternative but to continue to fight to restore their own
sovereign state.
In February 1993, at the 49th Sessions of
the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, 15 non governmental organisations (NGOs)
including Pax Christie International, the International League for the Rights and
Liberation of Peoples, Centre Europe Tiers Monde, International Educational Development,
the International Organisation for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination
and the World Confederation of Labour, expressed their deep and grave concern at the
continuing armed conflict in the island and declared that
*"any meaningful attempt to resolve the conflict should address its underlying
causes and recognise that the armed struggle of the Tamil people for self determination,
arose as a response to decades of an ever widening and deepening oppression by a permanent
Sinhala majority, within the confines of an unitary Sri Lankan state"; and further
that
*"there is an urgent need for the international community to recognise that the
Tamil population in the North - East of the island of Sri Lanka are a `people' with the
right to freely choose their political status."
The International Secretariat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam requests your
open support for the call made by these NGOs for recognition of the right of the Tamil
people to self determination. We believe that such recognition will pave the way for the
resolution of a conflict which has taken an increasingly heavy toll in human lives and
suffering during the past ten years and more.
Yours faithfully,
International Secretariat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
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