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Commonwealth & the Tamil Struggle
Appeal to Commonwealth
Heads of Government
by International Secretariat of LTTE
7 November 1995
On 9 November, in an Appeal for Justice and Humanity, Mr.Lawrence Thilakar, Member of
the Central Committee of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, called on the Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting in New Zealand to support the appeal made by the UN Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, on 4 November for urgent humanitarian aid for up to 400,000
Tamil refugees fleeing their homes as Sri Lanka government troops invaded the Jaffna
peninsula. Mr. Boutros-Ghali had said that 'humanitarian aid on a significant scale was
needed' to minimise the suffering of the Tamil people.
Text of Appeal
Your Excellencies,
An Appeal for Justice and Humanity
We seek the urgent support of the Commonwealth Heads of Government
Meeting for the appeal made by the UN Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, on 4 November for urgent humanitarian aid for up to
400,000 Tamil refugees fleeing their homes as Sri
Lanka government troops invade the Jaffna peninsula. Dr Boutros-Ghali has said that
humanitarian aid on a significant scale was needed to minimise the suffering of the Tamil
people.
Though Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga has sought to justify
the invasion of the Tamil homeland as a war to 'liberate' the Tamil people from the
Liberation Tigers, the fact is that the Tamil people have fled in their thousands from
their would be 'liberators', leaving behind them their homes and hard earned belongings.
Again though President Chandrika Kumaratunga has claimed that the Sri
Lanka security services have endeavoured to minimise civilian casualties, the fact is that
the invading Sinhala army has indiscriminately
bombed and shelled the Tamil homeland; that hundreds of Tamil civilians had been
killed and thousands maimed; that houses had been flattened and farmland destroyed; and
that the economic blockade imposed by Sri Lanka
had prevented food and urgently needed medical supplies reaching the peninsula.
On 1 November, the Government's own representative in the peninsula
urged the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry to stop bombing
civilians and refugees in Jaffna and has told President Kumaratunga that civilians in
refugee camps were being killed by aerial raids and appealed for safe areas to be set up.
Thousands of people have fled Jaffna with the spread of disease causing concern among
relief agencies. Relief workers have said that the few hospitals in the peninsula are
dangerously low on anaesthetics for surgery and several drugs essential to stopping the
spread of diseases and treating war casualties. Without clean water and proper latrines,
an epidemic could hit in a matter of days and the world probably wouldn't see it happen.
Gerard Peytrignet, who heads the International Committee of the Red
Cross in the island has said that about half of the 400,000 Tamil refugees are living and
sleeping outdoors in heavy monsoon rains. He added: "The rest are holed up in
churches, schools and relatives' homes. The refugees have very little food or proper
sanitation. Doctors are already seeing cases of dysentery and eye infections, and while
cholera hasn't struck yet, the conditions are perfect for a deadly epidemic.. Of course,
in this type of situation, anything could happen, quick action is needed."
The attack by the Sri Lanka armed forces has taken place under cover of
a press censorship imposed by Sri Lanka on
September 21. The press censorship has prevented full details of Sri Lanka's genocidal
attacks on the Tamil people from reaching the outside world. At the sametime, Sri Lanka
has used the cover of the press censorship, to manage news of the war to the outside world
and plant malicious propaganda concerning alleged attacks by the LTTE on armed Sinhala
settlements in the Tamil homeland in the East.
The Toronto Star reported on 5 November:
"Relief workers are so afraid of making the government angry, they
refuse to photograph or shoot video of the refugees' suffering and smuggle pictures out to
the reporters… Few were willing to criticise the government publicly because they are
afraid it will shut down their relief operation in retaliation… 'I think they don't
want an International presence there to witness what's happening,' a senior Western relief
official said."
The conclusion is inescapable that the Sri Lanka armed forces are acting
in accordance with the dictates of their commander in chief President Kumaratunga who said
in an interview with an Indian journal on 30 April 1995:
"Q. Where do you go from here?
A. ...To defeat the LTTE you have to launch an all out attack (which
would mean a lot of Tamil civilian casualties) and the place (Jaffna) will be wiped out.
Q. Is that possible? Can the Sri Lankan forces do it?
A. Ofcourse it is possible. That is what the IPKF tried to do."
President Kumaratunga's words are at one with the words of her
predecessor, President Jayawardene to a British newspaper, a couple of weeks before the
1983 genocide of the Tamil people in Colombo and elsewhere:
"I am not worried about the opinion of the Tamil people... now we
cannot think of them, not about their lives or their opinion... 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."
In this context, the claim of the Sri Lanka government on 4 November
that the exodus of Tamil civilians was somehow 'contrived' to deprive the government of
'the stated rationale for its military action, namely to liberate the people of the
peninsula from LTTE control' would be farcical if not for its callous disregard of the
unfolding human tragedy in the Tamil homeland, caused by the wanton actions of the Sri
Lanka armed forces.
The truth now stands exposed by Paul Watson from the Asian Bureau in a
report in the Toronto Star on 5 November that "while Sri Lanka's army fights to crush
Tamil rebels, its battling on another front against foreign relief workers trying to care
for 400,000 war refugees." He reported:
"The refugees, including hundreds of wounded civilians, are caught
behind the civil war's front line. Western relief agencies accuse the military of blocking
desperately needed aid. Tight restrictions are preventing the delivery of drugs, tents and
blankets as well as equipment to build latrines, said frustrated aid officials, who spoke
on condition they not be named…More food won't end the refugees' suffering or stave
off disease because most have no shelter from the rain, proper toilets or safe water,
relief workers said. While the government is announcing the new food of deliveries by sea,
its army was blocking a small convoy of relief trucks that was supposed to cross into
rebel territory yesterday."
President Kumaratunga has sought to justify the invasion of the Tamil
homeland by claiming at the United Nations General Assembly in October that "an armed
group which claims to represent the Tamil minority has been engaged in violent acts
against successive popularly elected governments preventing them from ensuring peace and
justice for all in our land."
But, the undeniable fact is that it was the oppressive
rule and state sponsored terrorism of successive, so called 'popularly elected' Sinhala
governments that led to the rise of lawful Tamil armed
resistance - and that too after decades of non violent protest by Tamil
Parliamentarians had failed to secure justice. To claim that the 'violent acts' of that
lawful armed resistance against state sponsored terrorism, somehow 'prevented' 'successive
popularly elected governments' from 'ensuring peace and justice for all' is to prevaricate
and deny the underlying causes of the conflict.
Sinhala chauvinism and President Kumaratunga are at one in refusing to
acknowledge that the armed resistance of the Tamil people arose in response to decades of Sinhala oppression; that it is lawful; and that
the leaders of that armed resistance, the Liberation Tigers are the true representatives
of the Tamil people. Sinhala chauvinism and President Kumaratunga are at one in refusing
to negotiate in good faith with the Liberation Tigers to secure a political resolution of
the conflict which has taken such a heavy toll in human suffering.
President Kumaratunga exposed her lack of good faith in an interview
reported in the Sinhala owned Sri Lanka Sunday Times on 20 August 1995: "I
have studied and acquired considerable knowledge on guerrilla warfare when I was a student
in Paris, and we knew how they would behave. We conducted talks on the basis that the LTTE
would not agree to any peaceful settlement and lay down arms."
Again the people who President Kumaratunga chooses to describe as 'the
Tamil minority' are in fact the 'majority' in their own homeland in the North and East of
the island of Sri Lanka - and have been so for several centuries. Sinhala chauvinism and
President Kumaratunga are again at one in refusing to admit to the existence of the Tamil
people as a 'people'. President Kumaratunga obfuscates because she knows that a social
group, which shares objective elements such as a common language and which has acquired a
subjective consciousness of togetherness, by its life within a relatively well defined
territory, and its struggle against alien domination, clearly constitutes a 'people' with the right to choose their own political
status - and Sinhala chauvinism refuses to deal with the Tamil people, as a people with
that right.
Here may we also refer you to the matters set out in the comprehensive
Petition submitted by the International Federation of Tamils to the President of the
European Parliament on 21 October 1995 (a copy of which we enclose herewith) and we
respectfully commend the matters stated therein for your particular attention.
President Kumaratunga also declared at the UN:
"Concerted international action is essential to
combat terrorism and to compel the terrorists to renounce violence and enter the
democratic process. Unfortunately, effective action to that end has been frustrated
through sterile philosophical debate about the nature of terrorism."
That Sinhala chauvinism should assert that discussion
about the nature of terrorism, is 'sterile' and 'philosophical' is not altogether
surprising. Sinhala political parties (who had 'entered' the so called 'democratic
process') have during the past four decades sponsored and actively encouraged terrorism
against the Tamil people.
State terrorism started in 1956, when Tamil leaders were assaulted in
the precincts of the Sri Lanka parliament and the Sri Lanka police were ordered to look
the other way whilst President Chandrika Kumaratunga's father, the late
S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike piloted the Sinhala Only Act inside Parliament. State terrorism
reared its ugly head again in 1961, when President Chandrika Kumaratunga's mother, Mrs.
Srimavo Bandaranaike ordered the Sinhala Army into Jaffna for the first (but not the last)
time to break up a non violent protest by Tamils in front of the Jaffna Kacheri. State
terrorism was consolidated and refined as a way of political life by the J.R. Jayawardene
government, and later by President Premadasa and President D.B.Wijetunga.
It is true that concerted international action is
essential to combat terrorism. On 9 August 1995,
21 non governmental organisations in a joint statement to the UN Sub-Commission on
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities expressed their grave concern at
the 'impunity with which the Sri Lanka armed forces continue to commit gross and inhumane
violations of human rights and humanitarian law' and went on to condemn such actions as
being 'intended to terrorise and subjugate the Tamil people'. The Statement added:
"In May this year, President Chandrika Kumaratunga declared that it
may be necessary to launch an all out attack in the Jaffna peninsula and that this 'would
mean a lot of civilian casualties' and the 'place would be wiped out'. In May, June and
July the Sri Lanka armed forces launched a genocidal onslaught on the Tamil people in the
Tamil homeland in the North-East.
In early July alone, 245 Tamil civilians including around one hundred
women and children were killed in the North. More than 470 were injured. Indiscriminate
and incessant night shelling of Tamil villages in the north led tens of thousands of Tamil
civilians to evacuate their homes. The Sri Lanka airforce indiscriminately bombed villages
and targetted temples, places of worship and schools. Sellachennathy Hindu Temple was
bombed. St.Peters Church and St.Peters School in
Navaly where hundreds had sought shelter from the incessant shelling was bombed on 10
July 1995. More than 120 including 13 babies died in their mother's arms. The Pope has
expressed his deep sorrow at the bombing of the Church and the loss of civilian lives.
The Sri Lanka government, initially denied the bombing of the St.Peters
Church. Then it criticised the ICRC representative for reporting the incident to the world
media without consulting the Government. Later the government promised to hold an inquiry
into the incident. Finally the Sri Lanka Foreign Minister declared that the government
will 'boldly apologise' for the attack even before the findings of the inquiry.
The aerial bombardment of civilian population centres and places of
worship follow a pattern set by the Sri Lanka armed forces over the past several years and
President Kumaratunga's belated promise to investigate the recent violations, must ring
hollow in the ears of the Tamil people whose kith and kin have lost their lives or their
limbs in the bomb outrage."
The International Secretariat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
appeals to you to respond positively and with humanity to the call made by the Secretary
General of the United Nations for urgent humanitarian aid for the tens of thousands
displaced Tamils and also call upon the Sri Lanka government
1. to withdraw from the occupied territories of the Tamil homeland and
end the genocidal attack on the Tamil people; and
2. to recognise the right of the Tamil people to choose their political
status in order to pave the way for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.
Thank you,
Yours faithfully,
sgd Lawrence Thilakar
LTTE Central Committee Member
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