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united kingdom
& the Struggle for Tamil Eelam
On the Conflict in the Island of Sri Lanka
Dr Kim Howells MP,
Minister of State
Foreign and Commonwealth Office 12 June 2007
[see also Sri Lanka accuses 'bullying' West 12 June 2007]
Comment by tamilnation.org
It is a matter for regret that the UK Government continues to obfuscate by
conflating the two words 'terrorism' and 'violence'.
We need to repeat that which we
have already
said
elsewhere. The Cuban revolution was violent but it was
not terrorism. The war against Hitler was violent but it was
not terrorism. The question that needs to be addressed is
whether there are
any
circumstances in which a people ruled by an alien people
may
lawfully
resort to arms to resist that alien rule and
secure freedom. And if all resort to violence to secure political ends is
not terrorism then, we may need
to address the question:
what is terrorism? We
need to address the genuine concerns expressed by
UN Special Rapporteur,
Kalliopi K. Koufa in June 2004
"The most problematic issue relating to terrorism and armed conflict
is distinguishing terrorists from
lawful combatants"
By refusing to distinguish
between terrorism and lawful national liberation struggles
the UK government has in effect encouraged successive
Sri Lanka governments to continue to label the national
liberation struggle of the people of
Tamil Eelam as 'terrorism', and on that basis
torture,
rape
and
murder
Tamils with
impunity in a sustained effort to
conquer and rule
the people of Tamil Eelam.
One result is that today Sri
Lanka's Defence Secretary is unafraid to
brazenly
declare to the BBC and to the world -
"When the US does operations they say covert
operations. When something is in Sri Lanka they call
abductions. This is playing with the words. What I am saying
is, if there is a terrorist group, why can't you do
anything? It's not against a community... I'm talking about
terrorists. Anything is fair."
Sanmugam Sabesan was
right to point
out on 28 May 2007 that தமிழீழ மக்களின் அழிவுக்குச்
சம்பந்தப்பட்ட மேற்குலகமே காரணம்
- 'Today our people are perishing because the international
actors have failed to demonstrate justice and integrity.'
UK and the West may continue to believe
that the approach they have adopted will advance their own
strategic
interests in the Indian Ocean region. Some features of
these strategic interests will appear from US Lt.Col.
Christopher J. Pehrson's analysis in
String of Pearls:Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power
Across the Asian Littoral -
 "
The geopolitical strategy dubbed the “String of Pearls” is
arising as foreign oil becomes a center of gravity critical to
China’s
energy needs. China’s rising maritime power is encountering American
maritime power along the sea lines of communication (SLOCs) that connect
China to vital energy resources in the Middle East and Africa. The “String
of Pearls” describes the manifestation of China’s rising geopolitical
influence through efforts to increase access to ports and airfields, develop
special diplomatic relationships, and modernize military forces that extend
from the South China Sea through the
Strait of Malacca,
across the Indian
Ocean, and on to the Arabian Gulf. .. "
Other aspects of the uneasy balance of power in
the Indian Ocean region will appear from
The Indian Ocean Region - A Story Told with
Pictures.
"The Indian ocean region had
become the strategic heartland of the 21st century,
dislodging Europe and North East Asia which adorned
this position in the 20th century.. the developments
in the Indian Ocean region were contributing to the
advent of a less Western centric and a more
multi-polar world."
Donald L. Berlin, Head of Security Studies, Asia
Pacific Centre for Security Studies, Honolulu,
Hawaii
Said that, given the Sri
Lanka government's
current
belligerent tilt to Asia (and China) (encapsulated in Defence Secretary
Rajapakse's statement: "We
have all the SAARC countries, the Asian countries. Britain, or Western countries, the EU countries, they can do whatever. We don't
depend on them. They think that they we get aid. No, they are not giving
anything."), the UK and the West may persuade themselves that the
answer lies in using the Tamil Eelam struggle as an
additional
lever to get President Rajapakse to 'play ball' as it were.
Here, the Tamil people may
have a feeling of deja vu. They have been there before with
India in the 1980s and the eventual betrayal of 1987 no
sooner
New Delhi's strategic interests were secured by the
Exchange of Letters annexed to the India Sri Lanka Accord.
A concerted attempt was then made to coerce Tamils into accepting the
comic opera reforms of the 13th Amendment and the Provincial
Councils Act - as the best deal available on the table.
This time round, no sooner Western strategic interests in
the Indian Ocean region are secured, the Tamils will be called
upon to accept a version of the toothless Vitharane proposals -
as the best deal available on the table. Again, if President Rajapakse refuses 'to play ball', the UK
and the West may persuade themselves that the answer lies in
'regime change' in Colombo - and help bring in a more
pliable Ranil Wickremasinghe who may be amenable to secure
Western interests whilst at the same time continuing to
deny the
existence of the Tamil homeland. Once again,
Sanmugam Sabesan was right to point out in
வலியப்போய் ஏமாறுபவர்களும்,
துணிந்து வந்து ஏமாற்றுபவர்களும்
on 15 May 2007 -
"The international community is concerned to
secure a peace in the island of Sri Lanka which will advance
their own political, economic and strategic interests. It is
not truly concerned with helping to resolve the basic issues
faced by the Tamils. The international community seeks a
peace, which even though it does not resolve the basic
issues of the Tamil struggle, is sufficient to deceive the
Tamil people into thinking that it has - this is the
position of the international community... "
But the UK and the West will be wrong in
believing that approaches such as those that they have adopted will succeed. For one
thing, they
may want to remind themselves of something which Professor
Marshall Singer told the
US Congress Committee on International
Relations in 1995
"...One of the essential elements that
must be kept in mind in understanding the Sri
Lankan ethnic conflict is that, since 1958 at least,
every time Tamil politicians negotiated some sort of
power-sharing deal with a Sinhalese government -
regardless of which party was in power - the opposition
Sinhalese party always claimed that the party in power
had negotiated away too much. In almost every case -
sometimes within days - the party in power backed down
on the agreement..."
They may also want to attend to the words of Neil Devotta in 2005...
"...Beginning in the mid-1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority
Sinhalese community resorted to
ethnic outbidding as a means to
attain power and in doing so
systematically marginalised the
country's minority Tamils...parties in power seek to promote
dubious conflict resolution only to be checkmated by the respective opposition
which typically claims that the proposed solutions are bound to eventually
dismember the island"
Neil Devotta
in From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict:
the institutional bases for Sri Lanka's separatist war, 2005
For another thing, the UK and the
West may want
to revisit the words of Dharmaretnam Sivaram in
What is really wrong with the counter insurgency methods?
"...Sri Lanka is easily the only country in the world to fight its
insurgency with the undivided support of the international
community, the backing of all the important nations across the
global political spectrum. It is the most advantageous external
environment that any country may have ever had in fighting an
insurgency.
And yet something is obviously going wrong. There are three reasons
that may be attributed to the apparent failure of western counter
insurgency - CI - methods in Sri Lanka. (It would be countered that
nothing is wrong with western CI but with the people who are not
doing it right. This, upon closer scrutiny, would be found untenable
because less literate armies have succeeded in quelling insurgencies
in less favourable circumstances) Firstly, the LTTE has developed
over the years a fairly sophisticated counter-counter insurgency
system. Secondly, it has consistently focused its resources on
building a conventional force and on preserving the minimum required
territory to sustain such a force. And thirdly it never lets itself
be inveigled or coerced into the political space that is so
necessary for diluting and mystifying the basic cause fuelling the
insurgency.
"
Finally, the UK and the West may want to consider whether their approach will fail,
in the same way that the New Delhi approach in 1987 failed, because
it is fundamentally unprincipled. The approaches of UK (&
the West) and New Delhi were each directed to securing
each of their separate (but undeclared) strategic interests in the
Indian Ocean region. They were mindful of
the words of
US
Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan quoted by
Cdr. P K Ghosh in Maritime
Security Challenges in South Asia and the Indian Ocean
on 18 January 2004
"Whoever controls the
Indian Ocean dominates Asia. This ocean is the key to
the seven seas in the twenty-first century, the destiny
of the world will be decided in these waters."
But, regrettably, they
were not equally mindful of the fundamental issues that had led to the
Tamil struggle for freedom. They were not mindful of the
words of Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in "Sri Lanka - the Country will Never be Put Together Again"
-
"..We have got to live
with the consequences of our actions. .. When I went to
Colombo for the first time in 1956 it was a better city
than Singapore because Singapore had three and a half
years of Japanese occupation and Colombo was the centre
or HQ of Mountbatten's Southeast Asia command. And they
had sterling reserves. They had two Universities. Before
the war, a thick layer of educated talent. So if you
believe what American liberals or British liberals used
to say, then it ought to have flourished. But it didn't.
One-man one-vote led to the domination of the Sinhalese
majority over the minority Tamils who were the
active and intelligent fellows who worked hard and got
themselves penalised. And English was out. They were
educated in English. Sinhalese was in.
They got quotas in two universities and now they
have become fanatical Tigers. And the country will never
be put together again.
Somebody should have told
them - change the system, loosen up, or break off. And
looking back, I think the Tunku was wise. (The reference
is to Tunku Abdul Rahman the Malaysian Prime Minister
under whose rule Singapore separated from Malaysia). I
offered a loosening up of the system. He said: "Clean
cut, go your way". Had we stayed in, and I look at
Colombo and Ceylon, I mean changing names, sometimes
maybe you deceive the gods, but I don't think you are
deceiving the people who live in them. It makes no
great difference to the tragedy that is being enacted.
They failed because they had weak or wrong leaders ".
Sometimes
maybe you deceive the gods, but you are
not deceiving the people who live in Tamil Eelam. Dr.Howell may want
to pay attention to
the words
of Professor Jeff Sluka uttered more than 10
years ago -
"... oppressed people are not
socially stupid even when they are poor, hungry, or uneducated. They understand only too well the social, political, and economic
conditions of their lives, and, when the possibility to do so presents itself, they are
prepared to act to improve those conditions.
National liberation movements are one of the
most significant ways people do this...
..National liberation movements are not the activities of small groups of isolated individuals, though state
authorities opposed to them frequently describe them as such for propaganda purposes.
They are the struggle of rebellious nations against foreign invaders ..
To defend their nations from being annihilated, many peoples have taken up
arms and engaged in wars of national liberation. To understand armed
national liberation movements, it is necessary to strip away the camouflage
terms and explanations that states use to hide their true nature... Instead of identifying them as patriots or freedom
fighters battling oppression and injustice and seeking the liberation of
their people, they usually refer to them as "terrorists."
Every nation people that has resisted state domination
or invasion has been accused of being terrorists. But
armed national self-preservation or self-defense is not
"terrorism" or "banditry". "
UK and the West may need to
recognise that state territorial boundaries are not
sacrosanct.
"...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
The attempt to freeze human
evolution is a futile undertaking . We would commend, yet again
to Dr. Howells, the view of Yelena Bonner (widow of Andrei
Sakharov) that "the inviolability of a country's borders
against invasion from the outside must be clearly separated
from the right to statehood of any people within a state's
borders." The strategic interests of the UK and the West in
the
Indian
Ocean Region will not be furthered by trying to suppress the
freedom struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam.
And here let us be clear. The struggle of the people of
Tamil Eelam is not about securing
benevolent Sinhala rule. It is about freedom from
alien Sinhala rule. It was a freedom struggle that was initiated, some 30 years ago, not
by the LTTE, but by the Gandhian Tamil Leader, one of Her
Majesty's (Queens) Counsel, S.J.V.Chelvanayagam -
"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."
"I have just completed my third visit to Sri Lanka, my second this
year. I met His Excellency the President and discussed the role of
the international community in assisting Sri Lanka resolve its
conflict. As always the people were warm and friendly and the country as
beautiful as any I have ever visited. But the clouds that hung over Sri Lanka during my last visit have
become darker and more threatening. The effects of the conflict are being felt directly in Colombo – a
cowardly terrorist bomb during the rush hour on 28 May 2007 killing
eight people, seven of them civilians. And there was the repulsive
abduction and murder of two Red Cross volunteers, whose bodies were
discovered on 2 June 2007. There is no justification for this terrorism and abuse of human
rights. They highlight the very real threat the people of Sri Lanka
face. In recent weeks there has been speculation that the British
Government might lift its ban on the LTTE – allowing it to resume
fund raising and political activity in Britain. This will not happen while the LTTE continues to use terrorism. The
targeting of civilians make the case ever more strongly that our
decision to proscribe the LTTE was totally justified. Before we
change our views on this, the LTTE must renounce violence in word
and deed. There are some that believe the only way to address the LTTE’s
violence is to fight fire with fire. They are wrong. For the last twenty-four years the front lines have moved north and
south along the A9 road, but neither side has been able to win a
decisive victory. And in any event even if the security forces were
able to win - what then? There would still need to be a political deal, otherwise resentment
will build up and there will be more violence, in twenty-five or
fifty years. This is a lesson we learnt through bitter experience in Northern
Ireland, where violence began in 1969. While the overriding
responsibility of British Governments was, like any Government, to
stop the killing and to protect the citizens of Northern Ireland, it
became increasingly and painfully clear that there could not be an
exclusively military solution to the problem. The first Military commander in Northern Ireland was quick to point
this out. The army could contain the terrorist campaign, but it
could not address the causes. In fact a security led response to terrorism can end up
strengthening the terrorist. The introduction of internment without
trial in Northern Ireland in 1971 resulted in the IRA’s ranks being
swelled by hundreds of new recruits. I am sure that similarly, the reports of human rights abuses and
civilian deaths are being used by the LTTE to win arguments and
raise money among Tamil populations, including those overseas. Human rights abuses not only play into the hands of propagandists,
they damage Sri Lanka’s image overseas and make it more difficult
for the international community to give the Sri Lankan government
the political support it wants. But most importantly human rights
abuses are wrong in themselves. The Red Cross worker deaths and the constant reports of
disappearances in Colombo and Jaffna suggest that the situation is,
if anything, getting worse. There has been some concern voiced in Sri Lanka about international
attention focussing on human rights. Some claim that comments about
human rights are interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs. But Human Rights are not a purely domestic matter. Both Sri Lanka
and the UK are signatories to the United Nations human rights
conventions, which means we both have an obligation to uphold the
highest standard of human rights. If either of us is perceived to fall below those standards we can
and should expect difficult questions. I realise I have painted a bleak picture. But I do not believe it is
a hopeless one. Most moderate people in Sri Lanka, the British and
Norwegian governments and the wider international community, want to
see Sri Lanka remain as a single country which is able to address
the legitimate demands of all its ethnic groups within its existing
borders. Other countries in the region, most notably India and Indonesia,
have been able to form prosperous and united nations out of diverse
linguistic and religious groups. In order to guarantee stability, Sri Lanka needs a sustainable
political solution, one that allows its Tamil population to feel
they will be able to prosper within a Sri Lankan state that takes
pride in the identity of all of its people. No one pretends this will be easy. The All Party Representative
Committee provides a clear opportunity to move the debate forward if
it publishes ambitious enough proposals. The way to defeat terrorism is not through relentless military
action, but by winning the battle of ideas and with it the support
of moderate Tamils. Without some form of political support even the
most ruthless terrorist group will have to either come to the
negotiating table or become marginalised. The UK is ready to help with the search for peace and the need for
all parties to the conflict to move away from the path of violence
and respect human rights. |
