National self-determination as a political principle has evolved over the last 150 years as a by-product of the doctrine of nationalism. The term 'peoples', in the UN Charter and Covenants is used as being coincident with 'nation'. What is a nation?

At the time of World War I, on the basis of Krehbiel's formulation, it was said that 'a nation exists when its component parts believe it to be a nation.' This repeats the much earlier idea of the great French scholar Ernest Renan when he simply referred to the nation as a 'corporate soul'. While this attempt at defining emphasises the subjective factor, yet it is inadequate in offering no means of distinguishing a nation from a community or tribe. An indispensable characteristic is the possession of a specified territory by the nation.

Taking into account the many views expressed, we find the following as indispensable characteristics of a nation:

(1) possession of a specified territory;
(2) a consciousness among the people as a nation; and
(3) cultural integration which binds the people by ties of cultural oneness.

Applying these criteria, the Tamils of Sri Lanka vis-a-vis the Sinhalese are indisputably a nation. However much Jayawardene brothers and their recently recruited pseudo-intellectual cohorts, in their myopia may want it otherwise to carry on their mad programme of Tamil genocide, the Tamils are a nation, living in a specified territory, possessed of consciousness as a nation and manifesting socio-cultural integration and coherence as one people.

It is essential to correctly designate the political conflict in Sri Lanka as one between the oppressor Sinhalese government sub-jugating the Tamil nation in the name of the interests of the Sinhalese nation on the one hand, and the oppressed Tamil nation fighting for freedom, on the other. It is a national question sui generis. That the Tamils of Sri Lanka are an oppressed nation, now subjected to genocidal repression by the very Government which must protect their lives, is put beyond any doubt by what Jayawardene, as President of the country told Ian Ward, a British journalist in July 1983. He said: 'I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people. . . .Now we can't think of them. Not about their lives or of their opinion about us.' (Daily Telegraph, London. 11 July 1983).

This Daily Telegraph interview was re-published in the Sunday Observer (Colombo) and all the Sinhala newspapers. The TULF President and M.P. for Nallur referred to the above statement in the Sunday Observer, in parliament and said: 'I only hope that what was published would be contradicted by the President. . . I hope to God that the article which was an interview was wrong as it was stated there that the President did not care for the lives of the people of Jaffna.' No contradiction was ever made and the President stood by the correctness of that news report.

A multi-nation State can continue to exist only if the cultural diversity of the separate nations is recognised as the bedrock and the equality of the constituent nations is accepted as axiomatic. The legislature in such a State must devise the structure to prevent the domination of one nation by the other. If domination by pursued, the State will fall apart and destroy itself. In Sri Lanka, domination and subjugation of the Tamils was what the blinkered Sinhalese chauvinist politicians wanted and achieved. Hence, the nation-breaking that is taking place.

The Tamil people have been subjected to and are fighting against the internal colonialism of the Sinhalese. The UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (G.A. Resolution 1514 of 1960) states: the process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible and all people have an inalienable right to complete freedom, the exercise of their sovereignty.'

Professor Virginia Leary, in her 'Ethnic Conflict and Violence' in Sri Lanka (I.C.J. 1983, p. 69), states: 'The Tamils could be considered to be a "people". They have a distinct language, culture, a separate religious identity from the majority population, and to an extent, a defined territory. Claims to self-determination under international law, however, must also be balanced against the inter national law principle of the territorial integrity of states.' True and a correctly stated international law principle indeed. But territorial integrity of states is not an end in itself. It is only of instrumental value in furthering the interests of all its citizens and to provide for the peoples comprised in the territory of the State their legitimate right to exercise power for their well-being. In international law, a nation of peoples have rights, viz., right to freedom from oppression, from racial discrimination, human rights, fundamental freedoms, etc.

The UN Declaration on the Principles of Equal Rights (GA Resolution 2625 of 1970) gives the right of self-determination to peoples within existing independent states when governments fail to 'conduct themselves in compliance with the principles of equal rights' and when the States do not 'represent the whole of the people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or colour.' The Article reads as follows:

Nothing in the foregoing paragraphs shall be construed as authorising or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial principle of equal rights and self-determination as described above and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or colour.

The Sri Lanka Government which does not hide its naked genocidal massacre of the innocent Tamils in their homelands cannot by regarded as conducting itself in compliance with the principle of equal rights. Nor can that government be regarded as representing the Tamil people when Jayawardene himself has said that he was not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people and not about their lives. What is self-determination in international law? The UN Declaration on the International Status of "Peoples" and their Right of Self-determination (GA Resolution 2625 of 1970) states:

The establishment of a sovereign independent state, the free association or integration with an independent state or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing the right of self-determination by that people.

The Sri Lankan Government has not simply been against but oppressive of the Tamil people, as a nation-, and its political, economic, social and ethno-cultural interests. Tamils in Sri Lanka have no state and are seeking to create their own sovereign state of Eelam based on their right of self-determination. They are a stateless nation oppressed by alien Sinhalese colonialism and domination.

The Tamil freedom fighters today assert and bear arms in exercise of their right to self-determination. In practical terms, what is now necessary is a constitutional formula for secession. In this, the Tamil people need the help of the international community, as the oppressor does not want to recognise its own international obligations. Otherwise, the state of international relations would be seen to be one of paralysis and bankruptcy, the inaction dictated by out-dated cliches of 'internal affairs', 'territorial integrity', `national unity', etc. To avoid further unnecessary violence, turmoil and loss of innocent lives, on both sides, it is the right and duty of the UN and concerned Member States, to intervene in recognition of the right of the Tamil people to self-determination. The particular justifiable circumstance of the Tamil people's desire for self-determination by secession is that it developed out of the dynamic of national oppression and has generated its own momentum. If is a national liberation struggle sui generis and in the words of David Selbourne of Oxford University 'a true national question, if ever there was one.'

There is need for enlightened and progressive realisation that self-determination necessarily involves attack on existing union, territorial unity and state sovereignty. But that is for the higher cause of human liberation, human rights and human dignity. The existing state cannot be regarded or defended as permanent and unalterable in the face of internal colonialism, genocidal repression, organised pogroms and mass massacre of a nation of people.