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CONFLICT RESOLUTION
TAMIL EELAM
- SRI LANKA
White House Statement on the Situation in Sri
Lanka
Office of the Press Secretary, White House
Friday, April 24, 2009
Comment by
tamilnation.org
It appears that what we wrote on 29
January 2009 in
Sinhala Sri Lanka's Genocide of Eelam Tamils - a Crime Against
Humanity,
is now coming to
pass -
"...the
international community will wait till Tamil resistance is
sufficiently weakened or annihilated before it
attempts to intervene 'on humanitarian grounds' and in
seeming response to 'world wide Tamil appeals'.
Meanwhile the IC will even welcome such world wide appeals
by Tamils as that will pave the way (and establish useful
contact points amongst the Tamil diaspora) for IC's eventual
intervention with 'development aid' with the mantra of not
conflict resolution but 'conflict transformation'."
'Humanitarian
intervention' to prevent the humanitarian tragedy that is taking
place in the Tamil homeland, had it been early, would have been
kind. But the belated attempts that are being made today expose
not the humanitarian concerns of the international actors but
the strategic interests that impel the international actors to
act the way they do.
The White
House call that 'international aid
workers should have access to all sites where internally
displaced persons are being registered and sheltered' is
directed to embed the physical presence of the so called
'international
community' in Sri Lanka and exclude the influence of China and
manage the influence of New Delhi in the Indian Ocean region.The
White House call has little to do with securing freedom
for the people of Tamil Eelam from permanent alien Sinhala
rule.We are reminded of the record of the Bush adminstration and
the
words of US Amabassador Lunstead in January 2006 -
"Through our military
training and assistance programs, including efforts to help
with counterterrorism initiatives and block illegal
financial transactions, we are helping to shape the ability
of the Sri Lankan Government to protect its people and
defend its interests."
We commented then -
"Shaping the ability of the
Sri Lankan government to protect the Tamil people may appear
to many like shaping the ability of the fox to guard the
chickens. Sri Lanka's record of torture,
rape,
extra judicial killings and mass graves, speaks for
itself . So does the strident voice of
Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism. But then, it may be
that ambassador Lunstead did not have the Tamil people in
mind."
After all the simplest thing that the US could
have done to protect the Tamil people would have been to remove
the ban on the LTTE so that the capacity of the people of Tamil
Eelam to resist the genocidal onslaught launched on them by
Sinhala Sri Lanka may have been strengthened.
The simple and humane thing that the US could
have done was
not to taunt the struggles against terrorism with the label
terrorism
but to adopt a principle centered approach which liberated
political language and also helped to liberate a people who have
taken up arms as
a last resort in
their
struggle for freedom from oppressive alien Sinhala rule.
The White
House statement fails to recognise that in
Tamil Eelam today, though the
charge is genocide, the struggle is for freedom. It is
not one or the other - it is both. It is not either or -
it is and. The genocide is taking place because
the people of Tamil Eelam have refused to submit to alien
Sinhala rule. And Sri Lanka President Rajapaksa is following in
the footsteps of Guatemala Gen. Efrain Rios who declared
in the 1980s that if it is that the guerrilla moves amongst the
people as a fish swims in the sea then 'if you cannot
catch the fish, you have to drain the sea.'.
Reconciliation and peaceful
coexistence between two peoples can come only on the basis of
recognising the existence of each people who inhabit the
island of Sri Lanka as a people with the inalienable right
to self determination.
''..The Tamil population in the North and
East of the island, who have lived from ancient times within
relatively well defined geographical boundaries in the north
and east of the island, share an ancient heritage, a vibrant
culture, and a living language which traces its origins to
more than 2500 years ago. ...Before the advent of the
British ..., separate kingdoms existed for the Tamil areas
and for the Sinhala areas in the island. The Tamil people
and the Sinhala people were brought within the confines of
one state for the first time by the British in 1833. After
the departure of the British in 1948, an alien Sinhala
people speaking a language different to that of the Tamils
and claiming a separate and distinct heritage has
persistently denied the rights and fundamental freedoms of
the Tamil people. ..
It is ...our view that the Secretary
General should consider invoking his good offices with the
aim of contributing to the establishment of peace in the
island of Sri Lanka through respect for the existence of the
Tamil homeland in the NorthEast of the island of Sri Lanka
and recognition for the right of the Tamil people to freely
determine their political status.''
- 17 non governmental
organisations ( International Association of Educators
for World Peace, International Educational Development,
International Indian Treaty Council, Consejo Indico de
Sud America, Comision de Deeches Homonas de El
Salavador, Commission for the Defence of Human Rights in
Central America, World Council of Churches,
International Movement against all Forms of
Discrimination and Racism,Action des Christians Pour
L'Abolition de la Torture,FIMARC, International Council
of Women, American Association of Jurists, Centre
Europe-Tiers Monde, Servieiv Pax Justica America Latina,
Pax Romana, International League for the Rights and
Liberation of Peoples, and World Christian Live
Community at the
UN Commission on Human Rights at its 50th Sessions in
February 1994:
There is a need for the US
to recognise the enduring truth of something which
Velupillai
Pirabakaran
said many years ago -
"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."
It is only the independent who
may become inter-dependent and associate with one another in
freedom, in equality and with dignity.It appears to us that
the dynamics of the
uneasy balance of power in the Indian Ocean region leads the
US to support the continued existence of an undivided Sri Lanka.
It appears that the US is concerned that support for an
independent Tamil Eelam may lead to an increased Chinese/Iranian
presence in Sinhala Sri Lanka and in the Indian Ocean region.
Again it appears that the US is not in the buisness of creating
regional hegemons and giving a blank cheque to India. Said
that it seems that the Obama administration also
recognises that a 'post genocide' Sinhala Sri Lanka will
prove to be no different to Saddam Hussien's Iraq which the US
supported in Iraq's war against Iran.
We believe that the long term strategic
interests of the United States will not be furthered by steadfastly
defending the inviolability of territorial boundaries of existing
states, regardless of how and when they were determined. That will
not be the path to a stable world order. Time will ofcourse, tell.
"....The political stability
in-ground is much more conducive to human rights and all those
aspirations that we hold sacred in the United States. And I think
that we've got to get away from this idea that we need to support
the central government everywhere because it's always preferable to
have a unified state rather than different ones....
we need to rethink the customary support we give for unity, and
blinding ourselves to the oppression, to the misery that's inflicted
on minorities and creates civil warfare, if you will, as in Sri
Lanka, that will persist forever, until there's finally an ability
to create a separate statehood that will be able to conduct its own
affairs in ways that satisfies its own domestic constituency and is
harmonious with its neighbours....
Remember the wisdom of Lord Palmerston: nations don't
have permanent friends and enemies; they have permanent interests.
And the interests the United States regularly is in recognizing
these separatists—if you want to call them separatist moments for
statehood, really, because it furthers political stability..."
Bruce Fein, founder of the
American Freedom Agenda, served in the US Justice Department under
President Reagan, adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise
Institute, a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation, lecturer
at the Brookings Institute, and adjunct professor at George
Washington University in
Kosovo: The global significance of independence, 24
February 2008
There is a need for the US to defend the
very real values that a people stand for and speak from the heart to the
hearts of those people. We want to believe that these are the values
which the Obama administration has pledged to uphold. 'Values are the
essential principles of life without which life would be without meaning
– things would fall apart, and the centre cannot hold. They are agents
of social cohesion'.
"...Movements
for justice throughout the world and throughout history always begin with
and are sustained by a moral statement, a value idea...Movements are
sustained when there are enough people whose imagination is captivated by a
vision that lifts them beyond wherever they may be and which encourages them
to have a better idea of themselves and their history into what they might
or could become.. Values are the essential principles of life without which
life would be without meaning – things would fall apart, and the centre
cannot hold. They are agents of social cohesion.... "
N Barney Pityana
in Liberation, Civil Rights & Democracy,
The Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial Lecture, 2004
We urge the Obama administration to
recognise that the United States has an opportunity to make Sri Lanka a
model and help it to evolve, by negotiating,
two
autonomous democratic political structures within a system acceptable to
both parties,
"....The United States has an
opportunity to make Sri Lanka a model and help it to evolve, by
negotiating,
two
autonomous democratic political structures within a system
acceptable to both parties, where ethnic communities can coexist
peacefully on the Island. The US should be firm in its message to
the government and the opposition, that if negotiations are not
forthcoming immediately, they should be prepared to conduct a
referendum of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. This can be done with
the assistance of the United Nations similar to the referendum in
East Timor. Thus, in the absence of a negotiated settlement, the
Tamil people could determine whether they want a
confederation or
a separate state as endorsed by the Tamil people in the last
democratic elections held in 1977 in the north and east of Sri
Lanka...." -
US Congressman Brad Sherman, 1 September 2000
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