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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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