Sathyam
Commentary
18 July 1998, Revised 2 September 2006
Revised 14 August 2007, First Anniversary of Chencholai
Massacre
The Charge is Genocide - the
Struggle is for Freedom... [also
in PDF]
 
[One Year Ago on 14 August 2006:
Sri
Lanka Air force kills 61 school
children]
"...Tamils who
today live in many lands and across distant seas
know only too well that sovereignty after all, is not
virginity. If Germany and
France were able to put in place 'associate' structures
despite the suspicions and confrontations of two world
wars, it should not be beyond the capacity of an
independent Tamil Eelam and an independent Sri Lanka
to work out structures, within which each independent
state may remain free and prosper, but at the same time
pool sovereignty in certain agreed areas. And to say
that is not to live in the fantasy world of the fanatic
but to reject the fanaticism of those who insist on
preserving the artificial
territorial boundaries imposed (and later bequeathed)
by the erstwhile British ruler. It is to reject the
colonial legacy and to reject the continuing attempt
to replace British colonial rule with Sinhala colonial
rule. The words of Velupillai Pirabaharan,
uttered some sixteen years ago, bear repetition, yet
again:
"...It is the Sri
Lanka government which has failed to learn the
lessons from the emergence
of the struggles for self determination in several
parts of the globe and the innovative structural
changes that have taken place... 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.."
And so today millions
of Tamils living in
many lands will remember and honour the memory of
their brothers and sisters who were killed, raped and
tortured in their thousands, for no crime other than
that they were Tamils and because, as a people, they
had
refused to submit to alien Sinhala rule. The
charge is genocide, the struggle is for
freedom..."
Twenty four years ago, commencing on 23
July 1983, thousands of Tamils
were slaughtered in the island of Sri Lanka by armed
Sinhala gangs, led in many cases by Sinhala members of
Parliament and their henchmen. It was a planned
attack.
"Clearly this was not a spontaneous
upsurge of communal hatred among the Sinhala people..
It was a series of deliberate acts, executed in
accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and
organised well in advance..." Paul Sieghart:
Report of a
Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International
Commission of Jurists and its British Section, Justice,
March 1984
It was genocide.
"..Under the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
acts of murder committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group as such are considered as acts of
genocide.The evidence points clearly to the conclusion
that the violence of the Sinhala rioters on the Tamils
(in July/August 1983) amounted to acts of genocide." -
The International Commission of Jurists Review,
December 1983
Amongst the several acts of gruesome
murder, one incident serves to illustrate the horror of
the ordeal faced by Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka in
July 1983:
"A tourist told yesterday how she
watched in horror as a Sinhala mob deliberately burned
alive a bus load of Tamils... Mrs.Eli Skarstein, back
home in Stavangen, Norway, told how she and her 15 year
old daughter, Kristin, witnessed one massacre. 'A mini
bus full of Tamils were forced to stop in front of us
in Colombo' she said. A Sinhalese mob poured petrol
over the bus and set it on fire. They blocked the car
door and prevented the Tamils from leaving the vehicle.
'Hundreds of spectators watched as about 20 Tamils were
burned to death'. Mrs. Skarstein added: 'We can't
believe the official casualty figures. Hundreds may be
thousands must have been killed already." (London
Daily Express, 29th August 1983)
But Genocide '83 was
not the first occasion, when the Tamil people in the
island of Sri Lanka were murdered by Sinhala armed gangs
and security forces. Nor was it the last.
Twenty five years before Genocide '83,
Tarzie Vittachi
wrote in Emergency '58 -
"As panic spread, doors were closed in
Sinhalese as well as Tamil homes. The Tamils closed
their doors to escape murder, rape and pillage. The
Sinhalese closed their doors to prevent Tamils running
into their houses for shelter…Among the hundreds
of acts of arson, rape, pillage, murder and plain
barbarity some incidents may be recorded as examples of
the kind of thuggery at work... At Wellawatte junction,
near the plantain kiosk, a pregnant woman and her
husband were set upon. They clubbed him and left him on
the pavement, then they kicked the woman repeatedly as
she hurried along at a grotesque sprint, carrying her
swollen belly... What are we left with (in 1958)? A
nation in ruins, some grim lessons which we cannot
afford to forget and a momentous question: Have the Sinhalese and Tamils reached the parting
of ways?.."
And in 1977, the Tamils were attacked and killed
again.
"A tragedy is taking place in Sri
Lanka: the political conflict following upon the recent
elections, is turning into a racial massacre. It is
estimated by reliable sources that between 250 and 300
Tamil citizens have lost their lives and over 40,000
made homeless...(The Tamils) have now lost confidence
in their treatment by the Sinhalese majority and are
calling for a restoration of their separate national
status... At a time when the West is wake to the evils
of racialism, the racial persecution of the Tamils and
denial of their human rights should not pass without
protest. The British have a special obligation to
protest, as these cultivated people were put at the
mercy of their neighbours less than thirty years ago by
the British Government. They need our attention and
support." - Sir John Foster, David Astor, Louis
Blom-Cooper, Dingle Foot, Robert Birley, James Fawcett,
Michael Scott, London Times 20 September 1977
It was all this and more that led Paul
Sieghart to conclude, 23 years ago in March 1984
"Communal riots in which Tamils are
killed, maimed, robbed and rendered homeless are no
longer isolated episodes; they are beginning to become
a pernicious habit." - Paul Sieghart: Report of a
Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International
Commission of Jurists and its British Section, Justice,
March 1984
Two years later, in March
1986, Senator A.L.Missen, Chairman, Australian
Parliamentary Group of Amnesty International declared in
the Australian Parliament -
"Some 6000 Tamils have been killed
altogether in the last few years...These events are not accidental. It can be
seen that they are the result of a deliberate policy on
the part of the Sri Lankan government...Democracy in
Sri Lanka does not exist in any real sense..." -
Australian Senate Hansard, 13 March 1986
Four years thereafter, on 19 September
1990, Amnesty
launched a three month international campaign against
Sri Lanka with a campaign poster which declared:
"Licensed to Kill: State Terror in Sri Lanka". But, two
years after Amnesty's campaign Sri Lanka continued to
kill with impunity and Margaret Trawick,
Professor of Social Anthropology, Massey University
Palmerston North, New Zealand was moved to declare in
agony -
"I have been struggling in my mind
against the conclusion that the Sri Lanka government is
trying to kill or terrorise as many Tamil people as
possible; that the government is trying to keep the
conditions of the war unreported internationally,
because if those conditions were reported, the actions
of the military would be perceived as so deplorable
that foreign nations would have no choice but to
condemn them. And this would be embarrassing to
everybody. But it seems now that no other conclusion
is possible..." Statement of 28
April 1996
Today, twenty three years after Paul
Sieghart, 21 years after Senator.A.L.Missen, 17 years
after Amnesty, and 11 years after Professor Mararet
Trawick, Tamils continue to be 'killed, maimed, robbed
and rendered homeless' and the Sri Lanka government
continues 'to kill or terrorise as many Tamil people as
possible.' A fair examination of the documented
record will prove (and prove
beyond reasonable doubt) that the people of Tamil Eelam
continue to be murdered and extra judicially executed in
a systematic, deliberate and planned manner by the Sri
Lanka authorities and their agents.
The massacres at Chunnakam
1984, Mannar 1985,
Kumithini 1985, Tiriyai
1985, Iruthayapuram 1986, Akkaraipattu 1986,
Kokkadaicholai1987, Kannapuram1990, Saththurukondan1990, Kokaddicholai 1991, Inspector Etram
Milakudiyetra 1995, Jeyanthipuram 1995 , Navali 1995, Nagerkoil School
1995, Kumarapuram 1996, Puthukudyiruppu
1997, Amparai1997,
Kalutara Prison
1997, Tampalakamam
1998, Ayithiyamalai
2000, Bindunuwewe
2000, Trincomalee 2006, Mandaithivu 2006, Vankalai 2006, Pesalai 2006, Vallipunam 2006, Muthur
2006, Vaharai
2006, and Padahuthurai
2007 have now become a part of the history of the
suffering of the Tamil people. And these massacres have
gone hand in hand with disappearances
and individual extra judicial killings, rape, torture, aerial bombardment
and shelling.
The continued attack on the Tamil
people is genocidal in intent and is taking place with
impunity
and under the cover of a controlled and
intimidated media. Successive Sri Lanka governments
and their Sinhala Presidents have refused to admit to or
publicly condemn the terrorist actions of those under
their command. On the contrary, the pronouncements
of successive Sri Lanka Presidents, Sinhala Cabinet
Ministers and the holding of
obscene 'victory' ceremonies have served to encourage
the terrorist actions of those under their command. Sri
Lanka President Jayawardene,
famously remarked to Ian Ward of the London Daily
Telegraph in July 1983 -
"I have tried to be effective for
sometime but cannot. I am not worried about the opinion
of the Jaffna (Tamil) people now... 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.."
Deanna
Hodgin, Insight Magazine, wrote in 1990 -
''..I attended a press conference where
Defence Minister
Ranjan Wijeratne told the press that there had been
no civilian casualties despite heavy bombing. When I
volunteered that I had seen many bomb-blasted bodies,
and many hundreds of people injured by helicopter
strafing and more, the Defence Minister told me it was
a pity I had not been shot. That's the mentality you
are dealing with - human rights is not an idea with
much currency for the Sri Lankan government....
Congressman, I'm writing to you because I am angry. You
should be, too.'' Letter
dated 7 November 1990 to US Congressman Gus Yatron,
Subcommittee on Human Rights,Washington
 Three years later, in 1993, Sri Lanka
President D.B.Wijetunga
declared with equanimity, 'when there is a war, there
is no law, there is a race to kill'. And, eight years
later, in 1998, the army blockade of
food stuffs and medical supplies continued leading
Professor Jordan J. Paust to
conclude
"As demonstrated in this Essay, there
are serious allegations and significant recognitions of
human rights violations in Sri Lanka relating to the
right to adequate food, the right to adequate medicine
and medical supplies, and the right to freedom from
arbitrary and inhumane detention and controls. Such
denials are sustained by governmental censorship, denials of
access to certain areas for investigative purposes, and
intimidation of non governmental
organisations (NGOs), which in turn involve
violations of the human right to transnational freedom
of speech. Moreover, these denials are sustained by the
lack of adequate governmental investigations, arrests,
and prosecutions of alleged perpetrators - patterns
that facilitate an air of impunity... the intentional withholding of medicine and
medical supplies from LTTE controlled areas is a clear
violation of common Article 3 (of the 1949 Geneva
Convention) and is a war crime. "
'The Human
Rights to Food, Medicine and Medical Supplies, and
Freedom from Arbitrary and Inhuman Detention and
Controls in Sri Lanka', Vanderbilt Journal of
Transnational Law, May '98)
Today, 160,000 Tamils have been displaced
from their homes and Sri Lanka President Rajapakse
blocks aid
convoys , the armed forces under his command execute
aid workers and the tragedy
of Vaharai continues to unfold.
[see also Sri
Lanka's State Terror in Streaming Video -
Vaharai Tamil Refugees
]
And here, it is both important and
necessary to ask the question: Why did these genocidal
attacks happen? Why do they continue to happen? The
genocidal attacks on the Tamil people did not and do not
'just happen'. Ethnic cleansing is about assimilating a
people. It is about destroying the identity of a people,
as a people. And it occurs in stages. The preferred route
of a conqueror is to achieve his objective without resort
to violence - peacefully and stealthily. But when that is
resisted, albeit peacefully, the would be conqueror
turns to murderous violence and genocide to progress his
assimilative agenda.
In the island of Sri Lanka, the record shows that during
the past fifty years and more, the intent and goal of all
Sinhala governments (without
exception) has been to secure the island as a
Sinhala Buddhist Deepa. Rule by a
permanent ethnic majority within the confines of a single
state is the dark side of democracy. The Sinhala
Buddhist ethno
nation masquerading as a multi
ethnic 'civic' 'Sri Lankan' nation set about its task
of assimilation and 'cleansing' the island of the
Tamils, as a people, by
- depriving a section of Eelam Tamils of their
citizenship,
- declaring the Sinhala flag as the national
flag,
- colonising parts of the Tamil homeland
with Sinhala people,
- imposing Sinhala as the official
language,
- discriminating against Tamils students
seeking University admission,
- depriving Tamil language speakers of
employment in the public sector,
- dishonouring agreements entered
into with the Tamil parliamentary political
leadership,
- refusing to recognise constititutional safeguards
against discrimination,
- later removing these constitutional
safeguards altogether,
- giving to themselves an authocthonous Constitution with a
foremost place for Buddhism,
- changing the name of the island
itself to the Sinhala Buddhist name of Sri Lanka -
appropriately enough, on the 'tenth day of the waxing
moon in the month of Vesak in the year two thousand
five hundred and fifteen of the Buddhist Era', and
- amending the Sri Lanka constitution to render non violent
struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam illegal and
criminal
The short point is that the
deliberate genocidal attack on the Tamil people was
directed to terrorise the Tamil people to submit to alien
Sinhala rule. It was directed to quell Tamil resistance
to assimilation and ethnic cleansing.
The issue is therefore, not
simply about genocide. The issue is not simply about the
violations of the
humanitarian law of armed conflict or the violations of
the
ceasefire agreement - or for that matter the systematic violations of
human rights of the Tamil people. The issue and the
conflict in the island is about the refusal of the
people of Tamil Eelam to submit to alien Sinhala rule.
And it was this refusal which the manifesto of the
parliamentary Tamil
United Liberation Front proclaimed in 1977 -
"What is the alternative now left to the Nation that
has lost its rights to its language, rights to
its citizenship, rights to its religions and
continues day by day to lose its traditional
homeland to Sinhalese colonisation ? What is the
alternative now left to a Nation that has lost its
opportunities to higher education through
standardisation and its equality in opportunities in
the sphere of employment ? What is the alternative to a
Nation that lies helpless as it is being assaulted,
looted and killed by hooligans instigated by the
ruling race and by the security forces of the State?
Where else is an alternative to the Tamil Nation that
gropes in the dark for its identity and finds itself
driven to the brink of devastation? There is only one alternative and that is to
proclaim with the stamp of finality and fortitude that
"we alone shall rule over our land that our
fore fathers ruled. Sinhalese imperialism shall
quit our Homeland"
It was to this manifesto that the Tamil
people gave their overwhelming approval at the 1977
General Election in the island of Sri Lanka. The national
identity of the people of Tamil Eelam is rooted in
their language, in
their culture and in
their heritage. It is
a togetherness consolidated by their suffering and it
is a togetherness that is given direction by their
aspirations for a future where they, and their children
and their children's children may live in equality and in freedom. And
today the struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam, is not
about whether alien Sinhala rule should be benevolent or
that it should be 'fair and just'. After all, the British
too offered to rule fairly and justly (and even
benevolently) but this did not prevent those on whom the
British sought to impose their alien rule, struggling for
freedom.
Neither is the struggle of the people of
Tamil Eelam about devolution. Devolution is about
devolving from the higher to the lower. The higher is the
ruler and the lower is the ruled. Alien rulers are not
slow to offer (from time to time) 'consultation' and
'devolution' as ways of perpetuating their rule,
pacifying their subjects and progressing the 'peaceful'
assimilation of a conquered people. Aurobindo's caustic comments on
the British Morley-Minto
devolution proposals for India in 1907 retain their
relevance ninety nine years later:
"Mr.Morley has made his pronouncement and a long
expectant world may now go about its ordinary business
with the satisfactory conviction that the conditions of
political life in India will be precisely the same as
before... We find it impossible to discuss Mr.Morley's
reforms seriously, they are so impossibly burlesque and
farcical. Yet they have their serious aspect. They show
that British despotism, like all despotisms in the same
predicament, is making the time honoured, ineffectual
effort to evade a settlement of the real question by
throwing belated and now unacceptable sops to Demogorgon."
The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam
is not about 'sharing power'
within the confines of a Sri Lankan state, with a Sinhala army in command. The
words of John Stuart Mill in 1872 remain true more than a
century later:
"Free institutions are next to
impossible in a country made up of different
nationalities. An altogether different set of leaders
have the confidence of one part of the country and of
another. ... Above all, the grand
and only effectual security in the last resort against
the despotism of the government is in that case
wanting: the sympathy of the army with the
people. Soldiers to whose feelings half or three
fourths of the subjects of the same government are
foreigners, will have no more scruple in mowing them
down, and no more reason to ask the reason why, than
they would have in doing the same thing against
declared enemies. (John
Stuart Mill: Considerations on Representative
Government. London 1872)
The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam
is not about how best Sinhala
rule may be perpetuated and legitimised. It is about
freedom from alien Sinhala rule - and
the removal of the alien Sinhala army from the
Tamil homeland. And to those who would ask where is this
Tamil homeland let us reply with
Sathasivam Krishnakumar -
'Take a map of the island. Take a paint
brush and paint all the areas where Sri Lanka has
bombed and launched artillery attacks during
these past several years. When you have finished,
the painted area that you see - that is Tamil
Eelam.'
And to those who would deny that Sinhala rule is alien rule, let us say that it is alien rule
because the Sinhala people speak a different language to
that of the Tamil
people; because
they trace their history to origins different from
that of the Tamil
people; and because their cultural heritage is
different to that of the
Tamil people.
Finally, to those who would deny that it
is Sinhala rule, let us say that
it is Sinhala rule because the
undeniable political reality is that the political
consciousness of the Sinhala people and the way they
exercise their vote, is clearly determined by their
separate language, by
their separate history and by their separate cultural
heritage - in short by their own separate Sinhala
national identity. In the island of Sri Lanka, no Tamil
has ever been elected to an electorate which had a
majority of Sinhala voters and no Sinhalese has ever been
elected to an electorate which had a majority of Tamil
voters. The practise of democracy within the confines of
a single state has resulted in rule by a permanent Sinhala majority. And nothing,
perhaps, establishes this more directly than the answer
to the simple
question:
Q. Why is it that in Sri Lanka,
for five long decades since 'independence', we have
always had a Sinhala Buddhist as the executive head of
government?
The answer is that a Sinhala
Buddhist ethno
nation masquerading as a civic
' multi ethnic Sri
Lankan nation', will always
have a Sinhala Buddhist as the executive head of
government. The words of
Tamil leader, Nadarajah Thangathurai uttered in
February 1983 (a few months before he was murdered whilst in
the custody of the Sri Lanka government) serve to
underline this political reality:
"...Allegations are made that we are asking for
separation, that we are trying to divide the country.
When
were we undivided after all? Our traditional land,
captured by the European invaders has never been
restored to us. We have not even mortgaged our land at
any time to anyone in the name of one country. Our land
has changed hands off and on under various regimes, and
that is what has happened... What we ask for is not
division but freedom.
"
In the ultimate analysis, the struggle of
the people of Tamil Eelam is about democracy. If
democracy means the rule of the people, by the people,
for the people then it must follow, as night follows day,
that no one people may rule another. The right of self
determination provides the framework within which
democracy may flower. Every people have the right to
freely determine their political status and the terms on
which they may associate with another people. Democracy
and the right to self
determination go hand in hand - one cannot exist
without the other. The struggle of the people of Tamil
Eelam is about their democratic right to rule themselves.
Prince Hans-Adam II of
Liechtenstein, was right to point out in 2001
-
"...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
Professor Margaret Moore was also right
to conclude in the same year -
"...The problem in nationally divided
societies is that the different groups have different
political identities, and, in cases where the
identities are mutually exclusive (not nested), these
groups see themselves as forming distinct political
communities. In this situation, the options available
to represent these distinct identities are very
limited, because any solution at the state level is
inclined to be biased in favour of one kind of identity
over another. That is to say, if the minority group
seeks to be self-governing, or to secede from the
larger state, increased representation at the centre
will not be satisfactory. The problem in this case is
that the group does not identify with the centre, or
want to be part of that political
community...One conclusion that can
be drawn is that, in some cases, secession/partition of
the two communities, where that option is available, is
the best outcome overall. .." Normative
Justifications for Liberal Nationalism - Margaret
Moore,2001
It is sometimes said
that to accord international recognition to separate
national formations will lead to instability in the world
order. The reasoning is not dissimilar to that which was
urged a hundred years ago against granting universal
franchise. It was said that to empower every citizen with
a vote was to threaten the stability of existing state
structures and the ruling establishment. But the truth
was that it was the refusal to grant universal franchise
which threatened stability - and in the end the ruling
establishment was 'persuaded' to mend its ways. As
always, conscious evolution remains the only alternative
to revolution.
And to
those in the international community who continue to
speak of their willingness to recognise the 'legitimate
aspirations' of the Tamil people (but who refrain from
spelling out what in their view is 'legitimate') the time
has come to reiterate that which Gandhian
leader S.J.V.Chelvanayagam declared 32 years ago and
say that it is the legitimate aspiration of the Tamil
people to be free from alien Sinhala rule.
"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." - Statement by S.J.V.Chelvanayakam Q.C. M.P. ,
leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front, 7
February 1975
Does the international community agree
that the aspiration of the Tamil people to be free from
alien Sinhala rule is a 'legitimate' aspiration? Or does
it take the view that Gandhian leader S.J.V.
Chelvanayagam was wrong and that the aspiration of the
people of Tamil Eelam to be free from alien Sinhala rule
is not a 'legitimate' aspiration? If the latter be the
case, has not the time come for the international
community to explain to the people of Tamil Eelam its
reasons for insisting that the Tamil people be ruled by a
permanent Sinhala majority within the confines of a
single state - with a Sinhala army occupying the Tamil
homeland?
Perhaps, the time has also come for the
Tamil people to engage in a dialogue with the
international community and tell them that they may ban
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam but they cannot ban
the cry of a people for
freedom from alien rule.
And here let us be clear. The struggle of
the people of Tamil Eelam to be free from alien Sinhala rule is not about what the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam may have done or may not
have done. The record shows that the
armed
resistance of the people of Tamil Eelam (warts and
all) arose as the inevitable response to decades of
efforts by successive Sinhala governments to conquer, subjugate, pacify
and assimilate the Tamil people and the enactment of the 6th
Amendment to the Sri Lanka constitution set the seal
by criminalising all non violent means of struggle for an
independent Tamil Eelam state - an
amendment which also violated Sri Lanka's obligations
under international law.
"The freedom to express political
opinions, to seek to persuade others of their merits, to
seek to have them represented in Parliament, and
thereafter seek Parliament to give effect to them, are
all fundamental to democracy itself. These are precisely
the freedoms which Article 25 (of the International
Covenant of Civil and Political Rights) recognises and
guarantees - and in respect of advocacy for the
establishment of an independent Tamil State in Sri Lanka,
those which the 6th Amendment is designed to outlaw. It
therefore appears to me plain that this enactment
constitutes a clear violation by Sri Lanka of its
obligations in international law under the Covenant
..." - Paul Sieghart: Sri Lanka-A Mounting Tragedy of
Errors - Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka in January 1984
on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists and
its British Section, Justice, March 1984
The time has come to engage the
international community (and that means the trilaterals -
USA, European Union &
Japan together
with India and
China) in an
honest and open dialogue as to the strategic interests
that each of these IC members themselves seek to secure
in the island of Sri Lanka - and whether they seek
to prevent a resolution of the
conflict except on terms which secure each of their own
strategic interests. After all, it will be fair to
say that there are two conflicts in the island - one the
conflict between the Sinhala nation and a Tamil Eelam nation
seeking freedom from alien Sinhala rule, and the
other the conflict between the international actors in
the Indian Ocean region seeking, (amongst
other matters) control of the Indian Ocean sea lanes -
whether through a string of pearls or
by other means.
But all this is not to say that Tamil
Eelam and Sri Lanka
may not sit together as equals and structure a
polity where the two peoples may associate with each
other in equality and in freedom. An
independent Tamil Eelam is not negotiable but an
independent Tamil Eelam can and will negotiate. There may
be a need to telescope two processes - one the
recognition of an independent Tamil
Eelam and the other the terms in which an independent
Tamil Eelam may associate with an independent Sri Lanka,
so that the national security of each may be protected
and guaranteed.
Strange as
it may seem to some, the struggle for an independent
Tamil Eelam, is not in opposition to many of the
underlying interests of the parties concerned with the
conflict in the island - and that includes Sri Lanka,
India, the
European
Union, the United States and China.
Tamils who today live in many lands and across distant
seas know only too well that sovereignty after all,
is not virginity. If
Germany and France were able to put in place 'associate'
structures despite the suspicions and confrontations of
two world wars, it should not be beyond the capacity of
an independent Tamil Eelam and an independent Sri Lanka
to work out structures, within which each independent
state may remain free and prosper, but at the same time
pool sovereignty in certain agreed areas.
And to say that is not to live in the
fantasy world of the fanatic but to understand the
unfolding political reality of the fourth
world and the processes that resulted in the European
Union. It is also to reject the fanaticism of those who
insist on preserving the artificial
territorial boundaries imposed (and later bequeathed) by
the erstwhile British ruler. It is to reject the
colonial legacy and to reject the continuing attempt to
replace British colonial rule with Sinhala colonial rule.
The words of Velupillai
Pirabaharan, uttered some sixteen years ago, bear
repetition, yet again:
"...It is the Sri Lanka government
which has failed to learn the lessons from the emergence
of the struggles for self determination in several
parts of the globe and the innovative structural
changes that have taken place... 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.."
And so today, in the shadow of a ceasefire, as the armed forces
under Sinhala Sri Lanka President Rajapakse's command
rape Tamil
women, assassinate Tamil
Parliamentarians, murder Tamil
journalists, execute Tamil
students, arbitrarily arrest and detain Tamil
civilians, abduct Tamil refugee workers, orchestrate
attacks on Tamil civilians and Tamil shops, bomb Tamil civilian population
centres, displace
thousands of Tamils from their homes, kill
Tamil school children, and murder
Tamil aid workers, millions of Tamils living in many lands will
remember and honour the memory of their brothers and
sisters who were killed, raped and tortured in their
thousands, for no crime other than that they were Tamils
and because, as a people, they had
refused to submit to alien Sinhala rule.
Millions of Tamils will remember and
honour - and will renew their own commitment to the cause
for which their brothers and sisters gave their lives.
The charge is genocide, the struggle is for
freedom...
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