To speak candidly is to speak openly and frankly.
The fuel blockade imposed on the Jaffna peninsula in
early January must be seen for what it is. It
constituted a near genocidal attack on the Tamil
people.
The ostensible reason for the blockade by the Sri
Lankan government, was the announcement of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that they
intended to make arrangements for the civil
administration of the peninsula - a civil
administration which had fallen into disarray and which
badly needed reconstruction.
But, whatever may be the ostensible reason, that
which is relevant is that in July 1983, long before the
LTTE announcement, President Jayawardene had set the
frame for his government's response to the claims of
the Tamil people for justice, by declaring in his now
famous interview with Ian Ward of the Daily
Telegraph:
"...I am not worried about the opinion of the
Jaffna people now...Now we cannot think of them. Not
about their lives or of their opinion about us...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..."
And the fuel blockade imposed in early January this
year seeks to starve the Tamils out.
Independent observers of the Sri Lankan scene will
therefore, be forgiven if they take the view that the
recent actions of the Sri Lankan government which have
caused untold misery and deprivation amongst the Tamil
people, were in fact, actions intended to translate
into reality the words uttered three years ago by an
elected President about the 'lives and the opinions' of
a section of his electorate. They will also be forgiven
if they link the fuel blockade in early January with
the massive military offensive launched later in
January, against the Tamil people both in the North and
in the East of Sri Lanka.
More than two hundred Tamil civilians have been
killed in recent weeks and these included 21 Tamil
employees in a Batticaloa seafood farm who were
allegedly lined up and shot dead by the state security
forces. In a telegram to President Jayawardene, the
Batticaloa Citizens Committee pleaded that Tamil 'males
were being systematically killed' by the armed
forces.
It was a telegram reminiscent of the communication
sent by Paul Nallanayagam some 18 months ago about a
similar incident and for which he was arraigned before
the High Court of Colombo for publishing false rumours
- a charge of which he was acquitted after a prolonged
period of detention and trial.
But then, it is unlikely that telegrams such as
those sent by the Batticaloa Citizen Committee, cause
much concern to the Sri Lankan government. After all,
to the Sri Lankan government every Tamil is prima facie
a 'terrorist' and therefore qualified for
elimination.
The words of National Security Minister Lalith
Athulathmudali uttered in Parliament in December 1984
spring to mind:
" Who is a terrorist? Is he the person who uses a
gun? Or is he also not a terrorist who accompanies a
terrorist with a gun? Is he not also a terrorist who
gives a house to a person who has a gun and who wants
to kill? Is he also not a terrorist who watches the
movement of the army and then goes and tells a
terrorist: do not go that way, the army is
around?"
On that occasion the Minister went on to advise
the Tamils in the Northern Province to take a 'holiday'
with their relatives in other parts of the country, so
that presumably, the armed forces would be able to
identify those who remained as the real terrorists.
Today, it seems that a concentrated military offensive
has been launched on all those Tamils who did not act
on the Minister's advice and take a holiday from their
homeland.
The recent killings by the state security forces
follow a pattern that had already been set. It was a
pattern that had emerged long before 1983. In July
1983, more than 50 Tamil civilians were killed by the
state security forces, on the streets of Jaffna and
Orville H.Schell, former President of the New York City
Bar Association, was moved to comment in the New York
Times on the 24th of August 1983:
"I believe that recent killings by security
authorities follow a pattern previously set...The
government must bear full responsibility for these
breaches of the right to life and other violations of
human rights, especially in light of the wide powers
that in recent years it has given the security
forces...".
Despite the concerns expressed by international
human rights organisations, the murder of Tamil
civilians has continued in 1984 and thereafter. In
respect of the massacre in Chunnakkam in March 1984,
Amnesty International concluded 'that there is strong
evidence' that the people 'died as a result of
deliberate random shootings by air force personnel And
the Sri Lankan army shot at random not only in
Chunnakkam but elsewhere in Jaffna as well.
In May 1984, the London Times commented:
"...in the past two months at least 100 Tamils in
the northern province of Jaffna have been killed by
security forces - the official explanation is that
these people were all 'terrorists', but this is
contradicted by the accounts of every independent
observer who has visited Jaffna..."
In June 1984, Amnesty International continued to be
'greatly concerned' 'that the government has permitted
its security forces' to commit 'grave abuses of the
right to life, that it has failed explicitly to condemn
these abuses and to halt their occurrence'. And, yet
again, in January 1985 Amnesty International referring
to allegations 'of widespread killings in the Mannar
area' 'by personnel of the security forces' pointed out
that 'the scale of these killings' was 'unprecedented'
and that it was alleged that 'at least ninety unarmed
civilians, nearly all Tamils, many of them old men,
women and children, were shot dead'.
According to another independent observer of the Sri
Lankan scene, Trevor Fishlock, writing in the London
Times in January 1985,
"the Sri Lankan forces were conducting a harsh and
remorseless campaign of intimidation among the
island's Tamil minority - by means of random murder,
indiscriminate shootings, beatings, torture and
plunder".
Senator A.L.Missen summed it all when he declared in
the Australian Senate on the 13th of March 1986:
"...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.."
And, it was a policy which the Sri Lankan government
did not hesitate to publicly declare, from time to
time. Kuldip Nayar reported in the Island on the 17th
of February 1985:
"...The President conceded that 'terrible things'
were happening in Sri Lanka...asked if he would set
up an inquiry commission to go into the atrocities
committed by the army against the Tamils, he said:
'Did the British appoint a commission during the
war?..
The Sri Lankan government has not been without its
moments of frankness. It was frank when it declared
that it was no longer 'worried' about the 'lives or the
opinion' of the Jaffna people. It was frank when it
declared that in its perception 'the Sinhala people
would be happy if the Tamils are starved'. It was frank
in advising the Tamils to take a holiday from their
homelands, so that those who remained may be identified
as 'terrorists' and dealt with as 'terrorists'. It was
frank when it declared that it was 'at war' with the
Tamil people.
And, it is important that the Sri Lankan government
should be taken at its word. The Sri Lankan government
is engaged in a war to subjugate the Tamil people.
But the process of subjugation is not without
difficulty. The victim will not quietly submit. He
screams for help. He seeks refuge and becomes a
refugee. And, he even has the temerity to resist and
retaliate.
In an increasingly small world, injustice anywhere
begins to affect peace and stability everywhere. In the
end, it is this which has given rise to the increasing
international concern for securing human rights. Today,
there is a need for informed opinion everywhere, to
recognise that the continuing violations of human
rights by the Sri Lankan government are not some
accidental happenings - they have come as the
deliberate response of the Sri Lankan government to the
claim of the Tamils to be recognised as a people.
The Sri Lankan government seeks to intimidate the
Tamil people by threatening genocide. To paraphrase the
words of Professor Leo Kruper, in his prize winning
booklet 'International Action Against Genocide' there
is today, an urgent need to refine the norms for
'humanitarian intervention for the exercise of the
right of
self determination' of a people.
This is the positive area of human rights work,
to which, both governments and non governmental
agencies, concerned not merely with mouthing platitudes
but with securing justice, should increasingly give
their time and energies. Otherwise, genocide will
continue to be a scourge and human rights more often
than not, a mere exercise in rhetoric.
It is in this context that we welcome Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi's initiative in calling upon the Sri
Lankan government to lift the fuel blockade, desist
from the continued military onslaught on the Tamil
people, and to get to the negotiating table.
Hopefully, the Sri Lankan government will
recognise that peace will not come by killing more and
more Tamils and by seeking to starve the remainder into
submission - it will come only through a negotiating
process firmly founded on the recognition of the Tamils
of Eelam as a people, as a nation. It is around reason
that peace will grow.
