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Home > Struggle for Tamil Eelam > Sri Lanka Accused at United Nations > UN Sub Commission 1999

UN SUB COMMISSION ON PREVENTION
OF DISCRIMINATION AND PROTECTION OF MINORITIES
51st SESSIONS: AUGUST 1999

"...Sri Lanka's genocidal onslaught on the Tamil people has been escalating over the last 16 years. During the Sri Lanka - Tamil Eelam armed conflict, the government of Sri Lanka has failed to maintain Humanitarian and Human Rights Laws. Today, when more and more mass graves created by the Sri Lankan Army are coming to light and people in their thousands are pushed to the borders of starvation and death, the Sri Lankan government continues to use food medicine and other essential supplies, and even rape as weapons of war against the Tamil people..." more

"...One conflict deriving from the denial of the right to self determination is the one of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka which began following independence in 1948 with a series of government policies that progressively and systematically deprived the Tamil of their fundamental rights.." more

"The International Peace Bureau, believes that long drawn out ethnic conflict and war in Sri Lanka could be satisfactorily and peacefully resolved only through peace talks, facilitated and mediated by the international community. The 16 year old spiral of violence and war has claimed more than 60,000 lives, mostly Tamils killed by the State forces through aerial bombing, artillery shelling and mass torture. It has caused utter destruction of the Homeland of the Tamils and their properties and displaced over 700,000 Tamils as world-wide refugees...." more

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Statement by International Educational Development

Mr. Chairman

Sri Lankan Government's criminal strategy of using food and medicine as a weapon of war

We the International Educational Development have been following the situation in the island of Sri Lanka since I 983.

Sri Lanka's genocidal onslaught on the Tamil people has been escalating over the last 16 years. During the Sri Lanka - Tamil Eelam armed conflict, the government of Sri Lanka has failed to maintain Humanitarian and Human Rights Laws. Today, when more and more mass graves created by the Sri Lankan Army are coming to light and people in their thousands are pushed to the borders of starvation and death, the Sri Lankan government continues to use food medicine and other essential supplies, and even rape as weapons of war against the Tamil people. Women are raped and then they are murdered by throwing grenades into their genitals.

Mr. Chairman,

The use of food as a weapon of war is a serious war crime.

Over half a million people in the Vanni region have been deliberately deprived of food and medicine by the closure of the supply route via Uyilankulam by the Sri Lankan government on the 26th of May 1999. The closure was ordered to facilitate the Sri Lankan Government's latest military operation ("Rana Gosha") to occupy the Mannar district.

This use of food as a weapon of war has now reached a critical point of survival for the 300,000 people in Vanni. There is a serious shortage of all items of food, as reported by the Government agents of the two districts of Kilinochchi and ,Mullaitivu. Bakeries and co-operative stores are closed and people looking up to the skies for survival. The two government agents who reported the true food situation to their Government have been already been dismissed by the government for giving the news to the world.

According to Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph, the Catholic Bishop of Mannar, about 1,000 people belonging to about 900 families from the Viduthaltheevu and Pallamadu areas are forced to live in the open and have no food and water

A further appeal on this issue has been forwarded recently the Secretary General of the United Nations by 37 Multi Purpose Co-Operative Societies of Vanni to apply pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to open an access route to the Vanni.

The Government's clear attempts to use food as a weapon of war in its war against the Tamil people is also made plain by its refusal to permit international aid agencies to engage freely in the supply of food. The Sri Lankan Government has laid serious restrictions on ICRC, CARE International, OXFAM and the UNHCR to operate freely. This has resulted in several civilian organisations calling upon these organisations to be more assertive in their dealings with the Government.

Tamil Child in the VanniUsing food and medicine as a weapon of war has been recognised as a war crime by several international authorities. In 1998, Professor Jordon J Paust, the Law Foundaticn Professor at the University of Houston in an article in the Venderbuilt Journal of Transactional Law entitled "The Human Rights to Food, Medicine and Medical Supplies, and Freedom from Arbitrary and Inhuman Detention and controls in Sri Lanka" has pointed out that the denial of medical supplies and medicine is a serious war crime.

According to Professor Paust the intentional withholding of food and medical supplies from LTTE controlled areas is a clear violation of Article 3, and as such, a war crime. He has also quoted the US State Department Country Reports (1997 & 1998) to say, "within the 1997 Country Report one finds a shocking confirmation of war crime policies and activities with respect to medicine and medical supplies.. War crime policies are further documented in the 1998 Country Report"

This deliberate denial of food and medicine to the civil an population is clearly a war crime. As Prof. Jordan Paust points out "Serious violations of basic human rights and humanitarian law occur in Sri Lanka when food, medicine and medical supplies are used a political weapons. Those least able to cope, especially children, are the primary victims of such criminal tactics. Such denials must be exposed. It is time for the international community to recognise that, in addition to medicine and medical supplies, food should be treated as neutral property during an armed conflict The international community should strive to assure those corridors for the free passage of food and medical supplies are negotiated or imposed during any armed conflict. For the children and others who suffer, criminal and civil sanctions are inadequate and come too late, if at all"

Thus the Sri Lankan Government has sought to use the situation it itself has deliberately created, to advance its military objectives by demanding the withdrawal of the Tami! fighters five kilometres from the present forward defence lines. This move of linking a withdrawal by the Tamil fighters five kilometres from the present forward line to the supply of food to the people in the Vanni is an obvious attempt to use food as a weapon of war.

Given the seriousness and depravity of the situation, we call upon through the members of this Sub commission the international community to intervene immediately for the survival of 300,000 people caught up with death and starvation in the Vanni. We plead that access into the war zone be made available for food and medicine to be transported and patients to be rushed to hospitals by the NGOs. Further, continuing this closure of access and continuing the economic blockade and refusal of food and medicine to these 300,000 Tamil people is a horrendous crime against humanity."

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Statement by the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples

Judging from some fifty violent conflicts occurring in the world today, which stem from the denial of the right of peoples to self determination, an aggiornamento (update) of this right becomes a must. The International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples therefore calls on the Sub-Commission, a body which it deems the most appropriate to undertake adequate steps to update this concept and find ways and procedures to empower the right to self determination with its sense and update it to the reality of our times. It has to accommodate inter alia to the right of a people, eventually an ethnic group, when it is subjected to years of gross violations of human rights by a government, when it has exhausted all reasonable peaceful means of redress and when there is no realistic expectation of improvement without drastic measures.

As an example, the struggle of Kosova albanians had to culminate into worst atrocities to finally deserve the attention of the international community as to a case of denial of the right of self determination for more than ten years. From the international perspective, such signals of internal conflicts are clears signs that existing patterns of international boundaries no longer correspond to the realities and prerequisites of effective governance, thus often risk to trigger violence.

One conflict deriving from the denial of the right to self determination is the one of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka which began following independence in 1948 with a series of government policies that progressively and systematically deprived the Tamil of their fundamental rights.

In the North-Eastern region, it is estimated that over 50,000 people have been killed, and over one million people displaced both internally and externally since 1983. There has been a massive destruction of the infra structure and deterioration of basic services. Children and women, the most vulnerable groups, face a future of deprivation and lack of hope if adequate efforts for a return to normalcy are not forthcoming. 140,000 persons remain in about 350 government run camps, many children have lived all their lives in overcrowded camps of the displaced, thousands have lost their parents and a generation of children have either been out of school or have had their education disrupted.

Some of these people have been displaced up to eight times due to attacks over the years by the Sri Lankan armed forces, losing their way of life and now have no means of support. Around 800,000 persons depend upon the government assistance for food rations and often live on the meagre rations that are provided to them through NGOs.

More precisely, the three districts of the Vanni, namely, Killinochi, Mullaithivu and Mannar and North Vavuniya with a population of about 500,000 are deprived of basic facilities. About 25% of the population displaced from Jaffna still reside in the Vanni region, putting considerable pressure on the limited resources and services there.

The problems faced by the Vanni residents have been compounded by the logistical restrictions imposed by the government on the movement of goods and personnel. The economic embargo on goods entering into the Vanni impacts on all aspects of the day to day life. While in theory the embargo is only with regard to items of potential military significance, in practice most items do not reach the people. The result has been insufficient quantities of pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, drugs, kerosene and fertiliser and even items such as clothes and water jars, pens and pencils, school books and other educational items.

With regard to human rights violations, the Non Governmental Organisation Council of Jaffna reports that about 600 persons arrested by the security forces in 1996 are reported to be missing. Some leading schools are occupied by the Army for the last three years. Journalists from Colombo and foreign countries are restricted to visit Jaffna. In fact the army has banned journalists from entering areas held in the Vanni region and in the Mutur area in the Eastern Province. Freedom of movement is controlled by the daily curfew and checks at several barrier points. There are restrictions on cultural, social and educational activities on the whole. Further there is suppression of the activities of the voluntary service organisations by curtailing the inflow of international funds to them.

However, today the Sri Lankan government adopts a new strategy against the Tamil people using food and medicine as a weapon of war at a stage that the people in the Vanni region have begun experiencing deaths through starvation and denial of access to health care.

The Sri Lankan army has not agreed to the International Red Cross taking relief supplies freely to the Vanni by sea from Mannar to Viduthalitheevu. In consequence, the office of international relief agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and CARE in Mullavi in the Vanni are being picketed by people protesting against the closure of relief supplies.

According to K.Ganesh, the Government Agent in Vavuniya and the UNHCR, eight seriously ill people in the Vanni have died as they have been unable to travel to hospitals in the South due to the closure of the access route to the region.

At this stage, six Tamil parties in Colombo addressed an appeal to the Sri Lankan President to take action to avert the crisis in the Vanni. The International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples asks, first: will the President not only pay attention but take steps to solve the issue on the ground? Second, will the Sub-Commission finally listen to these voices silenced by the media blockade and take measures to further a resolution of the conflict in this forgotten war?

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Statement by the International Peace Bureau

The International Peace Bureau, believes that long drawn out ethnic conflict and war in Sri Lanka could be satisfactorily and peacefully resolved only through peace talks, facilitated and mediated by the international community. The 16 year old spiral of violence and war has claimed more than 60,000 lives, mostly Tamils killed by the State forces through aerial bombing, artillery shelling and mass torture. It has caused utter destruction of the Homeland of the Tamils and their properties and displaced over 700,000 Tamils as world-wide refugees.

Still there has been no serious attempt made to resolve the conflict and bring to an end this senseless war. Even in the face of more mass graves coming to light, more starvation and death in the war zones, the Government is escalating only its military efforts to capture new territories, inflict more suffering on the civilians in the war zone and doing hardly anything about the perpetrators of violence and nothing about a peaceful way of ending this horrendous conflict.

I want to bring to the notice of this Session three examples of such human right violations

1. Sri Lankan Army by occupying a peaceful Shrine and chasing away the Refugees in the Shrine into the jungles has converted a peace zone into a conflict zone with rape and murder.

The big Catholic Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu, founded by the Catholics of Manthai in the 18th.century, situated in the present Catholic Diocese of Mannar in Sri Lanka, was a peaceful Refugee Centre for over 30,000 Tamil Catholics fleeing away in Exodus from the aerial bombings and artillery shelling of the Sri Lankan Army during the last four years. After fleeing from Jaffna Peninsula on the night of the 30th. of October 1995 and then again from Kilinochchi on the 26th. of July 1996, I was in Madhu for a whole month in August 1996. This shrine, was a peaceful zone for four years without a single incident of violence - was served by many NGOs and visited by peace groups from the South. Recently the Sri Lankan army had forcibly entered the shrine in spite of repeated and strong protests both from Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph, the local Bishop and proprietor of the Shrine and from the Sri Lankan Bishops' Conference.

Chasing away the 30,000 Tamil refugees into the jungles, without sufficient provision for their shelter and food and making false propaganda for the government as redeeming the shrine from terrorists. In spite of repeated appeals from the church authorities, the Army is still occupying the premises of the church and preventing normal conducting of religious feasts. Besides cases of rape and murder has already been reported during the last week in Sinna Pandivirichan - an area adjoining this shrine and directly under the control of the Army.

2. The Sri Lankan Army recently closed all access to the war zone merely for cheap military gain, causing cruel deaths, starvation and other disabilities to the Tamil civilians from the war zone Wanni. The Army deliberately attempted on the 29th.of July 1999 an advance into Wanni, using 2200 civilians as human shield and exposing them to danger.

The ten years old economic embargo against the Tamils has gone on shamefully unchallenged and not condemned by the democratic governments and human right organisations of the world. It covers a range of over hundred items basic to human life. Personally I have survived six years of this embargo which forbade electricity, electrical goods, postal services, transport, fishing, cement, paper, white cloth, milk foods and medicines etc. etc. It has been ruthlessly used by the military, not only to starve and throttle innocent people, including the old, the sick and the infants, but also as a political weapon to bend the political will of a people and beat them to subjugation.

Allowing only a fraction of the food needed by the 300000 people in Wanni serves well the hypocritical propaganda of the government to the world that it is unique in catering to the people in the war zone, but in reality it is a Sri Lankan way of executing the slow genocide of Tamils in Wanni - thus adopting a 'gas-chamber-style' of Hitler during the Second World War.

The Sri Lankan Army had on the 26th.of June 1999 deliberately closed the only available entry point for people and lorries and ambulances on the west side of the war zone. Very critical patients were dying for want of ambulance services, all bakeries and co-operative stores were closed for want of flour and other food stuffs. Without any agreement with the LTTE or arrangement with the ICRC, the Sri Lankan Army on the 29th. of July 1999 attempted the use of a human shield of over 2000 desperate Tamil civilians for military gain. Such cruel ways of using innocent and desperate civilians for military gains have to be condemned by democratic governments and human rights organisations.

3. Disappearances and Mass Graves of Tamils caused by the Sri Lankan Army?

Compared to the many conflicts, wars and human right violations taking place in other parts of the world, the conflict in Sri Lanka has gone on for nearly 50 years and the war for over 16 years, consuming over 60,000 lives mostly of Tamils bombed out or killed by the State Forces, causing massive destruction of Tamil property, their heritage and lands and also mass displacements both within and outside the country numbering over a million Tamils.

Of the thousands who have disappeared in the hands of the Sri Lankan Army after its take over of the Jaffna Peninsula, hundreds are believed to be killed and buried by the Army in many mass graves in Jaffna. Excavation of one of the mass-graves, where nearly 400 Tamil youth are believed to be buried, has just begun after more than an year of world-wide protest led by the Amnesty International. We know from past experience that none of the perpetrators of rapes and mass killings, conducted even in government Prisons, have been brought to justice or punished. Very often the suspects in these instances have been promoted in service. Let us hope that these excavations are not mere government propaganda to better their image before the world in the field of human rights, but a sincere attempt to bring to justice the perpetrators of torture and violence.

4. Our Appeal

The last fifty years following Independence of Ceylon, have seen the denial of basic rights to the Tamils, twenty years of State military oppression of the democratic and non-violent protests of the Tamils followed by the Tamil counter violence to State Terrorism. The spiral of violence and war between the State Forces and the LTTE has escalated to the level of a national suicide in terms of lives, property and wealth. More than blaming or condemning the deeds and behaviour of the combatants in the war, we have to blame the government and the politicians who play politics with the lives of people and prolong the agony.

The repeated call by the LTTE for peace-talks mediated by a third party had been arrogantly rejected by the Government in order to pursue its military solution, if that could be called a solution. The good will offers of many friendly governments to facilitate or mediate have also been rejected by the Sri Lankan Government. The Government still ridicules and reduces the Struggle of the Tamil people for liberation to mere Tamil terrorism in order to win weapons and finance to continue its military option. Sri Lankan Government wants finance, weapons and even foreign personnel to continue its war against the Tamils, but rejects any offer of mediation for Peace. Such an approach can never bring about a political solution for the crisis.

It is our plea to this Sub-commission and its member states, that they do all they can, to stop aiding the war efforts of the Sri Lankan government and do more for resolving the conflict by peaceful means.

The spiral of violence and war cannot be brought to a close by further escalation of violence with the help of foreign governments, nor by increasing the suffering of innocent Tamil civilians of the war-zone by the inhuman economic embargo, nor by closing the war zone to all media for so many years, but only by creating the necessary conditions for human living in the war zone and starting peace-talks between the Government and the LTTE with the help of the international community. Because the international community has not effectively questioned the economic embargo, the media blockade, the disappearances, the mass graves etc., the situation has aggravated to a national suicide. It is time for the international community to pressurise Sri Lanka into sane thinking by stopping its aid for the war and multiplying efforts for peace.

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