The Past
On 4th of February 2008, Sri Lanka celebrates its 60th anniversary of gaining independence from its colonial master, Great Britain. But, the second largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the Tamils, will remember this day as a day on which they lost their freedom and a life of subjugation began.
Before the European settlers arrived in Sri Lanka (Ceylon then), Sinhalese and Tamil rulers fought for dominance over the island. When Portuguese took possession of the island in 1505 there were 3 Kingdoms, a Tamil Kingdom in the North east and two Sinhalese Kingdoms – one in the central hills and the other for the remainder. The British took over in 1796, and Ceylon became an English Crown colony in 1802. Portuguese and Dutch ruled the Tamil and Sinhala homelands separately but the British unified the island with a single administration based in Colombo.
On 4 February 1948, after pressure from Ceylonese nationalist leaders (which briefly unified the Tamils and Sinhalese); Ceylon became a self-governing dominion of the Commonwealth of Nations. Britain gave a Westminster style parliamentary system of governance whereby a party that controls the majority of parliamentary seats governs the country.
To reduce the Tamil representation in Parliament the first Singhalese government of independent Ceylon disenfranchised the Indian Tamils who were brought to the island by the British to work in the tea gardens. The first Prime Minister D. S. Senanayaka started State sponsored Sinhalese Settlements in the Eastern part of the country which was entirely populated by Tamil speaking Hindus and Muslims. This State Sponsored Singhalese settlements continues to date and as a result the East which had 100% Tamil speaking people when Britain handed over governance to locals, has now only 70% Tamil speaking people When S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike became prime minister in 1956 and championed Sinhalese nationalism, by making Sinhala the country's only official language and including state support for Buddhism, the Tamil minority was further alienated. Peaceful protests by the Tamil parliamentarians was met with brutal mob violence at the door step of the Parliament Building. This was followed by widespread violence against the innocent Tamils in May 1958 resulting in hundreds killed, Tamil property and businesses looted and torched and tens of thousands of Tamils fleeing to their homeland in the northeast.
In 1972 his wife and Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranayke introduced a new constitution and converted Ceylon into a Socialist Democratic republic of Sri Lanka.
With this, even the minority protection clause 29 in the 1948 constitution, that provided protection to the minorities against discrimination until this time, disappeared. She introduced a system of standardisation to the University admission to favour the Sinhalese students further alienating the Tamil community.
All the peaceful protests against all these injustices by the Tamils were crushed using the armed forces. An army of occupation was sent to the north to create fear among the Tamil population that was protesting in the Gandhian way. Like any other army of occupation, every member of which is a Sinhalese, plundered the Tamil society by harassing the people including raping the women.
Past Breached Agreements
The first set of talks were held between the then Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike and SJV Chelavanayakam, the Tamil Federal Party leader and an agreement to create regional council was signed between the two sides on 25th July 1957. But due to pressure from Singhalese national elements the Prime Minister abrogated it, within less than a year, on the 9th of April 1958.
The Senanayake––Chelavanayakam Pact was signed between Dudley Senanayake, the then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and S.J.V Chelavanayakam, the Tamil leader on 24 March 1965 to create District Councils to devolve power to the periphery. This agreement never saw the light at all.
In July 1985, another attempt was made for both sides the Sri Lankan government and the Tamils, to come to an agreement with Indian mediation at Thimbu the capital of Bhutan. The Tamil side was represented by all the Tamil armed militant groups and the Tamil moderate parliamentary party the Tamil United liberation front. The proposals put forward by the Sri Lankan government delegation as their solution to this problem was rejected by the Tamil side as totally unacceptable. However, in view of their earnest desire for peace, they were prepared to give consideration to any set of proposals, in keeping with the following principles, that the Sri Lankan government may place before them. 1. Recognition of the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a nation. 2. Recognition of the existence of an identified homeland for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. 3. Recognition of the right of self determination of the Tamil nation. 4. Recognition of the right to citizenship and the fundamental rights of all Tamils who look upon the island as their country. The Tamil delegation had to walk out of these talks because of the authoritarian stance taken by the Sri Lankan government delegation and the arm twisting tactics used by the Indian mediator.
The then Prime Minister of the Republic of India, His Excellency Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and the President of the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka, Mr. J. R. Jayawardene having met in Colombo on 29th of July 1987, entered into an agreement to create Provincial councils in the country especially to devolve powers to the Tamils by creating a North-East Provincial Council in the temporarily merged Northern and Eastern provinces. This North-East provincial council functioned only for a short while and was dissolved under pressure from the extreme Singhalese Nationalists JVP and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) that was inducted into the North and East of the country under this agreement was sent back prematurely. The Chief Minister of this provincial council was also taken to India by the IPKF where he still lives with his family under Indian protection. Although this agreement does not provide even the Federal set up prevalent in India, according to the present President Mahinda Rajapaksa, all his predecessors (4 Presidents) failed to implement this agreement even after this agreement was legally incorporated into the constitution by the 13th amendment. Although Provincial Councils are up and running in all the other provinces, the merged North-East province never had a provincial council functioning except for that short initial period.
The Latest Agreement
After almost 20 years of armed conflict between the SLG forces and the LTTE, soon after a series of military victories including the ousting of the SLG forces from the Elephant-Pass garrison, LTTE declared its intention to negotiate a peaceful settlement with a third party mediation by declaring unilateral cease-fires in year 2000. Norway was suggested as the facilitator and both sides welcomed Norway and a Cease-fire agreement (CFA) was signed between the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabakaran in February 2002. A Scandinavian cease-fire monitoring mission (SLMM) was put in place to monitor the cease-fire violations.
The Sri Lankan State unilaterally abrogated many of the agreements that were made even within the six year ceasefire period before it unilaterally abrogated it on 16th January 2008. These include, agreement reached during the early peace talks to address the immediate humanitarian needs of the war affected Tamils, agreement reached on de-escalation according to the ceasefire, and the agreement signed for rebuilding the tsunami affected areas.
LTTE also cooperated fully with the Norwegian facilitators, respecting the wishes of the international community, in drafting and implementing the above mentioned agreements, that on immediate humanitarian relief, that on de-escalation and that on post tsunami reconstruction, that were later abrogated by the Sri Lankan State.
Although there had been minor violations of the CFA by both sides, the agreement remained effective until the present President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, came to power riding on the back of the Singhalese nationalistic parties such as JHU (a party of militant Buddhist monks) and JVP (a party which tried once in 1970 to overthrow the government by armed rebellion). President Rajapaksa (PR) pledged at his election campaign to abrogate the CFA and get rid of Norway from the facilitatory role.
To placate the chauvinistic Singhalese side of the electorate, PR took a military approach to the conflict. He started to campaign among the international community that what he is facing is not a Tamil national problem but an LTTE “terrorist problem”. Ignoring the CFA, full scale military operations were initiated in the east and under the disguise of liberating the area from the LTTE, more than 300,000 Tamil civilians were uprooted from their dwellings and made internally displaced people (IDP). PR carried out “Ethnic Cleansing” by not letting many of these IDPs to return to their villages. By declaring these villages as new High Security zones these villages are out of bounce to the Tamils and under the protection of the armed forces, Singhalese are being settled. To avoid civilian casualties, LTTE appears to have made a tactical withdrawal from the east. PR used Tamil paramilitary forces during this campaign to terrorise people and to gather intelligence. These paramilitary forces are ruling the roost in the absence of the LTTE amongst the Tamil people of the east. These paramilitaries, in connivance with the government security forces are responsible for the abduction, demanding ransom and extrajudicial killing of the Tamil politicians, journalists, civil activists and innocent civilians, in the government controlled areas in the East, North and even in Colombo.
Portraying the tactical withdrawal of LTTE as a military success, PR is trying to mislead his people and the international community that his armed forces are capable of eliminating the LTTE from the face of the earth, and have begun a military offensive in the north. But in the north PR’s military campaign has not produced any results for the last 9 months.
In the north, government sponsored Tamil paramilitary group EPDP, headed and guided by the government Minister Douglas Devananda, is involved in abducting civilians using “white vans” and carrying out extrajudicial killings.
Daily, aerial bombing of LTTE controlled areas result in civilian casualties including women and children, the deep penetration units of the security forces target buses carrying civilians including school children with claymore mines. Only a few days ago, in a such attack on a bus 20 civilians including a nun, school principal and several school children were killed in the north-west of the island.
Following the abrogation of the CFA on the 16th of January 2008, the President’s brother and Defence Secretary, Gothabaya Rajapaksa is talking about a full scale offensive in the North and the army commander Sarath Fonseka who is due to retire at the end of the year proclaims that he will not let this war to continue for his successor to deal with.
PR has hoodwinked the international community with his All Party Representatives Committee (APRC) he appointed ostensibly to come up with a devolution proposal. He is reported to have instructed the APRC to recommend the full implementation of the failed 13th amendment to the constitution (which was earlier rejected by Tamils) as an interim solution after 1 ½ years of deliberations.
If what is happening in Kenya today is described by the international community as ethnic cleansing, what the Tamils of Sri Lanka are going through is a genocide.
What is the future prospect for a solution to this conflict?
India intervened once in 1987 and failed to achieve peace since it did not respect and recognise the legitimate demand of the Tamil people to statehood based on their inalienable right to self-determination. International community has also failed to date to stop the Sri Lankan state from pursuing a genocidal approach to a legitimate political problem by not recognising the legitimate demands of the Tamil people and not offering parity of status to the parties to the conflict. By not applying diplomatic sanctions against the brutal oppressor but applying undue pressure on the national leadership of the oppressed Tamil people, the International community has emboldened a rogue state to pursue its genocidal path with impunity.
The International Community can save the Tamils from genocide by;
1. Recognizing the sovereignty of the Tamil nation in Sri Lanka and their right to defend in the face of genocidal aggression directed against them,
2· Providing humanitarian assistance to the needy, and
3· Imposing diplomatic sanctions including arms, trade and sports embargos against the Sri Lankan state until it abandons its genocidal approach to the conflict, complies with international norms on human rights and Geneva Conventions governing armed conflicts, cooperates to restore normalcy in the Tamil homeland and agrees to negotiate with the Tamil National Leadership, a lasting political solution..
Sydney: Dr. Victor Rajakulendran
On 4th of February 2008, Sri Lanka celebrates its 60th anniversary of gaining independence from its colonial master, Great Britain. But, the second largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, the Tamils, will remember this day as a day on which they lost their freedom and a life of subjugation began.
Before the European settlers arrived in Sri Lanka (Ceylon then), Sinhalese and Tamil rulers fought for dominance over the island. When Portuguese took possession of the island in 1505 there were 3 Kingdoms, a Tamil Kingdom in the North east and two Sinhalese Kingdoms – one in the central hills and the other for the remainder. The British took over in 1796, and Ceylon became an English Crown colony in 1802. Portuguese and Dutch ruled the Tamil and Sinhala homelands separately but the British unified the island with a single administration based in Colombo.
On 4 February 1948, after pressure from Ceylonese nationalist leaders (which briefly unified the Tamils and Sinhalese); Ceylon became a self-governing dominion of the Commonwealth of Nations. Britain gave a Westminster style parliamentary system of governance whereby a party that controls the majority of parliamentary seats governs the country.
To reduce the Tamil representation in Parliament the first Singhalese government of independent Ceylon disenfranchised the Indian Tamils who were brought to the island by the British to work in the tea gardens. The first Prime Minister D. S. Senanayaka started State sponsored Sinhalese Settlements in the Eastern part of the country which was entirely populated by Tamil speaking Hindus and Muslims. This State Sponsored Singhalese settlements continues to date and as a result the East which had 100% Tamil speaking people when Britain handed over governance to locals, has now only 70% Tamil speaking people When S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike became prime minister in 1956 and championed Sinhalese nationalism, by making Sinhala the country's only official language and including state support for Buddhism, the Tamil minority was further alienated. Peaceful protests by the Tamil parliamentarians was met with brutal mob violence at the door step of the Parliament Building. This was followed by widespread violence against the innocent Tamils in May 1958 resulting in hundreds killed, Tamil property and businesses looted and torched and tens of thousands of Tamils fleeing to their homeland in the northeast.
In 1972 his wife and Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranayke introduced a new constitution and converted Ceylon into a Socialist Democratic republic of Sri Lanka.
With this, even the minority protection clause 29 in the 1948 constitution, that provided protection to the minorities against discrimination until this time, disappeared. She introduced a system of standardisation to the University admission to favour the Sinhalese students further alienating the Tamil community.
All the peaceful protests against all these injustices by the Tamils were crushed using the armed forces. An army of occupation was sent to the north to create fear among the Tamil population that was protesting in the Gandhian way. Like any other army of occupation, every member of which is a Sinhalese, plundered the Tamil society by harassing the people including raping the women.
Past Breached Agreements
The first set of talks were held between the then Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike and SJV Chelavanayakam, the Tamil Federal Party leader and an agreement to create regional council was signed between the two sides on 25th July 1957. But due to pressure from Singhalese national elements the Prime Minister abrogated it, within less than a year, on the 9th of April 1958.
The Senanayake––Chelavanayakam Pact was signed between Dudley Senanayake, the then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and S.J.V Chelavanayakam, the Tamil leader on 24 March 1965 to create District Councils to devolve power to the periphery. This agreement never saw the light at all.
In July 1985, another attempt was made for both sides the Sri Lankan government and the Tamils, to come to an agreement with Indian mediation at Thimbu the capital of Bhutan. The Tamil side was represented by all the Tamil armed militant groups and the Tamil moderate parliamentary party the Tamil United liberation front. The proposals put forward by the Sri Lankan government delegation as their solution to this problem was rejected by the Tamil side as totally unacceptable. However, in view of their earnest desire for peace, they were prepared to give consideration to any set of proposals, in keeping with the following principles, that the Sri Lankan government may place before them. 1. Recognition of the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a nation. 2. Recognition of the existence of an identified homeland for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. 3. Recognition of the right of self determination of the Tamil nation. 4. Recognition of the right to citizenship and the fundamental rights of all Tamils who look upon the island as their country. The Tamil delegation had to walk out of these talks because of the authoritarian stance taken by the Sri Lankan government delegation and the arm twisting tactics used by the Indian mediator.
The then Prime Minister of the Republic of India, His Excellency Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and the President of the Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka, Mr. J. R. Jayawardene having met in Colombo on 29th of July 1987, entered into an agreement to create Provincial councils in the country especially to devolve powers to the Tamils by creating a North-East Provincial Council in the temporarily merged Northern and Eastern provinces. This North-East provincial council functioned only for a short while and was dissolved under pressure from the extreme Singhalese Nationalists JVP and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) that was inducted into the North and East of the country under this agreement was sent back prematurely. The Chief Minister of this provincial council was also taken to India by the IPKF where he still lives with his family under Indian protection. Although this agreement does not provide even the Federal set up prevalent in India, according to the present President Mahinda Rajapaksa, all his predecessors (4 Presidents) failed to implement this agreement even after this agreement was legally incorporated into the constitution by the 13th amendment. Although Provincial Councils are up and running in all the other provinces, the merged North-East province never had a provincial council functioning except for that short initial period.
The Latest Agreement
After almost 20 years of armed conflict between the SLG forces and the LTTE, soon after a series of military victories including the ousting of the SLG forces from the Elephant-Pass garrison, LTTE declared its intention to negotiate a peaceful settlement with a third party mediation by declaring unilateral cease-fires in year 2000. Norway was suggested as the facilitator and both sides welcomed Norway and a Cease-fire agreement (CFA) was signed between the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabakaran in February 2002. A Scandinavian cease-fire monitoring mission (SLMM) was put in place to monitor the cease-fire violations.
The Sri Lankan State unilaterally abrogated many of the agreements that were made even within the six year ceasefire period before it unilaterally abrogated it on 16th January 2008. These include, agreement reached during the early peace talks to address the immediate humanitarian needs of the war affected Tamils, agreement reached on de-escalation according to the ceasefire, and the agreement signed for rebuilding the tsunami affected areas.
LTTE also cooperated fully with the Norwegian facilitators, respecting the wishes of the international community, in drafting and implementing the above mentioned agreements, that on immediate humanitarian relief, that on de-escalation and that on post tsunami reconstruction, that were later abrogated by the Sri Lankan State.
Although there had been minor violations of the CFA by both sides, the agreement remained effective until the present President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, came to power riding on the back of the Singhalese nationalistic parties such as JHU (a party of militant Buddhist monks) and JVP (a party which tried once in 1970 to overthrow the government by armed rebellion). President Rajapaksa (PR) pledged at his election campaign to abrogate the CFA and get rid of Norway from the facilitatory role.
To placate the chauvinistic Singhalese side of the electorate, PR took a military approach to the conflict. He started to campaign among the international community that what he is facing is not a Tamil national problem but an LTTE “terrorist problem”. Ignoring the CFA, full scale military operations were initiated in the east and under the disguise of liberating the area from the LTTE, more than 300,000 Tamil civilians were uprooted from their dwellings and made internally displaced people (IDP). PR carried out “Ethnic Cleansing” by not letting many of these IDPs to return to their villages. By declaring these villages as new High Security zones these villages are out of bounce to the Tamils and under the protection of the armed forces, Singhalese are being settled. To avoid civilian casualties, LTTE appears to have made a tactical withdrawal from the east. PR used Tamil paramilitary forces during this campaign to terrorise people and to gather intelligence. These paramilitary forces are ruling the roost in the absence of the LTTE amongst the Tamil people of the east. These paramilitaries, in connivance with the government security forces are responsible for the abduction, demanding ransom and extrajudicial killing of the Tamil politicians, journalists, civil activists and innocent civilians, in the government controlled areas in the East, North and even in Colombo.
Portraying the tactical withdrawal of LTTE as a military success, PR is trying to mislead his people and the international community that his armed forces are capable of eliminating the LTTE from the face of the earth, and have begun a military offensive in the north. But in the north PR’s military campaign has not produced any results for the last 9 months.
In the north, government sponsored Tamil paramilitary group EPDP, headed and guided by the government Minister Douglas Devananda, is involved in abducting civilians using “white vans” and carrying out extrajudicial killings.
Daily, aerial bombing of LTTE controlled areas result in civilian casualties including women and children, the deep penetration units of the security forces target buses carrying civilians including school children with claymore mines. Only a few days ago, in a such attack on a bus 20 civilians including a nun, school principal and several school children were killed in the north-west of the island.
Following the abrogation of the CFA on the 16th of January 2008, the President’s brother and Defence Secretary, Gothabaya Rajapaksa is talking about a full scale offensive in the North and the army commander Sarath Fonseka who is due to retire at the end of the year proclaims that he will not let this war to continue for his successor to deal with.
PR has hoodwinked the international community with his All Party Representatives Committee (APRC) he appointed ostensibly to come up with a devolution proposal. He is reported to have instructed the APRC to recommend the full implementation of the failed 13th amendment to the constitution (which was earlier rejected by Tamils) as an interim solution after 1 ½ years of deliberations.
If what is happening in Kenya today is described by the international community as ethnic cleansing, what the Tamils of Sri Lanka are going through is a genocide.
What is the future prospect for a solution to this conflict?
India intervened once in 1987 and failed to achieve peace since it did not respect and recognise the legitimate demand of the Tamil people to statehood based on their inalienable right to self-determination. International community has also failed to date to stop the Sri Lankan state from pursuing a genocidal approach to a legitimate political problem by not recognising the legitimate demands of the Tamil people and not offering parity of status to the parties to the conflict. By not applying diplomatic sanctions against the brutal oppressor but applying undue pressure on the national leadership of the oppressed Tamil people, the International community has emboldened a rogue state to pursue its genocidal path with impunity.
The International Community can save the Tamils from genocide by;
1. Recognizing the sovereignty of the Tamil nation in Sri Lanka and their right to defend in the face of genocidal aggression directed against them,
2· Providing humanitarian assistance to the needy, and
3· Imposing diplomatic sanctions including arms, trade and sports embargos against the Sri Lankan state until it abandons its genocidal approach to the conflict, complies with international norms on human rights and Geneva Conventions governing armed conflicts, cooperates to restore normalcy in the Tamil homeland and agrees to negotiate with the Tamil National Leadership, a lasting political solution..
Sydney: Dr. Victor Rajakulendran