Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Genocide in Sri Lanka: an inconvenient finding

By Bruce Haigh - posted Tuesday, 11 February 2014


 

The previous Australian Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, and the present Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, view the world as they want it to be rather than as it is. Bishop, like her predecessor, has engaged in transparent and clumsy denial in order to please and placate what she likes to term Australia's friends.

She recently claimed there was nothing illegal about the latest round of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, only to be taken to task by four eminent Israeli lawyers, including a former attorney-general.

Advertisement

Similarly both she and Carr have described Tamil asylum seekers from Sri Lanka as 'economic migrants', in order to send them back to Sri Lanka without processing their claims to be refugees; an illegal enterprise under Australian and international law. This ploy was contrived to act as deterrent to other Tamils who might be contemplating flight. To further assist in deterring Tamils from undertaking asylum seeking voyages to Australia, the Australian government recently donated two naval patrol vessels to Sri Lanka.

The Australian government has adopted the fiction that the minority Tamils were the aggressors in the civil war, that the majority Sinhalese won the war, peace has been restored and the surly defeated Tamils must now accept the status quo and get on with life, accepting their position as a minority within mainstream Sinhala society.

That is not the finding of the Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka which met in Bremen from 7-10 December 2013. I attended the hearings as an expert witness on Australian treatment of Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers. The full findings and decision of the Tribunal can be found at www.ptsrilanka.org.

It found, "On the strength of the evidence presented, the Tribunal reached the consensus ruling that the state of Sri Lanka is guilty of the crime of genocide against Eelam Tamils and that the consequences of the genocide continue to the present day with ongoing acts of genocide against Eelam Tamils."

The Tribunal identified Eelam Tamils as those living in the north and east of the country.

The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal is an international tribunal, independent of state authority in order to examine violations of human rights. It was founded in 1979 in Bologna, Italy, and now has a permanent secretariat in Rome. The founders included five Nobel Prize winners and experts drawn from 31 countries. It draws on the Russell Tribunals on Vietnam (1966-67).

Advertisement

The Tribunal identified that, "genocidal social practices are not only attempts to destroy individuals. Genocide is an attempt to destroy the identity of a group, alienating it from its experience and history, trying to strip it of the control over its own past, present and future...The recognition that the Tamil people of Sri Lanka were persecuted, harassed and killed not just as individuals but as a group with its own identity, is fundamental in any attempt to confront the genocidal objectives of identity destruction and it is also a way to ratify the right of self-determination of any people.

It is organisation, training, practice, legitimation and consensus that distinguish genocide as a social process from other more spontaneous or less intentional acts of killing and mass destruction....

The construction of the Tamil population as alien to a unitary Sri Lankan state was a long process, which included legal and political decisions...(and) armed conflict...the repressive and discriminatory practices to construct a unitary State in Sri Lanka reached an important turning point in 1956 when the Sinhala language was determined to be the only official language, after which anti-Tamil pogroms took place..."

  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

78 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and retired diplomat who served in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1972-73 and 1986-88, and in South Africa from 1976-1979

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Bruce Haigh

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Bruce Haigh
Article Tools
Comment 78 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy