Sri Lanka: what happens next?

In the same interview, Jegan, a spokeswoman for the Australian Tamil Congress, also observed that “peace is not going to come until there’s justice, there’s reconciliation and the Tamils are treated as all other Sri Lankans are treated: as equals”. This is where the crisis over the war, the protection of civilians under fire and latterly the camps, needs to become an opportunity, backed by continuing pressure from the international community to find some way to transform the conflict into new phase.

Self-determination

The Tamil Tigers took, as a battle cry, the cause of an independent homeland - Tamil Eelam - in the north and east of the country, but demands for justice and equality long precede the emergence of the armed struggle.

“All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. So says Resolution 1514 of the UN General Assembly, passed 50 years ago next year. It also says: “Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”.

So it begs the question of who can be considered a “people” and what are the legitimate borders of “a country”. At the time, the subjugation of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka was being intensified, with the notorious Sinhala-only legislation - denying their right to use their own language in public life - recently imposed. In 1972, the protection afforded to minorities, in the Sri Lankan constitution of 1948, was deliberately revoked, and Buddhism - the religion of the Sinhalese - was installed as the country’s official religion.

That demarche also, in effect, severed the island’s remaining ties to the former colonial master, the United Kingdom, which gave fresh impetus to the call for a separate Tamil homeland to be established. According to a report by the International Committee of Jurists:

Proponents of Tamil Eelam argue that the northern and eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka coincide with the historic boundaries of the kingdom of Jaffna and argue a case that seeks to establish that sovereignty over these territories was never ceded to any conqueror and that, even if such concession had been made at any time in the past, the unilateral renunciation of links with the United Kingdom which took place at the assumption of office by the government of Mrs Srimavo Bandaranaike in 1972 resuscitated the Tamil sovereignty which had merely laid dormant until then ... In the abstract theory of international law, it would appear that the Tamils have at the very least, an arguable case, and possibly a sustainable one.

So it was that Tamil political leaders made the so-called Vaddukkoddai Resolution in 1976, named after the town in Jaffna where it was drawn up. This resolution was put to test in the 1977 general election and voters in Tamil Regions (north and east of Ceylon/Sri Lanka) returned 18 out of the 23 candidates who stood for election on the platform of independence. It was an assertion of the right to self-determination, in the face of systematic discrimination and state-sponsored violence, and its supporters today make the case that this was the last time the Tamils had a real chance to raise their voice, in a political context, because, “all elections held since were either under a gun point or a vast number of Tamil voters were stopped by Government forces and Paramilitary groups from voting”.

The words are from a proposal for a referendum among diasporic Tamils, who now number in the millions. Those who’ve fled as refugees over the years, and their families abroad, now almost certainly outnumber the Tamils left in Sri Lanka itself. The referendum is scheduled to go ahead in several countries including the UK - home to an estimated 300,000 - where it will be held in January. Those living outside Sri Lanka are, the document states, the only ones now in a position to state their wishes freely.

The European Commission report, compiled to guide EU ministers as they make a final decision on whether to extend GSP-plus, notes continuing concerns over human rights abuses: “The police are unwilling or unable to investigate human rights violations. The criminal investigation system and the court system have proven inadequate at investigating human rights abuses. The NHRC [National Human Rights Commission] is weakened, incapable of performing its role and has lost international recognition. The emergency legislation shields officials against prosecution.”

Sri Lanka had, in the past, adopted several key provisions of international human rights law, the report noted, including the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention Against Torture. However:

So far as effective implementation in practice of the conventions is concerned, the evidence shows that unlawful killings, perpetrated by police, soldiers and paramilitary groups, are a major problem. While Sri Lanka has a strong record of adopting legislation to criminalise torture, in practice torture both by the police and the armed forces remains widespread. The powers of detention conferred by the emergency legislation have enabled arbitrary detention without effective possibility of review of the lawfulness of detention. There have been a significant number of disappearances which are attributable to state agents or paramilitary factions complicit with the government; hence Sri Lanka has failed to implement its obligation to prevent disappearances by State agents and other forces for which it is responsible.

In this situation, the opportunities for Tamils to raise their voice effectively within the country are strictly limited. The diasporic referendum could therefore be seen as a further authentic assertion of the right to self-determination, and - let’s put it like this - it would be a major surprise if it did not produce a result strongly in favour of an independent Tamil state.