NESOHR: UN Must Assist an End to Violence

NORTH EAST SECRETARIAT ON HUMAN RIGHTS

NESOHR

KARADIPPOKU JUNCTION
KILINOCHCHI
SRI LANKA

tel: 021 2285986

e-mail : nesohr2006@yahoo.com

www.nesohr.org

______________________________________________________________

March 28, 2007

Mr. Ban Ki-Moon
His Excellency, the Secretary General,
United Nations,
New York.

Your Excellency,

Assist end violence and human suffering

This urgent appeal from the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR) reaches Your Excellency as a follow-up of our appeal on 17 March 2007 relating to the unabated violence in Sri Lanka.

Passage of politico-military events in Sri Lanka since then dictates that the international community and, more so, the United Nations take serious note of developments and bring about a change in the radicalization that has over-shadowed a well-meant peace process.

The incident at the Sri Lankan Air Force Headquarters and Air Base at Katunayake on 26 March 2007 should not be wrongly perceived as an act of just military retaliation, rather one would be prudent to see the sheer desperation in the Tamil psyche, a cumulative factor resultant from indiscriminate aerial bombardments that terrorize, traumatize and kill with immunity hundreds of innocent Tamils, including infants, children, women, aged, invalids and pregnant mothers.

It is not NESoHR’s intention, however, to engage in any political discourse as to the rights and wrongs of military actions. At the same time,  NESoHR cannot shirk its responsibility to bring to the notice of the world the human suffering, loss of life, enforced disappearances, displacements, rapes and all that is despicable being perpetrated on the Tamil people, which we firmly believe is genocide.

Instead of demonizing the LTTE and sounding a loud alarm throughout the region about impending disasters to come out of similar aerial attacks, it is prudent and circumspect to put in place a governance pattern for the Tamil people including arrangements for self-determination. Sounding such an alarm may be pre-emptive or even preventive, but what is required is a political resolution that would remedy the cause rather than treating the symptoms.

The UN, Your Excellency, is the viable body that can impartially sort out the political conflict that has taken an exceedingly high toll in this island during the last three decades. Instead of confining ourselves into a paradigm of perceived ‘terrorism’, let us boldly look at the cold facts relating to the Sri Lankan state’s acts of military terrorism that started very much earlier than Tamil militancy against state discrimination.  Added to this the reluctance of successive governments to treat the Tamil people as rightful shareholders in the affairs of governance, the lack of political will to put forward a tangible formula to equitably share power, and also the failure to honor and implement agreements reached from time to time have all been contributory factors to the Tamil peoples’ state of despair.

A clear analysis of the political injustice to the Tamil people in the background of deceit and duplicity from the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact of 1959 to Geneva 2006 would help us establish the bona-fides of the Tamil cause and thereby set in motion measures needed to bring back the Tamil people into a political process, for they have been over the years pushed into a state of  “decide-for-yourself.”

Conflicts and resolutions all over the world are not without precedence and no conflict remained as such forever. That is what a civilized world means and that is what the UN strives for.

In the light of the above, we seek Your Excellency’s immediate intervention in this matter in consultation with those involved in the Sri Lankan peace process to cry halt to the ever-increasing violence and human suffering.

Thanking you,

We remain,

Yours sincerely.

Rev. Fr. M.X. Karunaratnam
Chairperson
NESoHR