WHITHER INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY?

The Action Group of Tamils in Colombo (AGOTIC) drew the attention of many country delegates who attended the 41st Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in October to the tragedy facing the Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka (Sunday Leader, 8/10/95). In fact, for more than one year we have repeatedly called upon the Peoples Alliance (PA) Government first, to announce the Government's "peace package" and second, to commence negotiations with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). And we consistently urged the Government to reach a negotiated solution to the Tamil Question.

On the 3rd of August President Kumaratunga unveiled her "Devolution Proposals". As confirmed by the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Prof G L Peiris, the Proposals represent her "basic ideas" (The Island, 6/8/95). Before the Proposals were released, the President reportedly did not discuss them with her Cabinet. Nor did she consult the heads of other parties which constitute the PA. Nor did she place them before the PA Parliamentary Group. IN SHORT, THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS ARE NOT THE PA GOVERNMENT'S OFFICIAL "PEACE PACKAGE".

Prof G L Peiris informed the Nation that the Proposals are open for public discussion and debate. Thereafter they will, he said, be finalised as the Government's "peace package" and be presented to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on Constitutional Affairs within "two to three weeks". This has not happened although many "three weeks" have passed.

The most recent date specified for finalising and submitting the "peace package" to the PSC was the 16th of October. But the Government again failed to do so. Indeed some PA Members of Parliament have urged the Government to set a firm date for the release of the "peace package" (The Island, 29/10/95). THUS THE PA GOVERNMENT HAS YET NOT PLACED ITS OFFICIAL "PEACE PACKAGE" BEFORE THE NATION.

The intended process of routing the proposed "peace package" through the PSC would allow many Colombo-based Tamil political parties to table their observations and recommendations. This process will make direct negotiations between the Government and these parties redundant because the Tamil parties would be taken to have presented their positions at the PSC. The Government's intention not to negotiate is also revealed by the change in the official rhetoric. For after the beginning of "Operation Sunray" on the 17th of October, the Government's position has shifted from "negotiations" to "implementation" of the Proposals (What Proposals?) after the LTTE is crushed in battle.

The international community has nowhere pressurised the Government to publish its "peace package". On the contrary, it has endorsed the military repression supposedly of only the LTTE. This is invariably justified by reference to the resumption of fighting by the LTTE on 19 April. Some diplomats have also asserted that after the Government secures a significant military victory in Jaffna, the President will be able to negotiate with the LTTE without antagonising the Government's Sinhalese constituency. Indeed when diplomats arranged meetings for western journalists to make contact with Sri Lankan political analysts, the diplomat present at each such interaction even "massaged" the discussion in order to hoodwink the western journalists that their respective government's position is correct.

Meanwhile the PA Government appears to be operationalising a two-pronged political strategy. On the one hand Tamil nationalism is to be repressed militarily in the North-East Province (NEP). On the other hand the Tamils and Muslims in the NEP are to be ruled by the Government through a Vichy-type collaborationist regime - the so-called "temporary administration" - set up in the NEP and manned by one or more of the Tamil parties.

In effect, the international community has become an apologist for the PA Government. This fall from grace could be contrasted against the near universal support extended by the international community to the Tamil militant groups (including the LTTE) prior to the July 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord. The international community had occupied the moral high ground as a defender of minority peoples in Sri Lanka. AGOTIC does not contest the right of the international community to freely choose its stance on political issues. What is puzzling is that the international community considers it appropriate to "induce the LTTE back to negotiations" when the Government continues to prevaricate and so far has not announced its official "peace package".

The international community appears to believe that it is legitimate to coerce the LTTE through the barbaric carpet-bombing and inhuman artillery shelling of civilian areas of Jaffna. But it is elementary knowledge that the more force is applied by the State the less LTTE will be amenable to negotiations. Moreover the international community perhaps still believes that General Franco's grotesque carpet-bombing of the Basque people in the 1930s is an example of the civilised way to resolve national questions: thus a diplomat from a West-European country which prides itself on its revolutionary political culture unabashedly declared that up to about 8,000 civilian casualties during the current offensive in the North are "acceptable". The Tamil people legitimately ask: "acceptable" to whom?

Indeed the international community seems to believe that the monumental human tragedy unfolding in the North is justified by the slogan "battle for peace". In Bosnia, for instance, the international community voiced great concern as the number of EUROPEAN refugees crossed the 30,000 mark and rose to about 50,000. But the international community is virtually unmoved by the more than 400,000 ASIAN refugees in the Jaffna peninsula. In fact the Tamil refugee population approaching half million makes the conflict in the North the largest civil war in the world today. This also makes the Sri Lankan Government the most ruthless practitioner of State terror in the world, a record it first established when it crushed the Sinhalese Jathika Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in 1989/90. But one North-American diplomat glibly defended the Government's military campaign as "a war which is not entirely unjustifiable". Thus, despite the staggering impact on the Tamil people, the international community continues to parrot the empty official protestation that "the war is not against the Tamil people but to liberate them from the clutches of terrorism" (The Island, 20/10/95). It is highly unlikely that the almost half million Tamil refugees will concur.

The international community may have been encouraged by the spineless and shameless acquiescence of most Colombo-based Tamil political parties and the so-called "peace lobby" [which refers to human rights and conflict resolution organizations such as the Movement for Inter Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE), the Peace with Democracy Movement, the Centre for Society and Religion (CSR) and the National Peace Council (NPC)] in the South. With the possible exceptions of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) and the NPC, not a single Tamil party or human rights organization has had the honesty to demand that the military campaign against the Tamil Nation be stopped and stopped immediately. Instead they have opportunistically condoned the slaughter of Tamil men, women and children under the pretext of "forcing the LTTE back to the negotiating table". This comment applies equally to the international community.

The recent shift in the international community's position is necessarily reflected in the concern shown by the UN Secretary General. Nevertheless, the hands of the international community, and of the Tamil parties and "peace lobby", are steeped in the blood of Tamils. The Tamil Nation is entitled to an explanation.

Dr S Sathananthan Ph D, Secretary
6 November 1995.