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Pirapaharan By: T. Sabaratnam Introduction (Continued) The Language Tamil
youths had been radicalized by the late 1960s. Language is a matter that touches the
heart of every Tamil. They are proud of the antiquity and richness of
their language, and linguistic nationalism is part of the psyche of every
Tamil. When, in 1956, the Bandaranaike Government enacted the Sinhala Only
Act, Tamils were enraged. They were hurt the Sinhala leaders went back on their
earlier promise of parity of status for the Sinhala and Tamil
languages. The Federal Party decision to
perform satyagraha (non-violent protest) at Galle Face Green opposite the
Parliament building evoked a sympathetic response among the Tamil people. The
satyagraha held on 5 June 1956 was disturbed by organized Sinhala hooligans. The
Federal Party then took the opposition to the Sinhala Only Act to the Tamil
people. The TULF organized the “Thirumalai Yatra (March to Trincomalle) in
April 1957, which was followed by a 3-day convention. The Convention placed a
4-point demand before the government and gave the Government one year
to implement the demands. The demands were: 1.
The establishment of an autonomous Tamil state or States
on a linguistic basis within a federal union of
Ceylon. 2.
The restoration of the Tamil Language to its rightful place, enjoying absolute
parity of status with Sinhalese as the official language of this
country, 3.
The restoration of the citizenship and franchise rights
of the Tamil workers in the plantation districts by the repeal of the present
citizenship laws, and 4.
The immediate cessation of all policies of colonizing
the traditionally Tamil-speaking areas with Sinhalese people. Bandaranaike agreed to talk with the leaders of the
Federal Party and to work out a solution. Regarding the language issue, it
was agreed to work out an adjustment without abandoning the two
parties' respective positions: Sinhala Only by Bandaranaike and parity of
status by Chelvanayakam. The agreement worked out was the recognition of Tamil
as a national language and that the administration of the Northern and the
Eastern Provinces would be done in Tamil. That agreement was not honoured. Neither
was the agreement of 1965 in which Dudley Senanayake promised to make
Tamil the Language of Administration and of Record in the Northern and Eastern
Provinces. Senanayake's undertaking to enable Tamil-speaking persons to
transact business in Tamil throughout the island was also not
honoured. Safety and
Security Tamils as a whole, and
youths in particular, had lost faith in the Sinhala leadership by 1968 when the
Federal Party quit Dudley Senanayake's government in disgust. By then Sinhala
leaders had unleashed the armed might of the state and the strength of the
unruly mob to silence non-violent protest by the Tamils. The mob attack on the
satyagrahis at Galle Face was followed by attacks on Tamil officers and
cultivators in the Gal Oya scheme. Two years later, in May 1958, there was
widespread attacks on Tamils. These attacks started at Polonnaruwa
where Sinhala colonists from the Padaviya Colonization Scheme attacked the
Batticoloa- Colombo train. Attacks spread to Anuradhapura, Colombo and then to
the hill country. Tamils were attacked, their homes burnt, children were thrown
into boiling tar barrels, many were chased out with barely the clothes they
were wearing to the refugee camps and many refugees were then sent by trains and
ships to the north and east. The
Bandaranaike government, intent on pacifying the Sinhalese, detained Federal
Party leaders from 4 June 1958 to 4 September 1958, accusing them of instigating
the riots. Sirimavo Bandaranaike's government again detained Federal Party
leaders nearly three years later on 17 April 1961 charging them with trying to
establish a separate state. Addressing the nation that night on radio, Sirimavo
Bandaranaike said: Since last
week the Federal Party has opened, what they call, a postal service and formed a
police force. They have also established land kachcheries to allot crown land to
their supporters. It will thus be clear that the Federal Party leaders had
challenged the lawfully established government of the country with the view to
establish a separate state. Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s key ministers, Felix R. Dias
Bandaranaike and C. P. de Silva, who had obtained Thanthai Chelva’s assistance
to defeat the Dudley Senanayake government in March 1960, won the election in
July 1960 and started to implement the Sinhala Only in the Tamil provinces from
1 January 1961. The Federal Party launched a satyagraha campaign on
20 February opposite the Jaffna Kachcheri (Secretariat). This satyagraha
grew into a People’s Protest. The people blocked the gates of the
secretariat preventing administration in Sinhala. On
30 March the government airlifted a naval unit to Jaffna (the first airlift in
Sri Lanka’s history) to cordon off the secretariat, but that exercise failed as
the people used the by-lanes and private compounds to go to the secretariat. The
Federal Party retaliated for the deployment of the naval unit by extending
the campaign to Vavuniya, Mannar, Trincomalle and Batticoloa
secretariats. Making use of the growing support it received from the
people, the Federal Party leaders decided to court arrest by breaking selected
laws. They inaugurated the Thamil Arasu Postal Service on April 14. Thanthai
Chelva, functioning as the Postmaster General, sold thousands of stamps. The
next day, April 16, the Federal Party inaugurated the Thamil Arasu Land
Kachcheri in which applications for the allotment of state land were
received. The government reacted to the Federal Party expanding
the satyagraha into a civil disobedience movement. It declared a state of
emergency and made use of the army to break up the satyagraha movement. It
arrested the leaders and the youth leaders involved in organizational work. The
satyagraha, though subdued, had unleashed among the Tamil people the desire for
freedom and had brought Tamil youth into conflict with the armed
forces. The Breaking
Point The 1961 satyagraha was a turning point in Sri Lanka’s
Sinhala –Tamil relations. It made the Tamils politically conscious and active.
It drew the youths and the students, who had been mere spectators,
into becoming participants. From then on the youth started questioning
their leaders, pressing for action. The failure of Thanthai Chelva’s experiment
at cooperation during Dudley Senanayake’s National Government made the youth
assertive. The Sirimavo Bandaranaike government that succeeded
Dudley Senanayake in 1970 marked the breaking point. This
government touched the sore point in Tamil mind - higher education and
employment. The requirement that knowledge of Sinhala language was essential for
state employment almost completely barred the Tamils from an area that had
been their priority. Then Bandaranaike introduced language-wise
standardization for university entrance. Interference in education not only estranged Tamil youths from the Sinhalese, it also alienated them from their own leaders, who failed to understand immediately the impact of standardization. The Federal Party, from its inception, had been the agent of Tamil government servants and Tamil teachers, who made use of the party to safeguard their interests. The Action Committee of the party raised the question of standardization as only one of the six acts of government that affected the Tamil people. Angered youths decided not to rely on their leaders and formed the Tamil Manavar Peravai (Tamil Students League) to agitate for solutions to their problems. This league was headed by Ponnuthurai Sathyaseelan. Pirapaharan, Sivakumaran and Sri Sabaratnam were important members. Later the league was converted into the Tamil Elaignar Peravai (Tamil Youth League). The Thamil Manavar Peravai was involved in agitating against
the 1972 constitution along with its anti-standardization efforts.
The United Front, comprising the SLFP,
Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party, which won the 1970
election, set
up a constituent assembly consisting the members of parliament to draft and
enact a new constitution. The Federal Party presented a model constitution to
the constituent assembly. Article 1 of the FP's model constitution said Sri
Lanka should be a federal state comprising a central government and five
autonomous states. The five states proposed were: a state comprising the western
and southern provinces; a state comprising the north-central and
north-western provinces; a state comprising Uva, Sabaragamiva and Central
Provinces; a state comprising the northern province and the districts of
Trincomalle and Batticoloa of the eastern province and a state comprising
the south-eastern district of Amparai. The
constituent assembly did not even consider the Federal Party's suggestions.
Instead, it adopted the following basic resolution: "The Republic of Sri
Lanka shall be a unitary state." The assembly also adopted the resolution
that Sinhala would be the only official language and Buddhism would be accorded
the pride of place amongst the country's religions. Tamil youths, now
vociferous, demanded that the Federal Party quit the constituent assembly and
the Federal Party bowed to their demand. Thanthai Chelva called the 1972
constitution “a charter of slavery.” The
1972 constitution started the movement towards the demand for a separate Tamil
state. On 14 May 1972, eight days before the proclamation of the constitution,
Tamil parties formed the Tamil United Front (TUF) comprising the Federal Party,
All Ceylon Tamil Congress, the Ceylon Workers Congress, the Eelath Thamilar
Ootumai Munnani, the All Ceylon Tamil Conference and some Tamil trade unions.
The TUF organized a massive protest against the new constitution on 22 May 1972.
The youths took the protest to the villages. Village level demonstrations and
meetings were held, the national flag was burnt and bonfires made of the copies
of the new constitution. Thanthai Chelva resigned his
seat in parliament to give the government an opportunity to test the reaction of
the Tamil people to the new constitution. The government postponed the
by-election for his seat until 1975. The
government retaliated against the protests about the new constitution by
arresting over 70 youth leaders. That brought the police and the armed forces
into direct confrontation with the youths. As the impact of standardization
began to be felt among the students, they became ever more strident in their
protests. They started telling the people that the path of cooperation and
non-violent protest have failed. Armed struggle, as in Bangladesh and the
violent revolt by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in southern Sri Lanka, was
considered the only possible option. Secret armed groups sprang up.
One of these armed groups was Pirapaharan’s Tamil New Tigers
(TNT). The 1974 January Tamil Research Conference Massacre infuriated the youth, especially Sivakumaran. The youths were wild with anger. They charged the government with engineering the police attack. Youths organized a series of protests. Sivakumaran was determined to take revenge. His target was Posts and Telecommunications Minister C. Kumarasuriyar, Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiapph and ASP Chandrasekera, the Sinhala police officer held responsible for the deaths of civilians at the conference. Sivakumaran committed suicide by swallowing the cyanide capsule he was wearing when he was trapped while trying to rob the Kopay branch of the People’s Bank on 4 June 1974. His death created an emotional environment in Jaffna. The
massive victory Thanthai Chelva won in the Kankesanthurai by-election held on 6
February 1975 generated an intense movement towards separation. In his victory speech
Thanthai Chelva declared; Throughout
the ages, the Sinhalese and the Tamils in this country lived as distinct
sovereign people until they were brought under foreign domination. We have for
the last 25 years made every effort to secure our political rights on the basis
of equality with the Sinhalese in a united Ceylon. It is a regretable fact that
successive Sinhalese governments have used the power that flows from
independence to deny us our fundamental rights and reduce us to the position of
a subject people. I wish to announce to my people and the country that I
consider the verdict at the election as a mandate that the Tamil Eelam nation
should exercise the sovereignty already vested in the Tamil people and become free. On behalf of the
Tamil United Front, I give you my solemn assurance that we will carry out our
mandate. Youths raised a victory cry. “Tamil Eelam and nothing
else,” they chorused. Some pricked their index finger with a pin and applied the
blood on Thanthai Chelva’s forehead (the traditional Iratha Thilagam) indicating
their preparedness for any sacrifice, setting the stage for the historic
Vaddukoddai Resolution. On 5 May 1976, nine days before the adoption of
the Vaddukoddai resolution, 21-year old Pirapaharan, thamby as he was known then,
transformed his TNT into a well-knit guerrilla outfit and renamed it
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), pledging to make the
Vaddukoddai Resolution a reality. Vaddukoddai
Resolution The
Tamil United Front held its first annual convention at Pannakam in the
Vaddukoddai electorate on 14 May 1976. Youths, especially those who had secretly
set up militant groups, participated in full strength. They were there to ensure
the adoption of the historic resolution that called for the establishment of a
separate state for the Tamil people and the conversion of the Tamil United Front
into a liberation organization called the Tamil United Liberation Front
(TULF). The
resolution was moved by Thanthai Chelva and seconded by M. Sivasithamparam of
the All Ceylon Tamil Congress. The full text of the resolution is given in
Annexure-1. The resolution proclaimed;
The first National Convention of the Tamil
United Front meeting at Pannakam (Vaddukoddai Constituency) on the 14th day of
May, 1976, hereby declares that the Tamils of Ceylon, by virtue of their great
language, their religions, their separate culture and heritage, their history of
independent existence as a separate state over a distinct territory for several
centuries till they were conquered by the armed might of the European invaders
and above all by their will to exist as a separate entity ruling themselves in
their own territory, are a nation distinct and apart from the Sinhalese and this
Convention announces to the world that the Republican Constitution of 1972 has
made the Tamils a slave nation ruled by the new colonial masters, the Sinhalese,
who are using the power they have wrongly usurped to deprive the Tamil Nation of
its territory, language citizenship, economic life, and opportunities for
employment and education, thereby destroying all the attributes of nationhood of
the Tamil people...
This convention resolves that restoration and reconstitution of the Free,
Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of TAMIL EELAM, based on the right of self
determination inherent to every nation, has become inevitable in order to
safeguard the very existence of the Tamil Nation in this Country.
The Mandate
In
my third book; The Murder of a
Moderate, I told the story of how the moderates were marginalized,
through their own faults and through the strategies of Sinhala chauvinism.
Appapillai Amirthalingam took over TULF leadership after Thanthai Chelva died on
5 April 1977 and his first task was to face the election of 1977
July. The TULF decided to make use of
the election to obtain the endorsement of the people for the Vaddukoddai
Resolution and to get their mandate for the elected representatives to
constitute themselves into a National Assembly of Tamil Eelam for the purpose of
drafting and implementing a constitution. The relevant paragraph
read; Tamil
speaking representatives who get elected through the vote will also form
themselves into a National Assembly of Tamil Eelam which will draft a constitution for a
state of Eelam to establish the independence of Tamil Eelam by bringing the
constitution into operation either by peaceful means or by direct action or
struggle. People gave the TULF the required mandate, electing 17
of their candidates with massive majorities. In his electorate of
Kankesanthurai, Amirthalingam polled 31,155 votes to his opponent’s 5322. In a
moving victory speech, Amirthalingam announced that the people had given his
party the mandate it asked for and vowed: From now
onwards there is no looking back. We will march forward to achieve the goal of
Eelam. After the
election Amirthalingam went back on his word. The TULF parliamentary group
forgot entirely its promise to form itself into a National Assembly of Tamil
Eelam and to draft a constitution for a state of Eelam. Instead, the
parliamentary group that met at Vavuniya decided to accept the post of the
Leader of the Opposition and to function in Parliament as a responsible
opposition. The TULF attended the Sri Lankan parliament on 4 August 1877 and
Amirthalingam occupied the seat of the Leader of the Opposition. He seconded the
name of Ananthatissa de Alwis for the post of speaker, proposed by the Leader of
the House R. Premadasa. Congratulating the Speaker on his unanimous election
Amirthalingam said: The TULF
would fulfill its obligations in terms of the conventions of the House and would
cooperate with the Chair. The TULF attended the
ceremonial opening of the Parliament, breaking its 20-year boycott and made
a patient effort to build an amicable relationship with the government. That
brought about a cleavage between Amirthalingam and Tamil youths, whose
darling he was during 1970-1977, the period he was out of Parliament.
Youths adored him as their Thalapathi, meaning General.
President Jayewardene took all possible steps to widen this cleavage. He
provided Amirthalingam with an official residence, a car, security and other
facilities and responded favourably to most TULF
personal requests. Amirthalingam took further
steps to strengthen the bond between the TULF and the Government; the TULF
attended parliamentary committee meetings, it attended monthly meetings with the
cabinet to sort out the problems of the Tamils, and in June 1981 it contested
the District Development Council elections and captured all the ten seats in the
Jaffna District Development Council, polling 263,369 votes against the UNP’s
23,302 and the Tamil Congress’s 21,682. But the TULF’s hold on the Tamil people
vanished during the local government election of 18 May 1983. In that election the Tamil
people changed their loyalty from the TULF to the LTTE and obeyed the LTTE's
command to boycott the election. In Jaffna 86% of the voters kept away. In
Chavakachcheri 85%, in Point Pedro 99% and in Pirapaharan’s birthplace,
Valvettithurai, 98% of the voters kept away. The local government members
elected by the few who voted at the election obeyed the LTTE order not to attend
the inaugural meetings of the Councils fixed for June 16. Only the Point Pedro
Town Council met that day. Amirthalingam admitted that the
people had discarded the TULF and chosen a new leadership. He told the
Daily News; We were
reduced to a position that we could not reply to the Tiger charge that the
District Development Councils have failed. We had nothing concrete to show the
people other than the empty shells of the Development
Councils Youths warned the TULF and Amirthalingam that they were
not honouring the mandate that the people had given them. They were also warned
that they were being taken for a ride by Jayewardene. Young people repeatedly
reminded the TULF leaders of their obligation with posters,
whenever Amirthalingam visited Jaffna, which read: "What has happened to
the Mandate. When is the National Assembly of Tamil Eelam meeting?" They also
stepped up their attacks on the police and the army. Jayewardene aided the estrangement of the Tamil moderate
leadership - Amirthalingam and the TULF - from the Tamil people by refusing to
strengthen them by granting the District Development Councils any basic
legislating and taxing powers. Jayewardene and his advisors resorted to the
strategy of weakening the TULF in the hope that the Tamil agitation for a
separate state would wither away. They organized the Cyril Mathew group to
unleash a virulent propaganda against Amirthalingam, who was accused of being
the brain behind the militant groups. A no-confidence motion was moved against
him, the Leader of the Opposition, a first in the parliamentary history of the
world. He was accused of being a traitor by government members. They said
he should be publicly torn to pieces, the worst punishment Sinhala kings of yore
imposed on traitors. Jayewardene and his strategists unleashed two mob
attacks on Tamils - in 1977 on Sri Lankan Tamils and in 1979 on Indian Tamils -
to carry forward their scheme of weakening the Tamils. The same strategy with
added severity was implemented 1983 and thereafter. That phase, indicated
briefly in the The Murder of a Moderate, will form
the first part of the biography, Pirapaharan. Pirapaharan’s Mission Pirapaharan’s mission is to
attain the objective of the Vaddukoddai Resolution - "a State of Tamil
Eelam… to safeguard the very existence of the Tamil nation in Sri Lanka." The Tamil people gave the required
mandate to the TULF in 1977 to draft a seperate constitution and bring it into
operation “either by peaceful means or
by direct action or struggle.” The TULF failed to honour that
mandate. The TULF demonstrated that “peaceful means” had totally failed as a
method for obtaining Tamil rights. The failure of Thanthai Chelva’s experiments
at negotiations and cooperation has demonstrated that non-violent “direct action or struggle,” too, would
not succeed. Pirapaharan thus chose the only other option available; armed
rebellion. The events that forced him
to come to that conclusion, his attempts at organizing an urban guerrilla group,
the hardships he underwent during that process, his failures and successes, his
achievement in converting a guerrilla group into a conventional army, his
building of a suicide force, the establishment of a powerful naval unit, the
organization of a police force, a judicial system and an efficient
administrative network are all unparalleled achievements in the history of
revolutions in the world. In writing my fourth biography,
Pirapaharan. I am fully aware of the
difficulties I will have to face. Writing the first three biographies was
relatively easy. I had known Thondaman, Chelvanayakam and Amirthalingam
since 1957. I maintained close contact with them until their deaths.
I moved closely with them and covered most of the important events in their
lives. I had regular meetings with them and discussed the events that
affected their lives and times. I have never met Pirapaharan, nor any of
his top assistants. As a Lake House staffer, I have read more the army
handouts and covered innumerable defence ministry press briefings - a
definite disqualification to write about Pirapaharan, the most wanted man in Sri
Lanka. However, I posses a
qualification which no other biographer of Pirapaharan can claim. I have moved
very closely with the Tamil moderate leadership. More importantly, I have
also moved closely with the main Sinhala actors involved in the ethnic conflict
- Cyril Mathew, Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, Ranjan Wijeratne,
Ranasinghe Premadasa, Prof. G. L. Peiris, among others. I have also moved
intimately with three Indian envoys who influenced Indian Sri Lankan policy - G,
K, Chatwaal, J, N. Dixit and L. Mehotra. The idea of writing this book
was born in 1996, soon after I launched the book on Amirthalingam. I
called on Neelan Tiruchelvam to thank him for attending the launch. He
suggested that I should next write about Pirapaharan. I was bewildered.
“He is going to take our struggle to a conclusion,” Neelan
prophesized. From Neelan’s office at Kinsey Terrace I went to Kumar
Ponnambalam’s Queen’s Road home. He endorsed Neelan’s suggestion. He
promised to give me the necessary help. I am aware that this is a
sensitive project. My professional training has taught me to be impassionate,
objective, balanced. Facts are sacred and sacred they will be in this
narrative. If there are any inaccuracy and inadequacy, I take
responsibility. I will correct them whenever they are pointed out. I
hope my attempt will prompt better, fully authentic biographies on Pirapaharan,
a genius of our time.
Annexure-1
VADDUKODDAI
RESOLUTION THE RESOLUTION
Whereas, throughout the centuries from the dawn
of history, the Sinhalese and Tamil nations have divided between themselves the
possession of Ceylon, the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior of the country in
its Southern and Western parts from the river Walawe to that of Chilaw and the
Tamils possessing the Northern and Eastern districts; And,
Whereas, the Tamil Kingdom was overthrown in war
and conquered by the Portuguese in 1619, and from them by the Dutch and the
British in turn, independent of the Sinhalese Kingdoms;
And, Whereas, the British Colonists, who ruled the
territories of the Sinhalese and Tamil Kingdoms separately, joined under
compulsion the territories of the Sinhalese and the Tamil Kingdoms for purposes
of administrative convenience on the recommendation of the Colebrooke Commission
in 1833; And, Whereas, the Tamil Leaders were in the forefront
of the Freedom movement to rid Ceylon of colonial bondage which ultimately led
to the grant of independence to Ceylon in 1948; And, Whereas, the foregoing facts of history were
completely overlooked, and power over the entire country was transferred to the
Sinhalese nation on the basis of a numerical majority, thereby reducing the
Tamil nation to the position of subject people; And, Whereas, successive Sinhalese governments since
independence have always encouraged and fostered the aggressive nationalism of
the Sinhalese people and have used their political power to the detriment of the
Tamils by- (a) Depriving one half of the Tamil people
of their citizenship and franchise rights thereby reducing Tamil representation
in Parliament, (b) Making serious inroads into the
territories of the former Tamil Kingdom by a system of planned and state-aided
Sinhalese colonization and large scale regularization of recently encouraged
Sinhalese encroachments, calculated to make the Tamils a minority in their own
homeland, (c) Making Sinhala the only official
language throughout Ceylon thereby placing the stamp of inferiority on the
Tamils and the Tamil Language, (d) Giving the foremost place to Buddhism
under the Republican constitution thereby reducing the Hindus, Christians, and
Muslims to second class status in this Country, (e) Denying to the Tamils equality of
opportunity in the spheres of employment, education, land alienation and
economic life in general and starving Tamil areas of large scale industries and
development schemes thereby seriously endangering their very existence in
Ceylon, (f) Systematically cutting them off from
the main-stream of Tamil cultures in South India while denying them
opportunities of developing their language and culture in Ceylon, thereby
working inexorably towards the cultural genocide of the
Tamils, (g) Permitting and unleashing communal
violence and intimidation against the Tamil speaking people as happened in
Amparai and Colombo in 1956; all over the country in 1958; army reign of terror
in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in 1961; police violence at the
International Tamil Research Conference in 1974 resulting in the death of nine
persons in Jaffna; police and communal violence against Tamil speaking Muslims
at Puttalam and various other parts of Ceylon in 1976 - all these calculated to
instill terror in the minds of the Tamil speaking people, thereby breaking their
spirit and the will to resist injustices heaped on them, (h) By terrorizing, torturing, and
imprisoning Tamil youths without trial for long periods on the flimsiest
grounds, (i) Capping it all by imposing on the
Tamil Nation a constitution drafted, under conditions of emergency without
opportunities for free discussion, by a Constituent Assembly elected on the
basis of the Soulbury Constitution distorted by the Citizenship laws resulting
in weightage in representation to the Sinhalese majority, thereby depriving the
Tamils of even the remnants of safeguards they had under the earlier
constitution, And, Whereas, all attempts by the various Tamil
political parties to win their rights, by co-operating with the governments, by
parliamentary and extra-parliamentary agitations, by entering into pacts and
understandings with successive Prime Ministers, in order to achieve the bare
minimum of political rights consistent with the self-respect of the Tamil people
have proved to be futile; And, Whereas, the efforts of the All Ceylon Tamil
Congress to ensure non-domination of the minorities by the majority by the
adoption of a scheme of balanced representation in a Unitary Constitution have
failed and even the meagre safeguards provided in article 29 of the Soulbury
Constitution against discriminatory legislation have been removed by the
Republican Constitution; And, Whereas, the proposals submitted to the
Constituent Assembly by the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi for maintaining the
unity of the country while preserving the integrity of the Tamil people by the
establishment of an autonomous Tamil State within the framework of a Federal
Republic of Ceylon were summarily and totally rejected without even the courtesy
of a consideration of its merits; And, Whereas, the amendments to the basic resolutions,
intended to ensure the minimum of safeguards to the Tamil people moved on the
basis of the nine point demands formulated at the conference of all Tamil
Political parties at Valvettithurai on 7th February 1971 and by individual
parties and Tamil members of Parliament including those now in the government
party, were rejected in toto by the government and Constituent Assembly;
And, Whereas, even amendments to the draft proposals
relating to language, religion, and fundamental-rights including one calculated
to ensure that at least the provisions of the Tamil Language (Special
Provisions) Regulations of 1956 be included in the Constitution, were defeated,
resulting in the boycott of the Constituent Assembly by a large majority of the
Tamil members of Parliament; And, Whereas, the Tamil United Liberation Front, after
rejecting the Republican Constitution adopted on the 22nd of May, 1972,
presented a six point demand to the Prime Minister and the Government on 25th
June, 1972, and gave three months time within which the Government was called
upon to take meaningful steps to amend the Constitution so as to meet the
aspirations of the Tamil Nation on the basis of the six points, and informed the
Government that if it failed to do so the Tamil United Liberation Front would
launch a non-violent direct action against the Government in order to win the
freedom and the rights of the Tamil Nation on the basis of the right of
self-determination; And, Whereas, this last attempt by the Tamil United
Liberation Front to win Constitutional recognition of the rights of the Tamil
Nation without jeopardizing the unity of the country was callously ignored by
the Prime Minister and the Government; And, Whereas, the opportunity provided by the Tamil
United Liberation leader to vindicate the Government’s contention that their
constitution had the backing of the Tamil people, by resigning from his
membership of the National State Assembly and creating a by-election was
deliberately put off for over two years in utter disregard of the democratic
right of the Tamil voters of Kankesanthurai, and, Whereas, in the by-election held on the 6th
February 1975, the voters of Kankesanthurai by a preponderant majority not only
rejected the Republican Constitution imposed on them by the Sinhalese
Government, but also gave a mandate to Mr. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, Q.C. and
through him to the Tamil United Liberation Front for the restoration and
reconstitution of the Free Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of TAMIL EELAM.
The first National Convention of the Tamil
United Liberation Front meeting at Pannakam (Vaddukoddai Constituency) on the
14th day of May, 1976, hereby declares that the Tamils of Ceylon by virtue of
their great language, their religions, their separate culture and heritage,
their history of independent existence as a separate state over a distinct
territory for several centuries till they were conquered by the armed might of
the European invaders and above all by their will to exist as a separate entity
ruling themselves in their own territory, are a nation distinct and apart from
Sinhalese and this Convention announces to the world that the Republican
Constitution of 1972 has made the Tamils a slave nation ruled by the new
colonial masters, the Sinhalese ,who are using the power they have wrongly
usurped to deprive the Tamil Nation of its territory, language citizenship,
economic life, opportunities of employment and education, thereby destroying all
the attributes of nationhood of the Tamil people. And, while taking note of the reservations
in relation to its commitment to the setting up of a separated state of TAMIL
EELAM expressed by the Ceylon Workers Congress as a Trade Union of the
Plantation Workers, the majority of whom live and work outside the Northern and
Eastern areas, This convention resolves that restoration
and reconstitution of the Free, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of TAMIL
EELAM, based on the right of self determination inherent to every nation, has
become inevitable in order to safeguard the very existence of the Tamil Nation
in this Country. This Convention further declares -
This Convention directs the Action
Committee of the TAMIL UNITED LIBERATION FRONT to formulate a plan of action and
launch without undue delay the struggle for winning the sovereignty and freedom
of the Tamil Nation; And this Convention calls upon the Tamil Nation in general and the Tamil youth in particular to come forward to throw themselves fully into the sacred fight for freedom and to flinch not till the goal of a sovereign state of TAMIL EELAM is reached. |
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