UN Commission on Human Rights

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United Nations Commission on Human Rights – 60th session

Item 5 – Right to Self-determination

Intervention by Visuvalingam KIRUPAHARAN
March, 2004

In 1918, President W Wilson used the term ‘self-determination’ in his speeches to Congress. He stated that “Self-determination is not a mere phrase, it is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.”

Even though the “Right to self determination” is one of the subjects strongly linked to Human Rights, now-a-days it tends to be seen as a political issue. Demands made by ethnic groups legitimately exercising their “Right to self-determination” are countered with arms and ammunition around the world – causing severe gross human rights violations and threatening World peace.

As the strongest defender of the Right to self-determination, President Wilson said in April 1917 said “fight for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples…for the rights of nations great and small and the privileges of men everywhere to choose their own way of life.” Wilson further said, “The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be founded upon the tested foundations of political liberty.”

The “Right to self-determination” is well integrated into the UN Charter, Declarations, Covenants and in other Treaties.

Although our organisation is interested in the Right to self-determination of many people around the world, today we intervene in this august forum, concerning the right to self-determination of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

This forum has heard various reports, over many years, on the human rights violations suffered by the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Those violations are, of course, part of the repressive measures taken against the Tamils who demand their right to self-determination.

International law defines the right to self-determination as “rights of the peoples” not the right of just any group of individuals.

Mr. Chairperson, the Tamils in Sri Lanka are a ‘People’ with a long history, culture, language of their own and a land with well-defined boundaries. However, since Independence (1948), the Tamils in Sri Lanka have gradually lost their constitutional protections and began to lose their cultural and ethnic identity as “Tamils.”

The “Sinhala Only Act” passed in the Parliament in 1956; the two agreements signed between the Sinhala leaders and the Tamil political leaders in 1957 and 1965 which were unilaterally abrogated by the Prime Ministers who signed those agreements; the standardisation introduced in education in 1972 denying equal University education for Tamil students and several anti-Tamil pogroms were challenged in non-violent protests by Tamils.

It is pertinent to draw your attention to an independent report published by an Academic (K. Sachithanandan, Research officer for Colombo Fisheries Corporation, lecturer at the University of Jaffna and Adviser to the United Nations on Food and Agriculture in twenty-three countries.) The report describes, how 50% of the ancestral lands of the Tamils in the Island of Sri Lanka have been plundered and colonised by the Sinhalese with the encouragement of the Sri Lankan government and its agents.

Thirty years of the Tamils’ non-violent Gandhian manner of civil disobedience protest, Ahimsa, in Sri Lanka was consistently and violently suppressed by the security forces.

As the non-violent struggle brought no fruits of justice in Sri Lanka, the Tamils were compelled to defend themselves. This gave birth to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the armed struggle started in the 1980s. The bloody conflict continued, with a few lulls, for more than twenty years.

The result has been arrests, torture, rape, killings, massacres, the displacement of a million Tamils and the seeking of asylum in foreign countries of nearly 400,000 Tamils.

A de-facto government has been run by the Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for more than a decade. This administration covers nearly two thirds of the NorthEastern province in the island.

In February 2002, as a result of the mediation of the Royal Norwegian government, a ceasefire was signed by the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which are parties to the conflict. The cease-fire still holds successfully with some violations including IDPs not being allowed to settle in their homes, under the pretext of the necessity of newly created High Security Zones in the Jaffna peninsula(HSZ) and other parts.

Since September 2002 six rounds of peace talks took place between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – the LTTE. Due to non-implementation of the outcome of the peace talks by the government of Sri Lanka, on 21 April 2003 the LTTE leadership informed the Sri Lankan government that it had decided to suspend its participation in the negotiations for the time being.

Last year on 01 November, the LTTE submitted a proposal for an “Interim Self-Governing Authority-ISGA” for the NorthEast. This proposal was highly appreciated and welcomed by the European Union, the United States and many other countries. Unfortunately on 4 November, the Executive President of Sri Lanka who is in “cohabitation” with the government removed three important Ministers – defence, interior and media. This caused political turmoil in the country. The President then dissolved the parliament and a General Election is to take place next month. The LTTE’s ISGA proposal has simply been ignored and not taken seriously by people in power.

Mr. Chairperson, this is the saddest pattern in Sri Lanka! Every time there is a conducive and positive atmosphere in which to settle the bloody ethnic conflict, the main political parties, the SLFP and UNP create political turmoil and cancel out each other’s efforts.

This has continued since independence in 1948. The international community is patiently observing this.

In the 55th session of this forum, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “……..Even though we are an organisation of Member States, the rights and ideals the United Nations exists to protect are those of the peoples. As long as I am Secretary General, the United Nation as an institution will always place human beings at the centre of everything we do. No government has the right to hide behind national sovereignty in order to violate the human rights or fundamental freedoms of its peoples. Whether a person belongs to minority or the majority, that person’s human rights and fundamental freedoms are sacred. (Koffi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations – 55th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, 07 April 1999)

Mr. Chairperson, many Ethnic problems around the world have been settled though the intervention of the United Nations and this august forum has played crucial roles in many of these settlements.

The Tamils in Sri Lanka are desperately in need of the United Nations intervention to re-establish their right to self-determination which they had before the colonisation of this island.

Thank you.

Originally published March 21, 2004

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