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| Tamil parliamentarians pictured last year protesting against the Sri Lankan state’s indiscriminate violence against Tamils in the east. |
The TNA is a coalition of Sri Lanka’s four largest Tamil parties.
Outlining the humanitarian and human rights crisis that has emerged in the wake of Colombo’s military project, the TNA said: “the Sri Lankan State’s objective is to resolve the Tamil National question by military means.”
“We strongly submit that the Sri Lankan State will not conform to international norms or standards,” the TNA said.
“Only by the International Community taking a principled stand on the question of the right to self determination of the Tamil people and by taking meaningful steps, can the Sri Lankan State be made to realize that it cannot continue with the present disastrous trend,” the TNA argued.
“Since 1956, the democratic verdicts of the Tamil people in the North-East, at every successive election, have overwhelmingly supported this demand for self determination. All activities by the Tamil people in support of this demand were non-violent and peaceful.”
But the Sri Lankan State “has consistently denied the right to self determination to the Tamil people, and through the 1972 and 1978 Constitutions enacted without the consent of the Tamil people, enshrined the unitary system of government which is the antithesis of the right to self- determination.”
“Racial pogroms were unleashed against the Tamil people. Moderate Tamil political leadership over a period of three decades, despite valiant efforts failed to achieve positive results,” the TNA pointed out.
“It was in these circumstances that an armed struggle by the Tamil people commenced to defend the themselves from the genocidal intent of the Sri Lankan State and to further the struggle to realize the right to self determination.”
Saying that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) “are at the forefront leading this struggle for self determination of the Tamil people,” the TNA argued: “due to the intransigence of the Sri Lankan State, the struggle yet continues.”
The Sri Lankan Armed forces are over 99% Sinhalese, the Police forces are over 95% Sinhalese, and are openly hostile to the Tamil people, the parliamentarians said.
“The Tamil people look upon the Sri Lankan armed forces as an Army of occupation and have every reason to fear [them],” the TNA said.
“The Sri Lankan State’s objective is to resolve the Tamil National question by military means,” it said, adding that since President Mahinda Rajapakse came to power, he has pursued military operations in flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement signed in 2002 between the Sri Lankan State and the LTTE.
Meanwhile “violence against Tamil civilians has been a continuing phenomenon, and has escalated since 2006,” the TNA said.
The military uses heavy weapons indiscriminately against Tamil residential areas, the MPs said. “Though the Government claims that such attacks were directed against identified LTTE targets, the victims have very frequently and mainly been Tamil civilians.”
The Sinhala government was blockading Tamil areas and stopping international aid agencies from providing humanitarian relief, it said.
“Supplies of food and medicine to the civilian population have been obstructed by the Armed Forces, thus using food as a weapon of war. International and domestic NGOs and aid workers were denied access to these areas.”
There have been over 3,900 extra-judicial killings of Tamil civilians by the security forces and allied paramilitaries in 2006, and over 700 people were killed in the first three months of 2007, the TNA said, adding: “Over the past one year over 1000 Tamils are believed to have ‘disappeared’.”
Military attacks by the Rajapakse regime have displaced over 300,000 Tamils with another 20,000 fleeing to India. Apart from these, “over 250,000 Tamil civilians displaced by Tsunami and over 300,000 displaced during the earlier phase of violence have not yet been resettled.”
Instead of resettling people, in many places, the government was declaring large tracts of Tamil areas as High Security Zones and it is unlikely that the displaced Tamils would be allowed to resettle in these areas, the TNA said.
“This action of the Government is tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” the TNA said, also pointing to the forced eviction of hundreds of Tamils from the capitol, Colombo, in July.
