The following is the text of an address by Dr A Sriskandarajah at a virtual event held by the Kurdish – Tamil Friendship Forum last month.
See video of the event here.
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Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of Kurdish – Tamil Friendship Forum, I warmly welcome you to today’s Zoom event.
I am Dr Sriskanda Rajah. Hosting this event along with me is Mr Goldan Lambert, a longstanding Tamil political activist. He will be the co-host of today’s event.
I am especially grateful to our eminent panellists, Dr Ibrahim Sadiq, Dr Mohammed Shareef and Honourable Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam MP, for agreeing to speak at today’s event.
Today we meet at a critical conjuncture when efforts are being made to water down the Tamils’ demand for political rights and a political solution to the toothless provincial council system created by the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution.
When we speak of a political solution, many of us fail to understand that it should be a means of preventing genocide.
When I say genocide, I am not only referring to it in the legal sense – that is the physical extermination of a people, recognised by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute. Instead I am invoking the political definition of genocide – as set out by Raphael Lemkin (the patriarch of the concept of genocide) - which also extends to structural and cultural genocide.
Therefore, it is my firm belief that the Tamil struggle for political rights rose in 1949 as a direct response to the genocide of Tamils. That is in 1949, the Sri Lankan state decitizenised and disenfranchised 1 million upcountry Tamils of Indian heritage, and deported 600,000 of them to India – thereby weakening the ethnic composition of the Tamil nation in the island. But this form of structural genocide also took place in 1949 in the Eastern province, where the Gal Oya Sinhala settlement scheme in the predominantly Tamil-speaking Paddipallai region led to the exodus of thousands of Tamils. The genocide of Tamils assumed the form of physical extermination from 1956 onwards and culminated in the Mullivaikal genocide of 2009. 73 years on all forms of genocide of Tamils – whether they be physical extermination, structural extermination or cultural extermination – continues unabated.
And what has the 13th amendment enacted in 1987, and the provincial council system, created as a consequence of it, done to prevent the genocide of Tamils? Nothing – nothing at all. We saw the Mullivaikal genocide unfold whilst the 13th amendment was in force and the Eastern provincial council was fully functional. Today, 12 years after the end of armed hostilities, the structural and cultural genocide of Tamils continues. In fact, by virtue of the powers vested in the governors of the Northern and Eastern provinces, the 13th amendment has exacerbated the structural and cultural genocide of Tamils in our own homeland.
It is therefore imperative that we Tamils reject the 13th amendment and the provincial council system that emerged as a consequence of it, and instead urge the international community to deliver us a robust political solution that will prevent the genocide of Tamils.
That is why, I believe, it is important for us to examine the regional government system of the autonomous Kurdistan Region in the federal state of Iraq. The Kurdistan Region has its own constitutionally recognised president, prime minister, cabinet of ministers, parliament, judiciary, its own police force, own military and even a department for international affairs. I had the privilege to visit the Kurdistan Region on two occasions and witness first-hand how the regional government is directly linked to genocide prevention.
In today’s event, Dr Ibrahim Sadiq, a lecturer at Soran University in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, will tell us about the genocide of Kurds; about which he has written extensively in his recent book, ‘Origins of Kurdish Genocide’. I am sure he will also tell us about the regional government in the Kurdistan Region and how it has helped to prevent the genocide of Kurds.
Also speaking will be Dr Mohammed Shareef, a Middle East specialist with a focus on Kurdish affairs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (London). He was a lecturer at the University of Exeter and worked for the BBC and the UN. He was also a lecturer at Soran and Sulaimani Universities in the Kurdistan Region. He will be also telling us his views on genocide prevention and regional autonomy in the Kurdistan Region and perhaps what lessons we as Tamils can learn from our Kurdish sisters and brothers.
From the Tamil homeland, Honourable Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam MP, the leader of the Tamil National People’s Front, will be speaking.
