As Sinhalese nationalists celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling that the 1987 merger of Sri Lanka’s North and East was illegal and null, Tamils reacted with anger, seeing it as an attack on their assertion of a homeland on the island.
The merger, effected in the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, was successfully challenged by the Sinhala nationalist JVP and the hardline Buddhist JHU party, was two weeks ago declared by a five-bench Supreme Court as being “unconstitutional, invalid and illegal”.
Last Wednesday, all the districts of the Tamil-dominated NorthEast shut down in response to a call by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to protest and unitedly express Tamil opposition to the Sinhala rightwing government’s move to officially split the NorthEast.
Very few vehicles plied the streets, shops remained closed, businesses and private institutions remained closed and the Tamil towns in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) controlled areas of Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Vavuniya, Mannar and Jaffna were deserted, reports said.
Despite threats by SLA soldiers and Tamil paramilitaries to shopkeepers in Jaffna, warning that they would not be allowed to open their shops again if they were not open on the Wednesday, all shops were shut.
In Batticaloa, cadres of the paramilitary Karuna Group threatened civil service officials and business owners not to support the protest against the de-merger.
"All public offices must work. Transportation must flow as usual," according to a leaflet issued in Tamil by paramilitary operatives under the pseudonym "Theendum Padai" (Biting Force). The leaflet had warned Tamil business owners that the shops being shut down on the protest day would be confiscated.
Meanwhile, JVP Parliamentary Group Leader Wimal Weerawansa said not only the court order but the day it was issued on was of historical significance.
“The inhabitants [of this island] rose up in rebellion against the first white governor and against the British imperialism on a day like today in 1818,” he said.
“So it is remarkable that this order which will have an enormous impact on the so-called Eelam concept was made on such a day.”
The ultranationalist North and East Sinhala Organisation (N-ESO) President Ven Senpathiye Ananda Thera said the government in the past had turned a deaf ear to earlier calls by his group to de-merge the North and the East.
“The majority of the people would be happy about this court order as it was a defeat for the LTTE,” he said.
In contrast, the Tamils see the de-merger as designed to deny the Tamils their assertion of a traditional homeland on the island.
The TNA called on Sri Lanka’s President and government to “immediately take necessary action to validly restore the Status Quo Ante pertaining to the constitution of the North-East as one Unit.”
The TNA gave the government until November 7 to respond favourably.
“[The North and East were] merged through the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord, based on the sound principle of recognising the northeastern provinces, as the historical habitation of the Tamil-speaking people,” noted TNA parliamentarian Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam in an interview with the Sunday Leader.
“[The Supreme Court] seems to hold the view that the merger is invalid due to a technicality, which is the process, through which the merger was brought about,” he notes.
“Our view is that the merger has to remain. The government will have to take immediate steps to validly constitute the northeast as one unit,” he said.
"We see the situation as a declaration of war against Tamils," TNA Jaffna district MP M.K. Sivajilingam told the Daily Mirror.
The de-merger ruling, sought by President Mahinda Rajapakse’s political allies, comes despite pointed international opposition to it.
Asked about the Court ruling, US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher said the timing of the “unfortunate” issue of the de-merger raised lot of questions.
He was referring to the ruling coming just weeks before the Tamil Tigers and the government were to meet in Geneva for internationally demanded talks to end the rising tide of violence.
"[The merger of the North and East] is one of the fundamental assumptions of the whole negotiations and therefore, … it does raise some issues for all the parties, about how they are going to approach these both in terms of the court decision and in terms of negotiations," Mr. Boucher said.
India has also been consistent in its opposition to the de-merger, a point made by the Indian leadership to President Rajapakse just weeks ago.
India had insisted the Northeast Province should not be de-merged without a referendum, and such a referendum would only be possible when there was a "conducive atmosphere" in place.
The co-chairs of Sri Lanka’s donor community – the United States, Eureopean Union, Japan and Norway - also express similar views recently.
At their meeting in Brussels on September 12 they cautioned “there should be no change to the specific arrangements for the north and east, which could endanger the achievement of peace.”
The northern and eastern provinces were merged according to the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement signed in 1987 by then Sri Lankan President, J. R. Jayawardene, and then Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
The temporary merger of the two provinces, with a condition that a referendum should be held to merge the provinces permanently, still continues and a Governor appointed by the President is now administering the North East Provincial Council established under Sri Lanka’s 13th Constitutional Amendment.
