By: Ponrajah Anton; Coordinating Secretary, IFT; 9th August 1999

We, the Tamils of Tamil Eelam, now living outside Sri Lanka have come together in Geneva on the 9th August 1999, under the auspicious of the International Fedeeration of Tamils to voice our grave concern and vehement protest about the genocidal war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan Government and its Forces on our sisters and brothers still struggling to survive in their homeland. We have chosen the time of this gathering to coincide with the 51st Session of the United Nations Sub-commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights with the fervent hope that the United Nations will ultimately hear our cry for survival in our homeland with dignity and honour.

In the prolonged armed conflict in the small island of Sri Lanka, the crimes committed by the Sri Lankan Government against the Tamil people, have taken different forms of horror and are escalating in numbers to world records. The crimes committed by the State Forces have gone on for five decades, with the connivance of the Government. Neither the Government nor the State Forces have been sufficiently condemned or punished by the world, nor have measures been taken by the United Nations to cry halt to them.

Already Sri Lanka ranks only second to Iraq, in the whole world, in the matter of disappearances caused by the Army. Compared to mass graves discovered in Kosovo and Rwanda, the number of unexplored but seriously suspected mass graves in Sri Lanka is increasing. Furthermore hundreds of Tamil women are increasingly subject to rape and murder in the hands of the Sinhala Army. All these crimes, though shocking, are not covered by the international media, partly due to the dominant Sinhala and Government-owned media in the Capital Colombo reporting with a Sinhala bias and partly due to years of strict media blockade imposed by the Sri Lankan Government on all journalists. Hence the Tamils, made refugees as a consequence of this “horrendous war against the Tamils conducted behind closed doors” by the government, have to bear witness to the truth of the crimes and cry halt to the same. We briefly mention three sets of these crimes urgently requiring your attention.

1. USE OF FOOD AS A WEAPON OF WAR

Sri Lanka’s continued use of food as a weapon of war clearly constitutes a serious war crime with genocidal intnetions. The ten years old economic embargo against the Tamils has gone on shamefully unchallenged and not condemned by the democratic governments and human rights organiation of the world. It covers a wide range of items like food, medicine, milk-foods for the old and the sick, confectionary, electrical goods, cement, paper, cloth, kerosene, petrol, etc.etc. - all basic to human life. It has been ruthlessly used by the military, not only to starve the Tamil people, including the old, the sick and the infants, but also as a weapon to bend the political will of the Tamil people and beat them to subjugation.

Even in sending a portion of the basic food and medicinal items needed by the people the Government Agents and the NGOs experienced enormous difficulties in getting due permissions in Colombo. Beside the aerial bombing and artillery shelling, the threat of starvation is continually hanging over the Tamils. Recently, this threat had taken a new turn.

On the 26th. of June 1999 the supply route via Uiylankulam was unilaterally closed by the army and over 300,000 people in Vanni were pushed into gradual starvation. When the Government agents of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu reported the serious shortage of food to Colombo and the media, they were dismissed from their posts and called back to Colombo.

This genocidal denial of the basics of life to the Tamils, appears to be the Sri Lankan way of practicing what Hitler did during the Second World war with “the slow gas chamber execution of the Jews*.

2. MASS DISAPPEARANCES, MURDERS AND MASS GRAVES

From a long list of disappearances, murders and mass graves, we cite here a few examples at different times during the last two decaes. Sixteen years ago, in 1982, before the conflict became a fully blown out war, the London-based Minority Rights Group (MRG) implied that the “communal massacres in Sri Lanka” amounted to genocide. In its report titled “International Action Against Genocide”, it quoted Professor Leo Kruper as saying: “............ genocide continues to be an odious scourge on mankind.. There are also at the present time many immediate issues related to genocide, which call for the most urgent action (such as) the communal massacres in Sri Lanka”.

In July 1983, when the horrendous violence of the extremist Sinhala masses in Sri Lanka claimed over 3,000 innocent Tamil lives within a few days, the Government, instead of protecting a helpless minority, explained it away as a spontaneous backlash by the Sinhalese people to the killing of thirteen Sinhalese soldiers in the north by Tamil guerrillas. This claim even today by the Government is not consistent with the irrefutable evidence which points to diabolical advance planning by the Sinhala majority. In fact, a fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka in March 1984 headed by Paul Seighart, the Chairman of the British Section of the International Commission of Jurists, concluded thus: “Clearly this was not a spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred among the Sinhala people. It was a series of deliberate acts, executed in accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and organised well in advance.”

Again recently after the Army occupation of the Jaffna Peninsula, Amnesty International reliably reported approximately 600 cases of “disappearances” of Tamil youth. Later the same Organisation confirmed that most of them have been killed by the Forces. (According to Lutz Oette, winner of the 1996 Cheng Chen Nan Prize at the University of London, “Between 1984 and 1987 thousands of Tamil civilians, in particular young males, also women and children, were killed by various government forces”.)
On the revelation made by a soldier it came to light that over 400 bodies have been buried in Chemmani. Recently more mass graves have come to light in the North and East of the country in areas occupied by the army. After more than one year of world wide protest, the government has reluctantly allowed an inquiry to begin in the case of the first mass grave.

In January 1992, Liberation, a Non Governmental Organisation in its statement to the 48th Session of the UNCHR pointed out that since June 1990, over 10,000 Tamils had been killed. Several other NGOs have been equally forthright in their reports. In May 1995, the British Refugee Council publication, Sri Lanka Monitor reported “... in Colombo, Kandy and elsewhere in the South, hundreds of Tamils were arbitrarily arrested and tortured. Many ‘disappeared’ and bodies were found floating in the waterways and lakes near Colombo”. In August 1996, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported how a Tamil Catholic Church in the village of Navaly was bombed on the 6th July 1996, killing over one hundred and twenty people. In September, the same year Medicine Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported that a school in the Tamil village of Nagar Kovil was bombed by a low-flying Puccara aircraft during the school’s lunch hour, killing at least 34 children. In both instances the bombings were deliberate. More than 1800 Hindu temples and over 20 Christian churches have been bombed by the Sri Lankan forces.

In March 1997, the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, appealed to the members of UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) at its 53rd Sessions in March 1997 ”to take urgent measures to end the genocidal situation existing in Sri Lanka”. Likewise in September 1997, the Australian Human Rights Foundation, in a press release issued following the murder of a Christian Tamil priest by Sri Lankan troops called it “a war of genocide”.

3. RAPE OF WOMEN AS A WEAPON OF WAR

The rape of Tamil women by the Sri Lankan armed forces is again a well documented series of heart-breaking crimes. Two and half years ago, the South China Morning Post (11 Jan 1997) quoted Human Rights activists in saying that “more than 150 women, mostly minority Tamils, were raped by police and armed forces personnel in just one year. Amnesty International said in September 1996 that it has documented several cases of rape by members of the armed forces.

Case of rapes are too numerous to be listed here, but a few notorious cases are worth mentioning. Koneswary of Batticaloa, who was raped in front of her husband and her two children by army men, was finally murdered by the perpetrators throwing a grenade into her genitals with the hope of covering up their identity. Then there was the much-publicized case of Krishnthi Kumaraswamy, an 18 year old student at Chundukulli Girls` High School who was detained, raped and then killed. Her mother Rasamma(59), Vice Principal of a High School in Jaffna, her brother Pranban (16) and her neighbour Kirupaharan (35) who all went in search of Krishanthy to the army camp were detained, ill-treated and later the bodies of all three were found in the drains.

After much agitation by the Tamil people, an investigation was initiated with the bodies found in a shallow grave. A junior army officer, one of those found guilty of the crime, is the one who has pointed to the existence of the mass graves at Chemmani.

A recent case of rape is that of Ida Hamilitta on Tuesday the 13 July 1999. Because she happened to be a former member of the LTTE, she was raped and then shot dead in her home at 1.30a.m. The latest case is that of a Muslim woman from Oddamavadi in Batticaloa on the 27th July 1999. Three men of the Government Armed Forces under the pretext of checking her house for LTTE cadres, stuffed the mouth of the husband of the victim with cloth and gang raped the victim.

4. WE HAVE BROUGHT SOME EXAMPLES OF THE CRIMES AND THE COLLECTIVE VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTED BY THE SRI LANKAN GOVERNMENT AND ITS FORCES WITH REGARD TO:

A) THE USE OF DENIAL OF FOOD AND MEDICINES AS WEAPONS OF WAR,

B) THE ESCALATING OF MASS DISAPPEARANCES, MURDERS AND MASS GRAVES,

C) THE USE OF RAPE OF WOMEN AS A WEAPON OF WAR.

IN THE LIGHT OF THESE CRIMES, WE ARE ALL MORE THAN EVER CONVINCED,

A) THAT THE SRI LANKAN GOVERNMENT MUST STOP ITS GENOCIDAL PROGRAMME AND WITHDRAW ITS TROOPS FROM OUR HOMELAND.

B) THAT THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY RECOGNISE OUR RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION AS A PEOPLE.

C) THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DO ALL IT CAN TO STOP THE WAR AND FOSTER PEACE-TALKS WITH THE HELP OF A THIRD PARTY.

WE STRONGLY AND UNANIMOUSLY URGE THAT YOU CONDEMN THE SRI LANKAN GOVERNMENT FOR ITS HEINOUS CRIMES AGAINST THE TAMIL PEOPLE, CRY HALT TO THEM, ONCE AND FOR ALL AND HELP US REALISE OUR COLLECTIVE RIGHTS AS PEOPLE OF TAMIL EELAM ON BEHALF OF THE TAMILS OF TAMIL EELAM ASSEMBLED BEFORE THE GENEVA HEADQUARTERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS ON THE 9TH. OF AUGUST 1999

Ponrajah Anton
COORDINATING SECRETARY, IFT