The Legitimacy Of The Armed Struggle Of The Tamil People Essays

The legitimacy of the armed struggle of the Tamil people Democracy may mean acceding to the rule of the majority, but democracy also means governments by discussion and persuasion. It is the belief that the minority of today may become the majority of tomorrow that ensures the stability of a functioning democracy. The practice of democracy in Sri Lanka within the confines of a unitary state served to perpetuate the oppressive rule of a permanent Sinhala majority. It was a permanent Sinhala majority, which through a series of legislative and administrative acts, ranging from disenfranchisement, and standardisation of University admissions, to discriminatory language and employment policies, and state sponsored colonisation of the homelands of the Tamil people, sough to establish its hegemony over people of Tamil Eelam. These legislative and administrative acts were reinforced from time to time with physical attacks on the Tamil people with intent to terrorise and intimidate them into submission. It was a course of conduct which led eventually to rise of Tamil militancy in the mid 1970s with, initially, sporadic acts of violence. The militancy was met with wide ranging retaliatory attacks on increasingly large sections of the Tamil people with intent, once again to subjugate them. In the late 1970s large numbers of Tamil youths were detained without trial and tortured under emergency regulations and later under the Prevention of Terrorism Act which has been described by the International Commission of Jurists as a 'blot on the statute book of any civilised country'. In 1980s and thereafter, there were random killings of Tamils by the state security forces and Tamil hostages were taken by the state when 'suspects' were not found. The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads: "Whereas it is essential if man is not compelled as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law." The rise of the armed struggle of the Tamil people constituted the Tamil rebellion against a continuing Sinhala oppression over a period of several decades. The gross consistent and continuing violations of the human rights of the Tamil people have been well documented by innumerable reports of human rights organisations as well as of independent observers of the Sri Lankan scene. Walter Schwarz commented in the Minority Rights Group Report on Tamils of Sri Lanka, 1983 "...The makings of an embattled freedom movement now seem assembled: martyrs, prisoners and a pitiful mass of refugees. Talk of 'Biafra' which had sounded misplaced in 1975, seemed less unreal a few years later... As this report goes to press in September 1983, the general outlook for human rights in Sri Lanka is not promising. The present conflict has transcended the special consideration of minority rights and has reached the point where the basic human rights of the Tamil community - the rights to life and property, freedom of speech and self expression and freedom from arbitrary arrest have in fact and in law been subject to gross and continued violations. The two communities are mow polarised and continued repression coupled with economic stagnation can only produce stronger demands from the embattled minority, which unless there is a change in direction by the central government, will result in a stronger Sinhalese backlash and the possibility of outright civil war". David Selbourne remarked in July 1984: "The crimes committed by the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil minority - against its physical security, citizenship rights, and political representation -are of growing gravity.. Report after report by impartial bodies - By Amnesty International, By the International Commission of jurists, By parliamentary delegates from the West by journalists and scholars - have set out clearly the scale of growing degeneration of the political and physical well being of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka... Their cause represents the very essence of the cause of human rights and justice; and to deny it, debases and reduces us all". A Working Group chaired by Goran Backstrand, of the Swedish Red Cross at the Second Consultation on Ethnic Violence, Development and Human Rights, Netherlands, in February 1985 concluded: "There was a general consensus that within Sri Lanka today, the Tamils do not have the