On 23 March, de­spite In­di­a’s ab­sten­tion from vot­ing on the UNHRC res­o­lu­tion on ac­count­abil­ity of Sri Lanka for its gross hu­man rights abuse of Ee­lam Tamil rights, the res­o­lu­tion was adopted in a deep em­bar­rass­ment to Sri Lanka. Chen­nai-based Tamil Na­tional Move­ment Pres­i­dent Periyasamy Ma­niarasan in a scathing re­view ex­poses the guise of In­di­a’s neu­tral­ity in its ab­sten­tion from vot­ing. He de­bunks the skewed twist of In­dia and other coun­tries re­lat­ing hu­man rights com­pli­ance to the sov­er­eignty ques­tion even when the res­o­lu­tion reaf­firms “com­mit­ment to the sov­er­eignty, in­de­pen­dence, unity and ter­ri­to­r­ial in­tegrity of Sri Lanka.”  WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh ex­am­ines the his­tor­i­cal res­o­lu­tion, its con­text and its pos­si­ble im­pact on Sri Lanka, South Asia and the Tamil world.

When cor­nered, In­dia knows how to play its game. With in­ter­na­tional hu­man rights bod­ies and In­di­a’s civil lib­er­ties groups and po­lit­i­cal bod­ies and ac­tivists cit­ing in­ter­na­tional data and re­ports, In­dia is feel­ing the heat. Sri Lanka’s Sin­halese lead­er­ship, prac­tis­ing its own brand of vi­o­lent Bud­dhism have no re­morse for gross wrongs, no mercy for the be­lea­guered Ee­lam Tamils, no re­spect for in­ter­na­tional op­pro­brium nor con­cern for hu­man rights con­ven­tions and treaties. Ex­pect­edly, Sri Lanka re­jected the 23 March UNHRC res­o­lu­tion as “po­lit­i­cally mo­ti­vated”. Ear­lier too, the Sri Lankan Gov­ern­ment had of­fi­cially with­drawn from the co-spon­sor­ship of HRC Res­o­lu­tions 30/​1, 34/​1 and 40/​1 and walked away from HRC’s ac­count­abil­ity process.

When the geno­cide of the Ee­lam Tamils was on in Sri Lanka, many coun­tries of the world, in­clud­ing In­dia ei­ther turned a blind eye or con­nived with the guilty coun­try. As part of the ab­sten­tion ar­gu­ment, In­dia pays lip ser­vice to the as­pi­ra­tion of Tamils in Sri Lanka and os­ten­si­bly up­holds their yearn­ing for equal­ity, jus­tice and peace but all of this is sac­ri­ficed at the al­tar of sup­port­ing the ter­ri­to­r­ial in­tegrity of Sri Lanka per­pe­trat­ing geno­cide,” says Tamil Na­tional Move­ment leader and Tamil ide­o­logue Periyasamy Ma­niarasan, in a hard-hit­ting state­ment amidst the on­go­ing elec­tion­eer­ing in the Tamil-dom­i­nated Tamil Nadu state of In­dia.

In­dia is very clever at ob­fus­cat­ing facts and con­text. The UNHRC vote was about hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions of de­mo­c­ra­tic prin­ci­ples, ac­count­abil­ity of the miss­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of Tamils -Thamizh peo­ple who were killed ex­tra­ju­di­cially, yet In­dia and other naysay­ers con­tinue to harp on “unity of Sri Lanka” and “non-in­ter­fer­ence in in­ter­nal af­fairs.”

TNM chief Periyasamy Ma­niarasan in his video mes­sage has called upon fel­low Tamils to read be­tween the lines. He says, “Make no mis­take. Even if the In­dian Na­tional Con­gress were to be in power, they too would have done the same thing. In­dia is not con­cerned, be­cause those who die are Tamizhs.” He cites the case of the seven ac­cused in the Ra­jiv Gandhi case and how both the Con­gress party and the BJP have stalled their re­lease from prison even af­ter they have com­pleted their full sen­tences.

The United Na­tions Hu­man Rights Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion on ‘Pro­mot­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, ac­count­abil­ity and hu­man rights in Sri Lanka’ was adopted af­ter 22 mem­ber states of the 47-mem­ber Coun­cil voted in its favour.

The dogged per­sua­sion of UNHRC chief Michelle Bachelet has won the man­date for col­lect­ing ev­i­dence of crimes against hu­man­ity tar­get­ing civil­ian Tamils by in­dis­crim­i­nate aer­ial bom­bard­ments on hos­pi­tals, in­vol­un­tary dis­ap­pear­ance of poor Tamils in the coun­try­side and ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of rebels, par­tic­u­larly those who were forced to sur­ren­der. All of this was while fight­ing the war against Ee­lam Tamil Tigers.

Tamil Na­tional Move­ment com­mended the in­tro­duc­tory re­marks of UNHRC chief Bachelet, who while in­tro­duc­ing the Sri Lanka Ac­count­abil­ity Res­o­lu­tion had said, “the ef­fect of the con­flict on thou­sands of sur­vivors from all com­mu­ni­ties was dev­as­tat­ing. De­spite com­mit­ments made in 2015, the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, like its pre­de­ces­sor, has failed to pur­sue gen­uine truth-seek­ing or ac­count­abil­ity processes …the sys­tems, struc­tures, poli­cies and per­son­nel that gave rise to such grave vi­o­la­tions in the past re­main – and have re­cently been re­in­forced.”

The cur­rent UNHRC res­o­lu­tion, which will im­pact the in­ter­na­tional po­si­tion of Sri Lanka and with timely and ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion is likely to in­flu­ence the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in South Asia, is based on the pur­poses and prin­ci­ples of the Char­ter of the United Na­tions and the In­ter­na­tional Covenants on Hu­man Rights and other rel­e­vant in­stru­ments. It has also doc­u­mented that there have been Hu­man Rights Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions, namely 19/​2 of 22 March 2012, 22/​1 of 21 March 2013, 25/​1 of 27 March 2014, 30/​1 of 1 Oc­to­ber 2015, 34/​1 of 23 March 2017 and 40/​1 of 21 March 2019.

The res­o­lu­tion S-11/​1 of 27 May 2009 stated that “the Hu­man Rights Coun­cil wel­comed the re­solve of Sri Lanka to be­gin a broader di­a­logue with all par­ties in or­der to seek a po­lit­i­cal set­tle­ment and to bring about last­ing peace and de­vel­op­ment in Sri Lanka based on con­sen­sus among and re­spect for the rights of those from all eth­nic and re­li­gious groups, and en­dorsed the joint com­mu­niqué of 26 May 2009 of the Pres­i­dent of Sri Lanka and the Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral, in which the Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral, in­ter alia, un­der­lined the im­por­tance of an ac­count­abil­ity process for ad­dress­ing vi­o­la­tions of in­ter­na­tional hu­man­i­tar­ian law and hu­man rights law.”

#Sri­Lanka: Long-stand­ing, struc­tural and sys­temic is­sues per­sist, and now there are clear warn­ing signs that past pat­terns of vi­o­la­tions could be re­peated. – UN Hu­man Rights Chief @mbachelet tells @UN_HRC.

Read more: https://​t.co/​IG­DRAEWXgd#StandUp4Hu­man­Rights #HRC46 pic.twit­ter.com/​BETjt22HQ4

— UN Hu­man Rights (@UN­Hu­man­Rights) Feb­ru­ary 24, 2021

Sig­nif­i­cantly, the UNHRC has al­lo­cated $2.8 mil­lion for pur­su­ing the 23 March 2021 res­o­lu­tion “to pros­e­cute war crim­i­nals through an in­ter­na­tional ev­i­dence gath­er­ing and in­ves­ti­ga­tion mech­a­nism.” The UNHRC res­o­lu­tion al­lows the UN “to col­lect, con­sol­i­date, analyse and pre­serve in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence, and to de­velop pos­si­ble strate­gies for fu­ture ac­count­abil­ity processes for gross vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights or se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tions of in­ter­na­tional hu­man­i­tar­ian law in Sri Lanka, to ad­vo­cate for vic­tims and sur­vivors, and to sup­port rel­e­vant ju­di­cial and other pro­ceed­ings”.

The UNHRC has al­lo­cated $2.8 mil­lion for pur­su­ing the 23 March 2021 res­o­lu­tion “to pros­e­cute war crim­i­nals through an in­ter­na­tional ev­i­dence gath­er­ing and in­ves­ti­ga­tion mech­a­nism.”

Sri Lanka has said that it will not al­low any such ac­tiv­ity as it is with­out its con­cur­rence. Hu­man Rights ob­servers feel that even af­ter the pass­ing of the res­o­lu­tion, it will take some months be­fore UNHRC can take the first ef­fec­tive steps to­wards its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Sri Lanka thanked In­dia for ab­sten­tion, in­creas­ing its bar­gain­ing po­si­tion over the coun­try and also in­flu­enc­ing a sec­tion of the Tamil Di­as­pora that seems sat­is­fied with In­di­a’s stance. The “China block” con­sist­ing of China, Pak­istan and Bangladesh op­posed the res­o­lu­tion, with Nepal ab­stain­ing. Eu­ro­pean na­tions pro­posed and as­sented to the res­o­lu­tion. Many South Amer­i­can and African coun­tries too sup­ported.

Ma­niarasan has specif­i­cally pointed out in his video es­say that com­mu­nist coun­tries like Cuba and Venezuela, who pre­tend to be pro-peo­ple, also op­posed the UNHRC res­o­lu­tion. He said, “It is patently clear that Com­mu­nism is against the nat­ural lib­er­a­tion of dis­tinct races.” He ar­gues that re­alpoli­tik is about eco­nom­ics, pop­u­la­tion num­bers and in­ter­ests; the world pop­u­la­tion of Tamils may be a siz­able num­ber but mi­nus­cule in Sri Lanka.

“Tamils are po­lit­i­cal or­phans with­out a na­tion. We have no choice but to be­come a sov­er­eign na­tion. We need a peo­ple’s move­ment for our home­land. We are en­slaved in Tamizh­naadu but do not re­alise it. The elec­toral process has un­der­mined our sov­er­eignty and proved use­less in the de­liv­er­ance of civil and po­lit­i­cal rights.”

Pe Ma­niarasan, Pres­i­dent, Thamizh The­siya Thamizhar 

In June 2010, the then U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral Ban Ki-Moon formed a Panel of Ex­perts with a man­date to ad­vise him on ac­count­abil­ity op­tions for the hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions com­mit­ted “dur­ing the fi­nal stages” of the civil war in Sri Lanka and this panel pre­sented its fi­nal re­port in April 2011, which was re­jected by the Sri Lankan gov­ern­ment. “The Panel of Ex­perts [on Ac­count­abil­ity in Sri Lanka] stated that “[a] num­ber of cred­i­ble sources have es­ti­mated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civil­ian deaths”. Many Tamil hu­man­i­tar­ian and hu­man rights bod­ies have posted the num­ber to be three times this num­ber.

This res­o­lu­tion has brought to the fore the im­por­tance of Di­as­pora groups and an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of their re­lent­less lob­by­ing work. The per­sis­tence of the Tamil Di­as­pora groups and the brave out­spo­ken­ness of stal­wart British and Eu­ro­pean Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment has so far en­sured that the world com­mu­nity does not for­get this crime against hu­man­ity. Since the end of the Ee­lam Tamils-Sri Lanka war, Tamil na­tion­al­ists have kept afloat the flag of Tamil na­tion­al­ism in Sri Lanka and else­where for the 74 mil­lion strong Tamils in the world.

Note­wor­thy is the fact that, though the cur­rent res­o­lu­tion reaf­firms the ter­ri­to­r­ial in­tegrity of Sri Lanka, it also calls upon “the Gov­ern­ment of Sri Lanka to ful­fil its com­mit­ments on the de­vo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal au­thor­ity, which is in­te­gral to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and the full en­joy­ment of hu­man rights by all mem­bers of its pop­u­la­tion.”

There has been no let-up, even till to­day, of Bud­dhist Sin­halese atroc­i­ties on Tamils in Sri Lanka. Days prior to the adop­tion of this his­toric UNHRC res­o­lu­tion, Sri Lankan hu­man rights ac­tivist and vet­eran British civil ser­vant Ms Amib­hai Sel­vaku­mar was on a fast unto death since 27 Feb­ru­ary 2021, seek­ing ef­fec­tive UN res­o­lu­tions and in­ter­ven­tion. She must be a lit­tle re­lieved at the pass­ing of the UNHRC res­o­lu­tion.

Dur­ing the hunger strike, In her state­ment to the me­dia, Ms Sel­vaku­mar had ap­pealed to the British gov­ern­ment and the fair sense of the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to look into “the stag­ger­ing Sin­hal­i­sa­tion of Tamil lands, de­struc­tion of com­mem­o­ra­tion mon­u­ments, ob­struc­tion of equal­ity and the elim­i­na­tion of the Tamil lan­guage and his­tory are merely a few ex­am­ples of the on­go­ing geno­cide.”

She also pointed out that ever since the end of the war in 2009, to date, “Sri Lanka’s do­mes­tic processes have per­sis­tently and man­i­festly failed thou­sands of vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, which has fur­ther fu­elled the de­mand for an in­ter­na­tional in­quiry by the United Na­tions.”

Cur­rently, while elec­tion­eer­ing con­tin­ues in the In­dian state of Tamil Nadu, in an un­prece­dented act of sol­i­dar­ity, on 15 Jan­u­ary 2021, all ma­jor Tamil po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, Tamil civil so­ci­ety ac­tors and Tamil vic­tim com­mu­nity rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the North-East of Sri Lanka had signed a state­ment call­ing for an in­ter­na­tional ac­count­abil­ity process, in­clud­ing a re­fer­ral to the In­ter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court (ICC) to hear the charges of geno­cide, war crimes, and crimes against hu­man­ity.

I ap­peal to the good sense of the British and the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to ex­am­ine the stag­ger­ing Sin­hal­i­sa­tion of Tamil lands, de­struc­tion of com­mem­o­ra­tion mon­u­ments, ob­struc­tion of equal­ity and the elim­i­na­tion of the Tamil lan­guage and his­tory are merely a few ex­am­ples of the on­go­ing geno­cide.”

Ms. Amib­hai Sel­vaku­mar, Britain-based Sri Lankan hu­man rights ac­tivist and British Civil ser­vant

Over 250 British Tamil or­gan­i­sa­tions had also called upon the UK gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish an In­ter­na­tional In­de­pen­dent In­ves­tiga­tive Mech­a­nism (IIIM) to in­ves­ti­gate the war crimes and the charge of geno­cide in Sri Lanka. Fur­ther­more, on 4th Feb­ru­ary 2021, a sec­ond Joint Re­quest unit­edly signed by more than 500 British or­ga­ni­za­tions fully en­dorsed the above call.

The UN res­o­lu­tion has reaf­firmed that “all mea­sures taken to com­bat ter­ror­ism must fully com­ply with States’ oblig­a­tions un­der in­ter­na­tional law, in par­tic­u­lar in­ter­na­tional hu­man rights law, and, as ap­plic­a­ble, in­ter­na­tional refugee law and in­ter­na­tional hu­man­i­tar­ian law.”

Tamil Na­tional Move­ment, since the last decades, has been seek­ing self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in Tamil Nadu. With­out minc­ing words, TNM pres­i­dent Ma­niarasan speak­ing ex­clu­sively to the World Sikh News pointed out that, “Tamils are po­lit­i­cal or­phans with­out a na­tion. We have no choice but to be­come a sov­er­eign na­tion. We need a peo­ple’s move­ment for our home­land. We are en­slaved in Tamizh­naadu but do not re­alise it. The elec­toral process has un­der­mined our sov­er­eignty and proved use­less in the de­liv­er­ance of civil and po­lit­i­cal rights.”

Ex­hort­ing ag­gres­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion by Tamils in a mass po­lit­i­cal strug­gle, Ma­niarasan who ed­its the Tamil Na­tional Monthly mag­a­zine Thamizh The­siya Thamizhar Kan­not­tam urged, “We need peace­ful, weapon­less Prab­hakarans. Be­come one and do not seek only in oth­ers.”

“We need peace­ful, weapon­less Prab­hakarans. Be­come one and do not seek only in oth­ers.”

Pe Ma­niarasan, ed­i­tor, Thamizh The­siva Thamizhar Kan­not­tam

Tak­ing a long term view, the UNHRC res­o­lu­tion states that “Em­pha­siz­ing the im­por­tance of a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to deal­ing with the past, in­cor­po­rat­ing ju­di­cial and non-ju­di­cial mea­sures, to en­sure ac­count­abil­ity, to serve jus­tice, to pro­vide reme­dies to vic­tims, to avoid the re­cur­rence of vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights and to pro­mote heal­ing and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.”

Tamil na­tion­al­ism needs a de­ter­mined peace­ful strug­gle. Tamil Di­as­pora needs to be more proac­tive given the pro­cliv­ity of na­tions to base their for­eign pol­icy, es­pe­cially re­lat­ing to hu­man rights, on their own hu­man rights ob­ser­vance, eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests. There is an ur­gent need to align with the peo­ple at large and build bridges with nat­ural al­lies based on mu­tual in­ter­ests and con­cerns, in­clud­ing hu­man rights com­pli­ance.