Press Release on UNHRC Resolution on Sri Lanka passed at its 46th Session
The Tamil Civil Society Forumtakes note of Resolution 46/1passed by the UN Human Rights Council in relation to promoting accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. This is the eighth resolution on Sri Lanka passed by the UN Human Rights Council in the last 12 years. The resolution has done precious little in advancing accountability.
As explained in our letter dated 01 March 2021 to the Core Group, the resolutionis merely anotherattempt at delaying and obfuscating the Tamil people’s struggle for justice. It also does very little to prevent or deter on going violations against the Tamil people. The present Government is accelerating the process of denying the collective existence of the Tamils and Muslims. The Tamils have understood the policy of successive Sri Lankan Governments as nothing less than structural genocide. The resolution does not even understand the gravity of the situation leave alone prescribe ways to prevent the genocide.
While the resolution has been supposedly strengthened by giving the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights the mandate to ‘collect’ evidence, as we pointed out in our previous letter, the purpose of evidence collection, gathering and preservation will be meaningless if there is no clarity around what judicial mechanism it will feed into. It is not even clear whether member-states including the core group are willing to utilise the universal jurisdiction route to pursuing accountability. Time and again the core group is silent on the call for taking up the matter in the UN Security Council. These do not inspire confidence that all measures outlined in the OHCHR report are being explored by the core group with genuine commitment and political will, towards achieving justice.
We are dismayed by the reference to the 13th amendment and to ‘local governance’ in the text of the resolution. Theparticular paragraph of the resolution, we understand was ‘enhanced’ on a request made by the Government of India, which regards the 13th amendment and the connected Indo-Lanka Accord as important to preserving its interestsvis a vis Sri Lanka. We vehemently condemn this de-articulation ofthe Tamil demand for self-determination as ‘local governance’. As we have repeatedly stated the 13th amendment which sits within a tight unitary framework is not even a starting point to a political solution. The core group and Indiaare keen to push a political solution that the Tamil people and their representatives have rejected for the last 35 years.
This resolution will go down in history as yet another half-hearted attempt at dealing with accountability at best, but we are afraid it is in fact another attempt at giving false hope and expectations of justice to the Tamil people.
We are deeply disappointed by Tamil actors who are suggesting that this resolution is a step in the right direction and that it implicitly supports a call for referring Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court. We call upon all actors to be transparent, honest and genuine in their communications with the Tamil people and to not push us into a permanent state of despair and hopelessness.
The Tamil people at least must now learn that the wait for Geneva is without consequence. We must reject agendas that seek to instrumentalise our collective pain. The only way forward is for fresh ideas and new forms of struggle.
Sgd
Rev. V. Yogeswaran
Co-Spokesperson
P.N. Singham
Co-Spokesperson
