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Sri Lanka's Ceasefire AgreementAsoka Weerasinghe Ottawa, Canada.
Dear Simon Hughes: I just happened to read the text of your carefully crafted speech at the adjournment motion that Sri Lanka’s Ceasefire Agreement should be reinstated for the peace process to continue. With your bias in favour of the Tamil Tigers, what troubled me was your telling that “Britain had the right to intervene in Sri Lanka”. Oh, No, Simon. Hell you won’t! You sounded like a spoilt English brat who would do anything to get the attention of your female counterparts at your High School soc-hop, thus wanting to do anything to get the attention and votes from your Tamil Tiger sympathizer-constituents. Your action reminded me of the nursery rhyme, which would have read better thus, with my apology to the author: “Simple Simon met a Sri Lankan pieman Going to a Tamil fair, Says the Sri Lankan pieman to Simple Simon “Show me first your penny”, Says Simple Simon to the Sri Lankan pieman, “Indeed I have not any”. That’s why I said that you are acting like an English brat. That Simple Simon was bankrupt, and so are you trying to get Brownie points to get the Tamil votes from your Southwark North and Bermondsey constituents promoting bankrupt ideas for Sri Lanka’s Peace process and hurting its peoples along the way. They have no more tears to shed having collectively cried burying thousands of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, having been killed brutally by the Tamil Tigers for no fault of theirs. And that is why I said, “Oh No, Simon, Hell you won’t” for suggesting that Britain has the right to intervene in Sri Lanka. Britain lost her validity to even get marginally involved in Sri Lanka’s feud when you all kept silent when India violated Sri Lanka’s sovereign air space by sending four French-built Mirage 2000 bombers screaming over Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula providing protection for five Soviet-designed Antonov 32s during a surprise food drop of unsolicited “humanitarian” aid, on June 3^rd , 1987. The British did nothing, not even an effort of a pip-squeak to denounce India for this incredible display of “bully boy” tactics by New Delhi. So, Simon, you think that the time has arrived for Britain to be the Knights in shining Armour to help the Tamil Tigers when their /de facto/ territory has started to shrink, by poking your nose into Sri Lanka’s internal affairs! Here’s news for you Simon. India’s Prime Minister who helped the Tamil Tigers with an Indo-Sri Lanka Accord in June 1987 with the temporary merger of the North and East provinces was given a surprise gift by the Tamil Tigers. He was snuffed out by a woman suicide bomber while garlanding him at a husting at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, on May 21, 1991. Such is the Tamil Tiger terrorist’s courtesy of gratitude. These are the terrorists whom you wish to support by wanting to reinstate the defunct Ceasefire Agreement that died in 2005 for all intent and purposes. I am non-plused with your audacity to say that Britain had the right to intervene in this separatist feud. Oh! No Simon. Hell you wont! As for the CFA that you wish to be reinstated, */“Our contention is that from the very signing of the Ceasefire Agreement on 22^nd February 2002 the sovereignty of Sri Lanka has been steadily and visibly eroded to the point where Sri Lanka is in danger of being reduced to a nominal Sovereign State. Soon Sri Lanka will be a sovereign shell, the major attributes of a sovereign State – the capacity to govern, the resolve justifiable issues, to enforce the law, to protect its citizens throughout the entirety of its territory are being drained away by stealth, fractured by assault and worn down by attrition. This process commenced, with, and is being facilitates by, the Ceasefire Agreement itself, a structurally flawed document whose imperfections have now been clearly revealed, and are being deeply felt, as the weeks and months go by.”(Speech on the Ceasefire Agreement and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission given in May 2003.)/* *//*Believe me Simon, that statement was no bombast from a high school
drop out from Surrey Docks or Camberwell who was trying to impress you
as his MP, but by the late Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka’s
Foreign Minister, an ethnic Tamil, who wore his old College tie proudly,
from Bailliol at Oxford, where he received his B.LITT degree and served
as the President of the Oxford Union. He was also a barrister from the
Inner Temple. Would you not agree with me Simon, that he is well qualified
to know his marbles about Sri Lanka than what you think you do with
your disconnect with Sri Lanka, without enduring what Kadiragamar had
experienced, and involved in as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. By
the way, I did introduce him as the “late” Sri Lanka’s
Foreign Minister. There was a reason for that Simon. His life too was snuffed out by a Tamil Tiger sniper bullet on August 12, 2005. And that too during the time of the Ceasefire Agreement. The Ceasefire Agreement, my foot, Simon. That is the Agreement that you want to be reinstated. What the heck is wrong with you Simon? What the heck did you smoke that morning before you trotted to the House of Commons to state your case in favour of the Tamil Tigers? By July 14, 2006, according to the Norwegian led Scandinavian Ceasefire monitors the Tamil Tigers had violated the agreement 7,308 times compared to the government armed forces violating it just under 100 times. And they lamented and gave up keeping a count beyond that date as they said the violations were coming at them hard and fast and it was impossible to keep count. And this is the Ceasefire Agreement that you want to reinstate. Are you nuts Simon? You now know why I had to remind you of the re-worked Nursery Rhyme. – Simple Simon. Your statement in parliament, lacked depth as it was Simple; it lacked honesty as it was Simple; and it lacked the tenets and principles of conflict resolution as it was Simple. You are a British parliamentarian and you have gone through the throws of terrorism in the streets and the Underground in London when your people were shaking like autumn leaves in the wind the following morning trying to get on a bus or the Tube to get to work. Did I hear you say, “Yes, we are determined to eradicate terrorism in England?” If that is what I heard you say Simon, I don’t blame you nor your colleagues for that commitment. That is exactly what Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government is doing. They want to get the Tamil Tigers by their jugulars and wipe them out. You can’t penalize them for that. They are on a mission with the rest of the world, wanting to get rid of terrorism, and with it Tamil Tiger terrorists. Simon, these are not a bunch of Tamils who are trying to intimidate the majority Sri Lankans by popping a fire cracker here and there. They are a nasty bunch of tribal misfits who chase and shoot innocent civilians who run for their lives; who creep in the dark to enter adobe huts and chop the sleeping villagers to death; who pluck infants from their mothers arms while they are sucking their nipples for their feed and dash them on rocks to crack their skulls like cracking coconuts at their Hindu Kovils; who perfected the art of suicide bombing and the body pack that all other terrorists around the world are copying. If Human Rights violations in this feud is your concern, it is way out for you and anyone else to expect human rights norms to prevail under conditions of peace and stability in areas of conflict. This feud is a conventional war. The Tamil Tigers sneaked in 11 ship loads of conventional military weapons during the period of the Ceasefire Agreement; it has Sea Tigers which is a conventional navy; and an air force with four propeller driven Czech-built Zlin Z-143 planes turned into night-bombers which were brought in dismantled in containers during the period of the Ceasefire Agreement, with the intention of the planes being lifted off from an air strip at Iranamadu which was built violating the Ceasefire Agreement; their combatants wear army, navy and air force fatigues and have been assigned ranks. So they are not high school students fighting with catapults and stones for you to sympathize when they are going down in numbers in the battlefield. It was reported that at their peak they had 20,000 combatants fighting for their mythical separate state, Eelam. They were not just fighting the Sri Lankan armed forces, they were killing innocent, unarmed civilians in the hundreds at a time. Simon, let’s get this one right. This armed feud is between Sri Lanka’s democratically elected government and a non-state terrorists group, the Tamil Tigers. Hence the Treaty applicable to the non-international armed conflict is Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Additional Protocol 11 of 1977. This Additional Protocol is to protect persons in cases of armed conflict which is not of an international character. And it is called the “Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of victims on Non-International Armed Conflict (Protocol 11), 8 June 1977.” This should be clear and there should be no reason for debate. Once this is established in your mind Simon, in pursuant to the International
Law that applies to the situation in Sri Lanka is the International
Humanitarian Law and not the internationally recognized Human Rights
Law. So you have to be extremely careful to recognize the distinction
between these two Laws in Sri Lanka's context, before you join the bandwagon
of bleeding heart Human Rights aficionados who are complaining that
the Sri Lanka government is violating human rights and are Velcro mouthed
when it comes to recognizing the Tamil Tiger human rights violations.
So the barometer about Human Rights concerns in Sri Lanka is, when the conflict in Sri Lanka graduated from a Tamil youth insurgency into an armed conflict having been nurtured by their Mother India, fed, trained and armed in the military camps in India, the ground rules in respect of international laws changed. As an armed conflict, the rules of engagement are guided by Protocol 11 of 1977 of the Geneva Convention of 1949. Consequently, the applicable international laws are International Humanitarian Laws and not International Human Rights Laws. Whereby Humanitarian Laws require the State (Government of Sri Lanka) and the non-state (Tamil Tigers) actors to abide by defined rules of engagements. Where as Human Rights Laws relate to obligations of Governments in conflict to their citizens. Let me underline in red the words ‘Governments in conflict’. And in this feud of the two protagonists, one, the Tamil Tigers do not represent a government, and thus it is the Humanitarian Laws that apply and not the international Human Rights Laws. Any attempt otherwise should be construed by the Government of Sri Lanka as a direct interference and intervention in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka. And they should tell busy bodies like you to – “Simon, go fly a kite”. Your sincerely,
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