Tamil National Struggle
&  Indo Sri Lanka Peace Accord

An International Conference organised by the World  Federation of Tamils at the Middlesex Polytechnic, London
30 April & 1 May 1988

Conference Aims & Programme

The Conference is intended to explore the central issues of the Tamil national struggle and examine the extent to which the Indo Sri Lankan Peace Accord of July 1987 satisfies the aspirations of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and in particular their claim to the right of self determination.

The Conference is being convened at a time when there are around 125,000 Tamil refugees in India, more than 50,000 in Europe, and more than two hundred thousand in their own homeland in Sri Lanka. Hundreds of Tamils have been victims of extra judicial killings and hundreds more have been subjected to torture. And this assault on the Tamils in the island of  Sri Lanka continues even today.

The focus of the Conference will lie in the area of the interface between politics and human rights. Politics which is unconcerned with human rights becomes a cynical pursuit of power for its own sake. And human rights separated from politics often becomes the platitudinous expression of utopian ideals.

The Conference will consider the need to give the thick edge of action to the comments made by Professor Leo Kruper in 1984 in the Minority Rights Group Report on International Action Against Genocide - comments which have today assumed an urgency and an immediacy in view of the conduct of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in the Tamil homelands in Sri Lanka:

"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 a context of societal conflict which threatens genocide... Some of these genocidal massacres arise out of struggles for greater autonomy, and might be regulated by recognition of the right of self determination...there is a great need for delegations of member States (of the United Nations) with a strong commitment to human rights, and for non governmental organisations with consultative status, to continue their efforts to recall the United Nations to its responsibilities for international protection against genocide and other gross and consistent violations of human rights. These efforts should include...attempts to develop norms...for the exercise of the right of self determination in a decolonised world..."

The Conference will examine in depth the process of discrimination and differentiation which led to the emergence of Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka, the justification for the armed struggle of the Tamil people, the significance of the 1985 Thimpu Declaration by all the Tamil Liberation Organisations, calling for a political settlement on the basis of the recognition of the right of self determination of the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, the international frame of the Tamil struggle and India's role as a regional power, and the reasons for the continued failure of the Indo Sri Lankan Peace Accord to secure peace and the consequences of such failure.

The Conference will also consider the need to give practical effect to the Reports of Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the Lawasia Human Rights Standing Committee, the United Kingdom Parliamentary Human Rights Group, International Alert, the World Council of Churches, Australian Parliamentary Group of Amnesty International, the Emergency Committee on Sri Lanka, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, and several other non governmental agencies and independent observers on the gross and consistent violations of human rights in Sri Lanka. In this context, the Conference will consider the need to call upon the international community to address itself to the root cause of these violations -namely, the failure to develop norms for the exercise of the right of self determination by the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

The Conference will consider the need to persuade member States of the United Nations and non governmental organisations with consultative status, that a reluctance on their part to espouse the division of the sovereign state of Sri Lanka, should not lead them to deny the political reality that that there are in Sri Lanka today two nations -the Tamil nation and the Sinhala nation and that a political settlement of the conflict in Sri Lanka can be achieved only on the basis of recognising this political reality. And in this context the Conference will consider the significance of the words of Professor Seton-Watson:

"The belief that every state is a nation, or that all sovereign states are national states, has done much to obfuscate human understanding of political realities. A state is a legal and political organisation, with the power to require obedience and loyalty from its citizens. A nation is a community of people, whose members are bound together by a sense of solidarity, a common culture, a national consciousness"

The central theme of the Conference will be that the Tamil nation and the Sinhala nation may agree to live together by force of reason - but they cannot be compelled to live together by force of arms - and that it is the rejection of reason by successive Sri Lankan governments that has led to, and provides the justification for, the armed struggle of the Tamil people.

The Conference will consider the need to re affirm the reasoned framework of the Thimpu Declaration which called for the recognition of the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a nation. The Conference will focus on the need to secure the right of self determination of the Tamils of Sri Lanka in practical terms, and in this context the Conference will consider the need to secure international recognition of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as the true leaders of the Tamil national struggle today.