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Home > Struggle for Tamil Eelam > Sri Lanka's Broken Pacts & Evasive Proposals > Chandrika - LTTE Talks: 1994/95 > Letter from LTTE Leader to Sri Lanka President, 16 March 1995
16 March 1995
Dear President,
Thank you for your letter dated 9th March 1995.
The first part of your letter refers to certain discrepancies in the contents of a press release issued by the International Secretariat of the LTTE with regard to your suggestion of a neutral intermediary. I think it would be appropriate to consider my personal communication to you as the point of reference on this matter.
You will appreciate that from the outset we have been emphasising the creation of genuine conditions of peace and the restoration of normal civilian life as essential pre-requisites for the promotion of peace negotiations. We have taken up this position for specific reasons.
We are of the opinion that a durable condition of peace effected by a stable cease fire is absolutely essential to embark on a difficult, time consuming negotiating process aimed at resolving the highly complex ethnic conflict. You would have observed that in the past, political negotiations collapsed as a consequence of unstable cease fires, the breaches of which led to resumption of armed conflict. I regret to say that your Government has not taken our view seriously on this critical issue.
This is very evident in the approach of your Government by emphasising the category of cessation of hostilities which means a temporary suspension of armed hostilities, rather than utilising the full meaning of the concept of ceasefire. Furthermore, the disinterested disregard on the part of the Government to our continuous plea to work out a comprehensive mechanism pertaining to modalities of ceasefire demonstrates the fact that your Government shows little or no concern for the stabilisation of the conditions of peace.
You are certainly aware that conditions of normal civilian life have been seriously disrupted in the Northeast as a direct consequence of the repressive racist policies of the previous administration, which sought a ruthless military approach to resolve the Tamil national question. Our people have been subjected to enormous suffering and hardship as a result of various bans, prohibitions and restrictions that were imposed on their social and economic existence primarily for the sake of facilitating military occupation and domination of the Tamil homeland.
The LTTE as well as the Tamil people, entertained a hope that your new Government, which assumed power with the mandate for peace, would alleviate these h hips and create a congenial atmosphere of peace and normalcy. Based an this hope we have been pleading that the initial stages of the peace negotiations should give primacy to, what we have characterised as, urgent and immediate issues confronting the Tamil people. At the peace talks we have specified these issues, which are of paramount importance to the day to day existence of our people, and called upon the Government to redress these grievances.
We have consistently emphasised that these are not demands of the LTTE, but rather urgent humanitarian needs of an aggrieved people and that these issues have to be resolved to restore normal conditions of civilian life in the war affected areas.
Though, at the initial stages of the talks, your Government pledged to 'alleviate the hardships of daily life presently experienced by the people', later, as the negotiations proceeded we could notice a deliberate attempt to circumvent these issues under the argument that political issues underlying the ethnic conflict should be given primacy.
We have referred to this matter in our previous communications and attributed this reluctance to resolve the urgent and immediate issues to the Government's desire to placate the military hierarchy and pointed out that this approach of giving primacy to the strategic interests of the military over and above the existential concerns of a civilian population, would pose a serious threat to the peace process.
Our perception on this critical issue and our apprehension about the military designs are confirmed by your latest letter when you say that the granting of some of the 'demands' put forward by the LTTE could spark off 'serious military repercussions'. The issues we have raised as urgent needs of the people, particularly the facilitating of a passage to Jaffna by removing Pooneryn army camp, lifting the economic embargo on essential items, withdrawing the ban on fishing, are, in your view, problems of national security which cannot be compromised. In other words, you are attempting to legitimise the constraints and sanctions imposed by the military on the social and economic life of the Tamil people as essential requirements for the maintenance of 'national security'.
We are deeply perturbed and dismayed over your position on this critical matter which deeply affects our people. This position, based on a mistaken conception, that reduces the rights and liberties of a community of people to potential threats to national security, presupposes not only pure militarism but, also hidden elements of chauvinism.
The refusal to resolve the most urgent issues that beset our people as uncompromising security issues indicates the fact that your Government is determined to perpetuate the military and economic coercion on the Tamils as bargaining cards to seek political gains at the negotiating table. It is because of this view that you are insisting that these issues should be resolved within the framework of an overall political settlement.
We cannot agree to this position The immediate day to day problems that confront our people are not political issues arising from ethnic contradictions, but rather problems engineered by the military with clearly defined strategic objectives. We are of the opinion that these bans, restrictions and prohibitions are repressive military actions instituted by the previous Government which are unfair and inhuman and have to be resolved on humanitarian grounds; on grounds of building genuine peace and goodwill between the estranged nations.
In our several communications addressed to you during the last six months and during the peace negotiations we have been consistently reiterating the urgency of resolving the immediate day to day problems of our people. Our insistence on these issues should not be misconstrued as attempts to by pass discussions on fundamental political issues underlying the ethnic conflict.
We have never refused to discuss political issues. We have even gone to the extent of suggesting a suitable political framework that could satisfy the national aspirations of our people. The underlying cause for the current impasse in the peace process has nothing to do with the resumption of the political dialogue but rather the reluctance on the part of your government to deal with the immediate and urgent issues on grounds of 'military repercussions'.
If your government continues to adopt this hard line attitude on issues that need urgent resolution and which could be resolved without difficulty if there is a genuine will, we have grounds to suspect whether your Government would be able to resolve the most complex and difficult issue i.e the national conflict. Therefore, we urge you once again to reconsider your decision for the cause of peace.
If a favourable response is not received from you before the 28th March 1995, we will be compelled to make a painful decision as to whether to continue with the peace process or not.
Anticipating an early reply.
With regards
Yours Sincerely
(V.Pirabaharan)
Leader
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
