  INDICTMENT AGAINST SRI LANKA: Genocide '83
The matters presented here constitute,
at the lowest, prima facie evidence,
sufficient to warrant an indictment for genocide
against the Sri Lanka authorities. The Minority Rights Group was moved to comment in September 1983: "...The present conflict has transcended the special consideration of minority rights and has reached the point where the basic human rights of the Tamil community - the rights to life and property, freedom of speech and self expression and freedom from arbitrary arrest have in fact and in law been subject to gross and continued violations. "(Tamils of Sri Lanka: Minority Rights Group Report September 1983)
The International Commission of Jurists Review in December 1983 concluded : "A (Sri Lanka) government spokesman has denied that the destruction and killing of Tamils amounted to genocide. Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, acts of murder committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such are considered as acts of genocide. The evidence points clearly to the conclusion that the violence of the Sinhala rioters on the Tamils amounted to acts of genocide."
Genocide is a crime which transcends national frontiers. Furthermore, there is no time limit within which a prosecution for genocide may be launched. Those who committed the crime of genocide during the Second World War continue to be hunted down today. In 1985, on the 70th anniversary of the massacre of around one million Armenians on orders of the Turkish government, the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (successor to the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Vietnam) held a special hearing in Paris. The Tribunal's jury included three Nobel Prize winners -Sean Macbride, Adolfo Perez Esquivel and Professor George Wald. The verdict was that 'there was no doubt regarding the reality of the physical acts constituting the genocide' of the Armenian people. The Tribunal declared: 'The fact of the murder of members of the group, of grave attacks on their physical or mental integrity, and of the subjection of this group to conditions leading necessarily to their deaths, are clearly proven by the full and unequivocal evidence submitted to the Tribunal...'' ''It is further observed that the authorities generally refrained from intervening to prevent the slaughter, although they had the power to do so... This attitude amounts to incitement to crime and criminal negligence, and must be judged as severely as the crimes actively committed and specifically covered by the law against genocide...'' ''The Tribunal finds that the charge of genocide of the Armenian people brought against the Turkish authorities is established...The fundamental rights of this (Armenian) people are of direct concern to the international community, which is entitled and duty bound to ensure that these rights are respected, particularly when they are openly denied by one of its member states.''
Equally, even apart from the direct involvement of the Sri Lankan authorities in the planned attack on the Tamil people in July 1983, the failure of the Sri Lankan authorities to intervene 'to prevent the slaughter, although they had the power to do so... amounts to incitement to crime and criminal negligence, and must be judged as severely as the crimes actively committed and specifically covered by the law against genocide.' The matters presented in this publication constitute, at the lowest, prima facie evidence, sufficient to warrant an indictment for genocide against the Sri Lanka authorities. Those responsible for genocide '83 both within the then Sri Lanka government and outside it, should be charged and punished according to law.
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