17 February 2009
In this two part series we examine, firstly the continuing failure of the United States, and its diplomatic allies, the co-chairs of the Sri Lankan Peace Process and leading European governments to comply with their obligations to the Tamil people under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.
In the second part, we look at what ‘Genocide Resistors’ – particularly the Tamil Diaspora – can do to achieve compliance.
An important milestone in 2008 was further NGO recognition of genocide by the Sinhala State (“the perpetrator”) against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka (“the target group” of the genocide).
In December 2008, the Genocide Prevention Project [www.preventorprotect.org] compiled a Mass Atrocity Crimes Watch List of 33 countries where mass atrocity crimes are ongoing or civilians are at risk of mass atrocities. Eight of these 33 are Tier 1 or Red Alert countries. Sri Lanka is currently one of these eight – along with the Congo and Sudan – where genocide was ongoing or where civilians face risk of genocide and mass atrocities.
The report of the Genocide Prevention Project said: “We identify eight situations of highest concern. These countries appeared on each of the five expert indices used as a basis for this report and received the highest composite score on our watch list.” Sri Lanka was one of these eight situations.
The Genocide Prevention Project is a watch-list of watch-lists. It is a composite of five expert opinions and therefore is more significant than the opinion of a single group such as Genocide Watch or Minority Rights Group International.
Nevertheless Genocide Watch also gives Sri Lanka the highest ranking – a ranking of 7 for genocide. According to Genocide Watch those countries at Stage 7 are currently at the mass killing stage, meaning they have active genocides, recurring genocidal massacres, or ongoing politicides.
A third watchdog, The Genocide Intervention Network also tracks eight countries as “areas of concern,” defined by ongoing systematic violence targeting civilians on a massive scale as of spring 2008. The list of Genocide Intervention Network overlaps with but is different from the red alert list of the Genocide Prevention Project. This list also includes Sri Lanka.
In March 2008, the Minority Rights Group (MRG) International produced a report “Peoples Under Threat” that identifies those peoples or groups that are most under threat of genocide, mass killing or other systematic violent repression in 2008.
Sri Lanka ranked as number eleven on the MRG list. The MRG report uses a country and not the ethnic group as its unit of ranking.
But in Sri Lanka the genocide is specifically against a single minority: the Tamils, whereas other ethnic groups such as the Sinhalese enjoy better conditions. This helped Sri Lanka’s MRG rankings relative to say Pakistan – which has more minority groups. Nevertheless Sri Lanka, back in March 2008 had the 11th worst position in the world for mass killing and systematic violence according to MRG. (Cynics would argue the MRG tailors its methodology to suit: after all genocide is about the ethnic group itself so the country as unit approach is not meaningful.)
The 1948 UN Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide is possibly the single, most important international legislation for the Tamil people of Eelam.
Article 1 of the UN convention on genocide states: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
UN member states are bound by convention law to prevent and punish genocide: the wilful failure to prevent or punish the genocide of Tamils and any collusion in such genocide is unlawful.
Genocide is defined here to mean any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group and includes
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
It is noteworthy that it is not only the acts that are important, but also the intent behind them. UN Member nations have legal obligations to the Tamil people of Eelam arising from this convention. France ratified (i.e. was legally bound by) the convention in 1950, Germany in 1954, Canada in 1952. This means, that Germany, France, Italy, Canada, - to name just a few - were legally obliged to prevent and punish the genocide of Tamils in the series of pogroms in 1958, 1977 and 1983. Clearly they did not do so.
The United Kingdom ratified the convention in 1970 so it is obliged to act on genocides after 1970 – this would include the 1983 pogrom. It must be noted that the United States, which only ratified the convention in 1988 was not bound to act in the cases of any of the pogroms against the Tamils.
There is no doubt that the pogroms were genocidal. Genocide requires primarily intent and the intent of the killings could not have been otherwise. This was the conclusion the Times (of London), a generally pro-Sri Lanka publication, came to: “"Genocide is a word that must be used with care; but how else is one to describe the impulse which guided the Sinhalese lynch-mobs this week.."( Francis Wheen, London Times,30 July 1983).
In 1983 the International Commission of Jurists investigated and found “The evidence points clearly to the conclusion that the violence of the Sinhala rioters on the Tamils amounted to acts of genocide." International Commission of Jurists Review, December 1983.
But the International community – including the UK and Europe – chose not to honour its legal obligations towards the Tamil people – a choice they continue to make 25 years later in 2009.
The UN reacted in the same way in 1983 as they were to do 11 years later, in Rwanda in 1994: they dithered. Eventually, in August 1983, the UN passed an extremely mild resolution (Sub Commission Resolution 1983/16) calling for an investigation and expressing deep concern with 10 votes for and 8 against
Rwanda teaches us that this is to be expected: governments are reluctant to recognise genocide precisely because this may force them to act when they would prefer not to act.
US academic Samantha Power explained American behaviour in Rwanda: “Even after the reality of genocide in Rwanda had become irrefutable, when bodies were shown choking the Kagera River on the nightly news, the brute fact of the slaughter failed to influence U.S. policy except in a negative way. American officials, for a variety of reasons, shunned the use of what became known as "the g-word." They felt that using it would have obliged the United States to act, under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention”
She quotes a discussion paper by the office of the Secretary of defence: “Genocide Investigation: Language that calls for an international investigation of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding could commit [the U.S. government] to actually "do something."
11 years earlier, in July 1983 the International community’s attitude towards the genocide of the Tamils had been no different: they were more concerned with building trade relations with a newly ‘liberalised’ Sri Lanka, than with meeting their obligations under the genocide convention.
As in 1983 in Colombo, so did they act in 1994 in Kigali. And now in 2009, history repeats itself in Sri Lanka.
The acts of the Sri Lankan State and its allies are clearly a continuum of genocide – they are a series of acts intended to bring about the ultimate physical destruction of the Tamil people.
As just one example, given, that the burning of the Library of Jaffna, was part of a systematic genocidal campaign, calculated to bring about the destruction of the Tamil people in whole or in part, by means of destroying their sense of identity, history and language.
The United Kingdom is obliged to punish it; as is almost all of Europe, Canada and Australia. The Tamil Diaspora may insist that they fulfil this obligation.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor general’s indictment of President Al Bashir of Sudan is instructive – because almost all of the criteria cited apply equally to the Sri Lankan state’s treatment of Tamils.
Firstly there is a focus on intent. The UN prosecutor said of the Sudanese President: “His motives were largely political. His alibi was a ‘counterinsurgency.’ His intent was genocide”. These words apply equally to current Sri Lankan President Rajapakse – and indeed past presidents and prime ministers.
“For over 5 years, armed forces and the Militia/Janjaweed, on Al Bashir’s orders, have attacked and destroyed villages. They then pursued the survivors in the desert. Those who reached the camps for the displaced people were subjected to conditions calculated to bring about their destruction.”
“Al Bashir organized the destitution, insecurity and harassment of the survivors. He did not need bullets. He used other weapons: rapes, hunger, and fear. As efficient, but silent,” said the Prosecutor.
Whereas 35,000 people have died directly in Sudan, over 100,000 Tamils have died in Eelam. Both Sudan and Eelam have in excess of a million refugees.
In the recent fighting, a further 250,000 Tamil civilians, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of long term internal refugees, have been displaced by indiscriminate aerial and ground attacks by government forces.
The conditions imposed on Tamil refugees – the blockade of food and medicine, the deliberate killing of livestock that are essential sources of food, rape, lack of shelter, arbitrary detention and arrest, imprisoning fleeing refugees in military camps - are calculated to being about their physical destruction. .
In Sri Lanka, the recent deliberate bombing of civilian hospitals and the deliberate, continuous bombing and shelling of designated civilian safe havens, takes genocide to a different dimension from that of Sudan.
Of Sudan’s Al Bashir, the ICC Prosecutor General said “He did not need to use bullets”. But in Sri Lanka, cluster bombs are used against civilian refugees who are seeking safe haven from the war. And medicine is denied the survivors.
Today’s Sri Lankan actions are merely a shameless escalation of a structural genocide enacted over decades.
The closure of all transport (sea, road, rail) to the Jaffna peninsula now and pre-ceasefire, the embargo on food and medical items through the 1990s, the denial of Tsunami aid to the affected Tamils of the North East in 2005, were all acts designed to deprive the population of the essentials of life, including food and medicine, with the intent to create physical conditions calculated to destroy in whole or in part a people.
The systematic destruction of Tamil media (the witnesses) was a deliberate precursor to physical genocide – it was hence an act intended to bring about the physical destruction in whole or part of the Tamil people.
Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish holocaust scholar who invented the term explains:
“generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves”.
Lemkin’s definition is one of the most powerful for the Tamils – for Lemkin intimately understood the different varieties and specific methods of genocide.
By contrast, Ambassador Jurgen Weerth of Germany spoke out for the rights of journalists at the funeral of Lasantha Wickrematunge and while he mourns one (Sinhala) journalist, he continues to refuse to recognise the wholesale, systematic destruction of Tamil media as a component of genocide.
The destruction of other political, social cultural institutions, the killing of parliamentarians and aid workers is often a deliberate precursor to physical genocide.
Lemkin understood this well because the Nazis used similar methods in his country – deliberately targeting Polish Jewish academics and civil society leaders, for example, prior to the ghettoising and ultimate physical killing of the wider population of Polish Jews.
UN member states are legally obliged to prevent and punish these acts of genocide. Germany, Japan, Britain and the United States – to name some of the active players in the Colombo diplomatic scene and in the “internationally sponsored” peace process - have no special exemption from these obligations.
This means also that the UN member states are legally obliged to support organisations such as the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) – not to freeze their funds (collusion in genocide) but on the contrary to provide them with funds (prevention of genocide).
They may not gloat about the freezing of funds of the TRO as, for example, US Ambassador Blake did in his New Years day 2009 interview with the Daily Mirror.
At the time of his remarks Ambassador Blake, among others, knew full well that the UN has been forced to withdraw from the Vanni, that INGOs such as Action Contre Le Faim have been intimidated into withdrawing from the country and that the TRO is one of the few aid remaining agencies to work effectively in the North. He is completely aware that aerial bombing of livestock is part of this strategy of destroying existing food supplies of the Vanni, while preventing aid from reaching the area. Blockading food and aid from a civilian population is an essential part of genocide.
But as with a number of other diplomats, Ambassador Blake continues to pretend that this is not an ethnic war, a genocide.
It is insufficient for French group Action Contre Le Faim to say it will seek to have the murder of the 17 Tamil aid workers tried as a war crime.
It is more than a “war crime”, it genocide because of the strategic intent behind it – the aid workers were killed to intimidate aid organisations into quitting the area, and thus bring about conditions which would lead to the physical destruction of the internally displaced Tamil people.
In summary: the Tamils are subject to structural genocide by the Sinhala State. The UN member states have a legal obligation to prevent and punish genocide but have preferred to remain silent.
Yet any collusion in genocide is a crime under international law and deliberate refusal to acknowledge genocide is itself collusion in genocide.
Historians such as Linda Melvern have considered that the US and British obstruction of timely UN recognition of genocide in Rwanda constituted collusion. The present government of Rwanda has accused France of collusion in the genocide of 1994.
It is extremely likely that almost all the Western embassies in Colombo, as well as the Indian Ambassador know that genocide is going on against Tamils in Sri Lanka. But they choose to deny it.
The Genocide Prevention Project points out that government silence on genocide is to be expected: “Countries experiencing rampant human rights abuses are known to government officials, country experts, and political scientists. Governments and international political institutions compile private “watch lists” of such countries. These official bodies, however, do not publicize their lists. Beyond the inherent difficulty of constructing a list, “naming names” creates economic and political risks, both for those labeled as perpetrators and for governments that bestow the labels.”
In conclusion – not only is Tamil genocide ongoing, all governments know it but refuse to acknowledge it. This deliberate refusal goes to collusion.
It is left to the Tamil Diaspora and the people of Tamil Nadu to prevent collusion. We address this in part two of our series.
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