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Northern Provincial Councillor calls for international mediation in Sri Lanka’s constitutional reform

Northern Provincial Councillor M. K. Shivajilingam called for Sri Lanka’s constitutional reform process to have “involvement, assistance, and assurance” from the international community, in a submission made to the Sri Lankan government’s Public Representations Committee on Constitutional Reforms.

As the committee held their first meeting on Monday, Mr Shivajilingam noted that “the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka have been struggling for their political rights for about 70 years without any solution to their grievances”.

Bearing that in mind the councillor called for India, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to function as “witnesses and guarantors” during the process of constitutional reform, in order to achieve a “credible, trustworthy, and honourable process”.

Mr Shivajilingam also submitted to the committee that “the Tamil people shall continue to have the right to self-determination” and that they were “entitled to a UN monitored Referendum should the Govt. of Sri Lanka fail to implement the agreement… to determine their political future”.

See the full text of his submission here.

 

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