Issuing an extra-ordinary gazette notification and citing a UN Security Council Resolution (1373), the genocical State of Sri Lanka on Friday officially proscribed 16 Tamil groups and 424 Eezham Tamil individuals, most of them foreign citizens settled in the Western countries. The 16 organisations range from the LTTE to democratically elected diaspora bodies. Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris has justified the ‘proscriptions’ by signing the United Nations Security Council Resolution of 2001, especially after the UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka was passed in Geneva last week. Indian writers allegedly working for the Indian Intelligence have also been attacking the diaspora in the recent days raising suspicions whether the current move of Colombo is in partnership with New Delhi, Tamil political observers in the diaspora said.
“This order is based on the recommendation by the Secretary, Ministry of Defence and Urban Development, as the Competent Authority regarding the identification of persons, groups and entities, believed on reasonable grounds to be committing, attempting to commit, facilitating or participating, in the commission of acts of terrorism,” a news release by the SL external affairs ministry said on Wednesday.
The latest ‘proscription’ by the SL State has only strengthened the draconian practice of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the 6th Amendment, adding a UN seal to it in threatening the Tamil Diaspora activists from voicing for their political aspiration. The inclusion of 424 individuals in the list seems to be an attempt to threaten the private and family interests of the individuals on a political ground.
In other words, the latest threat has strengthened the further justified the Tamil perspective on Tamil sovereignty, the diaspora political observers said.
As far as the Eezham Tamils are concerned, the unitary Constitution of the so-called ‘Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka’ is something that was not endorsed by them.
Although the Eezham Tamils have been rejecting all the unitary constitutions since British times, the republican constitution was outrightly and democratically rejected by them since its inception in 1972.
The Tamil position has always been that the nation of Eezham Tamils never surrendered its sovereignty to the unitary State. After Eezham Tamils lost their sovereignty at the hands of European colonialists, it was never returned to them.
The SL State in 1978 introduced the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and made it permanent in 1982.
Also denying the Tamils to express their political aspiration under the illegal Sri Lankan Constitution, the SL State imposed 6th Amendment in 1983.
Under this SL Act's Article 157 A (1), “No person shall, directly or indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate state within the territory of Sri Lanka.”
The Sixth Amendment was introduced on the heels of the 1983 July anti Tamil pogrom in which thousands of Tamils were killed and maimed by state backed Sinhala mobs in Colombo and the Sinhala majority districts of the island. The Amendment saw the Tamil United Liberation Front giving up its seats in the SL Parliament and going into exile in India. The TULF was elected to Parliament in 1977 from the on an overwhelming mandate from the Eezham Tamils for establishing an independent State in the North and East of the island.
Under Sri Lanka's 6th Amendment, - 157 A (4) -“ any person may make an application to the Supreme Court for a declaration against an organisation espousing the cause of establishing a separate state in the island. Upon such declaration by the SC that the organisation has violated Article 157 A (2), then that organisation “shall be deemed, for all purposes to be proscribed”. Any member of such an organisation shall cease to be a member of Parliament. Any person who is a member of such an organisation after the date of the SC declaration “shall be guilty of an offence and shall, upon conviction by the Court of Appeal” would be stripped of his or her civic rights for a period not exceeding seven years; and his or her movable and immovable property would be seized.”
source:[TamilNet, Friday, 04 April 2014, 16:09 GMT]
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