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Genocide Tamils

Report by the LTTE Spokesperson on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs to mark the end of 2007

Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states,

“In the present Convention, Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:”

Three of the five acts specified in this Convention are:

a) Killings of group members;
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;

In other words anyone of the above acts committed over as period of time with the ulterior intention to destroy “in part or whole” a “national or ethnical group” constitutes genocide. The case of the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka in the hands of the Sinhala dominated Sri Lanka Government exemplifies the above definition of Genocide in several dimensions.

Large scale massacres of Tamil civilians that began in 1958 have continued and were intensified in the year 2007. Tamil land was confiscated at a massive scale by the Sri Lanka military under the guise of “High Security Zone”, causing large scale, long term displacement and loss of livelihood. Fishing a major livelihood of the Tamils was systematically destroyed. Education, once a pride of the Tamil community was also systematically dismantled through destruction and displacement of schools. All these dimensions of the Tamil genocide continued in 2007.

During 2007, 664 civilians have been killed and 446 were disappeared by the Sri Lankan armed forces and the paramilitaries, 26 of those who were killed are children.

During 2007, 300,000 civilians were forced out of their homes by Sri Lanka military deliberately targeting civilian areas. The displacement, in addition to the hardships caused by large scale forced movement, denies the children their education, causes loss of property, and loss of the produce from their farms which they suddenly have to leave behind. The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in often end up languishing in welfare centers without basic facilities.

Related Links:

01	‘Lest we Forget’
02	Militarized Zones
03	North East fishing Community

31 December 2007

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