Untitled Document

Internal self-determination: Citizen vs. ethnicity
It is sad and extremely ironic that a mere ten years back, talk of federal structures in any context would have aroused enough outrage to raise our dead from their sleep. Things are vastly different now. Our historical sense of outrage has been thoroughly defeated by the inexorable sequences of war and an increasingly putrid political leadership in the South. We have, in other words, reached a stage where federalism rings more like music to our ears.

Given the whole, one might very well be justified in throwing caution to the winds in the wake of this week's agreement by the LTTE to a "federal structure'' within the framework of a "united Sri Lanka." But, a sense of caution persists for very good reasons. Reportedly, the third round of talks between the LTTE and the government has resulted in an agreement to "initiate discussions on substantive political issues'' that would include "power-sharing between the Centre and the region as well as within the Centre, geographical region, human rights protection, political and administrative mechanism, public finance and law and order.''

The fact that human rights has been included as a substantive issue is to be welcomed. The reasons are obvious. The past 11 months has seen continuing and outrageous infringement of the basic rights of the people in the North and East and the inability of the monitors to contain these infringements in any significant manner.

In this respect, we need to see, more than ever, a definitive agreement relating to protection and observance of human rights applicable to the region as well as the LTTE being held effectively accountable for its actions.

However, while all this is undoubtedly exhilarating, the rider to the whole comes in the persistence of the concept of internal self determination in the formulae being held out as acceptable by the LTTE, as contained both in its direct statements as well as through communiqués issued by the Norwegian government.

The statement of the Norwegian Government phrases it thus; "a solution founded on the principle of internal self-determination in areas of historical habitation of the Tamil- speaking peoples, based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka.''

This, in a sense, only echoes what the LTTE and its spokesmen have been saying for the past so many months after all and underscores, in a vital sense, what the LTTE leader said last week regarding "regional self-rule'' as an alternative to a separatist state.

The LTTE demand for self determination had traditionally collapsed the military concept of an armed struggle and the legal right of a people for self determination in a very fundamental sense. The armed struggle was posed as effectively institutionalizing the political struggle of the Tamil people. The latter in turn, was based on the argument that the Tamil people constitute themselves as a people or a nation and have a homeland (a well defined and contiguous territory) in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. This, together with a distinct language and culture, a unique economic life and a lengthy history extending to over 3000 years, was argued as bequeathing all the characteristics of a nation. It was from this position that the inalienable right to self determination of the Tamil peoples was articulated, or in other words, the freedom to determine their own political status.

Up to now, the sheer savagery of the LTTE struggle as well as the context of its claim within a sovereign country had resulted in its claims for self determination being dismissed by the international community. However, one can envisage a vastly changed scenario in so many years time, when a claim to self determination might not come across as not being all that preposterous if made by a Tiger led administration, bolstered as it were by separate law and order systems and cosmetically rights conscious rule. This is more so if the Sri Lankan State is seen as having acquiesced to such a notion at the time of the initial content based agreeing on power sharing. This is, in effect, what could justifiably be perceived as being dangerous.

The LTTE claim to self determination could be usefully contrasted with a similar right put forward on behalf of Tibet for example. Tibet has urged the right to self determination of its people on two distinct lines of reasoning. First, the right to territorial integrity and second the right to self-determination. On the basis of both these rights, separately and together, it has been argued that the Tibetan people has the choice to determine their future political, economic, social and cultural status. Their options include independence, an autonomous arrangement or theoretically total integration into the Chinese state.

Tibet's historical right or claim to territorial integrity rests on the argument that Tibet was sovereign prior to the Chinese invasion quite unlike the case of the LTTE demand within the state of Sri Lanka. However, the second right of self determination is postulated to rest on principles of international law, including the United Nations charter.

Thus, Chapter 1, Article 1(2) of the UN Charter states that; "The purposes of the United Nations are: .....To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples..."

The following UN General Assembly declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the UN) (1970) declared further that;

"...all peoples have the right to freely determine, without external interference, their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with provisions of the Charter".
The Tibetans base their claim on the ground that they are a people with a common historical tradition, a racial identity, a shared culture, linguistic unity, religious affinity, a territorial connection and a common economic life.

This argument, is in its whole, very different altogether from what the LTTE demand has been, contextually speaking. The latter claim for self determination has an overriding principle militating against its acceptance which has been succinctly stated with regard to a conflict again of a nature different from that of Tibet's. Thus, in reference to the claims of the Quebec nationalists that Quebec should have the right to secede unilaterally from confederation, it has been pointed out that the use of ethnicity as a guiding principle of politics is both outdated and dangerous (Bliss, The Chimera of Self Determination). The basis of these arguments is that in modern democracies, it is citizens that count and not divisions that rely for their legitimacy on ethnic differences.
This is reasoning that the Sri Lankan government should stress at a point of time, when the positions that it takes may well decide the shape of what is to come for the future Sri Lankan State. Ignoring what may be inconvenient from the perspective of political expediency may be the worst choice to make.

Back to Columns