By Ana Pararajasingham
The Australian government's "historic shift" in policy to recognise East Timor's right to self-determination was a factor forcing Indonesia to consider granting East Timor political autonomy, or even independence. Similar shifts for other peoples in similar situations could help end seemingly irresolvable conflicts, but by continuing to treat these conflicts as "internal", they are masked rather than understood or resolved.
In recent times, the term "Fourth World" has been used to identify nations engaged in struggles for self-determination. According to Richard Griggs of the University of Capetown, these nations represent a "third of the world's population whose descendants maintain a distinct political culture within states which claim their territories. In all cases the Fourth World nations are engaged in the struggle to maintain or gain some degree of sovereignty over their national homeland" (The Meaning of "Nation" and "State" in the Fourth World).
Thirteen years ago, Bernard Nietschmann of the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out that, "Most wars since 1945 have not been state against state, but states against indigenous nations and ethnic groups that are fielding resistance forces to protect sovereignty, to gain greater autonomy, to restore national boundaries erased by colonial powers, and to end economic exploitation and political oppression".
According to the Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute, between 1990 and 1995 there were 97 such wars. Kosovo/Serbia, Tamil Eelam/Sri Lanka and Chechnya/Russia are examples which spring to mind. The Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey are fighting the regimes in power in those countries. Closer to home, an "internal war" is being fought in Bougainville against the PNG government. And there are many that are less well-known.
Many such wars have become genocidal. In 1982, the London-based Minority Rights Group cited Professor Leo Kruper as saying, "genocidal massacres [which] arise out of struggles for greater autonomy might be regulated by the recognition of the right of self-determination". Sixteen years have passed, yet there has been no concerted effort to resolve these conflicts.
One of the bloodiest conflicts in the Asian region now is between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamils of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. At least 60,000 civilians have already died.
The July 1998 report of the finding of Tamil mass graves at Chemmnay in the Jaffna Peninsula is only the most recently revealed atrocity in this saga. The Jaffna Peninsula, the main centre of the Tamil population, has been under Sri Lankan army occupation since late 1995.
Even before the occupation of the Jaffna Peninsula, Tamil civilians deliberately bombed. In August 1995, more than 120 people were killed when a Catholic church in the village of Navaly was bombed. The following month, a school in the village of Nagar Kovil was attacked by a low-flying Pucara bomber during the school's lunch hour, killing at least 34 children. In both instances the bombings were deliberate, but they were not condemned by other governments.
Amnesty International concluded in November 1997 that 600 Tamils had died under torture or been deliberately killed in detention by the Sri Lankan armed forces. Amnesty's reports since the 1980s show that these killings have increased exponentially over the years.
On February 11, 1996, 24 Tamil villagers were killed in the east of Sri Lanka by a group of soldiers accompanied by home guards (civilian settlers armed by the Sri Lankan government). A month later, on March 16, at least 20 Tamil civilians died when napalm was used in an aerial attack by Sri Lankan military forces on the coastal village of Nachikudda in the Mannar district.
Many international non-government organisations have insisted that this situation is genocidal. In March 1997, the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, (whose patrons include Noam Chomsky and whose president is Nobel laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel), called on the UN Commission on Human Rights at its 53rd session "to take urgent measures to end the genocidal situation existing in Sri Lanka today". Fifty-four NGOs drew the matter to the attention of the UNCHR again in March 1998.
In September 1997, the Australian Human Rights Foundation, after the murder of a Tamil priest by Sri Lankan troops, called Sri Lanka's assault a "war of genocide". The foundation's former chief executive, in a letter to the January 30, 1998 West Australian, pointed out, "Over 95% of the civilian casualties in the Sri Lankan war are Tamils".
Justice Marcus Einfield, former chairperson of the International Commission of Jurists and one of Australia's leading human rights activists, believes self-determination to be the key. Addressing the 1996 conference "Peace with Justice in Sri Lanka", Einfield identified the Tamils' call for self-determination to be "at the heart of the war" and called on the international community of states to respect it.
The current chairperson of the ICJ sent a letter to foreign minister Alexander Downer on January 19 which called "upon the Sri Lankan government to secure a political solution through third-party mediation so as to permit the Tamil people to realise their right to self-determination".
East Timor is only one among many. It is time the international community acted to resolve these conflicts by recognising the right of self-determination of small nations subsumed by larger nations. Sri Lanka seems a good place to begin.
[Ana Pararajasingham is the editor of Tamil Monitor, the journal of the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations.]