In recognition of International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide & the Prevention of this Crime, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) calls to attention evidence of “specific intent” of genocide against the Tamils evident in a November 10th, 2024 speech delivered by Sri Lanka President Dissanayake, as well as previous statements, in which he reiterated his call as head of state for a “Sri Lankan identity,” which inherently and deliberately comes at the expense of “Tamil identity”.
These remarks clearly establish his intention on behalf of the state of destroying the Tamil identity and the Tamil People as group, which constitutes an act of genocide as defined by the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Sri Lanka President Dissanayake in his November 10th speechstated that he and his party are “committed to uniting all Sri Lankans under one flag”, making clear their “specific intent” to wipe out the Tamil People—as “Tamil People”—from existence. Interestingly, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, who was recently appointed by President Dissanayake himself, called out this covert attack when she wrote in 2020, “Most calls for ‘unity’, a ‘Sri Lankan identity’, also reflect the majority preoccupation of ‘taming’ the minorities and bringing them under the benevolent control of the majority community. Many Sinhalese who would consider themselves cosmopolitan, democratic and tolerant, would not see the implicit exclusions and violence, in enforcing a totalizing identity in a society such as Sri Lanka.”
Additionally, statements previously made by Sinhala political leaders including Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premadasa and Anura Dissanayake that once the economic crisis is resolved the national conflict will disappear is also a strategic attempt to assimilate Tamils into the Sinhala economy and thereby destroy the Tamils as a distinct nation.
Attempts such as these to assimilate Tamils into the Sinhala population is to seek to destroy the distinctness of the Tamil Nation, just as the destruction of Tamil cultural marker such as Hindu temples by the Sri Lankan state is an effort to trigger nonviability of the Tamil Nation.
Double-Standards for Genocide On March 27, 2024, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese published a report “Anatomy of a Genocide” which concludes that, based on three acts, there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of … acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met” according to the Genocide Convention. It is noteworthy that the three acts she names are three of the exact same acts that Sri Lanka committed against Eelam Tamils during the armed conflict: One, “killing members of the group”; Two, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group’s members;” And three, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
Rapporteur Albanese’s report calls attention to the hypocrisy and politicalization of officially calling one state’s wartime actions “genocide” but not Sri Lanka’s.
The 2012 UN Panel of Experts Report states that Sri Lanka killed civilians through widespread shelling. This meets the criteria defining genocide detailed in Article II, subsection (a) of the Genocide Convention stating that an act of genocide is killing members of the group. To reiterate, this is one of the actions UN Special Rapporteur Albanese noted that contributed to her determination that there are reasonable grounds Israel committed genocide in Gaza. A second violation identified in the Expert Panel Report was shelling hospitals and humanitarian objects; This meets the threshold of the act of genocide detailed in Article II subsection (b) of the Genocide Convention of “causing serious bodily or mental harm”. A thirdviolation identified in the Expert Panel Report was denial of humanitarian assistance, meeting the threshold of the act of genocide defined in Act II, subsection (c) of the Convention of “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part”. (Tellingly, the word “genocide” is not used in the Expert Panel Report.)
To mark International Victims of Genocide Day, TGTE calls for a global rededication by both individuals and states to the pursuit of realizing a world in which “Never Again” is not merely aspirational, and hold perpetrators of genocide across the globe accountable.
Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran Prime Minster Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE)