S.C Judge says Tamil rights were snatched away

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 March 2001, 06:58 GMT]
"The vast majority of the denizens of the north and east seek the restoration of their rights and not devolution of power. These are the rights which were snatched away from them by virtue of a mathematical innovation where the majority in the two provinces were added to the majority in the seven provinces and thus made a minority in the nine provinces" said Justice C.V Vigneswaran in his ceremonial acceptance speech Wednesday on being appointed as judge to Sri Lanka's Supreme Court.

"As a Tamil speaking citizen, if I do not use my mother tongue, I will soon be forced to use my brother's tongue. The sterile and impotent provisions now appearing in our constitution have little meaning to the Tamil-speaking people of the northern and eastern provinces. They need to govern themselves in their own language with little interference from outside," the newly appointed supreme court judge said.

The following are excerpts from Justice C.V Vigneswaran's acceptance speech Wednesday.

"I have always referred to an incident that used to happen when we were marble playing youngsters in school. Some of our seniors who were not prefects would pounce upon us suddenly and illegally confiscate all our marbles. When we protested they would keep 90 percent of the marbles and offer us 10 percent and thereafter progressively increase it to 20 percent, forgetting that all the marbles were ours and the seniors had no right to confiscate in the first instance"

"The majority of those in the northern and eastern provinces were always Tamil speaking until independence and their language, religions -mainly Islamic, Christian and Hindu- culture, and customs and ways of life within the special topographical and climatic environment should have been allowed to blossom and flourish without interference after independence."

[Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, got independence from the British in 1948.]

"Even though the Attorney General and I are today in our respective honoured positions, we cannot forget that two sparrows do not make a summer. In fact, there are many more sparrows in high positions due to their intrinsic worth in almost every field during the middle of the last century. But we are today progressively depleting in numbers in this part of the island; and like the burghers we too would soon be hardly heard of in judicial, legal or government service or even in the private sector. It is a sad reflection of our times that after me there had not been a single Tamil speaking president of the Law Students' Union of the Sri Lanka Law College after 1962."

[Sri Lanka's Attorney General K. C Kamalasabayson, like justice Vigneswaran , is an ethnic Tamil.]

"I am one of the few still living among those who organised for the Congress of Religions in 1956 or thereabouts, the visit of the then Mahanayaka Thero of the Malwatte Chapter to Jaffna. It was a relative of my mother, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, who risked his life to travel to England to place the case of the Sinhala Buddhists before the Queen in the early part of the last century."

"Often today we miss the wood for the trees when we wax eloquently about the teachings of the Great Masters in mesmerising language, forgetting the spirit of their teachings and failing to imbibe them in our lives. Otherwise, how do we account for the echoing of war drums and hatred from the portals of love and religion?"

"An original court judge cannot under the present system of nominations to the higher judiciary ever hope to occupy the highest office in the judiciary except due to the condescending discretion of the executive (the President of Sri Lanka). Therefore I must feel that the acme of my career has arrived today, that I cannot aspire for anything more but to fade away with time into oblivion."

[Sri Lanka's executive President can nominate Chief Justice at her/his sole discretion. Sri Lanka's present Chief Justice Sarath Silva was appointed amidst opposition from the press and the bar and widely publicised allegations that he was guilty of abuse of power and corruption when he was the Attorney General of the country. Some human rights activists and lawyers allege that he deliberately dismisses Fundamental Rights cases by Tamils arrested, tortured and detained by Sri Lankan security forces. Lawyer/Columnist Mr. Rajpal Abeyanayaka filed a Fundamental Rights case that against Chief Justice Sarath Silva's nomination. The case is pending in the Supreme Court. ]

"Whether the Tamil language is spoken and preserved in other countries is irrelevant. The Sri Lankan Tamils need to develop their language and culture peculiar to themselves in their country".

"It is because I love this country and all its people, including those who hate me for what I am, that I take this opportunity to say- not for my sake, not for the sake of the Tamil people, but for the sake of cordial relationship among all the communities in this island of ours, for good governance and a progressive future - that unless we recognise that the Tamil language and culture are to the Tamils what the Sinhala language and culture are to the Sinhalese; And therefore make Tamil the dominant language of the northern and eastern provinces requiring the study of it compulsory for all in those two provinces just as Sinhala is recognise as the dominant language of the other seven provinces, with English as the link language between equals, the wrong done by enthroning one language in 1956 can never be erased; the havoc caused by the deletion of Article 29 (2) of the 1947 constitution and the doctrine of utra vires from subsequent constitutions can never be put right; the feelings of the Tamils wounded inter alia by the 1958, 1977 and 1983 riots can never be assuaged".

[Article 29 (2) of independent Sri Lanka's (then Ceylon) first constitution barred the Ceylon Parliament from enacting discriminatory legislation against a particular ethnic or religious group to which all other groups were not subjected. Sinhala Buddhist pressure groups campaigned persistently for the removal of this article. It was eventually repealed in 1972 and was replaced by an Article entrenching the foremost place and state patronage for Buddhism.]"The vast majority of the denizens of the north and east seek the restoration of their rights and not devolution of power. These are the rights which were snatched away from them by virtue of a mathematical innovation where the majority in the two provinces were added to the majority in the seven provinces and thus made a minority in the nine provinces" said Justice C.V Vigneswaran in his ceremonial acceptance speech Wednesday on being appointed as judge to Sri Lanka's Supreme Court.