2ND LEAD

Establishment-centric Geneva approach, built on Colombo's LLRC, loses credibility

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 March 2017, 23:48 GMT]
Tamil Nadu activist Thirumurugan Gandhi from May 17 Movement and Tamil diaspora activist Lathan Suntharalingam from Switzerland, who have been observing the UN Human Rights Council discourse in Geneva throughout this session urged Eezham Tamils in the homeland to continue to focus on building struggle-centric movements that really go beyond the electoral politics in the island urging them to focus sharply on the fundamentals of the Tamil struggle in their continued protests. The constitutional discourse is a deception without political justice. Political justice cannot be achieved without justice for genocide, they told TamilNet in an in-depth interview this week. The entire UN Human Rights Council discourse in Geneva is Establishment-centric and not victim-centric, as people tend to believe, they said.



“Tamils have to be reminded upon that the OHCHR and UNHCR process in Geneva has been centred around the so-called LLRC as its basis right from the beginning,” Mr Thirumurugan said.

The Geneva process is conceived to deny justice for Tamil genocide and to facilitate geo-politics-oriented regime change in the island.

It is therefore important to understand the big picture, especially the regional South Asian geopolitics to understand why the West, China, Russia and India are approaching Tamils as their adversaries, Thirumurugan said.

The path for regime-change was to safeguard the Agent State in the island. The West in particular is advocating the so-called ‘transitional justice’ as a means to transform Eelam Tamils as collaborators and second-class citizens of the Sinhala State committing structural genocide against them.

While ‘Transitional Justice’ seeks to bring Tamils as collaborators to SL State, the so-called Reconciliation aims to do the same between the Tamils who are deprived of their sovereignty and the Sinhala people with a lopsided political equality.

The tools and forms of the kind of ‘Transitional Justice’ and ‘Reconciliation’ being applied in the island have been introduced from white supremacist approaches that have primarily applied these techniques to populations that have not matured into nations in other places.

Tamils and many other people in South Asia are fully matured nations. The process led by the US-bandwagon was trying to render Tamils as ethnic minorities, they said.

Tamil activists basing their activism in Geneva should focus on Tamil sovereignty, Right-to Self-Determination, without succumbing to State-centric designs and NGO manipulations, Mr Lathan Suntharalingam said cautioning the Tamils not to fall prey to so-called ‘economic development’ and ‘Tamil heritage’ manipulations taking place in the West.

The activists were referring to Switzerland, Norway and Canada in particular.

Ms Yasmin Sooka, who was part of Secretary-General's Panel of Experts in 2011, and who now interacts with Tamils as their friend, also still refuses to look at the fundamental crime against Tamils in a genocidal context, Thirumurugan said.

He was citing an open discussion with Ms Sooka at a side-event in Geneva. She was making genocide-denial knowing very well that her past investigation didn't have the mandate to investigate it, Thirumurugan said. Although the SL regime brought in the LLRC as a counter-thesis to this initial investigation, it later became the trendsetter in Geneva due to the US-designs, he said.

Regardless of the regime changes and changes of personalities in the regime, the entire Geneva discourse still remains on the same LLRC-track, he reiterated.

The LLRC-approach seeks to uphold the integrity of Sri Lanka, the activists reiterated calling on Eezham Tamils to denounce Constitution which is the bedrock of the genocidal SL State.

The US-bandwagon was initially deceiving the Tamils as if it was going to provide international justice, then it watered down everything.

Even today, the moderate complaints coming from Geneva against the SL State are only criticisms of slow delivery. At the same time, they also expect Tamils to be continuously engaged on the same deceptive LLRC-track.

The only way to challenge the deceptive ‘transitional justice’ and the so-called reconciliation is to deny Sri Lankan identity, especially the SL Constitution.

The activists were however optimistic on a number of issues.

Based on the observation of the trends over the past 3 years through direct engagement in Geneva sessions, the activists said the Establishment-centric approach has become weakened due to fanatic regime changes that have taken place among the Powers themselves, both regionally and globally.

The regime changes that have taken place among the Establishments have brought new possibilities for course-correcting the Tamil struggle.

This has enabled the Tamils to choose a clear independent line as they have been in the past.

It is time that Tamils stand together from the Indian Ocean Region and beyond with a struggle-centric approach demanding justice and exposing the elements being operated by the Establishment paradigms.

With regards to forming stronger alliances with other nations without States and peoples without State, Tamil activists have made some progress in the Geneva discourse this time, both the activists said.

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