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    30 Years Since Tamil Organisations Unanimously Agreed On Thimphu Principles

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    Thavam Ratna
    30 years ago, Tamil organizations unanimously agreed to the Thimphu principles during peace talks with the Sri Lankan government in Bhutan. The principles called for recognition of Tamils as a nation, their homeland in Sri Lanka, their right to self-determination, and their citizenship rights. While the Tamil organizations rejected the Sri Lankan government's initial proposals, they were willing to consider alternatives that respected the Thimphu principles. However, the government proposals ultimately failed to satisfy the political aspirations of Tamils. The Thimphu principles became the basis for Tamil political demands for equality and self-governance in the face of oppression by the Sinhalese-dominated government.

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    30 Years Since Tamil Organisations Unanimously Agreed On Thimphu Principles

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    Thavam Ratna
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    30 years ago, Tamil organizations unanimously agreed to the Thimphu principles during peace talks with the Sri Lankan government in Bhutan. The principles called for recognition of Tamils as a nation, their homeland in Sri Lanka, their right to self-determination, and their citizenship rights. While the Tamil organizations rejected the Sri Lankan government's initial proposals, they were willing to consider alternatives that respected the Thimphu principles. However, the government proposals ultimately failed to satisfy the political aspirations of Tamils. The Thimphu principles became the basis for Tamil political demands for equality and self-governance in the face of oppression by the Sinhalese-dominated government.

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    30 Years Since Tamil Organisations Unanimously Agreed on Thimphu Principles

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    30 years ago, Tamil organizations unanimously agreed to the Thimphu principles during peace talks with the Sri Lankan government in Bhutan. The principles called for recognition of Tamils as a nation, their homeland in Sri Lanka, their right to self-determination, and their citizenship rights. While the Tamil organizations rejected the Sri Lankan government's initial proposals, they were willing to consider alternatives that respected the Thimphu principles. However, the government proposals ultimately failed to satisfy the political aspirations of Tamils. The Thimphu principles became the basis for Tamil political demands for equality and self-governance in the face of oppression by the Sinhalese-dominated government.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as odt, pdf, or txt
    217 views5 pages

    30 Years Since Tamil Organisations Unanimously Agreed On Thimphu Principles

    Uploaded by

    Thavam Ratna
    30 years ago, Tamil organizations unanimously agreed to the Thimphu principles during peace talks with the Sri Lankan government in Bhutan. The principles called for recognition of Tamils as a nation, their homeland in Sri Lanka, their right to self-determination, and their citizenship rights. While the Tamil organizations rejected the Sri Lankan government's initial proposals, they were willing to consider alternatives that respected the Thimphu principles. However, the government proposals ultimately failed to satisfy the political aspirations of Tamils. The Thimphu principles became the basis for Tamil political demands for equality and self-governance in the face of oppression by the Sinhalese-dominated government.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as odt, pdf, or txt
    of 5

    30 years since Tamil organisations unanimously agreed

    on Thimphu principles

    Delegations meet at the first phase of the Thimphu peace talks. Tamil delegation seated on the left and the Sri lankan delegation seated on the right. Photograph: Sahajeevana
    Centre

    13 July 2015
    30 years ago today, a coalition of Tamil organisations representing the
    Tamil people in Sri Lanka unanimously agreed a set of principles concerning
    a political solution to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
    The declaration came at the conclusion of the first phase of peace talks
    with the Sri Lankan government in Bhutans capital of Thimphu.
    In a joint declaration released on the 13th July 1985, a Tamil delegation
    consisting of representatives from the Eelam Peoples Revolutionay
    Liberation Front (EPRLF), Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Srudents
    (EROS), Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Peoples Liberation
    Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation
    (TELO) and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), said,
    It is our considered view that any meaningful solution to the Tamil
    national question must be based on the following four cardinal
    principles:
    - recognition of the Tamils of Ceylon as a nation
    - recognition of the existence of an identified homeland for the
    Tamils in Ceylon

    - recognition of the right of self determination of the Tamil nation


    - recognition of the right to citizenship and the fundamental rights
    of all Tamils in Ceylon
    Different countries have fashioned different systems of
    governments to ensure these principles. We have demanded and
    struggled for an independent Tamil state as the answer to this
    problem arising out of the denial of these basic rights of our
    people. The proposals put forward by the Sri Lankan government
    delegation as their solution to this problem is totally unacceptable.
    Therefore we have rejected them as stated by us in our statement
    of the 12th of July 1985. However, in view of our earnest desire for
    peace, we are prepared to give consideration to any set of
    proposals, in keeping with the above mentioned principles, that
    the Sri Lankan Government may place before us.
    This declaration which built on the Vaddukoddai resolution from the
    previous decade, often cited as the Thimphu principles, became one of the
    few times that all representative organisations of the Tamil people on the
    island of Sri Lanka formerly agreed a set of overarching principles that
    defined Tamil political aspirations.
    After rejecting the initial declaration of Tamil aspirations on the basis of
    constitutional violation, the Sri Lankan delegation submitted a proposal in
    the second phase of the talks.
    The Sri Lankan delegation proposal was rejected by Tamil organisations on
    the concluding day of the second phase of talks.
    On the 17th of August 1985, a joint response by the Tamil delegation
    rejected the proposals as failing to satisfy the legitimate political
    aspirations of the Tamil people.
    Extracts from the final statement made by the Tamil delegation at the talks

    are reproduced below.


    We, the Tamil delegation, consisting of six organisations,
    unanimously rejected these proposals because it was our
    considered view that any meaningful solution to the Tamil national
    question must be based on the four cardinal principles enunciated
    by us.
    More than 50 years have passed since 1928 and we have moved
    from Provincial Councils to Regional Councils and from Regional
    Councils to District Councils and now from District Councils back to
    District/Provincial Councils. We have had the 'early consideration'
    of Mrs. Srimavo Bandaranaike and the 'earnest consideration' of
    the late Dudley Senanayake. There has been no shortage of
    Committees and Commissions, of reports and recommendations
    but that which was lacking was the political will to recognise the
    existence of the Tamil nation. And simultaneous with this process
    of broken pacts and dishonoured agreements, the Tamil people
    were subjected to an ever widening and deepening national
    oppression aimed at undermining the integrity of the Tamil nation.
    The four basic principles that we have set out at the Thimphu talks
    as the necessary framework for any rational dialogue with the Sri
    Lankan Government are not some mere theoretical constructs.
    They represent the hard existential reality of the struggle of the
    Tamil people for their fundamental and basic rights. It is a struggle
    which initially manifested itself in the demand for a federal
    constitution in the 1950s and later in the face of a continuing and
    increasing oppression and discrimination, found logical expression
    in the demand for the independent Tamil state of Eelam or Tamil
    Eelam. It is a struggle in which thousands of Tamils have died and

    many thousands more have lost their properties and their means
    of livelihood - they have died and they have suffered so that their
    brothers and sisters may live in equality and in freedom.
    A political commentator at the time David Selbourne, writing on the
    collapse of the Thimphu talks, said,
    It is evident that one of the most difficult points for commentators to grasp - and large
    numbers of Tamils also - is that the Sinhalese, as I have maintained since I first began
    to write on Sri Lanka, have no intention whatever of reaching a 'negotiated' settlement
    with the Tamils. The Sinhalese politicians who presently misgovern what used to be Sri
    Lanka, do not intend, cannot embark upon, and will not concede, any real measure of
    devolution to the Tamils.
    The current leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Mr R Sampanthan
    represented the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), alongside the political
    advisor to the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Mr Anton
    Balasingham and several other Tamil figureheads at the time.
    In a tribute to the assassinated leader of the TULF, Mr A Amirthalingam, Mr
    Sampanthan, in 2002 said,
    It was primarily he who expounded the policies that Thanthai Chelva
    enunciated for the benefit of the Tamil speaking people in the North East.
    Once the Tamil people realised that the only manner in which they could
    avoid being assimilated and annihilated and preserve their distinct identity,
    was by bringing about the restructuring of the powers of governance in Sri
    Lanka so as to ensure very substantial self-rule in the North East and by
    preserving the territorial and cultural integrity of the North East, which was
    their traditional and historical habitation and which were at the core of the
    policies enunciated by Thanthai Chelva, the Tamil people very substantially
    reposed their faith in Thanthai Chelva.

    See more at Tamilnation.org.


    Posted by Thavam

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