KAMALIKA PIERIS

The term Genocide”  was invented by  the lawyer Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew. The word came into use after the  wholesale massacre of Jews in World War II. I  The word  was recognized in the  Nuremberg  trials  which  took place at the end of World War II.

 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,   (Genocide Convention )  was ratified in 1948.   The Genocide Convention has been accepted by 153 States , including Sri Lanka .Signatories  to the Convention are obliged  to  pass domestic legislation  on Genocide but   Genocide is  considered a part of international law and  is  binding  on all  States, whether or not they have ratified the  Convention. 

Genocide Convention  defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group.

Those charged with genocide must be tried either in international court or where the act of genocide took place. Genocides of Rwanda  and Cambodia   were heard by   ad hoc tribunals in Tanzania and Cambodia respectively.

Genocide  is included in the  Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It  is  extremely hard to prove Genocide  in the international courts  because  international courts have set the standard of proof  very  high.  International  Court of Justice  wants  conclusive evidence that there was a special intent” to commit genocide. There must be evidence of  the specific intent to destroy  the whole group. International  Court of Justice  has not found  any country guilty of genocide. It  said that  Croatia  and  Bosnia   failed to prove that Serbia had committed genocide against them .

Sri Lanka government has    challenged the use of the word Genocide for the Eelam war. The term has specific legal connotations, and the United Nations, which has codified the concept of ‘genocide’, has never used it in relation to the Sri Lankan conflict, nor has the term been used by any of the UN’s subsidiary bodies, including the UN Human Rights Council,  for  Sri Lanka . The so-called allegation of a genocide in Sri Lanka is a fabrication and is not substantiated by any responsible authority, nationally or internationally.[1]

The Paranagama Commission (2015) stated firmly that after many months of investigation and after consulting top legal experts, it had concluded that there is no     evidence to support the charge of Genocide. The Paranagama Commission rejected the suggestion that civilians were targeted by the Sri Lanka Army as part of an alleged genocidal plan.

 William Schabas, a leading authority on genocide and international criminal law,  was on a panel of inquiry set up by   Public Interest Advocacy Centre , an NGO in Australia , to assess the final stage of  Eelam War IV. He reviewed reports of United Nations investigations and  those of major international human rights  NGOs about the events and found no evidence  that the Government of Sri Lanka intended to destroy the Tamil population of Sri Lanka.

WikiLeaks revealed a US dispatch that quoted ICRC Head of Operations for South Asia Jacques de Maio as having told US Ambassador in Geneva  that though there had been serious violations of International Humanitarian Law, there was no genocide.

Census data  indicates that between 1981 and 2001 (the period of the war) there was a substantial increase in the Tamil population in the Sinhalese-majority areas due to the migration of Tamils from the North-East to that area. Such a movement of Tamils could not have occurred if the Tamils were being subject to genocide.[2]

The Census and Statistics Department  carried out  an Enumeration of Vital Events” census in the Northern Province  in 2011 on the deaths occurred in the five districts of Northern Province for the last four years of the conflict ending May 2009.[3]

The five districts of the Province recorded 22,239 deaths due to all causes during the period 2005-2009 and over half of those, 11,172 were in 2009. In 2009, a total of 7,934 died due to ‘other deaths’ and 2,523 died natural deaths.[4]The field data collection was carried out by Tamil government employees serving in the Northern Province.[5]

 In addition there  are several common sense arguments against the charge of Genocide in the Eelam war. Throughout the 30-year civil war, the government  provided food and medicines to the  north and east, it kept the  health and education services going, paid the salaries of teachers and doctors. In the final stage of the war, security forces rescued approximately 350,000 Tamils  who ran to them  for shelter from the war zone.  

If 40,000 were killed at Nanthikadal in the last weeks of Eelam War IV, where are the bodies? If genocide of 40,000 occurred in the last weeks of Eelam IV, mass graves of 40,000 killed must emerge in that locality. Lastly, Ceylon Tamils are resident in all 9 provinces of Sri Lanka. For genocide  to take place the government of Sri Lanka must  go from province to province on a killing mission.( continued)

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[1] https://www.dailynews.lk/2024/08/16/local/610161/foreign-minister-summons-canadian-hc-to-register-sls-objections-on-construction-of-a-tamil-genocide-monument-in-canada/#google_vignette

[2] https://island.lk/ontarios-bill-104-tamil-genocide-education-or-miseducation-week/

[3]https://www.statistics.gov.lk/Resource/en/Population/Vital_Statistics/EVE2011_FinalReport.pdf

[4]  27.2.22 https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/enumeration-vital-events-2011-%E2%80%90-northern-province-sri-lanka

[5] island 7.2.22 p 1   .