BETA

The situation in Sri Lanka is clearly an armed conflict governed by only humanitarian law. But the Sri Lankan authorities never failed to make serious efforts to seek to avoid application of humanitarian law at all but rather to have the international community view the armed conflict as a ‘terrorism/counter terrorism’ conflict. In this regard the United States has been very forward, putting a great deal of pressure on other states, notably the U.K., Canada, and the EU, to join it in listing the LTTE as a terrorist group.

 It is in fact unfortunate that these great nations failed to understand or rather appreciate that there is no rule in international law that forbids either civil wars or wars of national liberation in the exercise of self-determination. These struggles are simply not terrorism. Also obvious is the fact that the LTTE is not seeking the Sinhalese areas in the south but seeks to defend itself and the Tamils in the traditional Tamil areas. In this sense, the Tamil areas, the Sri Lankan forces are seen as a Sinhalese occupation.

Sri Lankan government has twin intentions. One was to seduce the international community by their charm offensive and to engage in a covert and overt genocide war against the Tamils. It is a natural event that the International Community is gradually and carefully coming out of the seduction. The actions of the USA, the UK, the EU in particular attributes to this state of affairs. It is high time that they accepted that Sri Lanka is a failed state: an out-law state that has the blood of the Tamils in their hands which has no regard for international law. The West can not be pretending any longer to be snoring while being wide awake.