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