Human rights violations continue in Sri Lanka

Asim Boral — The United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) has adopted a US-based resolution with a majority vote – 25 against 13 – amongst the Nations’ members. India has predictably voted in favor of the resolution and asked Sri Lanka to obey human rights resolutions in letter and spirit with a rider of independent and meaningful concrete proof on Sri Lankan Tamil people who originated from India and living in that country for centuries.

It is also a fact that Sri Lankan Tamils are always oppressed by the majority community of Sri Lanka for a long long time; and as a result, this oppression led to the demand for a separate Tamil Eelam (Tamil country ) under one of the most deadly terrorists groups – LTTE – led by V Prabhakaran and the fight for separation for years, possibly for 40 years till Prabhakaran's assassination by Sri Lankan forces in recent times and the completion of a bloody solution for the issue of Tamil Eelam. But the oppression by Sri Lankan forces still continued and there was a lot of human rights violation in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka where Tamil populations are majority.

India as a responsible neighboring country always stood behind these helpless people since ages and tried to help with so many peace-keeping missions and even sending the Indian Army there under peace agreement by the then Premier of India, Rajiv Gandhi, and the Sri Lankan President in 1985 to help against the oppression of Tamil people, even at the hands of their own people under LTTE led by Prabhakaran.

It was the most unfortunate moment that Rajiv Gandhi became a victim of the bomb blast carried out by the suicide squad of LTTE-backed terrorists while he was in election mode in Tamil Nadu. It is sad that more than a hundred thousand (in fact an estimated 500 thousand ) people of Tamil origin died either at the hands of Sri Lankan forces or at the hands of LTTE, creating one of the most deadliest human rights massacres in that small country of Sri Lanka.

We do hope now that the present Sri Lankan government takes this matter seriously and stops all kinds of human rights violations in view of the resolution passed on March 21 this year in Geneva. Hopefully the Sri Lankan government is able to bring those Tamil people in the mainstream of Sri Lankan administration and treat them as their own people with equal rights and dignity, thus ending the oppression in letter and spirit of the resolution. As in the past, India will always stand for the rights of humans and fight against any kind of violations of such rights whether they happen in any country in the world.

About the Author

Asim Boral, a science graduate from Calcutta University of West Bengal, India, is a retired Senior Marketing Manager of the largest Steel Company in India. After retirement, he joined the Indian National Congress and started writing regular articles in Times of India, a national English daily, on various issues from politics to social causes. He is now engaged for service to a big NGO – Bharat Sevashram Sangha – which serves worldwide, from USA to Fiji. Now 64, he lives in a Mega city Ahmedabad, Gujarat state of India and enjoys practicing his expertise in rain water harvesting and biodynamic farming system.