POLITICS: World Intellectuals Honour Slain Sri Lankan Leader

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 2 2000 (IPS) - Scholars, rights activists and former heads of government from some 25 countries met here this week to honour Neelan Tiruchelvam, a Sri Lankan intellectual who was assassinated by suspected Tamil rebels last year.

They came from the North and the South, from countries in South Asia, from South Africa, Britain, Norway and the United Nations to discuss a range of subjects, from constitution making to diversity, pluralism and civil society.

Pakistan’s foremost rights lawyer Asma Jahangir pleaded for a “South Asian civil rights movement”, while UN minority rights official Asbjorn Eide suggested a South Africa-type Truth Commission to investigate Sri Lanka’s bitter ethnic strife.

What people want are constitutions they and not just the political elite can access, stated Nigeria-born Julius Ihonvbere, who heads the South Asia desk at Ford Foundation.

“This conference has drawn intellectuals representing the cultural kaleidoscope of the world,” commented Egypt-born Prof Mahmood Mamdani from the Institute of African Studies at New York’s Columbia University.

The two-day meeting, which ended Tuesday, coincided with Tiruchelvam’s 54th birth anniversary. Rich tributes were paid to his efforts to end the bloody ethnic strife that claimed his life on July 29, and continues to divide Sri Lanka.

All the 150-odd participants were close friends, associates and colleagues of Tiruchelvam, who was among many other things a member of Parliament and leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and leading constitutional lawyer.

Remembering Tiruchelvam who “sacrificed his life for peace”, India’s former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral made an impassioned plea to leaders of India and Pakistan for restrain in the face of confrontation. Relations between the two nuclearised neighbours is icy.

Gujral and other South Asian participants issued a statement calling both governments to take “urgent and decisive measures to defuse tensions before it is too late.”

The signatories included former Bangladesh Foreign Minister Kamal Hossein, ex-Pakistan foreign secretary Niaz Naik, Sri Lankan intellectuals Radhika Coomaraswamy, Jayadeva Uyangoda and Prof. Stanley Tambiah, and Indian social scientists Ashis Nandy, Veena Das and retired chief justice P.N. Bhagwati.

The conference was organised by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, the Law and Society Trust and Tiruchelvam Associates, which Tiruchelvam had helped set up in Colombo.

Participants said they were astonished at the extent of his knowledge and understanding on a range of issues like politics, constitutionalism, civil society, arts, culture and even cricket.

Retired justice Bhagwati from India described Tiruchelvam as a man deeply committed to the preservation and advancement of human rights and above all a humanist. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message read out here that he was honoured to join others in Colombo to celebrate Tiruchelvam’s work.

“The United Nations stands ready to support any peace effort that would bring a political solution in Sri Lanka based on the principles for which Neelan stood for,” Annan wrote.

Tiruchelvam, himself a member of the minority Tamil community, had helped the Chandrika Kumaratunga government draft a constitutional reforms package, providing greater autonomy to Tamil dominated areas of the island which is stiffly opposed by the Tamil Tiger rebels who want a separate homeland.

The Tigers who are determined to be the sole representatives of Sri Lanka’s Tamil people, have killed many prominent Tamil politicians over the last 16 years, since the separatist conflict began in 1983.

Pakistan’s Jahangir, currently UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions, proposed the start of a new rights movement in South Asia, “not limited to activists but including all peoples.”

Every country has a problem, she said. There’s ethnic violence in Sri Lanka, religious and ethnic tensions in India, political bickering and polarisation in Bangladesh, a Maoist insurgency in Nepal and religious militancy and militarisation in Pakistan.

These were sapping the region, she said. “We as South Asians, represent a wonderfully rich regional society. There are hundreds of cultures, languages, ethnicities, and at least five major religions of the world found in the region. We should be the richer for it, not the poorer,” she said

Impressed by the level of political discourse in South Asia, Justice Albie Sachs of South Africa observed, “I find the strongest discourse on constitution and the constitutional process from South Asia.”

Sri Lanka’s Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Prof Gamini Lakhsman Peiris, who chaired a panel discussion on constitutionalism, updated the meeting on the constitutional reforms package of the government, and said his government was prepared to accept third party mediation to end the conflict. Norway has offered to assist the Kumaratunga government.