Kosovo statehood a special case: No parallel to Tamil Tiger-remnants’ demand for statehood in Sri Lanka

The United Nations highest court - International Court of Justice, ruled on Thursday July 23 that Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not violate international law but the ruling was significant when it avoided saying that the state of Kosovo was legal under international law.

But the ruling would have sent a chilling effect on nations that currently face separatist movements that legal experts warned could spur separatism in those regions.

Sri Lanka which ended its violent Tamil Tiger separatist movement with the annihilation of its top leadership in May 2009 may not be one of those countries that had a chilling effect following the ICJ decision on Kosovo but could be cautious because of the growing international call for alleged war crimes and genocide probe that the remnants of the Tamil Tigers domiciled in Western nations visualize may lead to a separate Tamil nation that the separatist Tamil leader Velupillai Prabhakaran could not achieve before his brutal death on 19 May last year.

It is to the credit of the United States which designated the Tamil Tigers a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1998 that it never supported a separate Tamil homeland for the 12% ethnic minority Tamils in the northern and eastern region of Sri Lanka, but since the defeat of the movement has been strongly advocating the restoration of Tamil rights, devolution of political and administrative power to majority Tamils regions in the north and east, and reconciliation process to lessen the majority Sinhalese domination in the governance of this South Asian nation.

To this writer’s up close and personal knowledge the US has been advocating an enhanced social status for the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka since the eighties.

With this atmosphere in mind Sri Lanka needs to accept what the US State Department’s Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Philip H. Gordon declared on Thursday July 23 in Washington following the UN ICJ judgment on Kosovo that the ICJ decision “underscore that the court’s opinion was closely tailored to the unique circumstances of Kosovo. This was about Kosovo. It was not about other regions or states. It doesn’t set any precedent for other regions or states.” He reiterated: “As you know, the United States strongly supports Kosovo as an independent state and its territorial integrity and sovereignty, and we believe that the opinion yesterday reinforced that view.”

Sri Lanka needs to understand that there is no parallel between the histories and situations in Kosovo and Sri Lanka.

Despite the carefully orchestrated propaganda of the groups of ethnic Sri Lankan Tamil professionals in Western capitals for decades endeavoring to convince the lawmakers and foreign offices of those countries that there was a wide spread suppression of the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka and that they were subjected to tremendous discrimination and a systematic genocide; the officials in those nations since late have realized the ground situation that the ‘propagandists’ have presented the ‘Tamil cause’ was out of proportion.

Nevertheless, it has been accepted by the current Sri Lanka government and the international community that 12% minority ethnic Tamils have less opportunities in many spheres that they enjoyed, often over what the majority Sinhalese enjoyed, during the British colonial rule prior to 1948 independence and the first decade after independence.

It was a significant contrast to what the ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo region experienced in the hands of the Serbs that led the UN to intervene in 1999. There is absolutely no comparison. Nevertheless, the pro-Tamil Tiger professionals and there Western acolytes endeavor to bring parallels to create a ‘Kosovo atmosphere’ for the UN to intervene to create a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern regions of Sri Lanka.

As Sri Lanka’s demography clearly shows that 54% of the 12% ethnic Tamils now live in the predominantly Sinhalese regions in the West and South of the country the authorities in Sri Lanka needs to shed its paranoia and take no notice of the ICJ decision on Kosovo declared on Thursday.

This writer who worked with the US State Department officials for two and a half decades in the seventies to the nineties is convinced that the United States has no policy plank to create an atmosphere and a conducive situation for a ‘Tamil homeland’ in Sri Lanka but is seriously interested in restoring certain basic rights of the 12% ethnic Tamil population while awarding political, social and economic justice to other disadvantages communities in Sri Lanka. If that process can be quickened to give justice to Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims who are concentrated in the semi-urban and rural 72% of the country it can be assured that the pale voice of alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide will fade into thin air.

The situation in Kosovo and Sri Lanka are polls apart.

In one position paper: The issue of an independent Kosovo entered the debate in international relations in June 1999 when UN Security Council Resolution 1244 established an international trusteeship in Kosovo. Since then, many efforts have been made by Kosovo Albanians and international organisations to establish a functional state in the former Serbian province (which it still is according to UNSCR 1244). The state-building process finally led to the declaration of independence by the Kosovan parliament and government in February 2008 and its recognition by a large number of EU member states shortly afterwards. Those states argue that Kosovo, after the atrocities in the past, can never become an integral part of Serbia again and refer to the right of secession, which is derived from the principle of self-determination of peoples.

This is one of the principles in international law and is contradictory to the principle of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. Both concepts are principles of the UN Charter: While Article 1 argues that the “friendly relations among nations (are) based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples” (1), Article 2 argues that “all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state (…)”.[2] There is an ongoing debate in the study of international law on the question of how to overcome the ambiguity of the UN Charter and its two contrary principles.

However, those states that have recognized Kosovo also argue that it is a case sui generis and that the recognition therefore did not set a precedent. In their view, it cannot be assumed that they will act similarly in similar cases. This legal conception is rejected by those states that oppose the recognition. They refer to the principle of state sovereignty and argue that the recognition has set a dangerous precedent for international law and international security. Many of them also consider the intervention in Kosovo in 1999 as a breach of the principle of non-intervention in international law, which is contained in Article 2 of the UN Charter, stating that “the United Nations or its member states are not allowed to intervene in matters that are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”

The ethnic cleansing the Albanians experienced in Serbia was in fact experienced by the Majority Sinhalese and Muslims who were well settled in Sri Lanka’s northern region under Prabhakaran’s separatist Tamil Tigers. In contrast the ethnic minority Tamils who were domiciled in the predominantly Sinhalese regions in the Western and Southern regions did not experience a similar ethnic cleansing except the sporadic violence that occurred in July 1983. The violence never repeated since then.

The ICJ decision on Kosovo, the situation that led to the creation of that independent state can be ‘teachable moments’ for the Sri Lankan authorities to pay greater attention to the semi-urban/rural 72% of the nation that has the concentration of all ethnic groups who had a raw deal since independence at the expense of the 20% urban regions whose Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims were the privileged class with advanced educational facilities, employment opportunities and economic security.

The political agenda of the remnants of Velupillai Prabhakaran’s separatist Tamil Tiger movement sitting pretty in their lucrative highly paid professional jobs in the West, especially in the United States, will not suffice to move toward the utopian Tamil Homeland.

Kosovo is definitely different.

- Asian Tribune -