| Submitted by Tsiatsan on Thursday, November 05 2009 |
Vicki Sentas, CAMPACC - On 28 October 2009, a public meeting held in parliament interrogated the purpose and continuing effects of the Terrorism Act 2000, in proscribing ‘terrorist organisations.’ These laws criminalise a broad range of political, emotional and financial support for non state actors in armed conflicts regardless of whether those conflicts are against violent occupations or incursions in self-defence, in accordance with international law. Over the last decade, the impacts of ‘terrorist’ bans on diaspora communities in the UK seeking self-determination abroad, such as the Tamil, Kurdish, Baloch and Palestinian people, have been devastating for the prospect of just resolution of political conflicts.Entitled ‘Proscription on Trial: The Tamil Experience’, the meeting was organised by the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) and the British Tamil Law Foundation, and hosted by MPs Siobhain McDonagh and Joan Ryan. The forum highlighted the recent trial of a leading Tamil community representative in the UK, Shanthan (Arunachalam Chrishanthakumar). On the 12 June 2009 Shanthan was sentenced to two years imprisonment for providing humanitarian support to the Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Under the law which bans the LTTE in the UK, goods for aid and development, which the Judge accepted were not military, were nevertheless still caught by the ‘terrorism’ law as a ‘benefit for the LTTE’ - even though at the time, the LTTE were not banned in Sri Lanka and a ceasefire was in place.
Addressing the meeting, Shanthan’s Lawyer Matt Foot, highlighted the multiple ways in which this prosecution reveals the political operation of the laws. As Foot explained, the prosecution alleged that the electrical items Shanthan had sent to Sri Lanka where for the purpose of making bombs. However, after the prosecutions case collapsed - its own expert witness found the equipment could not be used to make a bomb – the prosecution changed its strategy. No longer able to claim that Shanthan’s action were related to causing harm, the very fact that humanitarian aid was supplied to the LTTE constituted it as ‘terrorism’, as it was for the ‘benefit’ of a terrorist organisation. In this way, aid and support to long standing civil armed conflicts, not only that in Sri Lanka, but to Palestine, Kurdistan and Baluchistan, for example, is legally and politically constructed as terrorist.
The Judge said he was bound under the laws to give Shanthan a prison sentence although he believed Shanthan was “a thoroughly decent man” and that he was central to negotiations for peace and resolution of the conflict in Sri Lanka. The Judge said of Shanthan: “He did not wish the peace process to fail and civil war to reconvene, as tragically happened. Whatever he did for the Tamils and the LTTE, he did not do it in order to assist them in war. He did them to assist in maintaining the peace process.”
Foot highlighted the hypocrisy of the UK government position. Shanthan had been assistant to representative of the LTTE, the late Anton Balasingham, who had been allowed to enter and remain in the UK, as he was a peace negotiator in close contact with government officials and Special Branch. In fact in providing support to the LTTE during the ceasefire period Shanthan was doing nothing different to that of the British government, who were also providing aid to the LTTE. In the words of the Judge: “Shanthan was doing no more, although illegally, than the international community were doing.” However as Foot pointed out, the UK also provided Sri Lanka with the weapons that made the bloody war against the Tamil people possible. This criminal act of the state is unlikely to be determined illegal. The Judge praised Shanthan’s work for the Tamil people in this country and recognised the important need at this time for Shanthan’s role in continuing to support the Tamil community once released from jail: “In view of all that has been said about Mr Shanthan, and all that he has done, I make it the very shortest [sentence] that I can, so I can hope that you can resume the humanitarian work that you undoubtedly do do for Tamils in this country. They will need your help more now than ever before, perhaps.”
Meanwhile the humanitarian crisis alluded to in the judgement, has only intensified. Human rights lawyer, Cumarasamy Sithamparapillai, spoke of how Tamils are suffering from renewed persecution by the Sri Lankan state. Sri Lanka’s conduct of its brutal, inhumane military offensive against the civilian Tamil population, ‘to end the war’ – the so-called ‘war against terror’ - most certainly constitutes manifold war crimes. In the name of suppressing the LTTE, the military killed thousands of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The subsequent arbitrary detention of approximately 300 000 civilians today in unacceptable conditions without freedom of movement in what have been aptly called concentration camps, remains a disaster. Thousands of young men have been ‘disappeared’ from the camps, with evidence of murders as well as abduction to secret camps which Amnesty estimates to be in excess of 10 or more throughout the country. Those who continue to survive the camps risk grave illness and death, a result of the continued denial of food, sanitary conditions and medical attention. Sri Lanka continues to exclude international human rights observers, free media access and both local and international Aid agencies, including unhindered access to the International Red Cross. The crisis will bring further tragedy unless decisive action is taken by the international community.
The Judge’s call for the continued need for Shanthan’s activism demands urgent recognition of the Kafkaesque results of the LTTE’s banning. In Foot’s view, this is perhaps the first time that a Judge has lauded the necessity of the defendants actions, encouraging them to continue the very ‘illegal’ activity they sentenced them for. In this significant, yet ultimately limited form of critique, the judiciary points to the illegitimacy of the executive’s ‘legal’ use of law for political gain.
In the current humanitarian crisis, Shanthan’s prosecution increases the burden of oppression on the Tamil people and limits the prospect of seeking an end to the camps. Sithamparapillai emphasised how the inaction and silence of the international community helped to legitimize Sri Lanka’s inhumane treatment of Tamils, and has contributed to putting the Tamils in the same position they were before the armed resistance started. The meeting heard of how the history of the oppression of the Tamil struggle tells of manifold injustice. Sithamparapillai described the present atrocities as ‘the worst time in Tamil history’. The banning of the LTTE by the UK and by most western states has been central in legitimating Sri Lankan state terror in the name of waging war with the LTTE, and against the Tamil people. Today, terror law in the UK undermines the legitimacy of self-determination as a right in international law, concentrating the power of state actors and their western allies geopolitical interests.
The continued banning of the LTTE in the UK fosters state terror both here, and in Sri Lanka, in multiple ways. The ban directly criminalises Tamils in their provision of desperately needed funds and materials for reconstruction and aid, from the diaspora. The laws also function to suppress the political expressions, associations and aspirations of the Tamil people in having a legitimate claim in expressing and acting on self-determination and resisting an oppressive state. By criminalising the identifications of Tamils grounded in the resistance of genocidal and racist policies in Sri Lanka, the UK is complicit in undermining self-determination through ‘anti-terror’ laws. Further, as Sithamparapillai pointed out, the LTTE ban in times of negotiations for peace and reconstruction makes the UK directly responsible for impeding resolution. The effects are evident in the fear and intimidation of Tamils. In Sithamparapillai’s words, ‘people are scared’.
CAMPACC spokesperson, Les Levidow addressed how the suppression of self-determination functions primarily through intimidation rather than through repeated prosecutions (there has been but one prosecution of a Tamil to date). A case in point has been the excessive policing of the remarkable Tamil protests held over 73 days and nights against the humanitarian crisis. Experiences included police and M15 harassment, calling protestors ‘Tamil Tigers’, and arresting and detaining, but not charging, some of those who have carried the Tamil flag. Shanthan’s case however triggers the collective intimidation of affected communities as explicit threat. Levidow pointed out that such prosecutions are necessary to reinforce ‘terrorist’ stigma. In resistance to state practices of intimidation, Levidow spoke of how active defiance of the laws happens when communities continue acts of political expression, protest and speaking out against the ban.
Baloch leader, Hyrbyair Marri, spoke about the violent repression of the Baloch people by Pakistan and Iran and their struggle for independence. Marri outlined the history of Pakistani and Iranian occupation of Balochistan, despite its independent sovereign status, declared in 1947. The escalation of violence since 2000 under General Musharaffs regime, despite the change of government in 2008, continues unabated - extra-judicial killings, disappearances, diaplacement and collective punishment of the Baloch people continues. Marri noted that in this so-called ‘democratization’ period, three Baloch leaders, Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, Lala Munir Baloch and Sher Mohammed Baloch were abducted from their lawyers’ office by Pakistani Intelligence officers, tortured over several days and then murdered, their bodies found in a deserted area after a week later.
On 11 February 2009, Marri, together with Faiz Baluch, were acquitted of terrorism charges brought about as a result of the UK’s listing of the Balochistan Liberation Army as a proscribed organization. This prosecution revealed the extent to which the banning of the Balochistan movement functioned as a means to further the UK’s strategic alliance with Pakistan. Marri spoke of the central role which the international Community’s silence has played in legitimizing the repression of the Balochi people and the violent occupation of their lands:
“The Western democracies instead of siding with the oppressed are backing the oppressors. They are collaborating with Turkey against secular Kurdish movement; they have helped Sri Lanka against the Tamils and they are siding with Pakistan against the Baloch people. This biased approach has to stop and International Community must urge these occupying states to stop the slaughter of the oppressed Nations and abide by International laws.”
This complicity between western states in human rights violations was a repeated theme in the forum - Proscription laws operate as an instrument of foreign policy through domestic repression. Western state aid in abetting Turkey’s continued repression of the Kurds remains a case in point. Kazim Aqpak of the Kurdish Federation UK, spoke of how the Kurds in Europe where one of the first diaspora communities to be criminalised, with the PKK being banned in Germany in 1988. Aqpak raised the critical point: How can the Kurdish question be resolved when the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is banned in the UK, and in Europe? At a time in Turkey when the PKK have called yet another ceasefire in order to facilitate fragile moves towards a resolution of the conflict, the UK’s listing of the PKK empowers Turkey to not recognise the Kurdish liberation movement as a party to dialogue. Indeed, the PKK where listed in the UK at a time at which they called a ceasefire. Rather, the listing authorises Turkish reliance on military incursions. Proscription of organisations prolongs conflict and escalates the human misery which accompanies conflict by limiting efforts towards dialogue.
Aqpak spoke of recent atrocities in Turkey, including the killing of several Kurdish children by military shells or fire, and the imprisonment of Kurdish children for lengthy sentences, sometimes decades, for participating in pro-Kurdish demonstrations. It is clear the banning of the PKK reinforces the impunity of state crimes. In understanding this relation, Aqpak made the critical distinction between the provision of justice and the law. Drawing on the philosopher Jacque Derrida’s concept of justice as something ‘yet to come’, or ‘incalculable’, Aqpak highlighted the excessive violence at law’s foundation, as demonstrated in proscription.
The meeting ended with a broad ranging discussion on the urgent need for the repeal of laws designating and banning ‘terrorist organisations’ and extending forms of solidarity across affected communities. It remains to be seen however, how long international formations of state power can persist as hegemonic, through their own practices of terror.
For more information contact
CAMPACC
www.campacc.org.uk
estella24@tiscali.co.uk
tel 020 7586 5892
