Gerald H Peiris, unabridged version of the article submitted by G H Peiris to the ‘Jagran Forum’ 2007 …. with emphases as in the original word file version. …. note that just this week an American internationalist with cross-country experience in several former colonies to whom I sent a word-file version of this article responded: “fascinating and right on target” … Editor, Thuppahi.
Introductory Notes: The focus of this study is on ‘external interventions’ in the Sri Lankan conflict – those ostensibly intended to pressurise both the government of Sri Lanka as well as the LTTE to abandon violent confrontation and seek a negotiated settlement of the conflict. Such pressures on the government take several forms, applied with varying levels of intensity and insistence by the different countries with which Sri Lanka maintains close relations – advice and moral persuasion, economic aid being made conditional upon the resumption of ‘peace negotiations’, prohibitions on the sale of arms, providing lavish support to local NGOs that claim to be engaged in the ‘peace effort’, and, above all, threat of action as envisaged in the emerging doctrine of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (‘R2P’) against alleged violations of human rights. To the LTTE, with its proclaimed adherence to the belief that terrorist violence is a legitimate instrumentality of ‘liberation struggles’, and ranking as it does among the most violent terrorist outfits in the world, the charge of human rights violations has remained largely inconsequential except where it is given concrete expression in sanctions and proscriptions. To the Sri Lanka government, being placed at par with the Tigers in accusations of human rights violation is, of course, a damning indictment and a humiliating diminution of status in the community of nations. Continue reading
An NGO submission to the OHCHR investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) presented in Geneva on Monday 
