[TamilNet, Friday, 25 May 2012, 23:40 GMT]
Activists from Kurdistan, Colombia, Ireland and the island of Sri
Lanka, talking about the role geopolitics played in determining
peace-processes and conflict in various cases, informed a mixed audience
of activists, academics and journalists of the nuances of their
respective cases connecting it with larger trends at an event organized
at Trinity College, Dublin on Thursday. The public meeting titled ‘The
Local and the Global: The Geopolitics of Peace and Conflict’, focussing
on conflicts in Colombia, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka,
elaborated on how different alignments of global interests influenced
political outcomes at local levels. The conclusion of the conference saw
the unanimous passing of a resolution that opposed the criminalization
of political organizations like the FARC, PKK, LTTE that fought for
political and democratic demands of peoples.
The conference also underlined the need for oppressed groups to have
solidarity with each other and to critically study and learn lessons
from each others’ movements.
“The dismantling parity of esteem
and power balance between main parties in conflicts by the major powers
has led into bloodbath in Colombia, Kurdistan and Tamil Eelam, and a
global perspective is necessary for a just and peaceful resolution of
these conflicts,” Jude Lal Fernando, lecturer at the Irish College of
Ecumenics who was on the organizing committee of the event told
TamilNet.
“International solidarity is essential for reinstating
the power balance, without which peace and reconciliation would only be a
dream,” he added.
Paul Murphy, MEP, Ireland, equating ‘global
powers’ with ‘imperialist powers’ said that their role in conflict areas
were disgraceful. Arguing that that most of the conflicts in the world
now arise out of a denial of the right of peoples to self-determination,
he stated that the roots of these conflicts can be traced back to
imperialism and colonialism, and was augmented later by neo-colonialism.
Taking the case of Sri Lanka, he emphasised that there could be
no genuine solution from a military approach to political conflicts,
condemning the “genocidal approach” of the GoSL towards the Tamils to
deny them their national question. He also said that the continuation of
oppression would lead to a re-emergence of conflicts.
Making a
case for an independent international inquiry into the war crimes of the
Sri Lankan government and the right of self-determination of the
Tamils, he stressed that “justice is the pre-requisite for peace.”
Likewise,
he also criticized the Tamils’ hope on the IC in the belief that they
would help them, noting that the global powers promises don’t translate
into action and that they only raise false hopes among people. He
contended that the Tamils should reach out to the poor sections of the
Sinhalese, also repressed by the GoSL, to forge a common struggle and
also to work with the “real International Community” – trade unions,
peace activists, civil liberties organizations etc.
Speaking
about the geo-political factors that were responsible for the genocide
of the Eezham Tamils, Rohitha Bashana Abeywardane, exiled Sinhala
journalist, said that “Geo-political reasons were always suppressed in
the mainstream media.” He credited this to the vested interests of world
powers in preserving the unitary structure of the island. “No one
talked about the killing fields in the making from January 2009 to May
2009,” he said, noting that UN officials, including Gordon Weiss, knew
the scale of the massacre to happen in the GoSL’s assaults on the Tamil
people but chose to remain silent. All the powers were united that the
truth in Sri Lanka shouldn’t go out “until the job is done”, he said.
Using
power-point presentations to highlight the geo-strategic location of
Sri Lanka in the four main sea lines of communications, he noted that
the position of Sri Lanka between Malacca straits and the straits of
Hormuz made its structure of great importance for world powers, and the
Eezham Tamils who were trying to divide it in the course of their
struggle had to brutally crushed, because Sri Lanka is geo-strategically
important only as long as it is a unitary political entity.
Giving
an explanation for genocidal massacre of the Eezham Tamils, the Sinhala
journalist said, citing British counterinsurgency expert Frank Kitson,
when you want to neutralize an insurgency movement, you must destroy its
“genuine subversive element” – arguing that the genuine subversive
element in the island was the Tamil population as such.
Mehmet
Yuksel, Kurdish politician and human rights activist, spoke on the
prolonged assault on the Kurdish identity, referring to the assimilation
of Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran. In the case of Turkey, he noted how
Kurds had to use 2 names, the Turkish in public and the Kurdish in
private, and also how Turkey was systematically changing the names of
Kurdish towns and cities.
Of late, the Kurdish existence was
recognized but their political rights were denied, he observed, arguing
that Turkey thought that they will lose their geo-political position if
they give Kurds their rights.
Mr. Yuksel also spoke of the
repressive measures taken by Turkey, with the presence of over 12,000
Kurdish political prisoners, of whom more than 2000 were children. The
political prisoners included mayors and elected Kurdish politicians for
simply speaking about their democratic rights. He noted that the Turkish
state used the argument of ‘terrorism’ to clamp down on and arrest
Kurdish activists. He also said that repression of journalists by Turkey
was worse than China.
Carlos Arturo Garcia Marulanda, a member
of Patriotic March, the largest peace organization in Colombia, spoke
about how neo-liberal policies of the Colombian state and the influence
of multinational corporations worked against the interests of the people
and involved the use of repressive measures against movements for
social and economic justice.
Stating that peace in Colombia
needs to go hand in hand with social justice, Mr. Marulanda opined that
such a peace required a democratic debate of structural problems and
overcoming the major national problems that the Colombian people faced.
Referring
to assassinations of leaders and activists of trade unions and social
movements, forceful displacement of peasants by the military and
paramilitaries and land grabbing for the benefit of MNC’s, a “political
genocide” against indigenous people, the Colombian activist stressed
that the only solution to the conflict lay in a democratic political
dialogue, that also recognized the need for structural changes and also
truth, justice, reparation and the guarantee of non-repetition to
victims of state violence.
In a short speech, the Colombian
Ambassador to the UK Mauricio Rodriguez Munera claimed that the
Colombian government was interested in peace and development.
Joe
Castello TD, Ireland’s Minister of State at the Department of Foreign
Trade and Affairs, and Paul O’Connor, Irish activist at the Pat Finucane
Centre, spoke about the conditions around peace process in Northern
Ireland. Mr. O’Connor put forth the idea that a state which is a
participant to a conflict cannot give a just solution to it, and made a
case for an effective international participation.
David Landy,
activist from the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, touched on how
one form of state oppression influenced others, referring explicitly to
Israeli politicians suggesting a ‘Sri Lanka solution’ to control Gaza.
He also spoke of the importance of solidarity groups among oppressed
peoples.
The public meeting was part of a two day conference on
understanding the commonalities in geopolitics in the specific conflict
zones. It concluded on Friday with a resolution condemning the
criminalization of political organizations that demanded political and
democratic rights for people like the FARC, PKK, LTTE and others.
The
event was organized by Irish School of Ecumenics, Irish Forum for Peace
in Sri Lanka, Grupo Raices Colombia Solidarity in Ireland, Kurdish
Association of Ireland and Latin American Solidarity Centre in Ireland.
The meeting was moderated by Dr. Iain Atack, lecturer at Trinity
College.
