“Proscribe LTTE as terrorist organization” Australian Senator tells Federal Parliament [Monday , June 19, 2006- 10.10 GMT]

Senator Steve Hutchins (Australian Labour Party, New South Wales) blasted the LTTE on several counts in his speech to the Federal Parliament in Canberra, June 16, and urged the Australian Government to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist organisation under domestic law.

Condemning the LTTE attack on the civilian bus on Thursday which killed 68, including 15 children under 10, the Senator said, “What may have begun as an independence movement has now just debased itself into thuggery, and it should be condemned in all quarters”.

Sen. Hutchins told the Senate that “Australia should follow the examples of the EU and North American and proscribe the Tamil Tigers”, saying “currently there are 19 proscribed terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiah. These are without doubt the most brutal terrorist organisations in the world and they deserve their proscriptions. So, too, I am sure you will agree, do the LTTE.”

The LTTE has been banned under international law but not under Australian domestic law. Led by the Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights in Sri Lanka (SPUR) there is a growing lobby to list the LTTE under the Criminal Code of 1995 which would proscribe it under domestic law, giving the Police more powers to track down and prosecute agents of LTTE terrorism in Australia. A protest to this effect was held in Canberra today organized by members of SPUR.

Full text of the speech

I rise this afternoon to make some remarks about the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, and the civil conflict occurring in Sri Lanka.

The separatist Tamil movement sparked a bloody civil war that has carried on for the last 23 years. It is estimated that in those two decades of fighting, 64,000 people have been killed, and a further one million displaced.

This has not been an orderly conflict, if ever there can be one. If anything it has been characterised by brutal terrorism that has targeted innocent civilians. The tragedy of the situation is even more pointedly highlighted by the fact that the combatants have mostly been ordinary people, many of them women and children, caught up in the net of militarism.

Just by way of background, the LTTE formed in 1976 as a response to ethnic tensions between the minority Tamils, who make up around 18 per cent of the Sri Lankan population, and the majority Sinhalese. The LTTE led the armed civil conflict that erupted in 1983 and that has continued to this day. It has been a ruthless organisation, eliminating not only its enemies in the Sri Lankan Government but also rival Tamil groups, eventually taking complete control of the Tamil areas in the country’s north and east.

The victims of the LTTE do not stop at the Sinhalese; the Tamils living under LTTE control are exposed to fanatic militarism, and are drafted unwillingly to the cause and sent off to fight.

During the two decades of fighting, there have been hopes for peace. In 2002 Sri Lanka and the LTTE sat down and brokered a cease-fire agreement with the assistance of Norway. This was undoubtedly the most promising development in the history of the conflict, with Sri Lanka going so far as to remove its proscription of the LTTE, and Tamil rebels began decommissioning their weapons. However, this cease-fire is not the first, and the fact there have been others is perhaps a telling point. Even as far back as 1985, two years after the first outbreak of hostilities, the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE sat down at the peace table. They again attempted to make peace in 1995.

I have received a number of representations from the Sri Lankan community of my electorate, concerned at the fact that the LTTE is not demonstrating a clear resolve to continue as a participant in the peace process.

This is evidenced, I believe, by all three of these major attempts at peace failing. Since the last cease-fire, there has been a suicide bomb blast in the capital, Colombo, in 2004, the assassination of the Foreign Minister in 2005, and a horrible escalation of violence in the first half of this year with bomb attacks on military targets. An April attack in Trincomalee, an area with an almost equal one-third mix of Sri Lanka’s three major ethnic groups, left 16 people dead, many of whom were civilians.

The perpetrators of these attacks were the LTTE. This is a violent organisation that employs terrorist tactics- not diplomacy- to pursue its interests.

What may have begun as a movement for the independence of an ethnic group has devolved into a base expression of thuggery, and it should be condemned from all quarters.

There is no room for terrorism, and nor should it be tolerated or pandered to.

I have also received similar representations from the Sri Lankan High Commission highlighting their concerns regarding the collapse of the peace process, and the acts of terror being carried out by the LTTE.

Some of these, outlined in a letter I received from the High Commission, include the recruiting and training of Tamil children for combat. The High Commission states:

The LTTE under their ‘join or die’ policy for Tamil children routinely visits their homes to inform parents that they must provide a child for the movement. Families that resist are harassed and threatened. Once recruited, most children are allowed no contact with their families. The LTTE subjects them to rigorous and sometimes brutal training.

 

Despite the Sri Lankan Government and LTTE signing an agreement to put an end to child combatants, UNICEF still receives reports of children being recruited by the LTTE. In just the first few months of 2004, it recorded 160 reports of children being forced into armed service by Tamil rebels. In 2004, UNICEF had estimated there were still more than 1000 children forcibly enlisted in the LTTE army, and 44 per cent of these are girls.

The High Commission’s letter to me contained a number of cases of recent brutality on the part of the LTTE. One of those outlines a case of the murder of a 12-year-old boy for refusing to join the rebels. This was a boy who wanted to be just that. Not a gun-toting militia man, not a revolutionary. He simply wanted to be a 12-year-old boy. But by refusing to join the armed thugs of the LTTE, he was dragged out of his grandmother’s house, where he was taking refuge, and shot dead in the street.

I have received word that just yesterday, the LTTE launched another attack, this time the bombing of a bus, killing 60 people. Fifteen of those who died were schoolchildren. An unconfirmed number of pregnant women, on their way to an antenatal clinic, were also killed in the blast.

These are not the actions of a group seriously attempting to consolidate peace; these are the actions of an antagonistic group of cold-blooded killers who are not interested in bringing to a conclusion the conflict that is tearing their country apart. If they were serious, there would be no child soldiers, no suicide bomb attacks on civilians, and no assassinations of members of the Government.

They may claim the title of freedom fighters, but there is no sense of freedom in the ideals they are pursuing. Freedom is not to be gained by murder. Whatever ideals the LTTE claim to stand for, they have become an aberration and do the Tamil people no justice by their violent misrepresentation.

It is little wonder, then, that they have attracted the condemnation of the international community. The LTTE has been listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the United States, Canada, India, Britain and Germany. Most recently, the EU agreed in May to also proscribe the LTTE. What this means is that any level of participation in, or support for, the organisation is an offence.

In 2001 in Australia, the Tamil Tigers were included on the consolidated list of terrorist organisations for the purposes of this country’s terrorist asset freezing programme. Under this regime, it is an offence to provide or even possess any asset belonging to a listed terrorist group or individual, of which there are currently 540, and this offence is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. It is one of a number of measures that are essential in stemming the flow of funds to organisations like LTTE, who use them to arm their child soldiers and their suicide bombers.

There is scope, however, for Australia to go further and follow the examples of the EU and North America and proscribe the LTTE. There are currently 19 proscribed terrorist organisations, including Al Qaida, Hizbullah and Jemaah Islamiyah. These are without doubt the most brutal terrorist organisations in the world, and they deserve their proscriptions. So too, I’m sure you will agree, does the LTTE.

This is particularly pertinent in light of reports of the LTTE attempting to raise funds from its worldwide Tamil diaspora for a ‘final war’.

Human Rights Watch reported this year that ethnic Tamil residents in countries like Canada and the United Kingdom were being routinely harassed and threatened with violence if they did not pay LTTE organisers. Just prior to the inclusion of the LTTE on Australia’s consolidated list of terrorists, similar moves have been attempted here in Australia, with a Hindu temple in Perth being used by LTTE agents as a fundraising base.

I am told there will be a rally outside this place next Monday morning by members of the Australian Sri Lankan community to lobby the Government to clamp down on the LTTE.

It is important to maintain the pressure on this group and show them that terrorist activities will not be tolerated. Sri Lanka’s return to normality and the peace and safety of all of the island’s ethnic groups should be the priority of all the parties involved.

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Last Updated Date: June 19, 2006 -10.10 GMT