The leader of Sri Lanka’s major Tamil party, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has blamed the translator who has translated the constitution of the alliance’s main constituent, Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), that had called for a separate state for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.
The TNA leader R. Sampanthan and parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran have told The Hindu that a certified translator has made a “deliberate false translation” of the ITAK constitution, which was in Tamil, to English and the translated sworn affidavit filed in the Supreme Court has portrayed the ITAK as a party that stood for secession of the Tamil parts from Sri Lanka.
“This could only be done with motive,” Sampanthan has said adding that the ITAK did not stand for a separate Tamil and a separate Muslim State in Sri Lanka.
A Sinhala nationalist political party in April filed a petition in Supreme Court of Sri Lanka calling to prohibit Tamil political parties that have the ‘separate state’ demand in their constitutions.
The petitioner Jayantha Liyanage, secretary of Sinhala National Front, has cited that the constitutions of TNA, ITAK, Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) and Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) aim to establish a separate state.
The Sixth Amendment to Sri Lanka’s Constitution, enacted in August 1983, prohibits political parties from having as one of their aims the establishment of a separate State.
Sri Lanka’s Sinhala nationalist Buddhist monk party Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) also said that it has decided to take legal action against the TNA leader for his statements regarding formation of a Tamil Eelam state during the ITAK convention held in Batticaloa last month.
The JHU pointed out that the statements made by Sampanthan are against the Article 157 (2) in Chapter 20 of the Constitution which states that “No political party or other association or organisation shall have as one of its aims or objects the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka.”
During the ITAK convention the Tamil National Alliance leader has said the party’s expectation for a solution to the ethnic problem of the sovereignty of the Tamil people is based on a political structure outside that of a unitary government, in a united Sri Lanka in which Tamil people have all the powers of government needed to live with self-respect and self-sufficiency.
“We believe that only within such a structure of government can the Tamil people truly enjoy the right to internal self-determination that is their inalienable right,” Sampanthan has said in his speech.
He has said that the acceptance of a solution that goes beyond the 13th Amendment is to appease the international community since it would be the one that is likely to be acceptable to members of the international community including India and the United States.
He has asked the Tamil community to be patient in arriving of a solution to the ethnic problem as they have to prove to the international community that their efforts for a solution are doomed to fail.
“We must prove to the international community that we will never be able to realize our rights within a united Sri Lanka. We must be patient until the international community realizes for itself that the effort we are involved in is doomed to fail,” Sampanthan has said.
” You must build the genuine unity that is necessary to create an untainted force that will lead the Tamil Nation,” he has asked the Tamil people of the North and East.
