[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1230 Introduced in House (IH)]
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118th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 1230
Recognizing the hundreds of thousands of lives lost during Sri Lanka's
almost 30-year armed conflict, which ended 15 years ago on May 18,
2009, and ensuring nonrecurrence of past violence, including the Tamil
Genocide, by supporting the right to self-determination of Eelam Tamil
people and their call for an independence referendum for a lasting
peaceful resolution.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 15, 2024
Mr. Nickel (for himself, Ms. Wild, Mr. Davis of Illinois, Ms.
Malliotakis, Mr. Carey, Mr. Davis of North Carolina, Ms. Lee of
Pennsylvania, and Mr. Jackson of North Carolina) submitted the
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign
Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Recognizing the hundreds of thousands of lives lost during Sri Lanka's
almost 30-year armed conflict, which ended 15 years ago on May 18,
2009, and ensuring nonrecurrence of past violence, including the Tamil
Genocide, by supporting the right to self-determination of Eelam Tamil
people and their call for an independence referendum for a lasting
peaceful resolution.
Whereas May 18, 2024, marks the 15-year anniversary of the end of the 26-year
armed conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka and various armed
Tamil independence organizations;
Whereas the Sinhalese people and the Eelam Tamil people have lived on the island
presently known as Sri Lanka for thousands of years and lived in
separate and sovereign Sinhalese and Tamil kingdoms, and in 1833, the
Sinhalese and the Tamil territories were merged under a single unitary
administration by the British;
Whereas all major Tamil political parties united under the Tamil United
Liberation Front and adopted the Vaddukoddai Resolution on May 14, 1976,
asserting the right to self-determination of the Tamil nation and
calling for the restoration and reconstitution of an independent, free,
sovereign, secular Tamil Eelam as the solution to the Tamils, and in the
subsequent election which the Tamils treated as a model referendum, the
Tamil people gave their overwhelming electoral mandate for the
independent, free, sovereign Tamil Eelam;
Whereas the 6th amendment to Sri Lanka's constitution, introduced in 1983, was
targeted towards the Eelam Tamil people to limit their ability to
advocate for their independence, and to criminalize such activity, thus
the amendment infringes on the Tamils' freedom of expression which is
guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
Whereas, subsequent to the persistent calls by the international community to
resolve the ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka, without any consultations with
the Eelam Tamils, unilaterally introduced the 13th amendment to the
constitution in 1987, which claimed to be a solution to the conflict but
which was rejected by the Eelam Tamil political leaders as not meeting
the aspirations of their people, and their homeland still remains as
non-self-governing territory;
Whereas Richard Boucher, then-Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central
Asian Affairs, acknowledged during a visit to wartime Sri Lanka on June
1, 2006, that ``There are legitimate issues that are raised by the Tamil
community, and they have a very legitimate desire, as anybody would, to
be able to control their own lives, to rule their own destinies and to
govern themselves in their homeland; in the areas they've traditionally
inhabited.'';
Whereas, in a joint statement by the United Nations Secretary General and the
President of Sri Lanka following the Secretary General's visit to Sri
Lanka in May 2009, Sri Lanka gave assurance to find a lasting political
solution addressing the aspirations and grievances of all communities
and to an accountability process for addressing violations of
international humanitarian and human rights law;
Whereas the United States cosponsored the United Nations Human Rights Council
Resolution, HRC 51/L.1 (2022), which emphasizes the importance of
elections and referendums to strengthen the democratic process, calls
upon the Government of Sri Lanka to fulfill its commitments to the
devolution of political authority, and extends and reinforces the
capacity of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to
collect, consolidate, analyze, and preserve information and evidence,
and to develop possible strategies for future accountability processes;
Whereas the January 2021 report from the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights warns that ``Sri Lanka's current trajectory sets the scene
for the recurrence of the policies and practices that gave rise to grave
human rights violations'' and ``Given the demonstrated inability and
unwillingness of the Government to advance accountability at the
national level, it is time for international action'';
Whereas, 15 years after the end of the war, the traditional homeland of the
Eelam Tamils remains heavily militarized by Sri Lanka, while Sri Lanka
engages in land appropriation in Tamil territory and the destruction of
Tamils' heritage sites and war cemeteries, the root cause of the ethnic
war has so far not been resolved, and Sri Lanka, despite numerous
commitments, has not made enough progress toward accountability,
justice, and political solution, nor has it taken sufficient measures to
guarantee the nonrecurrence of the past patterns of violations against
the Eelam Tamil people; and
Whereas similar conflicts have successfully been democratically, peacefully, and
legally resolved by exercising the right to self-determination by the
people in countries such as South Sudan, Montenegro, East Timor, Bosnia,
Eritrea, and Kosovo via independence referendums with support from the
United States and other countries: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) urges the United States to strengthen diplomatic
channels with the Eelam Tamils and collaborate toward peace and
stability in the South Asian region of the Indo-Pacific;
(2) urges the United States and the international community
to advocate for and protect the political rights of the Eelam
Tamil people and work toward a permanent political solution
based on their right to self-determination that is
democratically and peacefully approved by them through a
universally accepted process of independence referendum; and
(3) recognizes the genocide against the Eelam Tamil people
by Sri Lanka.
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