THE University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), or UTHR(J), formed in 1988, is the Jaffna unit of a national organisation. At the time of its birth, Jaffna was a bloody theatre of war with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) on one side and a range of forces, varying from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to those who enjoyed government patronage, on the other. This placed a unique responsibility on the outfit and put it in an unenviable position.
For speaking the truth against the LTTE in particular and against all others who had an axe to grind against an invited foreign army, the UTHR(J) paid the price when one of its founders, Rajani Thiranagama, was brutally killed by the LTTE in September 1989, a day after the Indian government set the timeline for the departure of the IPKF. However, the loss did not deter the UTHR(J) from pursuing its objectives. In fact, it redoubled its efforts to challenge the external and internal terror and to create space for humanising the social and political spheres relating to the life of the Tamil community.
Though its public activities came to a standstill following Thiranagamas murder, the UTHR(J) continued to play its role as a conscience keeper by documenting, through its band of activists working underground, the human rights violations in the North and East and the forces behind them.
The UTHR(J) has won kudos from within and outside the island; its reports are valued highly not only for the details documented in them but for the valuable insights they offer on what the future holds. In May this year, its founder-members Rajan Hoole and Kopalasingham Sritharan were honoured with the 2007 Martin Ennals Award (MEA) for Human Rights Defenders.
The MEA is a unique collaboration among 11 of the worlds leading human rights organisations to give protection to human rights defenders worldwide. The jury is composed of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, International Federation for Human Rights, World Organisation Against Torture, International Service for Human Rights, Front Line, International Commission of Jurists, Diakonie Germany and International Alert, Huridocs.
Hans Thoolen, chairman of the MEAs jury, described the laureates as symbols of the human rights movement in their respective countries, where standing up for human rights and democracy is a dangerous activity and drew attention to their principled stand to cover effectively abuses committed by both sides in the conflict.
The MEA noted that at great personal risk Hoole and Sritharan reported on the effect of the armed conflict on children, women, minorities and displaced persons in the past 18 years. Often alone in exposing abuses by all parties, both men are reportedly on the LTTE hitlist. Since the assassination of Thiranagama, the two men have been forced to work underground for more than a decade, but their reports are well known in Sri Lanka and abroad.
In the course of its nearly two-decade-long existence, the organisation has faced innumerable obstacles, particularly in keeping alive a team of dedicated underground activists who procure accurate and impartial information on human rights violations in the conflict zone. Such is the LTTEs intolerance of the organisation that in the 1990s anyone who identified openly with it was forced to leave Jaffna.
The stated goals of the UTHR(J)s reports are1. To document human rights violations by all forces in order to bring about general awareness and to make violators accountable;
2. To bring out the human background in these violations through a portrayal of individual characters together with an analysis of social pressures and external circumstances governing their behaviour;
3. To leave behind a historical record of this crucial part of our history;
4. As responsible members of an academic institution and citizens of our community, we would like to express our opinions and make room for free expression and an edifying debate...
The organisation has produced voluminous documentation on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka in general and the North and the East in particular. It is a testimony to the spirit and efforts of the visible and invisible faces behind the organisation that rarely has anyone, be it state or non-state actors, challenged the facts, figures and assessments of the UTHR(J) reports.
B. Muralidhar ReddyCOMMents
COMMents
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