The trial of five Dutch-Sri Lankan Tamils, accused of raising funds for the separatist group LTTE (Tamil Tigers), is expected to end in The Hague on 21 October. If the men are found guilty as charged of overseeing an international criminal and terrorist organisation involved in arson, bombings and murder, they will face up to 20 years in prison.
The prosecution claims the men were responsible for a climate of fear and brainwashing, coercing young Tamils into supporting a murderous regime in Sri Lanka. The defence says they were nothing short of freedom fighters; heroes working in the cause of an oppressed minority struggling under a brutal and genocidal government.
Fear
The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora (9000-13,000 people) is awaiting tomorrow's decision with bated breath. How many of them were coerced into donating 2000 euros per year to the LTTE, as the prosecution maintains happened to each family, is difficult to know – few were willing to give testimony. Unsurprisingly, equally few were prepared to talk to the media – those who have spoken claim to fear the Dutch police, who earlier this year sent letters to all Tamils living in the Netherlands informing them of their investigation, and warning they were under scrutiny. ‘Many of us felt intimidated, so most people don’t really dare to show up here together in public,’ one Tamil supporter told RNW outside the court.
Live coverage of trial
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Sri Lankan army
Also watching keenly for tomorrow's verdict are sectors of the ruling Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka. Most eagerly anticipate a conviction and with it an inference that the Tamil Tigers are the sole criminal party in the country's bloody conflict, not the state military. The Sri Lankan government has come under intense international pressure this year to fully investigate allegations of genocide and war crimes committed by its army in the closing months of the conflict in 2009. It welcomes any foreign judgement of its arch foe the LTTE, instead of itself.
The Netherlands has used its laws of universal jurisdiction to prosecute the case. This happens only once or twice a year in the country's specialist war crimes court, as such The 'Tamil 5' represent a rare case of an international prosecution in The Hague taking place in a Dutch court.
Macro vs micro
Some voices in the international legal community have expressed distaste for the case being taken up at Dutch national level in the first place. The Paleis van Justitie (Palace of Justice) is a Dutch criminal court, which according to the defence team from the Böhler Advocates group, was ill-equipped to understand the complexities of a 30-year civil war waged 8000 km away. The case should be decided on a question of definition, they argued: If one sees the Tamil Tigers as a liberation movement then raising funds for it or being a member of it cannot be criminal.
Prosecutors have taken a more honed perspective, focussing on the documents and testimony relating to the individual behaviour of the men on trial. They maintain, for example, that there are or have been, 20 classrooms across the Netherlands educating Tamil children. There is nothing unusual in that for a strong expat community, but these, according to the prosecution, were used to “brainwash (children) with the violent ideology of the LTTE,” by teaching them to “make pictures of bombs and grenades,” said Prosecutor Ward Ferdinandusse.
The men ran organisations like the Tamil Youth Organisation and the Dutch Tamil Arts and Culture Organisation, which seek municipal subsidies. This is money that, according to the prosecutors, has been used to lubricate the war machine.
Judgement
The final hearing is scheduled for 13:00 CET Friday, if found guilty sentencing will follow immediately for the five.
(rk/ab/ld)
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Look at the list of the organisations they use. Exclusive to Tamils. Where ever in the world, Tamils opt to get isolated and live in ghettos while brain washing the next generation in to violence. This is height of the inferiority complex.
When we will stop this and integrate to the societies we live in? Is that such a bad idea that I should get beaten up for saying it?
The reality is, none of us in Europe / Americas will ever return to Sri Lanka. But for psychological reasons we want poor Tamils in Sri Lanka to fight the Army and get killed. we never collected money to develop the lives of tamils there but only to buy weapons.
The Dutch ought to know better because they were there in Lanka for 150 yars, after the Portuguese, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even during that period the Tamils had a separate autonomus Tamil kingdom with internal jursidiction, just as the Kandyan and Ruhunu kingdoms in the hills and in the south. Which is the more murderous: the LTTE,a non-state party which killed some 5000 Sinhal civilians or the sectarian Sinhala Buddhist state which killed some 160,000 Tamil civilians over 30 years, 60,000 in the last 5 months alone from Jan to May 2009 under the present President, which has raised alarm bells in the UN and in world capitals with strong suggestions of war crimes being committed by the UNSG's Panel?! Was the UK Channel 4 video ever aired in Holland. Seeing is believing.
Our government has made a huge mistake in allowing these criminal terrorists in our country. If the government had only investigated what the LTTE stood for we could have stopped this illegal emigration to our country at the earliest stages. Now we have to accommodate and feed them at our tax payers expense while these terrorists are engaged in all the criminal activities on our soil and behaving as though this country belongs to them. I hope that someone in our government will have the guts to say enough is enough and send these terrorists back to where they came from. We don't need these people coming and disrupting the peaceful environment and tarnishing the image of our beautiful country.
I hope the Dutch people will stand up to these terrorist thugs and influence the Dutch government to take necessary action to chase these fake refugees from our country. If they had a problem in Sri Lanka then these should have gone to India as refugees because its the closest country - instead of ending up in Europe, America, Canada and Australia. Its a known fact that these fake refugees have paid large sums of money to human trafficking criminals to bring them to the west and Australia in unseaworthy vessels because they are simply economic refugees who wanted to take the "back door" to migrate to these countries instead of following the correct process of migration through the respective embassies in Sri Lanka. It is also believed that several Indian Tamils also join these fake refugees from Sri Lanka to come over to our countries as Sri Lanka Tamils. And now they are living on our tax payers money like beggars and creating havoc in our country. I sincerely hope that the Dutch people will realize this fact soon. And if the Dutch government doesn't take necessary action to send these people back, then and I hope the Dutch people will take matters to their own hands to chase these people back to where they came from.
I guess you did not read the article properly. They did not involved in any criminal activities in the country but did some fund raising. I guess you are in Grade 5 or may be one of the brain washed Sinhalese hiding in a Dutch Name..
The Tamil Separatist movement in Sri Lanka has been an extremely well orchestrated one. The entire "refugee" scenario was a staged from the outset to enable the LTTE's agents to first move Tamils through the "Back door" - i.e. finding their way as "boat people" - to Canada, USA and Australia and then demanding refugee status claiming they were facing "genocide" in Sri Lanka. These Western governments who were fooled by these fake claims, accepted these fellows without a slightest background check and are now saddled with all the criminal Tamils from Sri Lanka. The objective was to remain as refugees and receive government "handouts" or obtain residency and get employment - either way, the LTTE's agents forcibly extort a huge percentage of these peoples' earnings for the LTTE coffers. As everyone is now aware, the barbaric LTTE committed horrendous crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka with the support of this financing by the Tamil diaspora. Check the following link to view some of the atrocities committed by the ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorists : http://www.spur.asn.au/ltteatrp.htm
I wish every tamilian realises that LTTE was more a challenge to the Tamils interest than a boon. They wasted the years of dedication by tamils by driving it in the wrong direction which contradicts the culture and heritage of tamils over centuries!We are a more respectful and able community in the world than what they made us to look like. Unless we get past the RAW created LTTE, I don't think we can earn a respectful living in the struggle against the Sinhalese Chauvinism!
to begin with ,can you define what is chauvinism according to your IQ and not extracts from google ,dictionary etc... What is Your Definition ???
It another Dutch colonial attitude on oppressed minority that waged war to survive. Dutch prosecutors need see what happened when Tamil Tigers lost in May 2009. Is the Dutch court going to prosecute Sri Lankan generals masquerading as diplomats all over the world. It is ludicrous that officials accusing, Tamils teaching class rooms in Netherlands brain washing children how to make bombs. Dutch government better see how Muslim madaracess run class in Netherlands how extremism.
"....it is now accepted that peoples have a right to self-determination in three situations: where they are under colonial domination; where they are subject to alien military occupation; and where they are a distinct racial group denied equal access to government (so-called “racist regimes”). The rules of international law:
(a) Forbid a state in such circumstances from taking military or other coercive action to suppress the lawful exercise of the right to self-determination;
(b) Recognise that peoples exercising the right to self-determination have, in the last resort, a licence to engage in armed conflict to protect themselves, and to prevent the violent suppression of the exercise of the right to self-determination by the oppressor state.
United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Part 1 Article 1(1).
To this can be also added the "right to rebellion" under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "in the face of oppression". This is exactly what is unfolding right now in Libya under the Arab Spring.
“One searches in vain for an authoritative definition of “terrorism”…[T]here is no single definition that is accepted internationally. The absence of an authoritative definition means that, at least at the margins, ‘the term is open to politicised manipulation, conjecture and polemical interpretation." Dennings Law Journal by Mark Muller
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