THE VOICE OF JUSTICE
Date: 28.08.2025.
To: The President, United Nations Human Rights Council
The High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR
Copy to:
All Member States of the UN Human Rights Council for the term 2025–2027
RE: Seeking Intervention by the International Community for a Lasting Resolution
We, the Eelam Tamils, declare to the world through the "Voice of Justice" campaign that we are a nation, rightful heirs to a defined traditional homeland, nationhood, and the inalienable right to self-determination.
We sign this petition, reaffirming — as a symbol of our steadfast struggle — our demand for a permanent political solution that upholds these just aspirations, as expressed in the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, the Thimpu Principles, and the Pongu Thamizh Declaration.
Since recorded history, the Tamil and Sinhala peoples have been two distinct nations with their own homelands and sovereignty on the island of Lanka, until British colonisation forcibly merged them into a single administrative unit in 1833. This colonial injustice laid the groundwork for our present tragedy.
Ignoring this historical fact, in 1948 the entire governance of the island was handed over to the Sinhalese under the guise of numerical majority. This enabled Sinhala chauvinists to strengthen their hold and initiate a state-sponsored genocide against the Tamil population — a genocide that continues in various forms even today.
We believe the British Empire bears primary responsibility for this injustice. By dismantling Tamil sovereignty and merging the two nations into a single entity solely for administrative convenience, Britain handed the Tamil nation over to its oppressors and bears ultimate responsibility for the genocide that followed.
The peaceful freedom movements of the Tamil people were repeatedly suppressed with an iron fist by successive Sinhala Theravada-Buddhist governments on the island of Ceylon, which was later unilaterally renamed Sri Lanka, even as those same governments provided state support to the violent campaigns of Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinists against the Tamils.
We believe that the current JVP regime, operating under the name "National People's Power," is also no exception to the narrative that promotes the island as a promised land for the chosen people of Sinhala Theravada Buddhists.
The Tamil people, expressing their political aspiration for independence, effectively gave an overwhelming democratic mandate in 1977 to the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, which aimed to reconstitute their sovereign state based on their inalienable right of self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
The armed resistance of the Tamil people emerged and evolved as a last-resort defence when the Sri Lankan state used military force to crush their non-violent movements. As the struggle grew, the Tamils established a de facto state and administered more than 75% of their homeland.
In 2009, at Mullivaikkal, more than 146,000 innocent Tamil civilians were either killed or subjected to enforced disappearance, leaving them unaccounted for, in the genocidal war systematically carried out by the Sinhala-chauvinist state. Hundreds of thousands more sustained injuries, with many left permanently disabled, while several thousand were arbitrarily arrested and detained. The armed struggle for national liberation was crushed with the direct support of various global and regional powers that were locked in a geopolitical game.
A lasting political solution to the national question of the Tamil people will only be achievable if the international community recognises their distinct sovereignty based on the principles of homeland, nationhood, and the right to self-determination at a global level.
We bring to the attention of global humanity that, for the past 16 years since 2009, the successive Sinhala-chauvinist governments that have come to power have failed to put forward any solution to the Tamil national question.
At the same time, we also bring to the attention of global humanity that, through military and intelligence structures, the Tamil people are subjected to divide-and-rule tactics, while conspiracies are orchestrated to prevent them from establishing their rightful political leadership.
Therefore, we request that the following issues be implemented under the monitoring and oversight of the international community:
1. Justice and accountability for genocide and other international crimes
a) The right of families and next of kin to know the truth about persons subjected to enforced disappearances must be fully upheld and realised through an international justice mechanism.
b) The evidence and testimonies of the affected people must be collected and preserved by an independent international mechanism, beyond the reach of Sri Lankan sovereignty.
c) The member states of the UN Human Rights Council must urgently act during the September 2025 session to adopt a resolution establishing a robust international justice mechanism on Sri Lanka for the crime of genocide, as demanded in the petition dated 12 August and endorsed by 56 dignitaries from the Tamil homeland — including bishops, religious leaders, civil society activists, and political representatives.
d) Sri Lanka’s state responsibility for genocide must be brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), known as the World Court, under the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with the maximum temporal, substantive, and territorial scope permitted under the Convention, for adjudication to ensure both prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.
e) In accordance with the UN Genocide Convention, a mandate must be issued to investigate both the special intent and the acts of genocide. Furthermore, military and state officials already identified as responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes must be held individually criminally accountable before an international court. Should the International Criminal Court (ICC) lack temporal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed before 1 July 2002, a special International Criminal Tribunal for Sri Lanka (ICT for Sri Lanka) must be established to prosecute genocide and other international crimes.
f) The current OHCHR Sri Lanka Accountability Project (OSLAP) should be upgraded into a fully-fledged International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) to comprehensively collect and preserve all evidence, including that required to establish both state responsibility and individual criminal responsibility, ensuring a complete and independent international investigation.
g) Travel bans have already been imposed on certain Sri Lankan military officials implicated in crimes against humanity and war crimes in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and possibilities have also emerged for legal action under the principle of Universal Jurisdiction. These measures must include the crime of genocide, and other states too must undertake similar actions.
2. Mass graves: international investigation and victims’ own justice mechanisms.
a) The relatives of those subjected to enforced disappearance and the victims of mass graves insist on an international justice mechanism because the domestic processes proposed by the Sri Lankan government have failed to deliver justice and never will. At the same time, we are deeply concerned that the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) is being presented as a credible mechanism, endorsed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council. Similarly, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is giving some recognition to the OMP, portraying it as if it were a process for Tamils who have been denied justice locally. We strongly emphasise that neither the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights nor the ICMP should validate or lend credibility to any process under Sri Lanka’s government control, nor should our testimonies or data be shared with them. Sri Lanka’s domestic mechanisms cannot provide justice for us. Instead, there is a risk that successive governments will misuse such data to impose new forms of repression. Only international justice mechanisms can be trusted. Therefore, we call for the creation of an Independent, Impartial, International Mechanism (IIIM) as a step towards a comprehensive international justice process. The next session of the UN Human Rights Council must advance towards the next level of international justice beyond the current OHCHR procedures.
b) Although successive Sri Lankan governments claim to handle their affairs through domestic mechanisms, the constitution of that state was created without our democratic mandate, excluding us, and entrenched in a unitary and chauvinist foundation. Therefore, its sovereignty is illegitimate in our view. The international community must not approach our issue by treating such illegitimate sovereignty as legitimate. Accordingly, we, the victims, reject entirely the Sri Lankan government’s mechanisms, which carry out only superficial inquiries into enforced disappearances and mass graves. At the same time, while the international community urges the implementation of such mechanisms, it must not force us to accept them as genuine processes. Hence, as victims, we call upon the international community to introduce alternative means that enable us to establish our own independent mechanisms for testimony and forensic evidence collection, outside the sovereignty of Sri Lanka. The doors of justice must be opened somewhere. As victims, we must be supported to safeguard and preserve our testimonies and forensic evidence beyond Sri Lanka's control, so that when a proper international judicial investigation takes place, we can submit them in a manner that meets the standards for admissibility. In this regard, the international community must also extend assistance in coordination with the Eelam Tamil diaspora, the nearby Tamil Nadu state government, and human rights organisations.
c) It is not appropriate for the international community to rely on the Sri Lankan government’s Archaeological Department for excavating mass graves or handling the preservation of remains collected according to forensic procedures, as it is a biased institution. The Sinhala-chauvinist government’s Archaeological Department is a fraudulent instrument of distortion that implants narratives in the minds of the people, justifying and sustaining genocide. Therefore, in accordance with international justice procedures as outlined in The Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Grave Protection and Investigation, all such actions must be carried out entirely independent of Sri Lanka, with binding safeguards, to ensure they remain beyond the sovereignty of Sri Lanka. At the same time, the international community must also provide technical assistance to the victims, enabling them to pursue their own justice mechanisms.
3. Halt structural and cultural genocide: compel the Sri Lankan government
a) All forms of land grabs carried out under the pretexts of the Department of Archaeology, Department of Wildlife Conservation, Department of Forest Conservation, Mahaweli Development Authority, and the Coast Conservation and Coastal Resources Management Department must be immediately stopped. At the same time, the lands of our people who have been forcibly displaced must be fully restored to their rightful owners.
b) All Sinhala settlements established under state-sponsored colonisation schemes, which aim to distort the demographic composition and territorial integrity of the Tamil homeland, must be removed, and the processes of Sinhalicisation and Buddhicisation — including the imposition of Buddhist shrines and symbols that distort the cultural and heritage landscape — must be stopped.
c) The Sri Lankan military, which has carried out massacres of Tamils, continues to occupy the Tamil homeland and sustain structural genocide. It must be immediately withdrawn from the Tamil homeland, and the region must be demilitarised.
4. Guarantee normalcy as a prerequisite conducive measure before achieving a permanent political solution
a) All Tamil political prisoners who have been imprisoned and detained for a prolonged period must be immediately and unconditionally released.
b) The lands that have been seized and occupied by Sri Lanka’s unitary state’s central government ministries and departments must be immediately returned to their rightful owners.
c) Journalists must be permitted to continue their independent media work.
5. Achieve a permanent political solution for the national liberation of Eelam Tamils
a) The Eelam Tamils’ rights to a distinct homeland, nationhood, and self-determination must be recognised.
b) Constitutional amendments such as the 6th Amendment, which aim to repress the Tamils, as well as laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and the controversial Online Safety Act, must be immediately repealed. At the same time, the rights of the Tamil people — including the freedom of thought, freedom of speech, the right to resources, the right to justice, and the right to movement — must be firmly recognised and guaranteed.
c) The Eelam Tamils’ traditional homeland, nationhood, and right to self-determination must be recognised. An irreversible political solution must be achieved immediately through the arbitration of the international community. If such a solution cannot be achieved or implemented within a reasonable timeframe, we, the Tamil people, urge the international community through this signature campaign to pave the way for conducting an internationally supervised referendum. This referendum will enable us to determine our own destiny and establish a lasting solution that enables us to govern ourselves.
We, the undersigned — as victims of a protracted genocide and on behalf of the Tamil people in the North and East of the island — submit this petition through the Homeland Action Front, and respectfully urge your early action.
