[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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