JM puts Muslim devolution rights in grave jeopardy – Rauff Hakeem
Although the Government touts the Joint Mechanism as a mere operational arrangement to distribute Tsunami aid, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress Leader Rauff Hakeem told the media today that the "Manner in which the document was finalised had very serious implications in the context of substantive devolution arrangements in a future resumption of peace talks.
Speaking at Party headquarters Dar-us-Salaam in
He drove home the point repeatedly that these were the very aspects he sought to secure safeguards against in the formulation stage of the JM and in its implementation stage.". But with Parliament being adjourned, even then we were not able to place on record our position vis—a-vis the JM.
We very categorically insisted that the Muslim community can not be overlooked being a principal party in determining what should be in the document. This has been consistently denied to the Muslim community despite our demands and requests to the government, facilitators, and our complaints to the donor community. Now we find that the way in which the document has been finalised, it has serious implication for the future peace process as well for the Muslim community, he added.
He said the SLMC will immediately launch an awareness campaign among the Muslim people, the affected people in the areas and thereafter decide what its response would be.
Right now I must say the party is of the position that extending our cooperation to this mechanism would be quite difficult given the present composition of the document. Therefore, there may have to be some opportunity for us to raise these issues with the parties concerned, the government and the LTTE. When I met with the President, I did emphasise to her that unless we are able to see in black and white what the document contains.
"We find that some details which have been revealed to us have serious implication for the future of the Muslim community in the peace process. Therefore, we are exercising maximum restraint in taking a total rejection stance because, it also involves the rebuilding of infrastructure and the damaged private properties of the affected people, we would give due consideration to all of that," Mr.Hakeem said, adding that however, "in the mean time we can not compromise the community's basic rights to be consulted, to be involved in the process.
And that has been denied to us and that major blow will also have serious repercussions for the co-existence among communities and therefore as a responsible party we will start our awareness campaigns since the details are only now made available to us, and this has been hatched in total secrecy for so long.
We have been asking our colleagues, who for a variety of reasons had gone and joined the government, to re-unite with us and bring substantial pressure so that at least we would be able to prevent this happening in this manner.
Once again I must reiterate that we are not in league with some of the parties which are totally rejecting any arrangement with the LTTE. We feel that we should have some kind of a mechanism, but this is not the way to go about it, and therefore, I must say that we can not cooperate with this arrangement as it is, that's our position, and we want to make it very clear.
"What we are trying to say here is that by basic denial of our rights to participate in this document as a party, we have not been able to make our input into it and now we find the implications of some of these provisions are going to visit us in a future peace process as well. Therefore, if we did participate without any protest about these matters, without reserving our rights to or without getting the parties who have already signed it to acknowledge that these matters are not going to be taken as a given" it would be a gross abuse of our peoples trust in us.
``They are looking at us as bystanders and this is not acceptable. We cannot participate in it,'' Rauff Hakeem of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress told a news conference, a day after the deal was signed.
The Dec. 26 tsunami hit the eastern coast where most Muslims live. Hakeem said his party will appeal for an amendment to the deal to include Muslims, the country's second-largest minority after the Tamils.
Sri Lanka's economically powerful Muslims comprise 1.3 million of the island's 19 million people, and like the Tamils, they want autonomy in areas where they are the majority. Hakeem's party has six seats in the 225-member Parliament.
Hakeem said the tsunami aid sharing deal may set a precedent and reduce Muslim chances for autonomy when a final deal is agreed upon between the rebels and the government to end the country's civil war.
The Tiger rebels generally don't trust the Muslims, because they see them as siding with the government.
During the two decades of war, the rebels carried out systematic killings of Muslims, including an August 1990 massacre of 130 people at two mosques on the same day. The rebels have driven out tens of thousands of Muslims from the northern
The aid-sharing deal has already been rejected by the Marxists and the powerful Buddhist monks.
The pact paves the way for the government and rebels to share US$3 billion (euro2.4 billion) in foreign tsunami aid, ensuring that the Tamil-dominated north and east - parts of which are under rebel control - get a fair share of funds.
Critics say the deal raises the rebels' legitimacy in the international community, boosting their separatist agenda and undermining the country's sovereignty. The Marxists pulled their lawmakers out of President Chandrika Kumaratunga's ruling coalition over the issue, reducing her formerly majority coalition to a minority in Parliament. The government could collapse if other parties side with the Marxists in a no-confidence vote.
A 2002 Norway-brokered cease-fire halted the two-decade civil war between the Tigers and the government that left nearly 65,000 people dead. Subsequent peace talks have been deadlocked over rebel demands for wide autonomy.
The waves killed more than 31,000 people in
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