A Referendum To Repeal The 13th Amendment?
R.M.B. Senanayake
The Government seems to be toying with the idea of holding a national referendum on the abolition of or changes in the 13th amendment. But can an ethno-religious majority decide against the rights of a minority by a majority vote? A certain institutional structure has been fashioned to resolve the grievances of the Tamil minority and to protect their rights with regard to their language, religion, culture, land and personal security of the minority. They have for long protested at what they called discrimination against them by the Sinhala dominated State. There is a UN Declaration called the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The Tamil minority has been complaining that they have been disadvantaged and discriminated against since 1956. They say their language and cultural rights have been denied and point to past attacks on the Hindu writers Conference. They say they have to deal with the State in Sinhala even in the areas where they are in a majority. They also say they have been deprived of personal security of life and limb and point to violence against them in 1958, 1977 and 1983. They point out that the Sinhala majority State failed to protect them from such violence. So they ask for police powers in areas where they constitute a majority. They say they cannot trust the Sinhala majority Police to act impartially. They also have been pointing out that there has been discrimination against them in the alienation of State land and want land powers to protect themselves from encroachments on their lands by the Sinhala dominated State. They also allege that there is settlement of Sinhalese in their traditional areas of occupation to make them a minority in their areas of habitation- something not permitted in UN Declarations. It is to resolve these problems and prevent discrimination that they want some measure of self government while being subject to the over-all sovereignty of the national State. They have also alleged in the past that they were discriminated against in entry to universities through the unscientific standardization of scores which was later altered to district quotas for admission to the universities.
