Tuesday, 21st October 2014
EU court gives LTTE something to cheer for
The Court of Justice of the European Union's decision to annul the sanctions imposed on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is of concern. The Tamil terrorist group, though militarily defeated by the Sri Lankan Government in 2009, has not been obliterated. It is active in foreign shores, receives support from the Tamil diaspora, and remains a threat to post-war reconciliation efforts. At a time such as this, the EU court's decision is, if nothing else, a morale-booster for the LTTE. It strengthens the silly argument that the separatist outfit is not a terrorist organisation but a resistance force, and adds muscle to the group’s lobbying efforts elsewhere to remove itself from terror listings. For example, in this country, a few Tamil Nadu leaders have used the opportunity to call upon New Delhi to lift the ban on the LTTE. It has been rightly ignored and there is no reason for the European ruling to have any bearing on India's long-held position on the group. India was the first country to blacklist the LTTE in 1992, after the Tigers assassinated former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Notably, the EU was the last to proscribe the LTTE in 2006.
Thankfully, the EU court's ruling will have little on-the-ground impact for the LTTE, for the time being. Though the court has annulled the sanctions, it has kept the group's assets temporarily frozen. This is because it is aware that the group may be blacklisted again and that it would like to “ensure the effectiveness of any possible future freezing of funds”. Importantly, the LTTE has been removed from the sanctions list on “procedural grounds”. The court found that the European Council's 2006 decision to impose the sanctions was not based “on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities” as required by the law. It was based partly on “factual imputations derived from the Press and the internet” and partly on “decisions of Indian authorities”. In the first case, the media reports were rejected because they had not been directly examined; in the second case, the Indian decisions were dismissed because, according to the court, Indian laws did not ensure the “protection of the rights of defence and of the right to effective judicial protection equivalent to that guaranteed at EU level”. Note that the court has not ruled on the validity of the LTTE's terror tag (a point that it has painstakingly sought to reiterate); it has merely said that the sanctions were imposed on weak evidence. In other words, if it gets strong evidence against the LTTE, the group goes back on the blacklist. This is where the Sri Lankan authorities come in. They must put together a strong case.
For now, the LTTE will seek to portray the decision as a legal victory. But even this is a tenuous argument as the group's primary claim against the sanctions — that it is not subject to the EU's anti-terrorism laws since it was involved in an “armed conflict” with the Sri Lankan Government — has been struck down. In some ways then, the EU court's decision to almost free the Tamil Tiger seems like yet another way to bully Colombo. As the Sri Lankan President has pointed out, it is no coincidence that the judgement came the same week that the EU threatened to ban Sri Lankan fish imports to Europe.
From : http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/not-a-sensible-decision.html
