; 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