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Tamil United Liberation Front President V.
Anandasangaree in a statement called upon
Tamil National Alliance (TNA)
Parliamentarians to do their duty or
honourably vacate their seats in Parliament.
“They have fooled enough, the people whom
they claim to represent in Parliament,” he
told the TNA.
He also charged them of misleading the
international community, the people of Tamil
Nadu in particular. “Tamil Nadu if left
alone or properly briefed would have
contributed their best towards a workable
solution, without earning the displeasure of
the people of Sri Lanka and without causing
embarrassment to their own Central
Government with unfair and unimplementable
demands,” he added.
The LTTE is holding thousands of people to
ransom for the purpose of using them as
human shields for their protection and the
international community much concerned about
human rights violations is compelled to keep
silent about it, said the statement.
“The people of the Vanni want the war to
continue, because they want the war to end
with the defeat of the LTTE” the TULF leader
said.
He said: "The LTTE has lost the war and it
is ridiculous for anyone to still believe
that they will regain all what they have
lost.
If the LTTE is willing to lay down their
arms they can do so and negotiate with the
Government for a solution within a united
Sri Lanka, wherein all ethnic groups can
live as equals, enjoying all rights without
any form of discrimination what so ever".
Full text of the statement
"I call upon the 22 Tamil National Alliance
Parliamentarians to do their duty or to
honorably vacate their seats in Parliament.
They have fooled enough; the people whom
they claim to represent in Parliament, but
never championed their cause. Instead they
always defended the LTTE at whose mercy they
got elected fraudulently to Parliament. They
have misled the International Community, the
people of Tamil Nadu in particular.
Tamil Nadu if left alone or properly briefed
would have contributed their best towards a
workable solution, without earning the
displeasure of the people of Sri Lanka and
without causing embarrassment to their own
Central Government, with un-fair and
un-implementable demands. Unfortunately the
people of Tamil Nadu got misled by the
advice given by the TNA Parliamentarians.
Without demanding the war to stop, if they
had, in a friendly way, agitated for a
reasonable settlement of the ethnic problem,
they might have succeeded. I extended my
invitation to the Chief Minister of Tamil
Nadu Dr. M. Karunanidi four years back to
pay a visit to Sri Lanka. Let us not forget
that the President Mahinda Rajapakse himself
has invited the Chief Minister Dr. M.
Karunanidi a couple of months back when a
mass scale agitation was going on in Tamil
Nadu, to visit Sri Lanka and would have been
very happy, if the Chief Minister had
accepted the invitation, came to Sri Lanka
and offered to mediate. This is yet another
lost opportunity for which the TNA should
bear the blame for not making use of this
opportunity.
“What sin have we committed to undergo this
agony all these long years, extending to a
period of quarter of a century and how long
are we to endure this?”, ask the people of
Kilinochchi, who are all now displaced and
living at Dharmapuram, a small village in
the district of Kilinochchi. I know most of
them because, I lived with them and
represented them in Parliament for many
years. Apart from these more than a hundred
thousand people - men, women and children,
including the sick and the toddlers,
deprived of their normal life, had been
mercilessly driven like cattle into
Kilinochchi by the LTTE from the areas under
their control in the neighboring districts
of Mannar, Vavuniya and Mullaitivu. They
were pushed into Kilinochchi by the
withdrawing LTTE cadre, unable to confront
the advancing Government Forces. Left alone
most of them would have stayed in their
homes or could have gone to their respective
homes and saved whatever left over after
being looted or robbed. Instead they are
brought from far off places and squeezed
into small villages already over crowded
with the locally displaced persons from the
Kilinochchi district itself. The LTTE holds
these people to ransom for no fault of
theirs, but only for the sole purpose of
using them as human shield for their own
protection. The distress call of these
unfortunate people is not heard in Tamil
Nadu.
The International Community which is much
concerned of the Human Rights violations in
the LTTE held areas also, is compelled to
keep silent, perhaps due to their reluctance
to go against the demand of Tamil Nadu for a
ceasefire although it is very obvious that,
the demand is more in support of the LTTE,
than in the interest of the Tamils trapped
in the LTTE areas.
It is very unfortunate that Tamil Nadu is
refusing and the TNA is ignoring to respond
to the distress call of these two hundred
and fifty thousand people who are caught up
between the LTTE which is compulsorily
recruiting men and women only to sacrifice
them at the battle front and the deadly
snakes that are multiplying in their
thousands. Hundreds had been stung by snake
and many have died.
Leave aside the TNA, even nature is against
them. The down pour of rain is so heavy that
all areas are flooded and people have to
move from place to place in search of
highland to camp and to cook their food.
Apart from the snake menace the other one is
the mosquitoes with the threat of an
outbreak of malaria or dengue. I dare say
that all these sufferings of the people do
not seem to be of any concern for the TNA
Members of Parliament in Sri Lanka and some
leaders of Tamil Nadu, who were in the
fore-front of the recent uprising in Tamil
Nadu, most of whom take pride in boasting of
"umbilical code relationship", between the
Tamils of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. They
least know of the same relationship the
Sinhalese have with the Tamils of Madurai in
Tamil Nadu.
Their only concerns seem to be saving the
LTTE under the pretext of stopping the war.
A TNA Parliamentarian had said in Parliament
recently that 55000 children from 190
schools are not attending school. He did not
have the guts to tell the world as to why
this has happened?, Because of whom? And
where? To add to what he said, in the
Eastern Province more than 6000 children do
not know their alphabet. The MP did not tell
how teachers on the Government’s pay roll
are fighting in the war front for the LTTE.
These MP’s children are quite safe in
foreign countries having good education. The
irony is a TNA Member of Parliament whose
entire family is in Australia, recently
referred to me in Parliament as a traitor.
The people in Vanni want the war to
continue, because they want the war to end
with the LTTE defeated. The forces that had
marched forward about 200 miles liberating
the people all along, has only a few more
miles to go. The people only plead that the
forces should avoid civilian targets and
night time aerial bombings.
Eeryday a few dead bodies of the LTTE
fighters are handed over to the ICRC to be
delivered to the LTTE. They are young boys
and girls, children of poor parents
compulsorily recruited by the LTTE and sent
to the battle front with hardly any or very
little training.
One can understand the TNA Members of
Parliament remaining silent on this type of
matters merely to please the LTTE and to
save their seats in Parliament. But one
cannot understand as to why Tamil Nadu,
which is rich in culture and civilization,
God fearing and pious, always sympathetic
towards the Sri Lankan Tamils and proudly
boast of its "umbilicus code relationship"
with them, should remain silent without
raising one word of protest against the
cruel and uncivilized manner in which the
brutal LTTE is treating the innocent Tamils,
whom they are keeping under compulsion in a
pre-dominantly jungle area, infested with
snakes and mosquitoes, in chilly weather and
pouring rain, without timely food and proper
shelter, shifting their temporary abode from
place to place off and on like nomads.
It is traditional for the LTTE to take away
first, all what they need and only what is
remaining is distributed to the people. This
is happening even today. The TNA Members did
not protest when the LTTE ordered all those
8000 students who sat for the G.C.E(O/L)
examination held recently, to under-go
trainings while the Catholic Church
protested against the attempt of the LTTE to
take away some orphans from an orphanage run
by the church.
All what is mentioned here is only a minor
fraction of the sufferings of our people.
Why can’t Tamil Nadu, which is partly
responsible for the present situation, wake
up from its deep slumber and persuade them
or, if unyielding, warn them to release the
people to go anywhere they want..
If Tamil Nadu, adamantly keeps silent or out
of fear for a handful of pro-LTTE leaders of
Tamil Nadu and also if the TNA Members of
Parliament who misled Tamil Nadu and roused
the feelings of the people there, fail to
move them inspite of all these pleadings, I
have to look upon the expatriate Tamils who
had largely helped the LTTE to grow, with
substantial financial assistance, to
intervene and bring pressure on them to free
the people detained.
The LTTE has lost the war and it is
ridiculous for anyone to still believe that
they will regain all what they have lost.
If the LTTE is willing to lay down their
arms they can do so and negotiate with the
Government for a solution within a united
Sri Lanka, wherein all ethnic groups can
live as equals, enjoying all rights without
any form of discrimination what so ever.
Failure to do so, will only pave the way for
some unscrupulous elements to takeover, like
snakes taking up residence in the anthills
built by the labour of infinite number of
white-ants. The Government of Sri Lanka and
the International Community has a moral duty
to see that the Tamils are not allowed to
jump from the frying pan into the fire. I
assure the TNA Members of Parliament that I
sincerely feel that they have failed in
their mission and therefore to quit their
seats in Parliament. As for me I am not
interested in any office but my whole
interest is only on the people who are
suffering for the last quarter of a century.
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