An open letter to TNA Parliamentarians:
TULF calls upon TNA to save innocent Tamils trapped in Vanni
I call upon the 22 Tamil National Alliance Parliamentarians to do
their duty or to honourably 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.
V. Anandasangaree |
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 unfair and
unimplementable demands.
TNA advice
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
ethic problem, they might have succeeded.
I extended my invitation to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Dr. M.
Karunanity four years back to pay a visit to Sri Lanka,. Let us not
forget that the President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself invited the Chief
Minister Dr. M. Karunanithy, 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.
Agony
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 this 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 neighbouring districts of
Mannar, Vavuniya and Mullaithivu.
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.
Human Rights Violations
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 Cease Fire 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 downpour 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 "umbilicus 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 concern seem to be saving the LTTE
under the pretext of stopping the war. A TNA Parliamentarian had said in
Parliament recently that 55,000 children from 190 schools are not
attending school.
Internally Displaced Persons in Kilinochchi |
Teachers at war
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 6,000 children do not know their alphabet.
The MP did not tell how teachers on the Government's pay roll are
fighting in the war for the LTTE. These MPs' 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.
Everyday 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 predominantly 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 8,000
students who sat for the G.C.E. O/L examination held recently, to
undergo 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.
Tamil Nadu silence
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 whatsoever. 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.
V. Anandasangaree, President TULF |