HR allegations against SL forces baseless:
LTTE atrocities taboo for some
Suraj A Bandara
The allegation that Sri Lankan security forces perpetrated mass
killings during the final phase of the war is baseless since over 9,000
LTTE cadres who were actively engaged in the war surrendered to the
Army. All these LTTE cadres would have been killed if the security
forces were fighting without considering rules of combat, Power and
Energy Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said before the Lessons Learnt
and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) yesterday.
He further said all these allegations are fabricated by certain local
and foreign organizations and politicians to put the blame on the Sri
Lankan Government. The embryo of Tamil terrorism was not laid in recent
history. Red Bana, Sarvodaya and TRRO organizations were systematically
establishing the notion of a separate Tamil homeland and the culmination
of their demand was the LTTE terrorism, he said.
After the war, a group of Sinhalese who migrated to Jaffna to settle
down were rousingly welcomed by the Tamil community as brothers. But
certain racist Tamil political parties are still protesting against the
Sinhala migration, he said.
'All the blunders are being done by the Tamil politicians and not by
the Tamil people. Tamil politicians should be responsible for the
bloodshed among all communities in the history," he said.
He said Sri Lanka was the only country that treated all the ethnic
communities equally.
Only one section of the crisis has been identified by the people.
Sinhalese were the grieved party due to this war. In the 1983 riot, all
Tamils who were discriminated by politically backed groups were returned
within six months but Sinhalese who were chased from the Jaffna
Peninsula and North and East regions are still deprived of their basic
human rights even to return to their residences where they were staying
for a long period, he said.
The Sinhalese who were chased from Jaffna under the LTTE's ethnic
cleansing project are still living in Mihinthale and Kurunegala areas.
Only Tamil displacement was highly emphasized and extensive media
attention was focused on them.
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