Nordic Greens ‘Hearing’ in EU Parliament, a mere gimmick - Ambassador Aryasinha

Ravinatha Aryasinha

Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU Ravinatha Aryasinha has made the following comment about the so called “hearing” held in the European Parliament on June 1 titled “Sri Lanka Two years after the war: will the perpetrators be brought to justice?”

The event held yesterday at the European Parliament with a handful of MEPs attending has no official standing and is a mere party event organized by the European Nordic Left/Nordic Greens Left (GUE/NGL), a fringe political party which has 35 out of 736 members in the European Parliament.

The Nordic Greens, together with other Left parties played a leading role three weeks ago in moving for an ‘urgency’ resolution on Sri Lanka seeking the “immediate establishment of an international justice mechanism on Sri Lanka” to give effect to the Darusman Report, which attempt was rejected in a formal plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on May 12.

Yesterday’s event was a mere gimmick to cover up for the loss of face suffered at the recent ‘urgency’ by the Nordic Greens, as well as other LTTE sympathizers in the diaspora and INGOs who backed the move.

It was largely attended by members of the pro-LTTE Tamil community, and several well known longstanding LTTE activists such as Vai Gopalasamy alias Viko from Madras who is no longer an MP and Selvarajah Gajendran, former MP from Sri Lanka who was not even given nomination by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to contest the 2010 general elections in Sri Lanka.