Stop GOSL Atrocities Against the Tamil Minority
PRESS RELEASE
May 29, 2006
Stop Sri Lankan Government (GOSL) Atrocities Against Tamil Minority.
In recent weeks, hundreds of Tamil civilians, including women and children, have been murdered with impunity in GOSL-controlled areas of the predominantly Tamil-speaking North East (NE) by Sri Lankan security forces and paramilitaries. In one case, nearly 20 Tamils, including infants, were murdered.
Senior Tamil political and civic leaders and journalists have been favored targets. Many Tamils have also been victims of GOSL aerial bombing and artillery attacks on civilian areas, and of security force-supported mob violence aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the historically Tamil city of Trincomalee.
Scandinavian Cease-Fire Monitors have declared that members of the GOSL forces and paramilitaries are involved in extra-judicial killings.
Under the 2002 Cease-Fire Agreement (CFA), and as affirmed at the February, 2006 Geneva meeting, the GOSL should have disarmed all paramilitaries. Activities of paramilitaries are currently the biggest threat to the peace process.
The killings are continuing and Tamil civilians in the NE are being terrorized by design. Even international NGOs helping Tamils have recently become targets. Now, the GOSL armed forces are forcibly preventing Tamil civilians from fleeing for safety to areas in the NE outside GOSL control, or to India. The GOSL has also failed to provide relief to tens of thousands of newly displaced Tamils in the NE.
As usual, no one has been charged in the killings. This is hardly surprising since GOSL forces, including the Police, are 99% from the Sinhala majority, and President Rajapakse and his allies have taken a very hard line, ruling out power-sharing or devolution arrangements for the Tamils in the NE.
Moreover, it was Mr. Rajapakse and his allies who, in 2005, destroyed the US-sponsored scheme for the distribution of humanitarian tsunami aid to Tamils in the NE. The NE suffered over 60% of the total tsunami damage in Sri Lanka, on top of the damage from years of civil war.
If the CFA and the peace process are to be saved, extra -judicial killings and other violations of the human rights of Tamils must end and those responsible must be punished, and paramilitaries must be disarmed.
We call on the US Administration to ensure that these actions are implemented immediately by the Government of Sri Lanka.
Association of Tamil Americans
Federation of Tamil Association of North America (FeTNA)– USA
Illankai Tamil Sangam – California, USA
Illankai Tamil Sangam – Florida, USA
Illankai Tamil Sangam – USA
Ilankai Tamil Sangam – Houston, Texas, USA
Ohio Tamil Association – Ohio, USA
Tamil Refugees Rehabilitation Organization - California
Tamil Youth Organization - USA
Tamil Welfare and Human Rights Committee – District of Columbia, USA
World Tamil Organization - Illinois
World Tamil Women Organization – USA
World Tamil Coordinating Committee – USA
| 
Home