In an e-mail interview to TV channel Times Now, the political
head of LTTE - B Nadesan - has called the eviction of people from
their homeland a calculated ploy by the Lankan government to uproot
Tamils from their traditional habitat.
Nadesan writes:
"I ask if the UN, or India, or any other country
would ever promote uprooting and relocating the people of Gaza
as a solution? And the Tamil people are expected to willingly
rush to these barbed wired internment camps in these surrounding
situations? Is this what UN, India and other nations are
envisioning for Tamils? The human shield term is a propaganda
used towards uprooting the Tamil people from their traditional
habitat. The Tamil people have lived here for generations and
want to continue living here and make a livelihood in these
lands. The Sri Lankan Government, UN and other international
community's statements that claim to seek the well being of
Tamil people - in uprooting them to forcibly and put them in
barbed wired military run camps is unprecedented... As India
also continues express calls for safe passage of civilians and
lukewarm calls for truce, these are seen as temporary measures
and a blessing to continue the military onslaught on the Tamil
Homeland by Colombo...
India and UN will be in no position to ask Sri Lanka to
adhere to these empty promises of resettlement in the future.
Remember that the new uprooting is being proposed while
thousands of Tamil people in Jaffna have been waiting for over a
decade to be re-settled. Sri Lankan government has refused to
adhere to the dignity, security and safety of even of Tamils who
have been living in cities like Colombo for generations.
The Sri Lankan government promises to the international
community of resettling Tamils will be broken at the same speed
soon before the promised assistance funds are made available to
the Sri Lankan government coffers that are already facing a
crunch of foreign reserves due to vast military expenditures."
The LTTE has also, for the first time, condemned the UN for its
latest report accusing the Tigers of forcibly holding people back.
Nadesan said that the United Nations has given a recent report
without any first hand information. The reality, he said, was that
Tamil people do not want to move to UN and Sri Lankan refugee camps.
"The UN was already forced to abandon the Tamil people last
year when the Sri Lankan government asked all the UN and NGO
staff to leave Vanni last year, in order to carry on its war
without witnesses. It is regrettable that the UN Secretary
General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes was not provided a
safe passage to come to Vanni and see the plight of the
civilians first hand and see if they are being forcibly held.
The people are staying here at their own will. They want peace
and security right where they live and do not want to move into
any UN and Sri Lanka government planned camps - internment
camps, as described by the Human Rights Watch on Feb 20th."
[see also Sathyam
Commentary
Nadesan Satyendra on The Politics of Humanitarian
Intervention. "
-
having
refused to admit to the horrific truth that faced with the
unity of a whole people in their struggle for freedom from
alien Sinhala rule, Sri Lanka has resorted to the anti
guerrilla strategy of the genocidal destruction
of that people, in other words, the civilians, women and
children;
- having suggested that
Tamil civilians are 'trapped in the fighting in the Vanni'
when in truth Tamil civilians are not 'trapped in the
fighting' or in the crossfire but are being
deliberately targeted and killed by Sri Lanka armed forces;
the co-chairs now propose a
'humanitarian operation', assisted by the United States
Pacific Command (US PACOM) to evacuate civilians 'trapped in
the fighting' in the Vanni....
(Again) in October
2008, when Tamil civilians were being targeted and killed by
Sinhala Sri Lanka's armed forces which New Delhi had armed and
trained, Mr.Mukherjee urged his Parliamentary colleagues
that in their anxiety to protect Tamil civilians, they should
not forget the strategic importance of Sri Lanka to India's
interests. Now that Tamil villages have been bombed and shelled
and Tamil civilians have been driven from their homes
into so called 'welfare villages' which they cannot leave,
and Tamil armed resistance to Sinhala rule has been weakened,
Mr.Mukherjee has formally offered assistance to 'friendly Sri
Lanka' to evacuate Tamil civilians somehow 'caught up' in
the battle zone! And Sri Lanka has accepted the offer coming as
it does from a 'friendly country' which had been told by India
that ' we will look after your security concerns, if you do not
look around.' After all what are good friends for if they cannot
help each other in time of need...
Humanitarian intervention'
to prevent the humanitarian tragedy that is taking place
in the Tamil homeland, had it been early, would have been kind.
But the belated attempts that are being made today expose not
the humanitarian concerns of the international actors but the
strategic interests that impel the international actors to act
the way they do...
more ]
