The Secretary General of the Tamil United Liberation Front and
Leader of the Opposition,
Appapillai Amirthalingam wrote to Sri Lanka President
J.R.Jayawardene on 10th August, 1983. The text of the letter read:
His Excellency J.R. Jayawardene
Esqr.
President, Colombo.
Your Excellency,
Since Your Excellency was
elected to power in July, 1977 I have had occasion to write
several letters to place before you various problems affecting
the Tamil people. My colleagues and I have met Your Excellency
and your ministers on numerous occasions to discuss matters
concerning our people. I wish to thank Your Excellency for the
unfailing courtesy of your replies to my letters and the
cordiality of the talks we had during the last six years.
As this may perhaps be the
last letter I write as Leader of the Opposition (which
office I got quite by fortuitous circumstances) I hope you will
pardon the length of this letter and my releasing it to the
press (the almighty censor willing).
1977 - 1983
The first letter I wrote to Your
Excellency was in August,1977 pleading for action to maintain
law and order and to safeguard the lives and property of the
Tamil people who were the victims of
planned violence
started by the Sinhala police in Jaffna on 16th August, 1977
and carried out with ruthless efficiency by Sinhala hoodlums
resulting in the death of about 300 Tamils, injury to over
10,000 people, raping of about 200 Tamil women, destruction and
looting of property belonging to Tamils worth about a billion
rupees and the driving out of their homes and evacuation to the
north and east of about 50,000 Tamil people.
There can be no more eloquent
testimony to the utter failure of the Government to solve this
problem than the fact that I am writing this letter, after six
years in the wake of violence and destruction against the person
and property of Tamil people more brutal and more complete than
in the past.
Over 100,000 Tamil people
have been displaced and driven to refugee camps, their
houses having been completely destroyed.
The destruction and plunder of
property belonging to Tamils will run into several billion
rupees. The loss of life
will exceed two thousand, though it is not yet possible to
fix the number with any certainty as every family arriving in
the north and east are coming with tales of cruel killing and
burning of men, women and children by Sinhala mobs and armed
forces.
There appears to be one
significant difference between the situation in 1977 and in
1983.
In 1977 the armed forces were
fairly disciplined but as Your Excellency is reported to have
told the New Delhi correspondent of the B.B.C. “the recent riots
revealed a serious lack of discipline in the armed forces and
there is strong anti-Tamil feeling among the troops and in some
cases they actually encouraged rioting”. (All India Radio news
bulletin, 8.8.83 morning). I will go further and say the
armed forces were directly
involved in the killing, looting and destruction of Tamils
and their property in Jaffna, Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Colombo and
other places.
The demand for a Separate
State
It has become the stock excuse
for all the violence against Tamils to say that it is due to the
demand for a separate state. How then does one account for the
violence against Tamils in Colombo, Amparai and other places in
1956 June? What
was the excuse for Emergency ‘58 and the Island wide
holocaust against
Tamils in 1958? It will be admitted that there was no
question of any demand for a separate state at that time.
The demand for a separate state is in fact the result of
grievances of the Tamil people, accumulated over quarter of a
century, including repeated communal riots in the Sinhala
provinces in the fifties followed by police and Army violence in
the northern and eastern provinces
in the sixties
and
seventies.
Your Excellency’s United
National Party itself in its 1977 Election manifesto identified
the grievances of the Tamil speaking people over Language,
Education, Colonisation, Employment and Economic development as
having driven some of them to demand a separate state. Having
diagnosed the disease correctly the Government failed to give
the correct treatment. Even where certain medicines were
prescribed they remained as prescriptions and were never
administered to the patient. Is it any surprise that the
condition has deteriorated over the last six years of Your
Excellency’s Government?
Language rights of Tamils
Ministers of your Government
have repeatedly said that this Government had granted the
language rights of the Tamils and that we should be grateful for
it. In 1958 Mr. Bandaranayake passed the Tamil Language (Special
Provisions) act which embodies the main principles of all
subsequent legislation on Tamil language rights. But neither he
nor the succeeding S.L.F.P. Government cared to implement the
act which remained a dead letter. On 6th January, 1966 Your
Excellency moved in Parliament the Tamil Language (special
provisions) regulations in accordance with the
Dudley Senanayake Chelvanayagam pact, on which the Tamil
Federal Party supported the U.N.P. to form the Government in
1965. But those regulations also were never implemented by the
U.N.P. Government or the United Front Government that followed.
The refusal of that Government to include those regulations in
the
1972 constitution and the walk out by Tamil members
including Mr. K.W. Devanayagam of the U.N.P. from the
constituent assembly are matters of history.
Your Government included certain
rights of the Tamil language in the
1978 constitution. Though these fall short of the official
status the Tamil speaking people were agitating for, we welcomed
the improvement in the status accorded to Tamil as a National
language. The Government has failed to implement the Tamil
language provisions and your ministers are busy finding excuses
for their non implementation over the last five years. Even
elementary rights like correspondence in Tamil are not observed.
Can any one blame the Tamil people, who have been struggling for
their language rights for the last twenty seven years, if they
refuse to be satisfied with mere paper rights for their
language? So much for the oft-repeated and much vaunted language
rights for which the T.U.L.F. is charged with being ungrateful.
District Development Councils
The second major concession made
to the Tamils by this Government is said to be the establishment
of
District Development Councils as instruments of devolution
of power. In the face of strong opposition from our own ranks,
the T.U.L.F. accepted the District Development Councils.
Your Excellency started this
exercise in July, 1979 and what have we achieved in the matter
of actual devolution during the last four years? On the eve of
the elections to the D.D.C. in 1981 your Government’s Sinhala
police mutinied in Jaffna and burnt half of Jaffna town
including the head quarters of the T.U.L.F., the house of the
M.P. for Jaffna and
the Jaffna public library with its invaluable collection of
97,000 books.
Two of your ministers were in
Jaffna supervising operations including the arrest of T.U.L.F.
members of Parliament and the nefarious things done in
connection with the elections on 4th June, 1981. In spite of all
these we entered the District Development Councils. After two
years it cannot be denied that the Government has failed to make
them function effectively. The attitude and actions of the
Government in this matter reveal a want of earnestness and lack
of a sense of urgency in implementing even meager concessions
made to the Tamil people.
The hand of friendship
Ministers and the Government
controlled press have repeatedly charged the T.U.L.F. with
failing to grasp the hand of friendship proffered by Your
Excellency. Whenever we were invited for discussions with the
Government, even when the Tamil people had been the victims of
violence instigated by your own party men as in 1981, we
responded and participated. Whatever the T.U.L.F. agreed to do
was unfailingly carried out by us. We cannot be blamed for
certain happenings which were beyond our control. We are not the
Government responsible for law and order in our areas. But can
Your Excellency say that the Government has carried out the
matters it agreed to do in the Inter Party Committee talks that
went on for thirteen months. I may mention some of the matters:
1.
District Development Councils - nothing done to make
them effective as agreed.
2. Posting a majority of
Tamil speaking policemen in Tamil areas -
Carried out in
Jaffna District but not done in any of the other
Tamil districts as promised. Most of the trouble we
had in Trincomalee and Vavuniya in June and July
could have been avoided if this was implemented.
3. Recruitment of more
Tamils into the police and the armed forces so as to
make these services function in a non - partisan way in
times of ethnic tensions. - This promise has not been
kept by the Government.
4. Compensation for
victims of Police violence in 1981 May - June has been
only partially paid. It has not been paid to victims in
Chunnakam and Kankesanturai as agreed to at the Inter
Party Committee. Only two million out of the ten million
rupees awarded by the Lionel Fernando Commission to the
burnt
Jaffna Public Library has been paid from the
President’s Fund.
5. Though prosecutions
were initiated against some of the Policemen responsible
for killing
and arson in Chunnakam and Kankesanturai in May - June
1981 none of them were arrested and produced at the
Mallakam magistrate’s Court and now these cases have
been transferred to Colombo where the victims dare not
appear and testify.
6. Home guards were not
established as promised though names were sent up and
cleared by the police.
7. Agreements reached
about the Punnaikudah housing scheme and the
Keviliyamadu village in the Batticaloa District have not
been implemented up to date. I wrote a letter to Your
Excellency regarding these two matters last month.
8. The Government has
not removed the illegally erected Buddha Statue at
Vavuniya junction though Your Excellency gave the order
to remove it at the very first meeting of the Inter
Party Committee in August, 1981. If the Government is so
absolutely powerless in removing an irritant to the
Tamil people illegally erected by certain Sinhala public
servants, can the Tamil people expect justice where
Sinhala chauvinism dictates otherwise?
9. The promises made by
the Government with regard to employment of Tamils in
the public sector were not kept. The circulars issued
and countermanded by the Secretary to the Ministry of
Plan Implementation regarding employment in the Tamil
Districts are too sordid to discuss at length here.
10. The agreement to
limit the Executive Committees in Mannar, Vavuniya and
Mullaitivu to three members so as not to make the
majority in these D.D.C’ s minority in the executive
Committees and the subsequent appointment of a U.N.P.
member to the executive Committee in Vavuniya, the
resignation of this member when the failure to comply
with the law was pointed out and the later nomination of
the same man again is a good example of the way the
Government promises are kept.
I mentioned above a few of the
matters which were agreed upon at the Inter Party Committee in
order to show why we regarded bilateral talks between the
T.U.L.F and the Government as a futile exercise. The Prime
Minister asked us in Parliament why we did not attend the all
party conference summoned by Your Excellency. When other parties
had not responded to the invitation the all party conference
would have been only a continuation of the Inter Party meeting
we had for more than a year and with what result I have shown
above. I was constrained to reply to the Prime Minister in
Parliament that we did not think any useful purpose will be
served by bilateral talks between us and the Government when
ninety percent of the matters agreed upon in earlier talks were
never implemented.
Violence against the Tamil
people and the sixth amendment
Incidents of army men shooting
and killing people in Jaffna and some youths killing some
service personnel or some civilian has been going on for a few
years. However much we may deprecate this situation it had
become part of the reality in Jaffna.
Assaults by members of the
armed forces on pedestrians, cyclists or motor cyclists with
iron rods or long poles they carried in their trucks and jeeps,
or injury to person or damage to windscreen or glasses of motor
vehicles or even window panes of houses by being pelted with
stones from army and navy vehicles have been almost daily
occurrences in Jaffna. Many people who complained to us
preferred not to make complaints to the police for fear of
reprisals.
On the afternoon of the 29th
July my own car was pelted with a stone from a passing navy
vehicle and my windscreen was smashed. I complained to the Naval
Commander at Karainagar who promised to look into it.
In this background of continual
harassment, assault and humiliation of the people by armed
forces behaving like an army of occupation is it surprising if
youths who attack these service personnel tend to be looked upon
as heroes. One has to live in this atmosphere of interminable
harassment to understand this attitude. This routine is upset
periodically when some serviceman is shot. Reprisals against
innocent civilians follow immediately.
As happened at Kantharmadam in
Jaffna on the 18th of May, and at Vavuniya on the 1st of June
all houses, shops and business places in the vicinity are
attacked, looted and burnt and innocent people are beaten up and
killed. The usual excuse is that some members of the armed
forces had mutinied and gone on a rampage.
Prior to 1981 it was the Sinhala
police that behaved in this manner. After the police force in
Jaffna was made majority Tamil there was no trouble from the
police now it is the Army and the Navy in Jaffna; The army, the
air force and the police in Vavuniya; the police, the army, the
navy and the air force - all combined in Trincomalee; and the
army in Mannar that attack the people.
In Mannar I saw with my own eyes
the car of the D.D.C. Chairman smashed and his driver and clerk
beaten up by army men from the Thalladi camp on 25th July.
Have the Tamil people no
right to freedom from these attacks on their person and
property by the police and the armed forces? Is not the
Government bound to pay heed to the feelings of these
innocent victims?
Your Excellency in
your broadcast to the nation on the T.V. and the radio,
at the height of attacks on Tamils by Sinhala mobs and armed
forces, stated that you had to pay heed to the demand and
national feeling of the Sinhala people and
therefore you were introducing the sixth amendment to the
constitution. The voice of the Tamil people crying for
justice and the right to live and safeguard their
hard-earned property goes unheeded. At a time when murder,
arson and plunder are being perpetrated against the Tamil
people the Government surrenders to the aspirations of the
marauding mobs and enacts the sixth amendment.
I would most humbly submit to
Your Excellency that this is a further outrage on our people and
their right to peacefully agitate for their political rights and
freedom. This amendment
embodies the justice of the lynch mob where you further
punish and humiliate the victim and not the criminal; the
oppressed and not the oppressor.
The events of the last two
months: Trincomalee
Violence against Tamil people
did not break out suddenly as a result of the killing of
thirteen soldiers in Jaffna on the night of the 23rd July. It
actually started on a planned basis with the attack on Mansion
Hotel in Trincomalee on the 3rd of June.
The police and the army who
searched these premises before the attack by the market Sinhala
hoodlums definitely stand implicated in this attack. They not
only failed to stop the attack and destruction of this hotel but
even failed to take action to arrest the perpetrators of the
crime. The
violence that was started on the 3rd of June went on with ebbs
and flows for over two months till about two days ago.
Twenty seven Tamils have been killed during this period as
against one Sinhalese.
As the Government itself
admitted about one hundred
and fifty Navy personnel went on a rampage and destroyed
about two hundred Tamil business places and houses in
Trincomalee town in six hours on the night of the 26th July.
With the assistance of the
police and army about two hundred houses of Tamils were burnt in
the Trincomalee District and 1,500 persons who were rendered
homeless had to seek shelter as refugees in school buildings. As
if the loss and the suffering they had already undergone were
not sufficient the Commander of the Navy forcibly put about six
hundred of these refugees into buses at one o’clock on the night
of the 24th July and took them to unknown destinations.
When I brought this matter to
Your Excellency’s notice the next morning you said that you were
informed they had volunteered to go back to the estates. You
will be surprised to learn that a good number of them were
voters in Trincomalee most of whom had permit lands and some
private lands in Trincomalee. The fate of these persons in the
present spate of violence in the plantation districts is not
known. This action of the Navy is typical of the racially
motivated and partisan conduct of the armed forces in the
present crisis.
How can you expect the Tamil
people to have confidence on these forces to protect them and
their properties from Sinhala killers and looters. There seems
to be a calculated move to drive the Tamils out of Trincomalee
by terrorising them. The visit of Mr. Jayaweera of the Ministry
of Industries to Trincomalee and the discussions he had with the
police and service personnel at the height of the disturbances
have created fear in the minds of the Tamil people that a
powerful section of the Government is involved in this
diabolical plot against the Tamil people of Trincomalee.
In the course of the last two
months
over ten Hindu temples in
the Trincomalee district have been destroyed. The Navy
personnel who ran riot on the 26th of July had set fire to the
Chariot of the Sivan Temple, broken the Nandhi and had
desecrated the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. It will not be
out of place to mention here that in the riots directed against
Tamil people in
1958,
1977,
1981 and 1983
Hindu temples have been targets of attack. In 1977 eighteen
Hindu Temples including the one at the Peradeniya University
were destroyed. Reports by refugees from the plantation areas
indicate that a number of Hindu temples in the plantation areas
like the one at Bandarawella have been destroyed last week.
In this situation the speeches of Government party members about
the veneration in which they hold the Hindu temples sound
hypocritical.
Massacre by the armed forces
in Jaffna.
According to the figures
available now over 50 innocent persons have been killed by the
army in Jaffna during the last few weeks. In the Tinnevely and
Kantharmadam areas about twenty people including University
lecturers, engineers, students and even housewives have been
shot in their homes and beds.
The detachment of the army
stationed at Mathagal had taken charge of a private mini-bus on
the morning of the 24th and gone on a rampage spraying bullets
on people walking on the roads, travelling in buses and in shops
and markets. They had killed about thirteen persons including
students, C.T.B. Employees, an accountant and traders.
It is the feelings of these
trigger-happy killers that the Government feels obliged to pay
heed to. In the eyes of the Government their killing innocent
Tamils does not seem to be a serious matter. But if any of these
killers are killed it becomes a very serious matter. I wish to
ask Your Excellency in all earnestness what action has the
Government taken to stop this killing by the armed forces? They
have got used to killing Tamils with impunity.
In several instances where
innocent persons were killed in Jaffna and where courts have
returned homicide verdicts no action has been taken against the
offenders. Are not the lives of Tamils entitled to the
protection of the law? The armed forces are indulging in killing
and maiming people; robbing and destroying their property. I
have received complaints from people at Palay and Kankesanturai
that even their goats are shot and removed by the army. They
dare not protest. Are we wrong in demanding that these armed
forces be removed from our areas?
Misconduct of the armed
forces in Vavuniya.
There have been many incidents
of violence in which the armed forces were involved in Vavuniya
and Mankulam areas during the last few weeks. I have an
affidavit sworn by one Velu Subramaniam, a labourer of
Thatchankulam stating how his wife was raped by two air-force
men on the night of the 30th July and how they wanted the
daughter to be made available to them the next day. A lorry
belonging to the Puloly M.P.C.S. in Jaffna was returning from
Anuradhapura transporting kerosene and diesel which were in
short supply in Jaffna, on the night of the 25th July. The lorry
was set on fire and totally destroyed at Nochchinimodai, a few
miles to the north of Vavuniya and the four occupants were
killed and the decomposed bodies were discovered a few miles
away. Villagers whom I have questioned have said that this was
the work of Airforce men. Private buses and lorries plying
between Colombo and Jaffna have been attacked and seriously
damaged and passengers and occupants injured several times
during the last three months by the army men stationed at
Mankulam. I complained to the Prime Minister regarding the
matter during Your Excellency’s absence from the Island.
The police and members of the
armed forces have now started systematically harassing and
intimidating the Tamil refugees from the plantation areas who
have settled down in Vavuniya after the 1977 riots. Tamil women
working in the fields have been taken into army trucks and
dumped in the police station. Where can these people go when the
Tamils all over the plantation districts are being attacked and
driven to refugee camps? The action of the Naval Commander in
forcibly removing Tamil refugees from Trincomalee to the estates
and the harassment by the police and armed forces of the
refugees long settled in Vavuniya make one think whether all
these are part of a plan to drive the Tamils out of even
Vavuniya.
Violence in the rest of the
Country
Reports I have had from Tamil
refugees who have been the victims of violence in Colombo and
other districts including the plantation areas indicate a
definite pattern in the attack. In most places the attackers had
come in C.T.B. buses. On the coast line in Colombo the train had
been stopped at several places to enable the looters to get down
and attack each lane at Wellawatte and other places. The police
and the armed forces had given all assistance and encouragement
to the looters and arsonists. They shared the spoils in the
looting and had shouted “Jayawewa” while passing mobs in
action.
Where ever Tamils resisted
the looters had withdrawn. But the armed forces had entered
those areas and shot and killed the Tamils who resisted the
attack. I have definite reports that this happened in the
Sea Street area in Colombo.
Several of the so called looters
who were reported to have been shot and killed by the armed
forces on 29th July were Tamils who were trying to safeguard
their property or were fleeing from the pursuing mobs.
It is in this situation where
the armed forces were seriously wanting in discipline and were
motivated by “strong antiTamil feeling” which made them
encourage rioting that we appealed to Your Excellency to
safeguard the lives and property of our people from the mutinous
and anti-Tamil armed forces and the hysteric mobs by getting the
assistance of the United Nations or of friendly countries. I
cannot understand how Your Excellency expects troops with
“strong anti-Tamil feelings” to protect the Tamils.
When it is admitted by Your
Excellency that the armed forces actually encouraged rioting, I
am surprised at your reported statement to the Prime Minister of
India that the Sri Lanka armed forces are capable of dealing
with the situation. They cannot be running with the hare and
hunting with the hound.
The Government has failed in
the elementary duty of safeguarding the lives and property
of innocent Tamils, (most of whom living outside the
Northern and Eastern provinces had supported the U.N.P.) and
thereby forfeited the moral right to rule them. I am sorry I
have to say this to Your Excellency, particularly because of
your broadcast to the nation.
The Tamil people do not
believe that the left parties had any hand in the attack on
them. They regard the attempt to implicate the Communist
Party and the reference to certain dark forces by the Minister
of State, as being calculated only to win the sympathy and
support of the Western powers . This is, in their view, only an
attempt to draw a “red’ herring across the trail.
The attack on the Tamil people
is pure ethnic violence
planned well ahead and
executed with ruthlessness
by forces close to the Government - the same forces that
attacked the strikers in July, 1980; attacked Prof. Saratchandra
and others at the meeting at the Buddhist congress hall and
demonstrated before the houses of the judges. These forces
include the armed forces for whom Mr. Cyril Mathew always holds
a brief in Parliament.
The attack on the private
residence of the T.U.L.F. President and the Official residence
of the Leader of the Opposition:
One of the first houses to be
attacked in the early hours of the morning of the 25th was the
private residence of Mr. Sivasithamparam, M.P. for Nallur and
President of the T.U.L.F. Police authorities were alerted at the
highest level of the impending attack. But no attempt was made
to stop it. His car was burnt, house was looted and completely
burnt and his wife and daughter had to scale a wall to save
their lives. Security personnel arrived on the scene several
hours later.
There was an attack on the house
of Mr. Murugian of Upali associates on the 25th of July.
Operations appear to have been directed by certain important
personages of the U.N.P. Some of those men had entered my
official residence which adjoins that house and robbed the
belongings of the members of my staff who were living there.
They jumped over the parapet wall and went into “Sravasti” for
safety. They were chased away by the employees. Fortunately for
them. Mr. Nihal Seniviratne, The Secretary General of Parliament
sent them to the refugee camps.
The police officers who escorted
them had been abusing me in the vilest of language and had sworn
to cut me to pieces if I went to Colombo. These are the
custodians of the law who are enlisted in the duty of protecting
Tamil members of Parliament. I realised how correct Your
Excellency and the Prime Minister were in advising me not to
travel to Colombo and that you could not give me protection.
Your subsequent offer to provide transport and security for us
to attend Parliament must have been for purely political reasons
and for the consumption of the world when a bill so intimately
affecting the members of the T.U.L.F. was being rushed through
Parliament.
The massacre in the Welikade
Prison
The blackest episode in the dark
fortnight following the 23rd July was the
massacre of the political
prisoners at the Welikade prison. The Government cannot
absolve itself of its responsibility particularly when it had
happened a second time. The judicial inquiry was held without
anybody to watch the interests of the victims.
There are several relevant
questions which go unanswered. How did the Sinhala prisoners get
out of their cells? How did the prisoners get the lethal weapons
like axes, iron rods, knives and clubs into their hands? If they
had overpowered the prison officials why were not the firearms
available to them used on the violent prisoners? When a few days
later some Tamil prisoners in Jaffna tried to escape four of
them were shot dead.
When on the second occasion
eighteen Tamil prisoners were killed the army had only fired
tear gas shells to disperse the killers. The lives of the
Sinhala prisoners are no doubt precious. But does not the same
rule apply to Tamil prisoners? I was shocked when some Tamil
refugees told me that a responsible Minister had stated in the
refugee camp that the Sinhalese people were pacified only after
the massacre at Welikade prison. The Tamil people are driven to
the irresistible conclusion that prison authorities and army
personnel were involved in the deliberate murder of those 53
Tamil political prisoners.
Relief and rehabilitation
measures.
In these circumstances Your
Excellency will not be surprised if the Tamil people look
askance at the relief and rehabilitation measures announced by
the Government. The move
to vest all affected property in the Government looks to
them a method of expropriating what the looters have not taken.
The announcement regarding
relief to workers who lost their employment is making the Tamil
people think that the prime concern of the Government is the
employment of Sinhala workers who have lost their earnings as a
result of the destruction of factories where they were working.
The reported departure of the International Red Cross
representatives who were here to assist in rehabilitation work
created further doubt regarding the way the whole matter is
being handled. The Government should dispel these fears and
announce their plans to rehabilitate Tamil refugees who have
lost their homes and means of livelihood and cannot go back to
their former places. It will be cruel to compel them to go back
to the same place again. Top priority should be given to the
case of these people who have no houses to go to and who will
have to languish in refugee camps unless immediate arrangements
are made to settle them in safe areas.
The Solution
The Tamil people are being
attacked and killed; their homes are being burnt and destroyed;
their business places are looted and burnt; they are driven to
refugee camps in their tens of thousands and are transported to
the north and east by sea and by air. Tamil prisoners are being
killed by Sinhala prisoners. Tamil University students are being
chased out by Sinhala students.
In the wake of these intolerable
sufferings and hardships to which the Tamil people have been
subjected Your
Excellency’s Government has enacted the Sixth amendment to the
constitution to proscribe our party and to drive the elected
representatives of the Tamils out of Parliament. We consider
this amendment a further outrage on our people and their right
to peacefully agitate for their political rights and freedom.
Your Excellency will agree that as a self-respecting people we
cannot allow these measures to stifle our voice and our will to
resist oppression. This amendment is only seeking to legitimise
through a legal device the conviction of the Sinhala mobs that
the Tamils have no political freedom, no right to property or
right to life. This is the “demand and National feeling of the
Sinhala people” to which the Government has bowed.
The Tamil people from all over
the Island are being driven into ghettoes in the North and East
by the Sinhala mobs. Even there, they are being harassed,
humiliated and killed by the Sinhala armed forces.
The T.U.L.F. has, through democratic and non violent means, been
trying to win the freedom and fundamental rights of the
oppressed Tamil nation. I assure Your Excellency that we
will continue to strive through all non violent means to
liberate our people from this horrible oppression.
With kind regards,
Yours
sincerely,
A.Amirthalingam
Leader of the Opposition and
Secretary General, T.U.L.F.
...continued...
