Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Trincomalee district MP and parliamentary group leader, R. Sampanthan, and parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told the visiting British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that 7,000 Tamils in Vanni have been killed and 14,000 injured in the last three months, but the International Community has remained inactive without taking any action to stop the killings, TNA sources said. The TNA parliamentarians also told Miliband that more than 300 Tamil youths in Vavuniyaa detention centre have been arrested by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and that the SLA has not revealed the whereabouts of the arrested youths to their parents.
Premachandran said in a press meet Wednesday that the following matters were represented to the visiting British Foreign minister.
“Sri Lanka government which had deceived the Tamils for the last 30 years is now deceiving the International Countries. It is killing its own citizens in violation of all the conventions of the UN including the one on Human Rights which the Sri Lanka government has ratified. Sri Lanka has broken its pledge to the Indian government that it would not use heavy weaponry in the war using them on the Tamil civilians held into a narrow area in Mu’l’livaaikkaal in Vanni,” Suresh Premachandran said.
“Why should the International Community which had successfully made Kosova an independent state for the killing of 1500 people remain passive though more than 7,000 Tamils have been killed in the last three months alone?” he asked.
“The root cause for the present problem is the British amalgamation of the independent Tamil Kingdom in the north and east of the country with the Sinhalese Kingdoms. Hence the responsibility of intervening in the ethnic issue arising out of its blunder lies squarely on the British government,”
Sampanthan and Premachadran also told the press that David Miliband who had listened to their representation had replied that he had come to Colombo to learn of the situation first hand and that appropriate action will be taken at the earliest.
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