Three Canadian college students, who started a 1000-mile trek from Chicago to Washington D.C. on the 26th of June to raise awareness of the general American population to the several thousand Tamil civilians killed by the Sri Lanka military during the first two weeks of May, and the 300,000 Tamil civilians held in Sri Lanka military supervised internment camps, have now nearly reached the half-way mark. "The men arrived in Dayton Monday morning after starting their trip in Chicago. By the time the trip is done, the men will have walked more than a thousand miles," the Dayton Television station WDTN reported.
Kannan Sreekantha, Vijay Sivaneswaran and Ramanan Thirukketheeswaranathan, the three Canadian college students involved in this campaign, told TamilNet that they expect to reach Washington D.C. early September.
"If we were to put our outreach work aside and only continue the walk, we can get to DC much faster than that. But the purpose of the walk is to create awareness among the American people about the situation in Sri Lanka and also to urge the US officials to take tangible measures to alleviate the current humanitarian crisis forced upon the Tamil people. We are also urging the officials to endeavor in an initiative to bring a lasting solution to the half a century old ethnic bloodshed against Tamils in that Island," Sreekantha said.
When asked what they plan to do in Washington, the students said they plan to hold a rally and to organize meetings with Congresspersons. "We have some concrete plans to mobilize the youths worldwide, and we will begin to focus on that," Sreekantha said.
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