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“Military should be utilized only for rescue operations, not for humanitarian relief,” Tamilselvan
Alladin Hussein in Colombo,
January 9, 2005, 11.57 p.m..
Political wing leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels S.P. Tamilselvan today expressed concern over the Government’s decision of deploying armed forces in relief work and the management of tsunami welfare centers. “LTTE strongly protests against this move. This matter has been already brought to the attention of the international community,” Tamilselvan told a news briefing in Killinochchi. His statement comes just hours after the Tamil National Alliance also in a letter to President Chandrika Kumaratunga voiced their opposition against the Government’s decision to give the military the task to handle relief and other distribution matters in welfare centers.
Tamilselvan also pointed out that despite the continuous claims by the Government that ample relief goods had been sent to the North East, the victims of the tidal waves did not receive any relief from the Government whatsoever for the first few days. “It was only with the local resources that we managed the situation thanks to NGO’s and civil organization donations and assistance,” he pointed out.
He further pointed out that it was only after four days after the tsunami had struck the country that Government aid started to ‘trickle’ in to the refugee camps in the North East.
“Understandably, the government seems to be worried about the focus of international attention, after international media started highlighting the situation.
President’s order to bring relief operations under the command of the armed forces makes the Tamil people suspicious of the government’s intentions. The Tamil people in the North East do not consider the Sri Lankan military as a friendly entity in the background of atrocities committed by them during the past. How can one erase the collective Tamil memory of the mass disappearances and ending up in mass graves, of thousands of innocent Tamils, all arrested by the armed forces and later unaccounted for in the North East,” he said.
He added that the LTTE can understand the military being utilized for rescue operations but not for humanitarian relief, especially in the background of hostile military personnel who do not speak the language of the displaced people. There is no paucity of civilian manpower or structures to manage humanitarian relief and we see no sense in this move of deploying a fully Sinhala military to perform relief work for displaced Tamil people.
Published: Sun Jan 9 13:37:38 EST 2005
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