EPDP supports Kumaratunga, Marxist alliance

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 15:07 GMT]
EPDP, a paramilitary group operating with the Sri Lanka army, said Wednesday in Jaffna that it supports the alliance between President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. Addressing press conference in its heavily fortified camp in Jaffna town, the leader of the group, Mr. Douglas Devananda, defended the JVP, saying that it was not a Sinhala chauvinist party.

Mr. Devananda addressing the press conference

Although the EPDP supports the SLFP-JVP alliance, it would consider working with any other party that comes to power in Colombo, Mr. Devananda said.

The JVP totally rejects any form of devolution to settle the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

Mr. Devananda said his group stands for the permanent merger of the northeast.

The EPDP leader lambasted the media in Jaffna for not giving publicity to his views.

However, one of the journalists present at the press meet pointed out that journalists in Jaffna were reluctant to write about the EPDP after the murder of Mr. Mylvaganam Nimalarajan in 2000. The EPDP has been accused of killing Mr. Nimalarajan, a senior journalist of Jaffna, allegedly for exposing the paramilitary group’s vote rigging activities at the 2000 general elections.