Perpetrating civilian starvation is violation of all norms of war: LTTE

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 March 2009, 13:51 GMT]
"The brutalities committed by Colombo's armed forces on civilians have no precedence in any conventional war," said LTTE's Puthukkudiyiuruppu area political head C. Ilamparithy on Wednesday describing that the offensive by the Sri Lankan government denying food and medicine to civilians whom it claims as its citizens as an "abnormal violation of all norms of war." He urged direct presence of the International Community to witness the gravity of the situation by itself and urged the Tamil diaspora to engage with the IC in order to make it look at the crisis through the perspective of the affected people and to work for sending international journalists to visit and report the plight of the civilians besieged in Mullaiththeevu.

"We know that many diaspora Tamils are prepared to help their kin and kith in Vanni and that they are engaging with the IC to assist the affected civilians with humanitarian and medical assistance," he said.

Mr. Ilamparithy, listing the supplies allowed by the Sri Lankan authorities between 16 January 2009 to 04 March 2009 as 129 MT flour, 10.8 MT sugar, 18.1 dahl and 7,891 liter kerosene and said the supplies were even not enough to satisfy the very basic needs of even one third of the population. 1,000 MT of supplies were needed per week.

He blamed that the Sri Lankan government was systematically sabotaging the implementation of World Health Organisation of supplying humanitarian supplies to the affected civilians with intention that no civilian should face starvation.

A shell fired by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) exploded near the site where he was being interviewed while being engaged in re-organising the supply of LTTE's 'ilaik-kagnchi' (gruel with leaves) to the hungry civilians in the besieged Mullaiththeevu.



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