American Tamils to demonstrate in Washington DC

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 July 2007, 14:21 GMT]
Tamil Americans and Friends for Peace is organizing a Peace Rally in support of Tamil people's right to national self-determination in the island of Sri Lanka, a press release posted at the PRWeb website said.



Fulll text of the release follows:

Tamil Americans and Friends for Peace is organizing a Peace Rally in support of Tamil people's right to national self-determination in the island of Sri Lanka. The rally will be held in front of the US Capitol building on the West Front lawn on Monday July 23rd from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Tamil Americans will gather in large numbers to express their aspirations for permanent peace in Sri Lanka and urge the US Government to Stop the Genocide of Tamils. All peace loving people and groups are invited to come and show their support.

Background: Violence in Sri Lanka has been on the rise since December 2005 and, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council, three million citizens have been affected, 500,000 forced out of their homes and over 4,000 killed in the past 12 months. The toll has added to the 100,000 deaths, mostly Tamil civilians, in more than two decades of sectarian strife since the early 1980s. Massive military operations in the Tamil homeland by the Sri Lanka government forces have displaced half-a-million war and tsunami devastated Tamil civilians. Their lands were appropriated to form High Security Zones. The Tamils living in the capitol Colombo were arrested and deported to the Tamil Northeast. Sri Lanka is thus engaged in systematic Ethnic Cleansing of Tamils. In the past year, more journalists and aid workers were killed with government complicity in Sri Lanka than anywhere else in the world. US military aid is on the increase to a government tainted by an abominable record of human rights violations.

Tamil Americans will urge the United States government and the international community to help end the occupation of Tamil homeland, and restore peace, justice and democracy.

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Peace Rally at Capitol Hill on Monday