2ND LEAD (Corrections)

UK Tamil groups to campaign jointly for Sri Lanka's war crimes probe

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 December 2011, 00:33 GMT]
Several Tamil activist groups, Tamil affiliates of British political parties, and Tamil journalists confederation in the UK in a meeting held at the British Parliament building at 7:00 p .m. Thursday organized by the British Tamil Forum (BTF) to mark the forth coming Human Rights Day, resolved to combined forces to pressure the international community to conduct an dependent investigation into war-crimes committed during the Sri Lanka's civil war, sources in UK said.

In a communique distributed to the media, the Tamil groups said that they will solicit cooperation to support the campaign for an International Independent Investigation (III) from expatriate Tamils living in other parts of the world.

Considering that Sri Lanka's security forces, with tacit directives from the high level political leaders, including Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse, committed mass atrocity crimes including war-crimes and crimes against humanity, the meeting discussed ways to effectively coordinate evidence collection and to mobilize expatriate support to the campaign, an attendee to the meeting said.

"The forthcoming 19th UN Human Rights Meeting scheduled for March 2012 added urgency to the plan of action discussed at the above meeting," a BTF spokesperson said.

Members from Tamils for Conservative, Tamils for Labor, Tamils for Liberal Democrats, British Tamil Forum, Tamil Solidarity, Act Now, International Tami Journalists Forum, Tamil Media Organizations, independent journalists, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), and TransNational Government of Tamil Eelam attended the discussion, according to the organizers.