3RD LEAD

Colombo deploys former LTTE members to twist opposition to US resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 March 2013, 07:32 GMT]
While the Tamil Nadu students in an unprecedented international approach have risen up targeting the hollow resolution tabled by the USA at Geneva, and have come out with 9 demands addressed to New Delhi and Tamil Nadu governments, Colombo engineering an ironical twist to the Tamil uprising, organised a simulated anti-resolution demonstration in Vanni on Tuesday directed by the Sinhala military with the forced participation of former LTTE members, who are now kept as farm labourers by the military. The demonstration was scheduled to take place in Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu by placing the detained former LTTE members in the forefront, followed by public passers-by who were detained for this purpose by the SL military on Tuesday morning. But, the plan flopped and the SL military had to bring in Sinhalese from Mannaar in 3 buses to stage the demonstration in Ki'linochchi.

The Sinhala women were given forehead marks (poddu) to look like Tamil women by the SL military and the Sinhala participants were chanting slogans in broken Tamil praising SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The march which began near the Central College on A9 road at 10:30 a.m. was concluded at Depot Juction in Ki'linochchi.

“USA, look after your own business; we will look after our own affairs. After providing weapons to massacre the civilians during the war, now you are again disturbing our peace. Nobody can change our government headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Our leader will always Mahinda Rajapaksa,” proclaimed Ms Geethanjali, the SLFP organisor of Ki'linochchi district.

In the meantime, former LTTE members who were forced to take part at the protest refused to chant the slogans and were hiding their faces from being photographed.

The empty resolution tabled by the USA was ultimately calculated to detract the question of Eezham Tamils by passing it or not passing it, and provides space for all in the game propping up the genocidal State of Sri Lanka, political observers in the island said.

At the end of the genocidal war in 2009, the international system and the international community of establishments allowed the genocidal military of Sri Lanka to capture an undisclosed number of LTTE members and associates. Conservative estimations put the number to around 20,000.

Among them, apart from the killed, disabled and released cum harassed, around 3000 able-bodied members were isolated by the Sinhala military to work as farm labourers in the farms run by the military.

Around 2,200 former female members of the LTTE and 800 former male members are now working in the farms as labourers.

They were given with black T-shirt uniforms with the legend CSD, meaning Civil Security Division and are paid with a salary of 18,000 SLR per month. There was also an attempt to give them SL military uniform, but following concerted protests by the detainees the move was abandoned.

The Sinhala military runs the slave farms at Kura-vayal and Suthanthira-puram in Udaiyaar-kaddu, Kai-veali in Puthukk-kudiyiruppu and at Thearaa-vil and Visva-madu – all in the Mullaiththeevu and Ki’linochchi districts of Vanni.

On Tuesday, the labour camp inmates were seen brought to the A9 highway in Ki’linochchi and to Mullaiththeevu and handed over to the SL police to ‘lead the demonstration‘ denouncing the Geneva resolution in such a way to favour the State and regime of Sri Lanka.

The former LTTE members were seen complaining that they were forcibly brought to lead the ‘demonstration’.