Daily Archive: August 26, 2015

Senator Lee Rhiannon   the Green Party Parliament of Australia  Dear Senator Rhiannon,  Just saw your Twitter message claiming to be a step closer to having Sri Lanka's former President Mahinda Rajapakse and his brothers tried in the Hague for "war crimes".  Please note that no 'war crimes' have been proven against any member of Sri Lanka's government or her armed forces.  There are such allegations being made by the pro-Tamil Tiger groups living in Australia and western countries.  Do not jump to conclusions based on one sided allegations and propaganda coming from those who funded and backed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), aka Tamil Tigers, who were designated as an international terrorist movement by the UN Security Council per Resolution Number 1373 of September 2001.  The FBI described the LTTE as the most brutal terrorist group operating any where in the world.  In the war that was thrust on Sri Lanka by the Tamil Tigers at the end of 2005 (refer HRW report of March 2006 wherein they detailed the large scale extortion of the Tamil expatriate community to raise funds for the purpose of launching their so called final war of liberation), which they started without any provocation whatsoever.  The LTTE not only forced the resident Tamil civilian population living in the Vanni region to move with the retreating Tamil Tiger fighting forces, to be exploited for their labour, conscripted to replace fallen cadre and to finally form a human shield to protect the LTTE fighters from harm as they engaged the Sri Lankan armed forces.  The Sri Lankan Armed Forces not only had to do battle against the armed Tamil Tiger fighting units, but they also had to devise ways of extricating the trapped Tamil civilians from the clutches of the LTTE terrorists with minimum harm to them, thereafter move them to safety in the special welfare camps that were set up in the Vavunia area, till such time as the region extending to 6,000 sq. km. could be de-mined of over 1.5 million landmines that had been planted by the Tamil Tigers, homes repaired or rebuilt, infrastructure put in place and re-settle in their former places of residence with new life skills and livelihood assistance.  This was achieved within a short space of a little over three years.