| SRI LANKA KILLS YET ANOTHER TAMIL PARLIAMENTARIAN WITH IMPUNITY? |
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Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations condemns the killing of yet another Tamil Parliamentarian in Sri Lanka on 6 March 2008. The Associated Press (AP) reported on 6 March 2008 from Sri Lanka that Mr. K. Sivanesan, 51, was the third lawmaker from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Tamil political front to be killed since 2005. Mr. Suresh Premachandran, a fellow lawmaker from the alliance had told the Associated Press that Mr. Sivanesan had attended Parliament on Monday 5 March and left Colombo early on 6 March to visit home in the north. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan accused the Sri Lankan Government Special Forces soldiers belonging to what have come to be known as the deep penetration units, of infiltrating LTTE territory and setting off the blast alongside Sivanesan's car as it travelled through a village. Mr. Joseph Pararajasingham, a lawmaker for eastern Batticaloa district was shot and killed at a 2005 Christmas Mass. His colleague, Mr. Nadarajah Raviraj, was killed in the capital, Colombo, in November 2006. These two parliamentarians had visited Australia earlier to lobby our government‘s assistance to end the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The TNA blamed those two killings on government-backed paramilitary groups. Another Tamil Parliamentarian belonging to the United National Party was killed in the premises of a Hindu Temple in Colombo on 1 January 2008. Mr. Mano Ganeshan, a Tamil Parliamentarian in the south has complained of threats to his life. The Norwegian Government has promptly condemned this latest killing and has extended it's sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims. “WHAT IS OUR RUDD GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE?” ASK AUSTRALIAN TAMILS! "President Mahinda Rajapaksa, once a rights advocate, has now led his government to become one of the world's worst perpetrators of forced disappearances," Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Elaine Pearson said, at the launch of a 241-page report on 6 March 2008. The report, entitled "Recurring nightmare: State responsibility for disappearances and abductions in Sri Lanka," features interviews with relatives of "disappeared," some of whom describe how police paid visits shortly before abductions. Others describe relatives disappearing after being interrogated at gunpoint by police in broad daylight, or being bundled into white vans by unidentified gunmen. Police then deny their relative has been arrested. Another very disturbing development is the decision made ironically on 6 March 2008 by a panel of international experts observing a Sri Lankan investigation into a raft of human rights abuses and killings to quit Sri Lanka, saying the government was hindering the process. "The proceedings of inquiry and investigations have fallen far short of the transparency and compliance with basic international norms and standards," the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons said in a statement. Our government’s nominee in this eminent group is Emeritus Professor Ivan Shearer AMRFD. After formally scrapping the 6-year truce with LTTE in a wider bid to win the war militarily, Rajapaksa's government banished Nordic truce monitors who enraged the government by accusing state security forces of massacring 17 local staff of the international aid group Action Contre la Faim in 2006 -- the worst attack on aid workers since the 2003 bomb attack on the U.N. office in Baghdad. The Australian Tamils ask the Rudd Labor Government what diplomatic action it intends taking to pressure the Sri Lankan State to comply with international norms and negotiate with LTTE, a just political solution to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Media inquiries: Sydney: Dr. Victor Rajakulendran 0402 484 209 Melbourne: Mr. Param Paramanathan 0408 360 865 Canberra: Dr. Raga Ragavan 0402 387 920 |
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