Pathmanathan calls for urgent international intervention

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 May 2009, 09:19 GMT]
Refuting the Sri Lankan propaganda that artillery and shelling against the Tamil civilians was carried out by the Tigers, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the LTTE's head of international relations on Monday urged the governments of the world to prevail upon the Sri Lankan Government to prevent it from causing a collective tragedy.

"The recent developments in Vanni are very disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Sri Lanka and its partners in this war to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty," Mr. Pathmanathan said in a statement issued Monday.

Full text of the statement from Mr. Pathmanathan follows:

LTTE Denies SLA Allegations and Calls For Urgent Intervention to Prevent Further Massacres

11 May 2009

The artillery fire and fierce mortar shelling by the Sri Lankan Army on the nights of 9th and 10th of May 2009 were one of the bloodiest episodes of the war so far, killing more than 2,000 of innocent Tamils including children, women and the elderly. This is a deliberate massacre of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces.

LTTE categorically rejects any allegations by the Sri Lankan Government and its military that the artillery and shelling was carried out by us.

It is an indisputable fact that the LTTE has waged this three decade long struggle for the liberation of the Tamil people from all oppressions by the racist Singhalese regime. We will never ever turn on the very people for whose liberation we have laid close to 20,000 of our own fighters.

It is not an overstatement to associate the treatment of Tamils with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity. The recent developments in Vanni are very disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Sri Lanka and its partners in this war to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty.

We are convinced that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the making and appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to prevail upon the Sri Lankan Government so as to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy.

The most brutal episode of this "collective tragedy" is what we have seen in the last two days.

We call upon the International Community and the UN Security Council “as a matter of urgency” to take all measures capable of genuinely preventing any further massacres of the innocent Tamil civilian population.