TNA welcomes Sri Lanka’s stand on Palestine issue, hopes same to be followed in Tamil traditional homeland

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 April 2010, 09:44 GMT]
“The permanent UN representative of Sri Lanka Bandula Jayasekara’s statement that an atmosphere to bring peace in Palestine could only be created by the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory it occupies is welcomed by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which expects Sri Lanka to follow the same principle in withdrawing its armed forces from the historical and traditional homeland of the Tamils of North and East to create peace in Sri Lanka,” Suresh Premachandran said in a press report on behalf of TNA. “We hope that the Sri Lanka government will not preach one thing in the UN and practice another at home,” the report further said.

The following is the excerpt of Suresh Premachandran’s media report:

“The Sri Lankan permanent representative in the UN has said that the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory it occupies and the relaxation of restrictions are prerequisites to obtain sustainable peace.

Sri Lanka government should follow the same principle by withdrawing all its occupying armed forces in the North and South which is the historical traditional homeland of the Tamils and it should restore the same situation which prevailed in the Tamil homeland before 1983.

The Tamils launched a nonviolent struggle to protect their rights and identification in the face of Sinhala hegemony being imposed on Tamils who had been living in the country since historical times.

State terrorism was used to quell the Tamil struggle precipitating armed struggle which was described as terrorism by successive governments of Sri Lanka.

In the end just as the Israelis uprooted the Palestinians from their homeland Sri Lanka government too occupied the North and East by brutal force and evicted the Tamils from their own places, reducing them to the state of paupers. In addition, the government is engaged in obliterating Tamil identity in all spheres.

The government’s statement at the UN gives us a little hope that it will follow the same principle here in Sri Lanka too.

We hope that the principle that Sri Lanka expresses internationally if practiced in Sri Lanka an agreeable solution could be reached by holding talks with TNA.”