Colombo conspires to alter East's demography- NLF

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 March 2007, 11:41 GMT]
Dr.Wickremabahu Karunaratne, leader of the New Left Front (NLF) said at a news conference held Monday at Hotel Nippon in Colombo organized by the National Front Against War (NFAW) that Sri Lanka Government is conspiring to change the demography of the eastern province by forcibly driving out Tamil people and settling members of the majority community, media sources said.

Dr. Karunaratne questioned whether any Tamil will come for talks while rejecting the self-determination right of the Tamil people.

"Sri Lanka Governments of the past wanted to transform eastern province into a Sinhala territory by colonising it with Sinhalese from other provinces. The present government is also dreaming the same by launching military operation and to make Tamils to flee from their villages. This will not succeed. There is no truth in the government statement that it is conducting military operation to curtail the activities of the LTTE," Dr. Karunaratne said.

With Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse's aim to establish a Sinhala Buddhist nation by defeating Tamil resistance, no one should expect a justifiable solution could be found to the ethnic conflict under the present regime, he said.

Vasudeva Nanayakkara, leader of the Democratic Left Front (DLF) said LTTE could not be defeated by war. Lasting peace could be found only through a political solution to the conflict. Law and order situation has been deteriorated even in the government-controlled territory of the north and east.

Kumar Rupesinghe, President of NFAW said the war should be stopped immediately. The government could satisfy the people in the south by telling the success of military operations now being carried out in northeast. The LTTE could turn the table with one military operation, he warned.

Mano Ganeshan, leader of the Western Peoples' Front (WPF), Suresh Premachchandran of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and S.Lawrence of the Upcountry Peoples Front (UPF) also addressed the briefing, media sources said.

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Bid to alter ethnic ratio in Lanka flayed