2ND LEAD (Adds video)

IC should address Tamil question coupled with international mechanism: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 February 2014, 23:02 GMT]
No internal mechanism would deliver justice to the people of Tamil homeland. The International Community should come up with a constructive international mechanism capable of delivering political solution to the Tamil question. If the IC that is in fact well able to grasp the situation fails Tamils would regard the IC also as being complicit in the act of suppression being meted upon them, said Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF). The prevailing suppression on the peaceful, non-violent and democratic voices of the people of Tamil homeland is equivalent to the act of annihilation of the existence of Tamils as a nation, he said while attending a demonstration organized by the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSO) in Jaffna on Saturday. The occupying SL military has blocked the affected people from taking part in the protest.

It is under the prevailing circumstance of suppression of the voices of people in the Tamil homeland, the United Nations Human Rights Council is set to debate the situation in the island at Geneva this March, Mr Gajendrakumar said stressing that the act of suppression prevailing on the ground could not be viewed only as a human rights violation.

The international community should grasp this and come up with a constructive resolution, the former parliamentarian said.



The comment from the TNPF leader has come at a time when Navanetham Pillay, the UN high commissioner of human rights, was again projecting the entire issue only as part of human rights violations taking place in the entire island.

On Saturday, the occupying Sinhala military threatened the uprooted people of Valikaamam North to stay away from attending the protest.

At the same time, people coming from Mannaar, Mullaiththeevu and the solidarity groups from South, were blocked and sent back by the occupying SL military.

The protest organized by NAFSO received the support of all the fisheries associations, the organisations representing the kith and kin of the missing persons and other civil society groups in Jaffna.

However, only around one hundred people were able to make it due to the threats and harassments by the SL military.

Apart from the TNPF political activists, Northern Provincial Council Minister of Agriculture P Aingaranesan of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and two councillors of the civic bodies, S. Sugirthan from Valikaamam North PS and N. Sathees from Valveddithtu’rai Urban Council attended the protest.