SL Foreign Ministry instructs visiting foreign citizens to North to obtain ‘military visa’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 April 2016, 23:42 GMT]
The officials of Colombo's Foreign Ministry have started to cite an updated ‘news report’ in the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry website, dated 03 March 2016, in instructing foreign citizens travelling to the five districts in North to obtain ‘prior approval’ from the genocidal military of ‘Sri Lanka’, a Tamil visitor from Europe engaged in providing humanitarian assistance has complained to rights activists in Colombo this week. The latest ‘development’ comes after increased reports of abduction-styled arrests that have been carried out by Colombo's military intelligence in North. The Eezham Tamil visitor, engaged in humanitarian work from abroad for a long time, was recently lured into ‘think’ as ‘Sri Lankan’ by the ‘reconciliation’ desk of the foreign ministry in the country of citizenship.

At Colombo, the diplomatic mission representing the citizenship, was also advising the visitor to proceed with securing approval based on the ‘travel advisories’ indicated in the SL military website.

Foreign travellers visiting to Jaffna, Ki'linochchi, Mullaiththeevu districts and to areas north of Vidaththaltheevu in Mannaar district and to the north of Oamanthai in Vavuniyaa are required to apply for such ‘military visa‘ through fax or email.

“As of now requests up to 3 months considered for multiple entry,” according to the update on SL Defence Ministry website.

In practice, this means the SL military check-posts, which are operating at the land-based entry points into former LTTE administered areas in the North, continuing to subject the visitors to their scrutiny as a border agency to the occupied heartland of Eezham Tamils.

In addition, the military officers of relevant military Brigades occupying the country of Eezham Tamils will have details ready for their shadow scrutiny processes at village level.

In the meantime, the SL Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by Mangala Samaraweera, has been closely working with the military intelligence in deploying a Colombo-based research outfit camouflaged as poverty-related ‘think tank’ to hire foreign academics in Western countries to conduct ‘counter-insurgency’ and ‘peace-building’ research to spy on Tamil diaspora organisations, an informed Tamil political officer attached to a foreign mission told TamilNet.

At the same time, former SL President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who now heads the so-called ‘Office of the National Unity and Reconciliation’, is engaged in deploying her close confidants dependent on Western funding and some selected Tamil diaspora academics with Peradeniya background to brainwash non-politicised Tamil diaspora activists to imagine themselves as ‘Sri Lankans’.

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Foreign Passport holders traveling to the North

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