Website: www.sluna.org E-mail: sluna@idirect.com
MEDIA RELEASE Re-issued on January 8, 2007
Incredible
Findings of Allan Rock on his Short Stop in
Allan Rock, the Special Advisor to
the UN Special Representative for Children and
Armed
Conflict, on a flying visit lasting
ten days covering areas far apart as
Batticaloa, Kilinochchi and
of complicity by members of
of underage children by the Karuna
Group which broke away from the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) in 2004, on mere
hearsay presented to him.
Mr. Rock has obviously been
influenced by the controversial Nordic SLMM (Sri Lanka
Monitoring
Mission) whose partiality towards
the Tamil Tiger Terrorists has been demonstrated
previously by their leaking
information confidentially given to them of planned moves by the Sri
Lanka Navy to apprehend a vessel
smuggling weapons for the LTTE, proposing special sea
lanes
for movement of the LTTE’s Sea Tiger
Naval Craft in
unknown third parties to shield the LTTE from serious acts of violence including their sinking of a
Chinese owned cargo vessel chartered
to carry essential commodities to the civilians in the
the northern
between the beak-away Karuna faction
and the security forces, even though they did not raise
the issue until now for reasons not
given. The recent faux pas where
the SLMM representative in
Batticaloa area, one Tveitan,
assumed that five youth who had been abducted had been taken
by
by Karuna’s men, where he sought the
help of the Sri Lanka Army to have them released, only to
find that the LTTE were the real
culprits, as one of the abductees had later been released
following
the intervention by a senior LTTE
cadre, is a case in point, that clearly shows the bias
and
incompetence of the
SLMM.
Whilst Rock’s main mission should
have been to deal with the LTTE’s continued abduction of
under
age children and using them as
frontline soldiers including suicide attacks, strangely, he was
side-
tracked by the SLMM and the Dollar
scrounging foreign funded NGOs’ that are pretending to
agitate
for peace by attempting to vilify
the government and prop up the terrorists.
Rock made some scanty
remarks about the LTTE’s child
recruitment referring to their assurance of taking steps to release
all of their child soldiers by
January 2007, whereas the LTTE has scoffed at the UN despite their
earlier undertaking to take similar
measures as per their pledge given to the UN’s Special
Representative, Mr. Olara
Otunnu. UNICEF went on to grant
Rupees 30 million to the Tamil
Rehabilitation Organization ( which
is an arm of the LTTE that funnels funds raised for
supposed
humanitarian work towards weapons
procurement ) for construction of a few shabby half-way
homes
costing a fraction of the grant,
which remained unoccupied, as only a token lot of children
numbering
around 35 were released at the
outset and none thereafter. UNICEF
meanwhile recorded complaints
in respect of over 5200 children who
had been abducted by the LTTE since the signing of the
CFA
in February 2002. The UN’s failure to have
the LTTE fulfill their prior undertaking to
release
their
child soldiers is a serious black mark on the UN’s ability to effectively
safeguard
children,
which Allan Rock conveniently ignored and instead attempted to divert
attention
to
alleged acts of wrong doing by the government’s security forces which he based
on mere
hearsay
or village gossip, which he blurted our loudly to the
media. It is not beyond the
LTTE
of planting such bogus stories
through intimidation and threats to persons who are within easy reach
of
their grasp , as Mr. Rock and other
Canadians are well aware that the Tamil Diaspora residing 10,000
miles away from the LTTE leader
holed up in a bunker in the jungles of Mullaitivu are afraid to speak
freely, let alone criticize the
LTTE, as they fear that they and their relatives could be seriously harmed
by the LTTE thugs spread around the
globe.
The unsubstantiated allegations made
by Allan Rock was about members of
scouting for potential child
soldiers in the predominantly Tamil villages in the east to be abducted by
the
Karuna Group which split up from the
LTTE. He even went on to say that
the government troops would
take photos of potential child
victims which were then passed on to Karuna’s men, who would then
grab
them from the care of the
parents. How naïve could Allan Rock
be to sell such absurdities, because
Karuna led LTTE fighting units from 1976 to 2004, and does not need to have any party scout for him in
Tamil villages as he knows the terrain including the surrounding jungles better than anyone else. Rock
may fool other naïve persons in the UN and international community, but he cannot fool knowledgeable
observers who understand the ground situation. According to UNICEF and HRW, Karuna released nearly
2000 child recruits in his ranks at the time he broke off from the LTTE. UNICEF now reports that Karuna
has since recruited about 185 child soldiers. The government’s security forces could only intervene if the
abducted children being taken past government check points if any give an indication as to their position
when their identity papers are verified, as otherwise, they have no authority to detain persons passing
through. If Karuna is in fact abducting children to enlist in his forces, he would know of jungle tracts to
reach his training camps in the
jungles without using the main streets and risk detection. Mr. Rock,
is
your motive to discredit the
government’s security forces who are constantly risking attacks by armed
LTTE cadres and doing a most difficult task to protect the civilian population from terrorist onslaughts?
Your interim report which is heavily biased and carrying unstantiated tell tales is considered a joke in
Sri Lanka
Mr. Rock, we are aware that you were
a key member of the previous Liberal Party Government of
Canada
that overlooked international obligations and recommendations of Canada's own intelligence agencies and
allowed the LTTE’s front organizations to operate freely, including the raising of funds unhindered for
procurement of weapons and carry out their propaganda from Canadian soil, notwithstanding the fact that
such acts resulted in a multitude of deaths of ordinary civilians and democratic leaders from every ethnic
community and destruction of
valuable property in
Tamil Diaspora promised by the
fronts in just about ten electoral ridings in the Greater Toronto Region.
Mr. Rock should understand that
United Nations, and not a UN administered territory, which has contributed immensely in helping the world
body to arrive at treaties in the areas of world trade, laws of the sea, nuclear non-proliferation, and suppression
of financing of terrorism amongst
others.
west who refuse to negotiate with terrorists has already made six attempts to reach a negotiated settlement
with the intransigent and internationally designated terrorist group known as the LTTE, that seeks to establish
a mono-ethnic racist Tamil separate state in the north and east of the island by force of arms and suicide
terrorism, comprising 30 percent of the land and 67 percent of the coastline and adjacent ocean for Tamils
numbering approximately 8.5 percent of the total population, of whom over 60 percent reside elsewhere outside
the north and east in mixed
ethnic surroundings.
peaceful settlement despite unprovoked attacks launched daily by the terrorist LTTE in violation of the ceasefire
accord, using both children and the captive civilians in areas illegally controlled by them in the Vanni region, in
pursuit of the same separate
state.
Mr. Paul Murphy, the British
emissary declared that only a home grown solution could bring about
peace.
Mr. Rock and other international
players who tend to impose their preferred solution of a federal
structure
that is not favoured by the local
populace and unsuited to the tiny island state, should help the
democratically
elected government to deal more
effectively with the terrorist violence and pave the way for peace and
stability.
Tiger terrorists and instead use
their influence to compel the latter to stop the bloodshed and enter
the
democratic process to build
prosperity and stability for all citizens, in the common homeland of
Mr. Rock, you should rise above the
duplicitous Liberal Party partisan politics that was partial to the LTTE’s
cause of breaking up
two state solution from behind the
scenes. Mr. Rock, in order to
safeguard what is left of your reputation,
you should at least at this late
stage, admit that you had been misled and withdraw your wild and
incredible
allegations. The only place
your biased and flawed report has in history is its rightful spot in the trash
bin.
Yours very
truly,
Mahinda
Gunasekera
Honorary
President
.