SRI LANKA UNITED NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OF CANADA
P.O.Box 55292, 300 Borough
Drive,Toronto, Ontario M1P 4Z7 Canada
MEDIA RELEASE
June 21,
2005
INTERNATIONAL DONOR FUNDS
FOR UN DESIGNATED TAMIL TIGER TERRORISTS
The co-chairs of the Tokyo Conference on
Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka comprising the USA, EU, Japan and
Norway met on the
13th of June 2005 and pledged their
support for the commitment made by the Sri Lankan President and her government
and the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to rapidly
implement a structure to administer tsunami assistance in the north and east, as
envisaged by the controversial
Joint Mechanism (JM) or renamed
Post-Tsunami Operations Management Structure (P-TOMS).
It has since come to light that
the President of Sri Lanka had not even shared the details of the Norwegian
brokered JM or P-TOMS
as it is now
called, with the members of the
Cabinet of Ministers let alone the rest of the government. This
secretive process to give a
dominant role in the tsunami rehabilitation of the entire northern and eastern
coastal areas of the island to the UN designated Tamil Tiger Terrorists
who illegally control less than 15 percent of this belt, resulted in the major
coalition partner of the UPFA government to abandon the ship of
state.
On March 31, 2005, Ram Manikkalingam, an
adviser to the president revealed that the proposed administrative structure
that would handle in
excess of US $1.5 billion in the north
and east region would have 5 representatives from the LTTE, 3 from the Muslim
community who have been
the worst affected in the region, and 2
nominees from the government. Many Tamils from parties that have
entered the democratic stream
including the veteran politician
Ananda Sangaree of the TULF are opposed to the inclusion of the LTTE which
continues to extort,
intimidate,
kill Tamil dissidents and
government security personnel, and forcibly recruit children, from gaining such
legitimacy. They
also do not recognise
the LTTE as the sole
representative of the Tamil community. The Muslims led by Rauf
Hakeem too are not in favour
of the proposed mechanism which allows the ruthless Tiger Terrorists who have carried
out ethnic cleansing massacres of Muslims and Sinhalese
a dominant role in the administrative set up. Furthermore, the Sinhalese who
are the indigenous population of the land forming the majority
community in the
island have been completely left out,
totally discounting them in the vital decision making process involving the
investment of the
pledged aid, even though they will have to bear
the larger share of the repayment of that portion deemed as
loans. People have demanded
transparency
and a free and open debate which is being denied to
them.
Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of
State for South Asian Affairs testified before the US International Relations
Sub-Committee on June 14,
2005, stating that the divisions within
the Sri Lankan Government and the absence of trust between the Government and
the LTTE is due to the
latter group continuing to use
assassinations and suicide bombers underscoring their character as an
organization wedded to terrorism, and
justifying their designation as a
foreign terrorist organization, as being the main reasons for the breakdown of
the peace process.
Despite all of this, the international
community apparently requires the government to involve the ruthless Tamil Tiger
Terrorists in a joint
administrative structure where they
would wield a dominant position, in order that funds may be transferred for
tsunami rehabilitation programs
in Sri Lanka. The rationale for
such a policy simply boggles the mind. Remember the famous saying,
" You are either with us or you are
with the terrorists " .
It is therefore difficult to understand why the international community
wants to reward an armed terrorist group with a
great deal of blood on its hands, that
has links to and cooperated with the much maligned Al 'Qaeda in exchange for
supplies of surface to air
missiles, when they have
firmly pledged at the United Nations and other fora to leave no stone
unturned in the fight to eliminate the scourge of
terrorism from the face of the
earth.
An alternate
proposal titled ' Distributing Aid for Recovery from Tsunami (DART)
has earlier been presented on May 16, 2005 to the
Government by our Australian affiliate, namely the Society for
Peace, Unity and Human Rights of Sri Lanka (SPUR), that avoids the
pitfalls of legitimising a
brutal terrorist group, whilst
entrusting the management to an All Party Committee drawn from Sri Lanka's
elected representatives
including the Tamil National
Alliance which is an appendage of the LTTE. We believe that such
a mechanism
will be acceptable to the
majority of the people from all of the
ethnic and religious communities. We have in our prior media release
dated June 5,
2005 recommended an auditing role
for the international funding agencies such as
the World Bank, IMF, and ADB to further streamline this
arrangement. We call on the
co-chairs of the Sri Lanka Peace Process and the Government to move away from their erratic and controversial
P-TOMS mechanism, and to adopt the
alternate DART proposal in order to move forward with the tsunami reconstruction with the willing
participation and approval of the people
of Sri Lanka.
Yours very truly,
Mahinda
Gunasekera
Honorary
President