February 6, 2001

Right Honourable Home Secretary,

We write to congratulate you and the British Government for promulgating the subject Act in keeping with the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism, to which Britain is a signatory. It is inded commendable that your government has been able to conform your laws with that of the UN Convention within a short period of time, whilst even our Government in Canada continues to drag her feet despite being one of the first signatories.

Britain no doubt has won the goodwill of the peace loving people of the world by forging ahead with the necessary legal framework to deal with terrorists, who have taken advantage of the democratic freedoms prevailing in the developed countries to thwart and snuff out democracy and freedom in developing nations, using every means of violence and terrorism.

We are particularly concerned with the activities of the numerous front, cover and sympathetic organizations linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that operate in the western countries including UK, engaged in the insidious task of raising funds by legal and illicit means to finance the secessionist armed warfare carried on by the LTTE for the past two decades to carve out territory in Sri Lanka, in order to establish a mono-ethnic separate state called ‘Eelam’ for the exclusive residence of the Tamil minority community.

The Sri Lankan authorities have made several attempts at reaching a negotiated peace settlement beginning with the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord of 1987, mediated by the Government of India led by the late Rajiv Gandhi.

Sri Lanka kept her part of this agreement including the establishment of semi-autonomous Provincial Councils to enable the Tamil minority predominantly settled in the north and east to manage their affairs extensively, only to be faced with a new round of hostilities as the LTTE reneged on the deal to seek their elusive goal of a separate state by force of arms. The next President, Ranasinghe Premadasa sought direct talks with the LTTE only to be duped by the latter, who were merely buying time to re-group and attack both the security forces and innocent non-Tamil civilians. The current President, Madam Chandrika Bandaranaike – Kumaratunge’ s attempt to reach a comprehensive and honourable peace also floundered in the same manner, as the LTTE unilaterally decided to resume hostilities after re-arming their forces with more deadly weapons.

The people of Sri Lanka belonging to the various ethnic communities have equally enjoyed fundamental rights of citizenship from the very inception. Sri Lanka has within her short history as an independent nation, taken steps to constitutionally enshrine the Tamil language spoken by 18 percent of the population as a National Language, and further elevated Tamil to the status of an Official Language. The linguistic rights enjoyed by the Tamil minority of Sri Lanka far exceeds that enjoyed by the English speaking people resident in Quebec or the French speaking people in the rest of Canada.

The LTTE who claim they are seeking to liberate the Tamils, have decimated the ranks of the other Tamil militant groups with similar objectives such as TELO, EPRLF and PLOTE, and even killed the leader of the TULF political party, Mr. A.Amirthalingam who was also their initial mentor. Between 1978 and 1990, the LTTE had further murdered a total of 1417 identified Tamil civilians, and even lately killed the Human Rights Advocate, Dr. Neelan Thiruchelvam, and the democratically elected Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Jaffna.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have effectively subjugated the Tamil people through a psychosis of fear and terror in the regions they control, which surprisingly extends to Tamil communities even living as far off as Canada. They have used their indoctrinated cadres with cyanide necklaces to carry out mass murders of Sinhalese and Moors (Muslims) in acts of "ethnic cleansing", in order to drive all non-Tamils from regions claimed for their separate state. They have proven themselves to be a brutal terrorist group by using suicide killers with body belts of explosives to kill several Sri Lankan leaders including the late President Premadasa. They have also been convicted in the murder of Late Rajiv Gandhi, with India seeking the extradition of the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran to be punished for this dastardly crime.

The LTTE which has never wavered from its path of terror and violence nor its goal of an ethnically cleansed separate state, have recently postured itself as being ready for peace negotiations with the Norwegian facilitator, and proposed a ceasefire due to their present military weakness, in their attempt to fool the British Government which is expected to announce her list of groups designated as terrorists. (Contd./3)

This strategy is nothing but a ruse to hoodwink the British Government if possible, while they buy time to re-group, re-arm and abduct more Tamil children and youth to continue their megalomaniacal journey of murder and mayhem in pursuit of their mono-ethnic separate state.

We are of the firm belief that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and their front, cover and sympathetic organizations fall within the ‘terrorist’ category, no matter whatever test is used in terms of the Terrorism Act 2000. We look forward to your leadership and that of the British Government in taking the most stringent measures permitted by the Act to curb the spread of terrorism by cutting off the means to raise funds and finance terror both within and outside the United Kingdom. We trust that you and the other members of the British Government will fully implement the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000 in order to totally defeat the misguided groups that have taken up the path of terror and violence, and at the same time help to revitalize democracy in all parts of the world.

Yours sincerely,

Mahinda Gunasekera

Hony. President

Sri Lanka United National Association of Canada