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Time for rehabilitation: Envoy
Nanda Mallawaarachchi: JP The Sri Lankan government will now concentrate on rehabilitating the Tamil civilians who suffered 25 years of civil war that finally ended Monday with the demise of the rebels’ top leader, the country’s ambassador to Indonesia said
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Nanda Mallawaarachchi: JP
The Sri Lankan government will now concentrate on rehabilitating the Tamil civilians who suffered 25 years of civil war that finally ended Monday with the demise of the rebels’ top leader, the country’s ambassador to Indonesia said.
“I believe this is the time for the government to concentrate on rehabilitating internally displaced people, making them comfortable, bringing them back to their original place of living and giving them all the facilities they never enjoyed,” Ambassador Nanda Mallawaarachchi told The Jakarta Post Monday.
The Indian Ocean Island nation victoriously announced earlier that its army had killed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s top leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, whose death was deemed crucial in ending the war in which more than 70,000 people have died.
On Sunday, the rebel group offered to lay down its arms, saying it was acting to protect the wounded in the war zone, AP reported.
“This battle has reached its bitter end,” rebel official Selvarasa Pathmanathan said in a statement.
“It is our people dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them.”
Mallawaarachchi, a retired major general in the Sri Lankan army, said the government would later invite the Tamil people in exile to return to Sri Lanka and live a normal life again.
“I believe it will take place…when everything has been completed; the resettlement, the rehabilitation and the reconciliation,” he said, adding the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora was currently spread in Europe, the United States and Canada.
He rebuked media reports on the conflict, saying they were mostly inaccurate as the mainstream media had fallen victim to the Tamil Tigers’ propaganda.
“The LTTE black media attempted to portray a situation of genocide but on the other hand, 200,000 Tamil civilians crossed over to the government-held safe zones in the sudden rescue operation,” he said.
However, the humanitarian crisis caused by the war that escalated earlier this year drew criticism from several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, against both parties.
The European Union called Monday for an independent inquiry into alleged violations of humanitarian and human rights laws in Sri Lanka, Reuters reported. EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels said the 27-nation bloc was “appalled” by reports of high numbers of civilian casualties, including children, caught in the fight between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels.
“Some countries reacted to the escalation in the conflict in an abstract way rather than considering the government was fighting LTTE terrorism,” he said in response to rights abuse allegations.
He thanked the Indonesian government for its “continuous and unstinting support throughout the long drawn out campaign”, saying he expected stronger bilateral ties between the two countries.
When visiting Sri Lanka in March, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda reiterated Indonesia’s support for the South Asian nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and donated rice and medicine to the internally displaced people in the country.
