Lanka did not succumb to pressure in ’09: minister

Agencies

Colombo

President Mahinda Rajapakse refused to succumb to pressures exerted by some countries to end the military campaign against the LTTE in 2009, a top Sri Lankan minister has said.

Government spokesman and Minister of Information Keheliya Rambukwella said some countries had put pressure on Sri Lanka when the war was reaching a decisive stage in 2009.

“Some countries sent advance teams and even were ready to send ships. But the President (Rajapakse) refused to give in,” he said at a gathering in the central district of Kandy yesterday.

Rambukwella’s reference to the international pressure was apparently aimed at the visit of the then British foreign minister David Miliband and his then French counterpart Bernard Kouchner to meet Rajapakse in 2009.

Rambukwella said the international pressure during the 2009 conflict was much more serious than the Indian government intervention in 1987, when the Sri Lankan troops were closing in on the hideout of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabakaran.

“This time there were more than dhal drops,” he said referring to the Indian Air Force’s air dropping of rations to the northern Sri Lanka citizens during the 1987 military offensive against the now banned LTTE.

India believed Sri Lanka was willfully starving the population in the north as a military tactic hence decided to airdrop supplies.

Sri Lanka has, since the end of the war five years ago, faced three consecutive UN Human Rights Council resolutions calling for urgent reconciliation measures for the Tamil minority.

The US-backed resolutions were supported by leading Western nations. Japan, along with India, was two of the 12 countries which abstained during the vote in March in Geneva.

Rambukwella said Sri Lanka had taken steps to achieve reconciliation with the Tamil minority and the government has set in a programme to engage those who have a negative image of the country.

The military yesterday banned public ceremonies to commemorate civilians killed during a conflict in the northern and eastern part of the country, amid fears that support for Tamil rebels may be revived, officials said.

Military spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasuriya said that no public gatherings will be allowed in the northern and eastern parts of the country to remember those killed.

“Even two or three families will not be allow to gather in a house to have remembrance ceremonies as it will turn into a public gathering’, he said.

The main university in the northern capital Jaffna is closed until next Tuesday to prevent students organising commemorative events to remember those killed in the final stages of the conflict, which ended on May 18 five years ago.

Tamil rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fought for an independent homeland for minority Tamils.

The military decision came as the government claimed that it had evidence there was an effort under way to revive the LTTE.

The Sri Lankan government is planning to hold its own ceremonies to mark the fifth anniversary of ending of the conflict.

President Mahinda Rajapakse will preside over celebrations on May 18 to mark “Victory Day.”

An estimated 40,000 civilians were killed during the final stages of the battle which was confined to the northern part of the country.Information Minister Keheliya Rambukwella