"Stand by your principles" - Civil society leaders write to Tamil parliamentarians

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Tamil Net
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Prominent members of the Tamil civil society of all walks of life presented a memorandum to the Tamil National Alliance leadership on Tuesday, strongly condemning deception and deviatory polity of the leadership while times demand well-defined solutions to a long struggle.

The civil society members urged firmness of leadership in political stand in convincing India and the US of the indispensability of addressing fundamentals of the aspirations of Eezham Tamils, i.e., nation and the right to self-determination. Tamils are not a ‘minority’ requesting concessions, but a nation demanding self-rule, the memorandum said. The impressive list of signatories included prominent religious leaders, academics, educationalists, professionals, trade unionists and community leaders. For the first time the TNA leadership faces such an open challenge of the first magnitude from the civil society.

The uprising of the civil society of Eezham Tamils, coming from a realization that nothing but fundamental solutions only could guarantee their existence, is inevitably impelled by the brutal and suffocating oppression committed on them by occupying Colombo, political observers in Jaffna said.

One SL military personnel for every 12 civilians in Jaffna, and for every 4 civilians in Vanni is the gravity of the nature of the military occupation. The international community ostensibly plays down the crucial fact that the occupying military cannot be considered a State military, but in this context is an ethnic Sinhala military of genocidal intentions and potentiality, the political observers said.

Taking advantage of the plight of Eezham Tamils gagged in the island, sections lured by collaborative polity in the diaspora used to project every truthful Tamil opinion coming from the island as fabricated ones, by citing them as 'unnamed'. But now, surging above all the oppression and pressures from the powers, the Tamil civil society in the island is openly up in arms, shaming the section of the impotent critics in the diaspora, the political observers further said.

For how long the simulated leadership in the clutches of powers attempting to hijack diaspora politics is going to sit on any uprising in the diaspora, they asked.

Representatives of the civil society of Eezham Tamils, after conducting a convention, handed over a 7-page memorandum signed by more than 75 signatories to TNA Secretary General Mavai Senathirajah MP at Uthayan Guest House in Jaffna on Tuesday evening.

Mr. Senathirajah's objection to the presence of journalists along with the civil society members and his enraged comments over the role of Tamil media in spoiling TNA's agenda, resulted in verbal exchanges between him and the journalists on the occasion.

The journalists later left the scene.

The TNA General Secretary told the civil society representatives that he could not freely discuss matters with them in the presence of the journalists. He was also enraged over certain points mentioned in the memorandum.

© Tamil Net

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