An Open Letter To UN Commissioner For Human Rights
Hilmy Ahamed
In your capacity as the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, I write to your Highness with much hope and confidence that the office of the United Nations Commission For Human Rights will provide and protect the human rights of Sri Lanka’s multi ethnic, multi religious and multi cultural population.
Your Highness, as you are well aware, all three communities in this country, i.e. the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims suffered in numerous ways and faced untold hardship during the 30 years of armed conflict that devastated our country socially and economically. The Muslim community in particular, who were not part of the armed conflict, paid a heavy price when ethnic cleansing took place in the Northern Province, when they were forced to leave their homes in a few hours taking nothing of value. The entire population of the Northern Province was ethnically cleansed. The Muslims in the East too suffered extreme violence including the gunning down by the Liberation Tigers of Thamil Eelam (LTTE) of 147 Muslims while they were in prayer inside a mosque in Kathankuddy, Sri Lanka. The Muslims paid this price because they refused to join the Thamil separatists in their quest for a separate state (Eelam).
The evicted Muslims of the North have remained in refugee camps and shelters in different parts of the country for over 25 years and still continue to live as a “Forgotten People”. They have been denied their right to return, their land and properties forcibly taken from them and their livelihoods lost.
At the end of the war in May 2009, the Government followed a policy of resettling the ‘last in, first out’, that deprived the Muslims of their right to return to their homes and restart their lives and livelihood.
