Investigate Militarization, Settlements And The Systematic Rape Of Tamil POWs – Global Citizens Writes Pillay
August 24, 2013
“Over 30 activists, human rights campaigners, lawyers and academics from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa have signed onto a letter that brings her attention to the most immediate threats to peace and justice in Sri Lanka today. Tamil organizations, irrespective of their ideological differences, have signed under the broad banner of the Canadian Peace Alliance” says the Canadian Peace Alliance.
We publish below the letter in full;
Dear Dr. Pillay,
With your visit to Sri Lanka from August 25th-31st, we urge you, as global citizens concerned with the deteriorating situation in the island, to investigate militarization, settlements, and the systematic rape of Tamil prisoners of war. These three issues, the most immediate threats to peace and justice today, lay new seeds of dispossession, inequality and bitterness. Ultimately, an international investigation cannot delink the 2009 massacres from the ongoing suffering of the Tamil people in the here and now.
Navi Pillay
The Sri Lankan army is building military bases throughout the Tamil peoples’ lands. The Sri Lankan army presence of 85,000-86,000 in the North and East is contrary to peace building and amounts to a Tamil civil society under occupation. According to ground reports, armed soldiers control every area of civilian life from schooling to public meetings; soldiers even place restrictions on humanitarian, developmental and psychiatric work for the war ravaged Tamil peoplei.
Through the occupation, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces seize land from Tamil civilians while settlers from the South are brought in to colonize the land. From the Jaffna Peninsula in the North to the Trincomalee harbor and beyond in the East, the traditional homeland of the Tamil Nation is subjected to occupation and settlements. This situation exacerbates socio-economic deprivation, for Tamil people are denied the ability to cultivate their appropriated lands and must compete for fishing with the superior technology of Sinhalese settlers. Read More
