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“SLMM should exercise its CFA mandate”

“Our leadership is deeply shocked and wishes to express its concern over the attack on the SLMM in Batticaloa and would urge SLMM to exercise more care and become vocal in its exposure of the elements responsible for this type of dastardly acts that are planned on a political agenda to do away with the presence of SLMM” said Mr.S.P.Tamilselvan in a meeting with the Head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) today 17 January 2006 at the Peace Secretariat in Kilinochchi.

At the outset Mr.Hagrup Haukland expressed deep concern over the accelerating pace of violence and killings and asked of Mr.Tamilselvan to suggest ways and means of curbing violence. Tracing the sequential pattern of violence, Mr.Tamilselvan recalled the Tamil uprisings commencing July 2005 wherein the Tamil people expressed in very clear terms their sense of frustration and hopelessness due to non-fulfilment by the government of the various obligations to bring about normalcy in their life after two decades of war and three and a half years of cease fire. These peaceful demonstrations, Mr.Tamilselvan said, were responded by the occupying military in the most dreadful manner, pushing the civilian population into a state of anger and creating a political vacuum by the withdrawal from military occupied areas of LTTE members engaged in political work due to life threats by both the military and its ‘kept’ armed groups.

Touching on the current exodus of large number of families from the military occupied ares, Mr.Tamilselvan referred to the killing of a family in Manipay yesterday by an armed group consisting mostly of SLA personnel, and reiterated the necessity for the SLMM to exercise its mandate vis-à-vis the government’s obligations to provide normal life to the people without the threatening omnipresence of military and arbitrary occupation of peoples’ habitats.

In another meeting earlier in the day Mr.Hans Bratskar, H.E. The Ambassador for Norway had brief discussions with Mr.Tamilselvan on the visit next week of Mr.Erik Solheim, Norway’s Minister for International Development who is scheduled to meet with the LTTE leadership to work out modalities on the proposed Government – LTTE meeting on the implementation of the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA).

17 January 2006

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