Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has said in an interview with India's The Hindu that he wants to resettle 'as soon as possible' the 300,000 Tamils displaced by the recent war with the Tamil Tigers.
“I would say the condition in our camps is the best any country has,” the Sri Lankan President said over dinner with the newspaper's interviewer.
He gives some reasons for the delays in rehabilitation.
The war is over, the Tamil Tigers have undoubtedly been defeated but the essential grievances of the Sri Lankan Tamil population remain, i.e. inequalities in education, employment, and civil rights.
How those are going to be immediately addressed is not clear.
Most important of all, while the world's leaders and the UN make mealy-mouthed utterings, the fact remains that media and independent observers have not had and still do not have freedom of movement to corroborate, catalogue and accurately record what is going on in the camps and outside. WHY NOT?
Tamils themselves, in India and the huge diaspora around the world, in the UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia for instance, feel very aggrieved and will not roll over in the present circumstances.
The Sri Lankan regime is about power politics; rule being retained within the family of the President and his allies.
I am surprised at how his utterings are not subject to any of the same scrutiny that Sarah Palin's are, for instance. The consequences of President Rajapaksa's actions are already much more serious than the hypothetical future consequences of a President Palin.
Monday 6 July 2009
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