TNA urges IC to ensure Sri Lankan forces do not bomb besieged civilians
[TamilNet, Monday, 09 March 2009, 06:24 GMT]
The leaders of four major Tamil parties, the ITAK, ACTC, EPRLF and TELO comprising Tamil National Alliance (TNA), on behalf of the 22 elected parliamentarians from North and East, sent an appeal to the International Community urging it to ensure an immediate cessation of the war and ensure that adequate medical supplies, food and shelter be sent to the 333,000 civilians inside the area under siege by the Sri Lankan military. "The civilians are merely asking, that the SriLankan armed forces do not bomb them, and that the government permits adequate food, medicine and shelter into the area." Since the beginning of this year, more than 2150 civilians have been killed inside the so-called ‘safe zones’ by bombing campaigns carried out by the Sri Lankan armed forces and over 5000 are wounded, the TNA appeal said.
The TNA also urged the IC to urge permission be given for the UN and other humanitarian organisations to function in the area and to allow independent media into the affected areas to report the situation.
Full text of the appeal by the TNA follows:
Appeal to the International Community
Sri Lanka has been wracked by violent conflict for most of the past 25 years, suffering more than 100,000 deaths in conflicts in both the north and south. Successive attempts to resolve the ethnic conflict between Sri Lankan Tamils, who have traditionally inhabited the northern and eastern regions, and Sinhalese, concentrated in the central and southern regions, have been tried since the 1950s, but with no success. 