Lankan envoy refutes AI's allegations

Sri Lanka has strongly responded to the Amnesty International's suggestion that Canada should provide asylum to illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka.

The Washington Post published a letter from James McDonald of Amnesty International suggesting that a shipload of Sri Lankans arriving illegally in Canada should be given asylum because they faced persecution if they returned to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the US, Jaliya Wickramasuriya speaking to the Sunday Observer said that McDonald misstates so many facts and makes so many blind allegations that he must be corrected. "First, he states that both the government and LTTE terrorists committed human rights abuses including battle.

"Sri Lanka's long battle against a terrorist outfit such as the LTTE was not a civil war. That's a convenient Western characterisation. The LTTE ruthlessly took over parts of Sri Lanka and killed any person, many of them Tamil, who stood in their way," he said.

The Ambassador said that it is outrageous to suggest that the government of Sri Lanka committed human rights abuses and war crimes as it defeated the LTTE in May 2009. "In fact, the government rescued nearly 300,000 people who were held hostage as human shields by the LTTE. Furthermore, Sri Lankan forces are trained in human rights," he added.

The Ambassador claimed that McDonald cites no evidence for his allegations. "In fact there is none. Sri Lanka has established a Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission to examine the most intense years of the conflict. McDonald accuses Sri Lanka of holding hardcore LTTE militants without due process. These militants escaped by posing as civilians. They are terrorists. Yet the government of Sri Lanka has initiated a program that will offer them amnesty and rehabilitation," he added.

Ambassador Wickramasuriya said that Sri Lanka is working hard to provide Tamils and all others affected by the conflict with a new beginning, and so it is also outrageous to suggest, as McDonald does, that Tamils who return to Sri Lanka will be persecuted. In fact many Tamils have already returned to renew lives that were disrupted by the LTTE's violence - another fact ignored by McDonald.

"Accusations come easy without facts, but facts make it difficult to sustain tired arguments. I should think that McDonald and Amnesty International would be heartened by the fact that terrorist violence against innocent civilians has been halted in Sri Lanka for more than a year," he said in a statement.