Colombo (AsiaNews) – The Sri Lankan government wants the help of the international community to dismantle the Tamil Tigers network abroad. Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) outside the island remained “largely intact.”
Speaking at a high-level Asian security forum in Singapore, the minister said that “many of the operatives have clearly cultivated powerful, political lobbies in certain capitals with a view to resurrecting the LTTE”
This appeal comes at a time when Sri Lankan authorities are concerned that hundreds of rebels might have escaped to India.
Colombo wants the international community to take the right steps to ensure the final defeat of the Tamil Tigers.
At the same time Mr Bogollagama dismissed genocide allegations against the Sri Lankan military as LTTE propaganda, “well-fabricated” so as “to discredit the Armed Forces as well as to embarrass the government of Sri Lanka.”
In the meantime in Vavuniya conditions remain desperate for 280,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs).
According to Caritas Sri Lanka, which is providing assistance in all four refugee camps in the north, overcrowding (6-7 people per bed) and lack of water and sanitary facilities have reached a breaking point.
Equally tensions between refugees and local communities have risen over the use of schools to provide shelter to IDPs.
