Send delegation to Sri Lanka demand Tamil Nadu politicians

With the political scene in Tamil Nadu hotting up again over the plight of displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka, the main opposition party, AIADMK, led by Jayalalitha Jayaran threatening to launch a mass agitation over the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, DMK and Congress MPs from Tamil Nadu rushed to Delhi to meet the Prime Minister and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi seeking New Delhi’s immediate intervention on the issue.

The group of cabinet ministers and MPs from Tamil Nadu urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi to send a team to Sri Lanka where they said the military was 'mistreating' Tamils displaced by the war and interned in camps, IANS news agency reported.

"We met the prime minister and the Congress president and appraised them about the plight of Tamil civilians living in refugee camps," said DMK leader and former cabinet minister T.R. Baalu.

"We said that the displaced Tamil civilians were being mistreated by the Sri Lankan military officials. We told them that steps should be initiated to rehabilitate the displaced Tamils," Baalu told IANS.

India, the delegation, which met Manmohan Singh on Tuesday September 22 demanded New Delhi to send a team of Tamil Nadu MPs to Sri Lanka to study the situation there.

The MPs who called on Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi also included Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Communication Minister A. Raja, Textiles Minister Dayanidhi Maran, Shipping Minister G.K. Vasan as well as Kanimozhi, a Rajya Sabha MP and daughter of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.

Among the others were ministers of state S.S. Palanimanickam, S. Gandhiselvan and S. Jagathrakshakan (all DMK) as well as Congress leader K.V. Thangabalu.

The detention in barbed wire camps in Sri Lanka's north of some 300,000 Tamil civilians since they fled Tamil Tigers territory before the military crushed the Tamil Tigers has caused widespread concern.

Few Days earlier, On Friday, September 18, Dayanidhi Maran separately called on the prime minister as an emissary of Karunanidhi to "highlight the plight of the displaced Tamils" in the Sri Lankan camps.

Karunanidhi wanted Manmohan Singh to "exert diplomatic pressure at appropriate levels" on Colombo to end what he said was "untold suffering" of the displaced Tamils.

Baalu alleged that the Sri Lankan government was not allowing the Tamil refugees to return to their native places, which were under the control of the LTTE before it was defeated.

"We told the prime minister that Tamils are stranded in the refugee camps. Around 2,000 Tamil civilians who were allowed to move to their native places have not reached there," Baalu said.

"We want to know what happened to them."

The delegation also urged the prime minister to take immediate steps to stop attacks by the Sri Lanka Navy against Indian fishermen in the sea, Baalu said.