Sangaree tells TNA MPs Resign or save Tamils trapped in Vanni

TULF leader V. Anandasangaree yesterday called upon the 22 TNA Parliamentarians to vacate their seats or save the innocent Tamils trapped in Vanni under the gun point of the LTTE.

"They have fooled enough of the people whom they claim to represent in Parliament, but never championed their cause. They have misled the International Community and the people of Tamil Nadu in particular," said in a release issued to the media.

The people of Kilinochchi are all now displaced and living at Dharmapuram, a small village in the district. More than 100,000 people, including men, women and children, including the sick and toddlers, deprived of their normal life, had been mercilessly driven like cattle into Kilinochchi by the LTTE from the areas under their control in the neighbouring districts of Mannar, Vavuniya and Mullaitheevu. They were pushed into Kilinochchi by the withdrawing LTTE, unable to confront the advancing Government Forces. Left alone, most of them would have stayed in their homes or could have gone to their respective homes and been saved. Instead, they are brought from far off places and squeezed into small villages already over crowded with displaced persons from the Kilinochchi district. The LTTE holds these people to ransom for no fault of theirs, but only for the sole purpose of using them as human shields for their own protection, he said.

The TNA, he said, was "ignoring to respond to the distress call of these 250,000 people who are caught up between the LTTE which is compulsorily recruiting men and women only to sacrifice them at the battlefront. Hundreds had been bitten by snakes and many have died. The weather is so bad and the rain so heavy that all areas are flooded and people have to move from place to place in search of highland to camp and to cook their food. Apart from the snake menace, there is the threat of malaria and dengue.

The distress call of these unfortunate people is not heard in Tamil Nadu, he said: "I daresay that all these sufferings of the people do not seem to be of any concern to the TNA MPs and some leaders of Tamil Nadu, who were in the forefront of the recent uprising in Tamil Nadu, most of whom take pride in boasting of the umbilicus corde relationship, between the Tamils of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. They least know of the same relationship the Sinhalese have with the Tamils of Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Their only concern seems to be saving the LTTE under the pretext of stopping the war."

"A TNA Parliamentarian had said in Parliament recently that 55,000 children from 190 schools are not attending school. He did not have the guts to tell the world as to why this has happened, because of whom and where. To add to what he said, in the Eastern Province more than 6,000 children do not know their alphabet. The MP did not mention how teachers on the government’s payroll are fighting in the war front for the LTTE. These MP’s children are quite safe in foreign countries, enjoying a good education. The irony is that a TNA Member of Parliament, whose entire family is in Australia, recently referred to me in Parliament as a traitor."

"One can understand TNA Members of Parliament remaining silent on this type of issue merely to please the LTTE and to save their seats in Parliament. But one cannot understand as to why Tamil Nadu should remain silent without raising one word of protest against it."

"The TNA Members did not protest when the LTTE ordered all those 8,000 students who sat for the G.C.E(O/L) examination held recently, to undergo training while the Catholic Church protested against the attempt of the LTTE to take away some orphans from an orphanage run by the church," he said.