Archive of South Asia Citizens Wire | feeds from sacw.net | @sacw
Home > Citizens Action and Concerns for Peace in South Asia > Petition Submitted to Indian President Regarding the Fast Deteriorating (...)

Petition Submitted to Indian President Regarding the Fast Deteriorating Situation in Northern Sri Lanka

by C. Boaz, R. Ariharasudhan, S. Lidwin, S. P. Udayakumar, V. Anthony Dhasan, 16 April 2009

print version of this article print version

April 16, 2009

Dr. S. P. Udayakumar
- C. Boaz
- S. Lidwin
- V. Anthony Dhasan
- R. Ariharasudhan
- A 124/6 First Floor
- Katwaria Sarai
- New Delhi 110 016 (Contact Mobile: 09865683735)

H. E. The President of India
- Rashtrapati Bhavan
- New Delhi 1

Your Excellency:

We, the following concerned Tamil-speaking Indian citizens, would like to bring your kind attention to the fast deteriorating situation in northern Sri Lanka. Tamil men, women and children are being killed in large numbers by the genocidal atrocities of the Sri Lankan army, navy and air force with the help of chemical weapons and other dangerous weapons supplied by several countries.

This genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka has been going on for the past few months and the Indian government does not seem to be interested in the issue at all. There are disturbing reports in media doing the rounds here in India that the Indian government has been supplying men, material and other forms of help and guidance to the Sri Lankan government to continue this genocide against the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The Tamil-speaking people here in India requested the Indian Foreign Minister to visit Sri Lanka and to try to bring about a ceasefire in the conflict. He ignored the call for more than a month and made a half-hearted unproductive visit to Colombo. The Indian foreign secretary had made a trip in January 2009 and claimed that the India-Sri Lanka relations had “never been so close, so warm and so deep†at his meeting with the Sri Lankan ruler. While this statement came as a slap on the faces of all the Tamils in India, the Foreign Minister’s visit was like another blow to the injury. Most importantly, the Manmohan Singh government has been keeping a disconcerting silence about the Sri Lankan genocide. In this alarming situation, we, the Indian Tamils, feel confused, disturbed and deeply worried.

Some twenty women have embarked upon an indefinite hunger strike in Chennai and they are accompanied by scores of women from all parts of Tamil Nadu every single day. Students, youth and other sections of the Tamil society are also agitated.

We turn to you now, Madam President, to come to the rescue of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. As the President of India and all the Indian Tamils, the Head of the largest democracy in the world and the daughter of the land of Mahatma Gandhi, please ask the Government of Sri Lanka to stop the genocide against the minority Tamils in that country immediately, to accept the ceasefire calls earnestly, and to negotiate a political settlement for the long-standing ethnic issue in that country.

We earnestly hope, Your Excellency, that you would not let us down.

Thanking you in great anticipation,

Cordially yours,