Final-year BGL students of the Law College burnt an effigy of External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid in the city on Wednesday and urged the Centre not to train Sri Lankan Navy personnel anywhere in the country. The protestors also demanded a UN referendum on the formation of separate Eelam.
They also criticised the Centre for its inaction when the war was at its peak during May 2009. “Despite all these, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has claimed that India had done everything for the welfare of Tamils in the Island Nation. We strongly condemn this, ” Senthil, a III BGL student, told Express.
“Our motto is to carve a separate Eelam out of Sri Lanka. We cannot let Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse rule over Lankan Tamils when he has been accused of genocide,” he added. “Though he may not face the trial in the international court for the genocide, he will be forced to appear before the same court one day,” a protester said.
US Warns Lanka
Meanwhile, the US warned Sri Lanka that the patience of the international community could wear thin if the Rajapaksha Government does not take steps to address the issue of human rights, accountability and reconciliation process.
“The United States and all of our friends across the international community have underscored the need for Sri Lanka to make progress on issues of reconciliation, on issues of accountability and on issues of human rights -- ongoing concerns about the political space and human rights in the country,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal was quoted as saying by Press Trust of India in Washington.
“We are committed to working with our friends in Sri Lanka to see that progress,” Biswal said in response to a question, adding that the US would like to see Sri Lanka address these issues through its own processes.
“We hope that that can in fact be the case. I think that the patience of the international community if real progress is not seen, particularly on issues of accountability, that patience will start to wear thin. And so we urge our friends in Sri Lanka to use the opportunity to show some concrete steps that their own, you know, processes have yielded,” Biswal said.
“Through the LLRC (Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission), there are a set of recommendations. I think that those are exactly the points that we’d like to see progress on, and we’ve encouraged them to do that,” the top US official said.