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Home > Struggle for Tamil Eelam > Sri Lanka's Broken Pacts & Evasive Proposals > Chandrika - LTTE Talks: 1994/95 > Thamilchelven's Statement
Thamilchelvan's Statement
Courtesy: Tamil Eelam News Letter - April 1995.
17 April 1995
The LTTE had given the Chandrika government an extended time frame of April 19, to enable the government to clear all obstacles in attending to the day-to-day problems and living needs of the Tamil people in the north. But it would appear that the government had not shown any serious concern to this issue. In a letter to the LTTE leader dated 12th April, President Chandrika, while affirming her intention to "take firm action to ensure that all such obstacles are speedily removed and that goods can be transported to the north without impediment", very little has been done to translate this intention into practice. In releasing the letter to the Press, and publicising its contents, an impression has been created that the President had shown a keen desire to solve these problems, but in actual practice the impediments remain.
The ban on urea, fertiliser, needed by the farmers, continues, adding to the already prevailing scarcity of food. The President has announced, what appears to be, certain relaxations on the ban on fishing. But she also says that no fishing would be permitted within an area one mile either side along the coast, and two nautical miles seawards from all security forces camps on the coast. The seas within Vidathalthivu and Kerathivu are also prohibited zones, except within five mile limits from the coast.
Because all government forces camps are situated bordering the seas, whatever relaxations on the ban on fishing that are announced ' are largely unhelpful in permitting our fishermen to go fishing.
On the issues of opening a safe pathway for freedom of movement between the peninsula and outside, as well as on the question of LTTE cadres to carry arms for their protection in the East, the government continues to maintain its position that these issues have military implications, and hence would not be considered now. he government therefore has not changed its stance on these two issues. Therefore it is very clear that the government is more guided by military motivations than in offering relief to the civilian population. There are nearly two hundred military camps in the northeast. In persisting in its refusal to remove even one of these camps and offering a safe passage for public use, the government is only continuing the policy of the earlier governments in encircling the north through military means. The government is not prepared to guarantee protection to the LTTE cadres in the East. At the same time vigorous measures are being undertaken to open new military camps, new checkpoints, engage in search operations and arbitrary arrests, and in terrorising the civilian population there. In one such incident, an LTTE cadre was assaulted by the police at a checkpoint resulting in his death.
The government is also continuing to spurn the months-old request by the LTTE for a mutual declaration of a permanent ceasefire, instead of the present fragile cessation of hostilities agreement.
Our plea is that a suitable atmosphere be created in which our people could hope to live without fear, to live without want, and wit faith in the future. These are pre requisites in taking the peace process forward. We are forced to believe that in hesitating to accept this contention, the government is keeping in reserve a military option as its way of solving the ethnic problem.
