Tsunami Disaster & the People of Tamil Eelam

Pirapaharan meets with disaster management planners
17 January 2005 - Courtesy TamilNet

"We should not wait for aid and relief from the international agencies but start immediately to bring hope and confidence to our affected people.We should not allow our people to become a community that is dependent on international aid..."

Leader of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Mr. V. Pirapaharan, met with disaster management planners who are currently participating in relief and reconstruction planning and praised them for their services to the people of NorthEast. Pirapaharan told the planners that all resources available have to be utilized to ensure a swift and sustained recovery from the tsunami disaster that has brought destruction and grief to the community. The meeting took place in Kilinochchi on Monday, 17 January 2005.

Pirapaharan said:

"Although our people have suffered through severe hardships, we are shocked by the scale of destruction and loss of lives tsunami has inflicted on our community within a short period of time. Our people were displaced several times and suffered losses to their property by the actions of the Sri Lanka Army during the past several years. While this period where the destruction to the Tamil homeland was inflicted silently without the knowledge of the international community can be called tsunami-one, December 26th disaster, tsunami-two, has brought additional destruction.

'The challenge before us is to bring our community back to normalcy and to ensure that all necessary effort is taken to comfort them from the shock. We have to take special care of the children who have been psychologically scarred by the disaster. We are forced to disband traditional approaches to providing help and to look for more appropriate approaches to providing a healthy environment for the children to emerge unscathed from the disaster’s impacts. Well equipped playgrounds and creating a happy educational environments in schools are important to the recovery of our children.

We have decided that people who have obtained loans for economic activity need not repay them. At the same time I urge the expatriate community to do everything necessary to help the people affected by the disaster. We should not wait for aid and relief from the international agencies but start immediately to bring hope and confidence to our affected people.

We should not allow our people to become a community that is dependent on international aid. Instead, we need to implement projects that can build confidence and self-reliance among our people. Education should be structured to prepare students for jobs we need for long-term reconstruction and rehabilitation. Technology required to build our infrastructure should be integrated into our future educational plans.

'While we embark on our path to economic progress and prosperity we should be mindful of the need to preserve our environment. Appropriate and innovative technologies should be chosen to further strengthen our natural resources.

I also would like to pay special tribute to the doctors and officers of our health department for their service that have created a healthy environment in the welfare camps preventing spread of infectious diseases''