TORONTO: Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada have called for an international trial of the Sri Lankan president for allegedly ordering the killing of surrendering LTTE leaders during the ethnic war that ended in May.

Former Sri Lankan army chief and opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka has alleged that Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered troops to kill three top LTTE leaders when they raised white flags to surrender.

The defence secretary is the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The killed Tamil leaders included LTTE Peace Secretariat head Seevaratnam Puleedevan, political wing head Balasingham Nandesan, and top military commander Ramesh and their families.

“From day one we knew that war crimes were being committed by the Sri Lankan army, but the international community asked us: where is the proof? Now the proof has come from the top army guy,” Canadian Tamil Congress spokesman David Poopalapillai .

“What more proof do world leaders and the international community now need to try the Sri Lankan president and his men for crimes against humanity?” he asked.

“Rajapaksa is a war criminal. He should be taken to The Hague to face trial for war crimes. No nation has violated the Geneva Convention as flagrantly as Sri Lanka. No nation ever killed the surrendering enemy.”

The Canadian Tamil leader said the international community should deal with the Sri Lankan president “in a similar way it dealt with Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.”

He said the Tamil diaspora around the world is writing to the UN, the International Court of Justice and world leaders to put the Sri Lankan president on trial immediately.

“We are drafting our petition and will send it soon to the world leaders, including Canada and India, to put Mahinda Rajapaksa and his men in the dock for war crimes,” he said.

Canada has the largest concentration of Sri Lankan Tamils outside Sri Lanka, with most of the 300,000-strong community concentrated in the Toronto area.

Though Canada banned the LTTE in 2006, the community staged vociferous rallies in Toronto and at the Canadian parliament to put pressure on Sri Lanka to stop the war against the LTTE.

Sri Lanka Free From 136,000 Tamils:All ethnic-minority Tamil detainees will be freed from government camps on December 1, a senior Sri Lankan official has said.

Some 300,000 war-displaced Tamils were forced into camps after fleeing the final months of the government’s decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.

The Tamils are held against their will in overcrowded camps with poor sanitation. More than half were released in recent months amid pressure from rights group and foreign governments.

Authorities say nearly 136,000 people remain detained.

Basil Rajapaksa, a senior adviser to his brother, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said the camp’s residents will be free to return to their original villages after December 1.

New Delhi: A group of around 10-15 Tamil protesters shouting anti-Sri Lanka slogans barged into the Sri Lankan high commission here Friday and started vandalising it, the first time such an incident has happened here. Sri Lanka has expressed “shock” over the attack.
Sri Lanka has taken up the issue with India’s external affairs ministry.

“We are shocked. We have taken it up with the external affairs ministry and the Delhi Police. We will also be writing to the ministry,” S. Gunaratne, first secretary in the Sri Lankan high commission.

The incident took place around 3 p.m. The Tamil protesters after scaling the wall of the high commission, located in the high-security diplomatic enclave in the Indian capital, smashed 10-15 flower pots.

“In the afternoon, there were about 40-50 people chanting anti-Lanka slogans. They looked like Tamils and flaunted placards attacking the Sri Lankan government,” Gunaratne said.

“Around 10 people had jumped over the perimeter of the main gate. Since it was a holiday, there was no staff around. They smashed several flower pots and chanted slogans,” he said.

The Lankan security staff managed to overpower them, he said. No one was arrested.

The Sri Lankan high commission is a stone’s throw from the Chanakyapuri police station.

“No one was injured. It all happened in two minutes. Before the police could swing into action, they had fled. No one could be arrested,” Additional Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) S.

“These people were Tamils protesting and they are extending support to Tamils in Sri Lanka. They were prepared and had arrived along with news channel reporters. We are seeking video footage from news channels to identify those who stormed the high commission,” he said.

New York: More than two months after the Tamil Tigers were decimated, Sri Lankan Tamils living abroad remain bitter about the support China and India extended to Colombo during the war.

The Tamil Diaspora is livid that Beijing provided tonnes of arms and ammunition to Sri Lankan security forces battling the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The anger against India is rooted mainly in New Delhi’s diplomatic backing to Colombo when it came under Western fire over human rights abuses.

On Monday, Sri Lankan Tamils staged a rally outside the Chinese mission to the UN to protest “China’s assistance to Sri Lanka towards ethnic cleansing and genocide of Tamils”.

Around 50 Tamil Americans from around the East Coast came out with placards that read: “China, Stop helping Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Cleansing of Tamils.”

The group chanted slogans like “China don’t fund Sri Lanka’s war crimes.”

The campaigners claim that Colombo’s attacks on Tamil areas were facilitated by Chinese weapons. Beijing supports abuses against the Tamils through economic and military assistance to Sri Lanka, they said.

The rally was organised by Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a NGO based in Maryland that is protesting against alleged atrocities committed by Sri Lanka.

A spokesman for TAG expressed dismay at New Delhi’s support for Sri Lanka’s military campaign that ended in the killing of LTTE founder leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his top lieutenants in May.

“India has done an extreme form of treachery to the Tamils,” the spokesman said. “We need India to do justice to the Tamils.”

In May, India supported a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which commended the Sri Lankan government on its defeat of the Tamil Tigers and its efforts to address the needs of the displaced.

The resolution was slammed for ignoring the tactics used by the Sri Lankan army that led to massive human rights violations.

Brazil, Cuba, India and Pakistan blocking a stronger resolution that called for accountability.

The Tamil separatist campaign claimed over thousands of lives since July 1983. The end of the war was followed by accusations of human rights violations against the Sri Lankan authorities.

Human rights groups are also calling for the release of 280,000 displaced Tamil civilians living in relief centres which critics say are no better than “detention camps”.

TAG said it supports the goal of an “independent state” for Tamils through peaceful means and diplomacy.

“The violent form of struggle is dead in the new world order,” said its spokesperson, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

“We want an economic boycott from the one million strong Tamil Diaspora,” he added. “The struggle will continue in one form or the other.