LTTE warns of genocide as UN pulls out

Author: 
AP
Publication Date: 
Sun, 2008-09-14 03:00

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers yesterday accused the government of planning a genocidal campaign against Tamils as UN agencies pulled out of rebel-held regions in the island’s north.

UN agencies started exiting on Friday after Colombo said it could not guarantee the safety of aid workers as troops pushed toward the Wanni region, which comprises Kilinochchi and Mullaittivu districts.

People in Kilinochchi have protested the departure of UN agencies from the Wanni region, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said in statement.

Residents had gathered outside the offices of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the World Food Program, said the rebels, who have been fighting to carve out an independent homeland in the island’s north and east since 1972.

They were “demanding the agencies should stay behind and continue their humanitarian work for the Wanni people facing a humanitarian crisis,” the rebels said. “The appeals (from residents) mostly said the Sri Lankan government is ordering the international agencies out as it readies for the final stage of the genocide of the Tamils,” the rebels said. There was no immediate government reaction to the charges.

But the government said earlier in the week it wanted to avoid troops being accused of killing aid workers, in a repeat of the August 2006 massacre of 17 local employees of the French aid agency Action Against Hunger, as it presses on with its offensive against the rebels.

UN agencies say at least 160,000 people have been displaced in the past few months in Mullaittivu and Kilinochchi. Some 70,000 people have fled due to fighting in the past two months alone.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s defense secretary yesterday told thousands of people living in the capital “without any valid reason” to return to their villages, calling them a national security threat. Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said thousands of people arrive in Colombo each month from other parts of the war-torn nation, many of them ethnic Tamils fleeing fighting in the north, according to state-run media.

“It is an immense problem for the security forces to provide security. The LTTE mingles with these people to infiltrate these areas,” he said.

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