LTTE has betrayed Sri Lankan Tamils: Swamy

WASHINGTON, JULY 23. India would never forgive the LTTE for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. ``For us, Rajiv's assassination is a challenge to our sovereignty,'' the Janata Party president, Dr. Subramanian Swamy, said in New York today. He was addressing a meeting of Sri Lankan Tamils from the U.S. and Canada.

The meeting was attended by persons holding high positions in various professions and had been convened to form a group that would struggle non-violently for the human rights of the Sri Lankan Tamils.

Dr. Swamy told PTI that the Sri Lankan President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga, was clueless on what to do. The solution was either Sri Lanka become a federal state instead of the present unitary state or an Indian-guaranteed Eelam be created. The former was better, but the present procrastination could not go on because the LTTE was destroying the Tamil younger generation or brutalising it. The Sinhala community should make up its mind soon.

The gathering, Dr. Swamy said, revealed that Tamil intellectuals felt betrayed by the violent methods of the LTTE, which had through a series of assassinations led to the decimation of Sri Lankan Tamil leadership's stature. The get- together was to explore if a peaceful non-violent movement could be launched from abroad.

Dr. Swamy told the gathering that if they formed an international group committed to non-violence, the world would take the Tamil cause more seriously.

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Section  : International
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