TFO: UN-SPONSORED REFERENDUM IN NESL SOON !!!??

"Tamils for Obama" lobby UN members for referendum....by S Venkat Narayan
Our Special Correspondent..ISLAND.LK

NEW DELHI, March 7: An organization claiming to represent Tamils who have either settled or been born in the United States has appealed to member states of the United Nations to support a referendum on forming Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka.

According to a communication your correspondent received today from the group that calls itself "Tamils for Obama," the letter sent to representatives of all UN member states at the world body’s headquarters in New York uses the precedent of East Timor, in which a UN-sponsored referendum ended a bloody civil war ten years ago, and led to East Timor’s independence to make its case.

It begins thus: "This letter concerns UNTATE. That stands for United Nations Transitional Administration in Tamil Eelam. Tamil Eelam means Tamil homeland. UNTATE follows the precedent of UNTAET, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor. We would like to show how this precedent applies to the situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka."

The letter points out that Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975. "Following the invasion there was a civil war, atrocities by government-supported paramilitary groups, the starvation and disease that come with destruction of civil society that comes with civil war, and massive displacement of the civilian populations both within the disrupted country and into other countries. Note that all of these events (except for invasion) have happened in Tamil-inhabited areas of Sri Lanka," it adds.

The website reproduces more than sixty articles/ broadcasts/ news reports published, broadcast or circulated by reputed global media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, the BBC, The Independent, Reuters, the Associated Press and others on the situation in Sri Lanka published since August 2003.

The letter notes that, in 1999, a UN-sponsored referendum was held in East Timor. "It ended the genocide and led to the independence of that nation. We hope that a similar UN-sponsored referendum can be held in Tamil-inhabited areas of Sri Lanka, and we ask you to support it."

The letter explains to the UN member states: "Tamils are an ethnic group living mainly in the northeast of Sri Lanka and southern India. They are a minority population in Sri Lanka, and are currently bearing the brunt of a civil war they regard as genocide. One third of the Tamil population has fled the island and formed a substantial diaspora overseas. Tamils for Obama is comprised of Tamils who have settled in the U.S. or who were born in the US."

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