TESO group to meet Ban in US, visit UNHCR in Geneva

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 September 2012, 12:01 GMT]
M.K. Stalin, son of DMK chief Karunanidhi and former deputy chief minister of Tamil Nadu, accompanied by T.R. Balu, senior leader of the DMK, and possibly joined by two other TESO Committee members, the DK chief Veeramani and Subhaveera Pandian, is scheduled to visit the US during the third week of September to meet the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to present the TESO resolutions to him, Deccan Chronicle reported Monday. On their way back, the group is also scheduled to stop at Geneva to hand over the resolutions to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC). Stalin and Balu would be officially informing the purpose of their travel to the Speakers of the Tamil Nadu Assembly and the Indian Lok Sabha where they are members.

The ground realities increasingly impel Tamil Nadu polity to take external steps independent of New Delhi, South Asia watchers commented, welcoming the trend.

“Among the demands put forward by TESO that Sri Lanka would find very difficult to accept are conducting a political referendum in the Tamil-dominated areas of north and east of the island-nation to allow the Tamil people to decide their own political future, formation of a United Nations monitoring committee to supervise the rehabilitation work being carried out there and conduct of an enquiry by UN into alleged war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan Army during the closing days of the war against the Tamil tigers, rejecting the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC),” said the Deccan Chronicle feature by its New Delhi correspondent, K.S. Jayaseelan.

Any model, long-term or short-tem, enforcing military-less Eezham Tamils to live with the occupying Sinhala military that has committed and continue to commit genocide, is the worst of the predicaments to the affected people. Any approach that doesn’t recognise Eezham Tamils a nation having its territory in the island is impractical to resolve the chronic question having an affirmed fault line. Knowing the wish of the affected people in an internationally conducted referendum, especially after an internationally waged genocidal war, is the universally righteous step. The mass-based Dravidian parties shouldn’t hesitate to rise up in unison in presenting the case internationally, Tamil political activists in the island said.

The grassroot should be supportive but at the same time vigilant in monitoring and directing the parties, in the given scenario of deliberations of the establishments, the activists further said.