Warning that there continued to be a "threat", Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary, speaking at a lecture on ‘Future Challenges of National Security in Sri Lanka’ on Tuesday, said,
“LTTE front organisations can encourage and facilitate ex LTTE cadres and those who escaped from the military during the war and pave way for a re-emergence.
Those who did not surrender are probably following the ideology of the LTTE. Even though 11,000 of them were rehabilitated there must be cadres who are not 100 per cent rehabilitated."
“We cannot forget everything just because we defeated them militarily. Still the threat is there. There are lots of enemies in the international front taking active steps to derail the path the government is taking to achieve economic development.”
Despite renewed calls for Sri Lanka to curtail its ever increasing militarisation of the North-East, the Defence Secretary justified the military's sweeping reach, saying,
“That is why we still maintain a strong military and that is why a considerable portion of the budget is given to the military. Still it is only two and a half years after defeating the LTTE militarily."
“To establish a camp anywhere in Sri Lanka is a decision and concern of the country as it is a sovereign state."
“Currently the front organisations of the LTTE and their supporters are taking internal problems of Sri Lanka to the international level,”
“Organisations such as Global Tamil Forum and British Tamil Forum pressurise the international community and western governments to put more pressure on Sri Lanka by all means. They want the international community to look negatively at Sri Lanka and that is how the pressure is taken on us,”
Sri Lanka recently boycotted the African National Congress' centenury celebrations due to a Tamil diaspora delegation, the GTF, being present.
