Reacting defiantly to decisions by Sri Lanka and the United States to ban it, the leading Tamil charity in the island, the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation, vowed to continue its founding mission to help the victims of the Sinhala government’s military campaign and called on Tamils around the world to support its work.
“We assure you that our mission will continue in our homeland areas without interruption and we call on the international community and the Tamil Diaspora to continue to support our work with war and tsunami affected persons,” the TRO said.
Both the United States and Sri Lanka claimed the TRO was a front for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
However, neither country has offered proof or ever charged the TRO or one of its workers with assisting the LTTE.
“One wonders what the goal of the US Government is since no proof of any wrongdoing has been presented that casts doubts on the work of TRO,” the charity said.
“The US Government currently does not provide any humanitarian relief to those in LTTE controlled areas and with the recent actions inevitably supports the GoSL's campaign to limit assistance to the Tamil people,” the TRO said.
The TRO said the Sri Lankan ban was a culmination of a campaign of harassment and violence against the charity and its staff carried out by the Rajapakse regime.
Last year the Sri Lankan government froze the TRO’s accounts. In January 2006 paramilitary groups, known to be working with and under the direction of the GoSL, abducted, raped, tortured and killed 7 TRO humanitarian workers.
The TRO, which has been the largest - and for long periods the sole - NGO assisting the hundreds of thousands of Tamils displaced by the conflict, said “with the banning of the TRO the final nail in the coffin of the peace process has been hammered home.”
Meanwhile the main Sinhala opposition parties, the United National Party (UNP) and the ultra-nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP) hailed the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led regime’s decision.
The TRO said it was being banned with the “ulterior motive of unleashing untold hardships on the Tamil people as part of [the Sri Lankan government’s] continuing discrimination and oppression of the Tamil people.”
