US would have supported Tamil Eelam claims Sinhala nationalist MP

Sinhala extremist lawmaker Wimal Weerawansa claimed that the Sri Lanka refused to facilitate the surrender of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran to the United States in 2009, as Washington would have supported an independent state of Tamil Eelam.

Speaking in Sri Lanka’s parliament, Weerawansa said the US had sent a ship to the shores of Mullatiivu in 2009 to facilitate the surrender of the LTTE leadership.

“We opposed it,” he said. “Even China and India asked for us to hand him over. We refused all of that.

“Just like the US supports Israel, they would have supported Tamil Eelam,” he claimed.

“If by any chance the Sri Lanka military had not defeated the LTTE terrorist organization, in South Asia, Tamil Eelam would have become like Israel,” he told the house.

He went on to claim that Israel “is breaching all international laws and bombing Gaza relentlessly” and implied that an independent Tamil Eelam state would have done the same to Sri Lanka.

“If Tamil Eelam had materialized, we would be in the state that Gaza is in today.”

His remarks come despite Sri Lanka repeatedly bombing hospitals and no fire zones, using starvation as a weapon of war, deploying widespread sexual violence and executing surrendering Tamils in 2009. More than 169,000 people remain unaccounted for, in what us increasingly being recognised as a genocide.

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button