Northern provincial council members seeking for International war crimes Investigation

The Northern Provincial Council Members Leading their March Seeking for International Investigation on War Crimes.

The Sri Lankan Tamils On Long March Seeking International Probe Into Alleged War Crimes. A group of radical Tamils led by the Northern Provincial Council members M.K.Shivajilingam and Ananthi Sasitharan are at the tail end of their four day march from Kilinochchi to Jaffna, demanding an international inquiry into the charges of war crimes against the Sri Lankan armed forces and an international court to try the alleged perpetrators. Speaking from Kaithady in Jaffna, Shivaji Lingam said that about 50 people are in the will wind up at Sangiliyan Thoppu in Jaffna, which had been the seat of the Tamil kings of yore. Ananthi Sasitharan said, “I am in the march both as a Sri Lankan Tamil and as a Victim of War Crimes". Ananthi Sasitharan had seen her husband Sasitharan alias Ezhilan, surrender to the Sri Lankan army on the 16th of May, 2009 at Mullaitivu. But till date, he is untraceable, with the army and every other agency saying that they have no information about him. Ezhilan was the political commissar of the LTTE in Trincomalee district in the East, before he went to Wanni to fight in the second phase of Eelam War IV in the Northern Province. Ananthi Sasitharan, who came second among TNA candidates in the last NPC elections of 2013, pointed out that her case is only one among the hundreds of men and women of the LTTE, who had voluntarily surrendered to the Sri Lankan forces with the hope that they would not be killed. On why she rejected a Sri Lankan domestic mechanism to probe the war crimes charges and render justice, Ananthi Sasitharan said: “We have had many domestic mechanisms in the past and all of them have failed.” Ananthi Sasitharan also rejected the proposal to set up a South African style Truth Commission to enable people to confess and make a bid for closure. “The South African Truth Commission brought succor to the non-Whites, because they had, by then, won back their rights. But we the Tamils of Sri Lanka are still to win our rights. So the Truth Commission and the confessions made there will be of no use to us,” Ananthi Sasitharan said.