16.1.2008
Neville de Silva - Diplomatic Editor Asian Tribune
The British Tamils Forum yesterday appealed to Tamils and others to boycott Sri Lanka's national carrier SriLankan Airlines claiming that its revenue is being used to buy arms to use against the Tamil people.
BTF, an umbrella organization of several Tamils organizations based in the UK, said at a press conference in London yesterday that some 30,000 of the 300,000 persons of Tamil origin living in the UK, use Sri Lanka's national carrier to fly to the country each year from the UK providing the airline with some £12 million which goes into the "war chest" of the Sri Lanka Government.
The appeal to boycott was made on the eve of the abrogation of the 2002 cease fire agreement by the Sri Lanka government and was criticized as a "precipitous action" which has "jettisoned any prospect for a peaceful political settlement."
The international community, particularly the western nations, was not spared the ire of the BTF.
"We think that the partisan international pressure exerted by Western countries only on the LTTE was a mistake in that it led the GOSL to consider it a carte blanche from the international community to scrap the cease fire agreement and finish off the Tamils in a one-sided war. We feel that a more even-handed approach from the international community between the two proponents, including sanctions on the GOSL for human rights abuses, will even now be more conducive to a negotiated peace settlement in Sri Lanka."
The BTF also appealed to its" other British compatriots" who travel on holiday to Sri Lanka to think of the deaths and destruction that their money paid will eventually cause among the Tamils of Sri Lanka.
They were asked to desist from traveling to Sri Lanka.
The BTF claimed that it had support from its counterpart Tamil organizations in Europe, Canada, USA, Australia and India to launch a worldwide campaign.
Courtesy - Asian
Tribune