SL and India to enable voluntary repatriation of refugees
- quillmastersslcj
- Jan 25, 2015
- 1 min read
Sri Lanka and India have decided to expedite the voluntary repatriation of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees inhabiting the camps in Tamil Nadu. Bilateral discussions regarding this will begin at the end of this month, according to Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera.
The Sri Lankan cabinet approved the decision to enable repatriation on Wednesday (21) and announced that the premise will be further explored upon Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Sri Lanka later in March.
The topic was brought up during a visit to New Delhi, India, Samaraweera made recently to engage in talks with Modi and India's Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj. Following his meeting with Swaraj, Samaraweera told the media that he wanted all Sri Lankan citizens who have left the country to come back to their motherland.
However, pro-LTTE Tamil organisations in Tamil Nadu have spoken out against repatriation. The Tamil National Movement (TNM) leader, P. Nedumaran, told media in Madurai on the day of the announcement that Western countries would emulate India should repatriation occur. He claimed that the new government is attempting to remove evidence of war crimes as much as the previous regime had.
Nedumaran said that one way of accomplishing this cover-up is to show that everything is peaceful in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
by Kevin Andrews
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