Thursday, 10th April 2014
(COLOMBO, Xinhua)
Sri Lanka's government is stepping up its crackdown on an attempt to revive the Tamil Tigers with 65 people arrested on terror links over the past two months, an official said here on Thursday.
Sri Lanka's government ended a 27-year war with the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 but has come under fire from the international community for disregarding allegations of war crimes and undermining human rights.
Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution allowing an investigation through the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the last seven years of the conflict, a probe that has been vehemently rejected by the Sri Lankan government.
In response, the government also banned 16 Tamil organizations, which it says is pro-LTTE. Ongoing investigations have also resulted in the arrest of 65 people, who were suspected by the police of attempting to revive the LTTE in the country.
"The suspects were arrested mostly from Northern and Eastern provinces. Five of them have been released already," police spokesman Ajith Rohana told reporters.
Sri Lanka's army spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasuriya on Wednesday said the banned 16 organizations can resort to legal means to clear their names if they wished after an international rights watchdog criticized the move to ban them.
Sri Lanka on April 1 signed the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, which sets out strategies to combat terrorism and to control terrorist financing.
With the signing of the Resolution 1373, the Sri Lankan government banned the LTTE and 15 other Tamil diaspora groups.
Editor: Fu Peng
See more at : http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2014-04/10/c_133252754.htm
