Tamils for Obama Seek Rejection of LLRC Report, Call for International Investigation of Sri Lanka Civil War

“We hope that you will recognize this incomplete report as the whitewash that it is and call for an international tribunal to investigate the matters that the LLRC chose not to find.” - Tamils for Obama

One of the many images that haunt the Tamil population of Sri Lanka and their supporters. Thousands of similar images exist.

(NEW YORK) - Tamils for Obama wrote a letter to Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake in which they recognized his role in forcing the GOSL to create an investigating body—the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission—and asked him to denounce the commission’s final report as biased and inadequate, and to call for an international tribunal to investigate the war crimes committed during the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war.

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) recently released its final report, and many people and organizations who were paying attention to events in Sri Lanka were disappointed. Tamils for Obama, in a letter to US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake, asked him to reject the inadequate report and call for an international investigation.

The letter quoted Gibson Bateman, who in the Journal of Foreign Relations called the report a “biased, inaccurate and disappointing report loaded with lacunae…” A Tamils for Obama spokesman noted “we agree with Mr. Bateman.”

The letter also mentioned Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians, who were quoted by the Associated Press as saying “By mischaracterizing the crimes committed during the last days of the war as isolated acts of individual perpetrators, the LLRC has effectively granted immunity to civilian and military leaders responsible for devising the policies that led directly to the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity."

Thousands of bodies were burned - during the Genocide in 2009

The Tamils for Obama spokesman said “We told Secretary Blake we agree with the TNA parliamentarians too.”

The letter went on “We believe that the Sri Lankan armed forces, not just the LTTE (as suggested by the LLRC report), was guilty of hideous war crimes and transgressions. We suspect that any commission created by the government of Sri Lanka will be a cat’s paw of the Rajapaksa government, and will see its mission as minimizing and eluding blame for the government’s misdeeds.”

Tamils for Obama’s letter then offered some praise for Secretary Blake’s efforts. “We know that you had a significant role in creating the LLRC,” the letter said. “We see it as an act of wisdom and courage that prodded the GOSL into doing something which it would never have done by itself. And so you are probably even more disappointed than we are at the LLRC producing an apologia for the Rajapaksa government’s monstrosities.”

At the end of the letter Tamils for Obama presented what may have been their main point. They wrote to Secretary Blake “We hope that you will recognize this incomplete report as the whitewash that it is and call for an international tribunal to investigate the matters that the LLRC chose not to find.”

To see the entire letter go to: http://www.tamilsforobama.com/letters/LLRC_report_blake.html

Link to Gibson Bateman on LLRC: http://www.jofr.org/2011/12/17/sri-lankas-truth-commission-a-brief-assessment-of-the-llrc-report/#.TwTIVTXOwWZ

Link to TNA statement: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20111219/as-sri-lanka-civil-war/

Tamils for Obama is a politically active group of Tamil Americans. We supported Hillary Clinton and then Barack Obama in the Democratic primary and US general election in 2008. We believe that over 70,000 Tamil civilians were massacred during the last weeks of the Sri Lankan civil war. We have watched the behavior of the Sri Lankan Singhalese victors after the war, and we strongly conclude that Tamils in Sri Lanka will only be safe when this unfortunate island is divided into two states.

http://www.TamilsForObama.com

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