Mahinda Reiterates Lanka’s Commitment to Help Over 9,000 ex-LTTE Cadres
HUMAN Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said that over 9,000 LTTE cadres now in government custody would be put through a comprehensive rehabilitation programme. Addressing the UN Human Rights Council Special Session in Geneva on Tuesday (May 26), he said the government would help them to reintegrate with the civil society.
He said, "We work very closely with several UN Organisations such as UNDP, UNICEF and ILO as well as international organisations such as the International Organisation for Migration, IOM in this endeavour. My Ministry has taken the initiative of preparing a national frame work for the reintegration of ex-combatants and this is not an initiative that we started recently. In fact, we were preparing for the post conflict era even before the armed forces destroyed the LTTE."
Here are excerpts of Samarasinghe speech: "When the biggest hostage situation the world had ever seen in recent times has been successfully resolved and at a time when new challenges confront in our quest for durable and sustainable peace, we are meeting in this room and focusing on Sri Lanka in order to agree on a way forward.
Over 250,000 of our citizens who were held hostage by the LTTE in the north were rescued by our forces and are being looked after and cared for as we speak. There was a reference little while ago about lack of food; there was a reference little while ago about starvation, about malnutrition which is furthest from the truth. Today we have all of the UN agencies working side by side with governmental officials in each and every one of these camps. Today we have given access to 52 International Non Governmental Organisations and other non governmental organisations to work side by side with government officials in complementing efforts of the Government. My Ministry Mr. President enjoys a mandate on the protection side of the Government. I have not heard from any one of the UN Agencies, any one of these INGOs or NGOs telling us that there are people dying of malnourishment, of starvation and there is lack of food. So I would like Mr. President, to state for the record that 250,000 of our citizens are being looked after and cared for as we speak and we will continue to show that commitment and we will continue to offer access and facilitate our partners in the international community to complement efforts of the Government within a national frame work.
Our objective of course is to resettle all our citizens in their homes in the shortest possible time. This is a decision that the people themselves must take.
With the eradication of terrorism as we have known it to be we are conscious of new challenges before us. The task of de-mining, infrastructure rehabilitation, and restoration of basic services need to be put in place before resettlement can commence and then livelihood strategies to ensure that post re-settlement sustainability is ensured. There is no question of taking short cuts and subjecting ourselves to pressures from certain quarters and saying that we are sick and tired of these pressures; we are going to take these people back to their homes.
We see another important challenge and that is, to reach out to the Tamil Diaspora living in counties of some of our friends in this room. So that by way of a process of dialogue and confidence building we can embark on our own reunification process and reconciliation process vital to ensuring never a repetition of what we as a nation had to go through Mr. President.
We will continue to work with all our friends in the international community. We will continue to engage as we have done in the past consistently with all regional and cross regional groups in this council. I am sure that the Ambassadors, Permanent Representatives in this room will bare testimony to the fact that I have personally every occasion when I have been in Geneva taken the initiative of coming and addressing the regional groups and cross regional groups, so that I can make myself available to any clarifications or questions that they might like to post to me as a member of the Government. And Mr. President, we will continue in our efforts to facilitate our bilateral and multilateral partners in complementing the efforts of the Government in the multi-pronged strategies that we will put into place in the post conflict era. This is why we must not engage in the naming and shaming game.
It is also in this spirit that a broad based draft resolution has been co sponsored by many countries including Sri Lanka which we believe has even taken into account some of the constructive and practical suggestions made by some of our friends who were supportive of another resolution.
We are receptive to international cooperation and assistance, however as the affected State we have to preserve our right to decide the modalities and mechanism by which we would address these issues. They must be home-grown. The UN has recognised over a long period of time the nature of the assistance to be rendered to victims and the central role of the affected State. We have to be supported by the broad umbrella of international solidarity which will include member States and concerned international organisations.
We have engaged with the international community in a constructive and consistent basis and always cooperated as far back as the 1980s by subscribing to 13 core international human rights conventions and several optional protocols. We have put in place 11 pieces of domestic legislation which has given effect to the ICCPR and has effectively put in motion the implementation of these rights. We have put in place mechanisms to protect children in armed conflict to prevent recruitment of child soldiers.
Mr. President what I would like to leave behind in this room is our commitment as a government, as a nation to the fact that Sri Lanka is a multi cultural multi lingual multi ethnic and multi religious society. This is the great diversity and the strength of Sri Lanka. And we are committed and we believe in the fact that it is only through the protection and nurturing of this diversity that we can build the unity that we need to overcome the challenges that are before us in the national, reconstruction and development efforts that our country needs to put in place towards our goal of sustainable peace and development. (Courtesy: The Island)
