THE All India Anti-Terrorist Front (AIATF), a leading organization opposed to terrorism in all its forms has felicitated President Mahinda Rajapaksa for “launching a nationwide peace initiative and checking the LTTE onslaught”.
The Memorandum of Felicitation was handed over to the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi yesterday by Maninderjit Singh Bitta, Chairman of the AIATF, which was set up in the late 1980s to counter terrorism that wrecked the Indian State of Punjab at the time. It’s founder and present Chairman Bitta was a Cabinet Minister in the Punjab Government in 1993, and later under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao was Head of the All India Youth Congress. He has narrowly escaped several assassination attempts, and was injured in attacks by terrorists during the campaign for a separate Sikh State.
The AIATF is widely recognized in India for the useful work it does in carrying out mass action to create an abhorrence of all kinds of violence, while also affording practical assistance to the victims of terrorism.
The Memorandum of Felicitation also states: “Your Excellency and your team of expert advisers on internal security has set a unique precedent for other countries ailing for a long time by similar tumultuous internal disturbances and the menace of terrorism.”
Activists of The All India Anti Terrorist Front pose with posters featuring images of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi outside the Sri Lankan Embassy before they handed over a memorandum to the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in New Delhi yesterday. Gandhi was assassinated in May 1991 by a Tiger suicide bomber as he campaigned for general elections in the Southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. AFP (Courtesy : Daily News)
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