Sri Lanka News, update throughout the day....

---

CABINET MINISTER PERIYASAMY CHANDRASEKARAN IS ALLEGED FACILITATING INDIAN ORIGIN YOUTH IN GUERILLA TRAINING

One of Chandrasekaran’s(L) first acts as a Minister was to meet Prabhakaran in Kilinochchi (Photo by LTTE)

By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles

January 05, 11.00 PM: Ranil Wickremesinghe’s cabinet Minister, Periyasamy Chandrasekaran is facilitating the guerilla training of Indian origin Tamil youth in the luxuriant tea plantations of Sri Lanka’s central hills by the country’s Northern separatists, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) alleges a Tamil political party opposed to the rebels.

The arch rivals of the Tamil Tigers, the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) said that 250 youth of Indian origin recently went to the Tiger stronghold of Wanni in Northern Sri Lanka to receive such guerilla training with the recommendation of the Community Development Minister Periyasamy Chandrasekaran

Chandrasekaran is the leader of the Upcountry People’s Front, a political party and a minority trade union of the Indian origin tea plantation workers of Sri Lanka. The majority of them are organized under the trade union, Ceylon Workers Congress led by Arumugam Thondaman, also a cabinet member of the Ranil Wickremesinghe government

Long before the EPDP allegations, Sri Lanka’s security forces knew that some of the fighting forces of the LTTE consisted of Upcountry Tamil youth of Indian origin. Some of the escaped child soldiers of the LTTE who surrendered to the security forces confessed that they were recruited from the tea plantations.

The EPDP said, over 250 Tamil youths from Sri Lanka’s upcountry had gone to Wanni with introductory letters from the Ministry of Community Development Periyasamy Chandrasekaran, purportedly as manual workers recently.

The Tamil political party said, in fact these youth would be trained in the use of weapons and sent back to upcountry.

In an earlier item published in their news service the EPDP quoting the country’s Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa said the LTTE had infiltrated in the central hills also in the pretext of engaging themselves in the mineral water business. The news item said a group of youths from Vavuniya met another group of youths in an upcountry tea factory. It said that a Minister of the government had been instrumental in arranging the meeting.

In his public statements, under the context of the weak parliamentary strength of the Ranil Wickremesinghe government, Minister Chandrasekaran had not been very much guarded in his pro-LTTE utterances

Last October, Chandrasekaran, in a statement to the Sinhalese service of the BBC, Sandeshaya said that the Sri Lanka government should remove its troops from the High Security Zones in both Northern and Eastern Provinces. Replying the Sri Lanka Army, who had argued that only such withdrawal could be done when the LTTE was fully disarmed the Minister said the LTTE could give up arms only when the country was reverted back to the position that existed before the rebels were armed. Critics said being a cabinet minister he was in fact representing the LTTE

Addressing a “Pongu Thamil” LTTE propaganda rally in Mannar during the same month, Minister Chandrasekaran said to win Eelam all Tamil people regardless whether they lived in up country or in Colombo, in one united force support the Tamil rebel leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Some security sources believe, that in a coming Eelam war the trained guerillas of the tea plantations would be fully utilized to cripple the economy of the island nation in order to bring it down to its knees

( go2lanka.com)