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Ferial Ashraff says Hakeem is helpless after strengthening the hand of LTTE

(file photo)

Sri Lanka Muslim Congress leader Rauff Hakeem’s troubles with his community started ever since he signed a Memorandum Of Understanding accepting Prabhakaran as the sole leader of the Tamil people. Being a Sri Lanka government Minister Hakeem signed the agreement under the secessionist flag of the leaping Tiger, symbolically accepting the separate state of Eelam. In this LTTE issued photograph he is seen shaking hands with terrorist leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Anton and Adele Balasingham and Thamilselvan are also seen in this picture taken at Kilinochchi, after Hakeem made a political pilgrimage to Wanni, with the blessings of his Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe. But after few months, the LTTE started massacring Muslims in the Eastern Province, under their ethnic cleansing program and is continuing to this day Ferial Ashraff his political rival says Rauf Hakeem cannot do anything else but to ask the government to declare curfews. He had made the Eastern Province Muslim a sitting duck, she alleged. Rauf Hakeem was in Muttur recently to bury two prominent members of his Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, assassinated by LTTE gunmen.
(Caption by Walter Jayawardhana)

(17/08/03 go2lanka.com)