SRI LANKA UNITED NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA
Box 55292, 300 Borough Drive, Toronto, Ontario M1P 4Z7, Canada

Website: www.sluna.org E-mail: sluna@idirect.com
By E-mail January 20, 2007
Hon. Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul
Minister of Overseas Development and Economic Cooperation
Austvartiges-Amt
Werderscher Markt 1 10117, Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany
Honourable Madam Wieczorek-Zeul,

Suspension of Humanitarian Aid to Sri Lanka

We refer to your interview given to Der Tagesspiegel about your decision to divert aid earlier earmarked for tsunami relief in Sri Lanka to the Aceh Province in Indonesia, and further suspend aid committed for development programs based on the advice of unnamed non-government organizations. Whilst we have no objection to your assisting the people of Indonesia, we are at a loss to understand the reasons surrounding your rash decision to deprive the needy people of Sri Lanka who are coping with the three decade long terrorist insurgency of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of some measure of planned assistance to uplift their economic condition.

In addition to your decision to suspend aid to Sri Lanka, you have apparently undertaken to canvass other western governments to follow suit. You have said that with the Federal Republic of Germany taking the Chairmanship of the European Union in the first half of 2007, you hope to redouble your efforts to re-energise the peace process, which in our opinion is a wasteful effort as the LTTE has at no stage negotiated in good faith as they merely used the process to seek the same goal of a mono-ethnic racist Tamil separate state to be carved out of the sovereign territory of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has made six attempts in the past two decades to reach a negotiated settlement acceptable to all of the constituent communities through direct talks and the use of international mediators and facilitators from India and Norway, but to no avail, as the intransigent internationally designated LTTE terrorists never shifted from their end goal and were unwilling to discuss substantive issues. The LTTE backtracked from their deal in Oslo to seek a solution based on a federal system clearly showing that they were deceitful and only buying time to militarily achieve their objective of a divided Sri Lanka. You are perhaps aware that the LTTE avoided the Tokyo round of June 2003 as they would have had to sign on to a Human Rights Charter, and having kept away for nearly an year, they came up with their Interim Special Governing Authority (ISGA) proposal of October 31, 2003, which was nothing but a blueprint for a separate state.

You have not disclosed the names of the INGO and NGOs that had written to you on the suspension of aid and sought your support in lifting the ban imposed by the EU on the LTTE. We are aware that a great many of these non-government organizations to whom you have entrusted the German tax payers money have acted irresponsibly utilizing a large chunk for their extravagant lifestyles and political posturing, and done comparatively little to assist the needy by way of development work. It is not far fetched to state that these NGOs are interfering in areas which are strictly the internal affairs of the host country, and using their substantial funding to promote the LTTE’s cause of a divided Sri Lanka by advocating political solutions leading to the break up of the state.

It is unfortunate that the Federal Republic of Germany and most western countries channel their aid to developing countries through various non-government organizations whose efficiency is questionable. It has come to light that certain INGO and NGOs supposedly engaged in tsunami rehabilitation work in the un-cleared areas illegally controlled by the LTTE, permitted the diversion of material for use by the LTTE including nearly 250,000 bags of cement for construction of bunkers, military hospitals and fortifications for these terrorists in Sampoor close to Trincomalee and Stanley Base in Ampara.

Yet another example is the recent admission by the Red Cross of Canada that they had so far spent only 30 percent of the donated tsunami funds of $370 million, and had built just 58 permanent houses in addition to some interim units and initial emergency relief. A Buddhist organization that we are associated with in Toronto raised a sum of $217,000 but managed to construct 43 permanent houses and also carried out repairs to 28 damaged houses in partnership with a well respected Sri Lankan Charity (Dharmavijaya Foundation), at two sites on the east and southern coasts at a cost of $176,000 leaving a balance of $41,000 for further rehabilitation work. The foreign based INGO and foreign funded NGO are therefore not necessarily the right vehicle for development programs.

As you are no doubt aware, the LTTE’s aim is to forcibly carve out 30 percent of the land and 66 percent of the coastline and territorial waters in the north, north central and eastern areas of Sri Lanka initially, to establish their mono-ethnic racist Tamil separate state of “Eelam”, to create a second homeland for Tamils in addition to their National Homeland in Tamilnadu, South India, where over 55 million Tamils live, for less than half of the total Sri Lankan Tamil community that reside in this region numbering less than 4 percent of the island’s population.

You can rest assured that the Sri Lankan people who have already enshrined Tamil as an Official Language, established two universities in Jaffna and Batticaloa for higher education in Tamil, guaranteed free education in the Tamil language from the kindergarten to university, bestowed equal status as per the Fundamental Rights Chapter of the Second Republican Constitution of 1978, given further recognition to the Tamil

minority community in the National Flag and declared National Holidays to celebrate special religious and cultural events of the Tamils, are certainly not going to approve the break up of the National Homeland of the indigenous Sinhala people numbering 77.5 percent into a multitude of ethnic states, merely because your government has decided to suspend humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka. In order to eliminate any confusion, we would like to add that Sri Lanka is at the same time the common homeland of all her people recognised as equals, no matter as to their ethnicity or religious background, and not going to barter away their freedom, territory and sovereignty for a sum of Deutsche Marks or other pile of currency.

The Sri Lankan people who have had to endure the chaos and instability of the past three decades at the hands of the brutal Tamil Tiger Terrorists will act on their own with or without international support to rid their country of this scourge of terrorism, even though the champions of the world’s fight against terrorism in the major capitals of the world attempt to dictate means that they themselves do not adopt against terrorists both within and outside their territories, for countries such as Sri Lanka.

You may re-think your decision and either help Sri Lanka to rid her land of terrorism or unwisely encourage the terrorists at the cost of untold harm to peace and stability everywhere. We are taking the liberty to release copies to other leaders and the media in the public interest.

Yours very truly,

Mahinda Gunasekera
Honorary President

Copy to: Hon. Dr. Angela Merkel, Chancellor – Federal Republic of Germany
“ “ Hon. Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, FRG