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The Enquirer - U.S. shouldn't help Sri Lanka regime with our tax dollars

Dear Editor,enquirer.com

We regret the fact that a prestigious journal like yours has given the special Editorial-Opinion (level) status to an article

a) Filled with misinformation and written based on unsubstantiated hearsay information;

b) Written by not a career reporter (not even a journalist), most probably born and lived in US all his lifetime. The writer is a junior in a US University who could not have had enough time to do fact-finding mission on this story before writing it.

If this article appeared under "Letters to the editor" section, this wouldn't cause the credibility of an esteemed journal to be at stake in anyway.

Let's check how true his information and how he has conveniently disguised the truth :

1) His report is published under a caption of " Nazism, apartheid alive in Sri Lanka- US editorial " in LTTE Terrorist grouped backed news organizations and their only grievance being "Last month in Sri Lanka, 500 Tamils were forcibly evicted by police”.

Reply:

(First of all, this incident happened on June 6th, not last month as indicated in this published on Sep 18th)

Further, the writer in his report doesn't say

i) How many Tamils live in harmony with the other ethnic groups in the all parts of Sri Lanka. According to 2001 census Tamils living in Colombo (Population - % of the Total):

a) Sri Lankan Tamils 185,672 - 28.91%;

b) Indian Tamils 13,968 - 2.17%;

Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombo#Demographics

(Based on http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu-projects/Global_Report/pdfs/Columbo.pdf ;)

2) His article does not say:
" On Friday June 8, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court ordered a halt " & also the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka personally involved in the matter and settled it.

"Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake who spoke at a press briefing in Colombo on June 10, 2007, has expressed regret over the incident and assured that there would be no recurrence of such incidents in the future."

http://www.slembassyusa.org/press_releases/summer_2007/sl_accepts_11jun07.html

Isn't this a perfect example of democracy in action? When the Government found that their decision is wrong, they rectified the problem immediately and accept the responsibility. If Nazism, apartheid alive in Sri Lanka as the writer claims, how could this have happened?

Why the writer doesn't say the problem was corrected within 3 days after it happened. If the writer cares so much about his ethnic group (that most probably his parents left behind several decades ago) and constantly watching over their welfare why waited for nearly 3 and ½ months to make a big fuss about it now.

3) Most of his comments have been extracted from hearsay comments written by people like him (not supported with facts and figure).

E.g.: The portion, "Police didn't listen to us...." has been extracted from the people's comments section in the following website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/news/story/2007/06/printable/070608_evicted_tamils.shtml .

Yours Sincerely,
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 12:31 AM
Subject: The Enquirer - U.S. shouldn't help Sri Lanka regime with our tax dollars

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070918/EDIT01/709180314/1090

Damage Done:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22U.S.+shouldn%27t+help+Sri+Lanka+regime+with+our+tax+dollars%22

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