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To Amnesty International Australia - Are you aware how your organization is being used by the LTTE in their effort to discredit my country of Sri Lanka?

Lt Col Anil Amarasekera

The Director,
Service Centre,
Amnesty International,
Australia.

Dear Sir,

Are you aware how your organization is being used by the LTTE in their effort to discredit my country of Sri Lanka?

It may be possible that Amnesty Australia is collaborating with the world’s deadliest terrorist organization for financial gain or it may even be that your staff has been heavily infiltrated by LTTE sympathizers. What ever the reason, please see below how TamilNet is using the name of your organization for propaganda purposes against Sri Lanka when the truth is just the opposite.

Amnesty Australia exhibits photos on Sri Lankan rights abuses [TamilNet, Friday, 06 June 2008, 09:21 GMT]

Amnesty International Australia held a photo exhibition, Cries of the Voiceless, over two days in central Sydney city, at the Martin Place Amphitheatre on 5-6 June 2008, o highlighting human rights abuses and violence against journalists in Sri Lanka. The photos taken with a rented camera by a 23-year-old man in Sri Lanka and explore life as a child in a conflict situation.

Trough its severe lack of media freedom, it is the cries of help of the victims of these human rights abuses that go unheard. Cries of the Voiceless is a photo exhibition to be held by Amnesty International to help carry these messages, read the Amnesty International flyer.

Attendees to the event said the open-air photo exhibition attracted several viewers. "These human rights abuses are shocking. It is horrible to think of the effect it must have on the children there," said one Sydney-sider after viewing the photos. "By simply killing journalists and enforcing media restriction, the Sri Lankan government cannot sweep their dirty work under the carpet," were other comments.

The Amnesty International Report 2008 released last week found enforced disappearances, unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests and torture continued to be a feature of the ongoing and escalating conflict between Sri Lankan government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2007.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced from their homelands as conflict continued. As hostilities intensified the space for dissent was increasingly restricted, and journalists, particularly those associated with the Tamil media, were attacked, abducted and killed.

Please be informed that terrorism expert and Chief Scientist at the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College, Dr. Magnus Ranstorp has described the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as “probably the most sophisticated terrorist organization in the world. This is the organization against which my country is pitted and this is the very organization that you are trying to whitewash.

Is it ignorance or is it a deliberate effort on your part that you fail to recognize that LTTE has been one of the pioneers of suicide bomb technology and has been responsible for more than half the suicide bombings the world over? Are you unaware that its victims have included thousands of innocent civilians, as well as national leaders such as President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka and the former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi? Do you know that they have been also responsible for the deaths of two generations of moderate Tamil politicians and the destruction of many economic assets?

Are you aware of what critically differentiates the LTTE from most other terrorist groups? If not, please be informed that since mid 1980s it developed a global network and boasts of having maintained political and propaganda offices and cells in some fifty four countries. Please also be informed that this network has helped to coordinate their fundraising, drug trafficking, human smuggling and shipping network for the procurement of war related equipment.

Have you been informed that the August 2007 edition of Jane’s Intelligence Review has commented that, “the Tamil Tigers generate an estimated US$ 200 to 300 million per year” and “after accounting for its estimated US$ 8 million per year costs within the LTTE administrated Sri Lanka, the profit margin of its operating budget, would likely be the envy of any multinational corporation.”? I am beginning to wonder if some of these profits are being utilized to get organizations such as Amnesty Australia to support their efforts at dividing the sovereign nation of Sri Lanka, given the fact that even at the last World Cup efforts were made, if I remember correct, to use the name of Amnesty International in a smear campaign against Sri Lanka.

Therefore let me finally warn Amnesty International that continued surreptitious support to the LTTE will make your organization a partner in the crimes committed by the LTTE against humanity and you will be made liable to be dealt with accordingly.

Yours sincerely,

Lt Col Anil Amarasekera.

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