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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swisshits" data-source="post: 7481454" data-attributes="member: 100589">Event organized by Amnesty International on Sri Lanka in Berlin –  Sri Lankan Diaspora Switzerland is getting involved – Zuerich,  12.05.2010A group of the Sri Lankan Diaspora Switzerland went to Berlin  on 11th May 2010 to visit an event on the topic „The Human Rights on  Sri Lanka one Year after the End of the War – Situation and  Perspectives“ organized by the University Group of Amnesty International  at the Technical University Berlin.                                   The reason for the trip of the group of the Sri Lankan Diaspora  Switzerland was the rather strange composition of the speakers of the  event. Journalist Sunanda Deshapriya speaking on press freedom in Sri  Lanka was responsible for the killing of several civilians during his  time as district leader of the JVP-terrorists in Sri Lanka (Cover Name:  Asoka). Last year, he had to give up his job as Director of the „Free  Media Movement“ in Sri Lanka, being accused of misappropriation of  project funds, and since then has been speaking at events in Europe as  “politically threatened journalist”. Lawyer Dr. Frank Florian Seifert  has defined the basic argumentation of LTTE-terrorism in his book „Das  Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Sri Lanka-Tamilen zwischen Sezession und  Integration“ and made many friends among LTTE-supporters with his study  on assumed war crimes of the Sri Lankan army.     However, under the statements of the invited speakers, the lecture by  Father S.J. Emmanuel, himself President of the LTTE-successor  organization „Global Tamil Forum“, referring on the human rights  situation in Sri Lanka attracted special attention. Father Emmanuel did  not hesitate to compare the „Welfare Camps“ in Vavuniya district with  the death camps of the German National Socialists. He added that murders  and rapes in the camps only did not come out because there was not  possibility to keep into contact with the Tamils inside. The camps were  part of a strategy of the government to settle the Singhalese families  of the Sri Lankan army in the North of Sri Lanka and thus commit  genocide of the Tamil people in the long run. Father Emmanuel especially  blasted the arrest of Tamil activists accused of supporting the LTTE by  the German police and accused German politicians to be under Sri Lankan  influence.     In a counter-speech after the end of the lectures, a Tamil  representative of the Sri Lankan Diaspora Switzerland addressed the  participants of the event to explain his impressions on the situation in  Sri Lanka. He had been in Sri Lanka some weeks ago and had also visited  the camps in the Vavuniya district. The camps were openly accessible,  and Tamils living in the camps were always free to leave them. The  situation in the camps could not be criticized, as he could prove with  pictures, and many living in the camps had mobile phones not, and thus a  contact inside the camps were always possible. He challenged the  participants of the event to check this claim by calling persons inside  the camps from his mobile phone.     As a sad fact, this offer was rejected by a well-organized fraction  of young Tamils, and the representative of the Sri Lankan Diaspora  Switzerland was accused of spreading lies on order of the Sri Lankan  government, as other persons present were accused of representing the  embassy. Journalist Sunanda Deshapriya joined this critique and said  that he had known the representative of the Sri Lankan Diaspora  Switzerland as representative of the government of Sri Lanka in Colombo  already, which is in no case true, like the assumption of one of the  participants of the following heated discussion that the Tamil  representative of the Sri Lankan Diaspora Switzerland might have  Singhalese parents – all attempts of the young cadres present to kill  all doubts about the dubious information disseminated by Father Emmanuel  in the beginning.     After the event, representatives of Sri Lankan Diaspora Switzerland  were able to inform the organizers of Amnesty International in a  personal discussion about the problematic personal backgrounds of the  invited speakers. They asked the organizers to do a more intensive  background check on the invited speakers of such events in future. The  organizers said that it was not their task to take sides in global  conflicts, but promised to take the information provided by the Sri  Lankan Diaspora Switzerland into consideration during their post-event  discussions.      For further Information please feel free and contact Mr. Nandana Nakandalage (Secretary Sri Lanka Diaspora Switzerland) on <a href="mailto:info@srilankandiaspora.ch">info@sriLankadiaspora.ch</a>  <a href="http://www.lankanews.net/politics/17353.html" target="_blank">http://www.lankanews.net/politics/17353.html</a></blockquote>

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