GTF: NPC result meant Tamils want political freedom

September 22, 2013, 8:37 pm 

The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) yesterday asserted that the ITAK’s overwhelming victory, at the first Northern Provincial Council polls, meant that Tamil speaking people want political freedom.

UK based GTF spokesperson Suren Surendiran issued the following statement in response to a query by The Island at the conclusion of the election: "Under occupying military intimidation and violence the defiant Tamil people of North have shown, in unprecedented record numbers, their true aspirations through the ballot box.

"President Rajapaksa and his government, including some of his Tamil collaborators, must at least now understand that mere infrastructure development and reconstruction is not what our people want.

"Our people want a political solution that will allow them to be self-governing.

"If the President and his brothers believe that their manifesto is what the southerners have voted for, it is the TNA’s manifesto, that the northerners have voted for too, which incidentally calls for an international independent investigation into the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed against their loved ones at the end of the war, four years ago."