Tamils want Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa arrested

Herald Sun

TAMIL protesters have demanded that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa - in Perth for the Commonwealth leaders' meeting - be arrested and charged with war crimes.

Around 60 members of Perth's Tamil community took centre stage at a rally of hundreds of diverse protesters before they all marched to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), opened by the Queen today.

Tamil speaker Yogan Tharma said Mr Rajapaksa had been given a "red carpet welcome" to CHOGM, but he was a war criminal who should be arrested.

"His place is not in the parliament, it's behind the barb wire," he shouted to the crowd.

"Please Australia, put him into jail, don't send him back home."

Mr Tharma, standing in front of a grisly banner showing dead and mutilated Tamil children, said he had lost 79 family members in the Sri Lankan civil war.

A Tamil woman, who only wanted to be known as Ajanthy, said the Commonwealth "does have teeth" which had been used to suspend four member nations - Nigeria, Fiji, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

"The crimes committed in Sri Lanka are far more serious and much larger in scale than those attributed to the four members who faced suspension," she said.

Ajanthy said genocide had taken place against Tamils in Sri Lanka, with nearly 500,000 killed and one million displaced out of the country.

"We need Australians to support suspension of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth, we need to stop the genocide of Tamils and support the independents of Tamils," she said.

Earlier this week, Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland moved to quash a court case brought by a Melbourne man against President Rajapaksa, which alleged he had committed war crimes and human rights violations.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard met Mr Rajapaksa in Perth earlier this week in the lead-up to CHOGM.