'Eelam' tag of political parties should be removed: Lanka Oppn

I / Colombo May 30, 2009, 15:40 IST

Sri Lanka's main opposition party has asked government to initiate steps to "defeat politically" the 'Eelam' ideology after the security forces' comprehensive victory over the LTTE which had been fighting for a separate state.

Now that the LTTE leadership, including its chief V Prabhakaran, had been finished, there was an urgent need to look at various ways of defeating the concept of 'Eelam' or a separate Tamil homeland through political means, United National Party (UNP) leader Dayasiri Jayasekara said.

It was high time the government politically defeated the 'Eelam' ideology, he said, adding pressure should be mounted on concerned parties to remove 'Eelam' word from their names.

He was referring to Eeelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), People Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS).

"Action needs to be taken regarding political parties carrying the name Eelam. The LTTE has imposed this concept on the minds of people who lived in the North and East.

"They have been made to believe they were living on a land described as Eelam under a separate flag. Now we have to through political means replace the Eelam concept or mindset with the one that we are all Sri Lankans," the UNP leader said.

Jayasekara said UNP was overjoyed at the government's resolution on the action against LTTE adopted at the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday, with 29 nations voting in favour. The government should now look at reasons for some European nations voting against Sri Lanka at the special session and revamp the country's foreign policy to win them over.

"The United States and the European countries are our major trading partners. Without just focusing only on one section of the international community we should focus on the others too," Jayasekara said.

Earlier during the week, UNP chief and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe told reporters that Sri Lanka should allow free access to the UN bodies and then International Red Cross to visit the camps for refugees.

He said the aim of the government should be to resettle about 90 per cent of the displaced Tamil IDPs by this year.