The DMK got a morale-boosting breather as an extraordinary sitting of a division bench of the Madras High Court on Sunday allowed the party’s outfit, Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation (TESO), to hold its International Eelam Tamils Rights Protection Conference (ETRPC) here with some conditions.
DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, meanwhile, has warned against any further delay by the global community in resolving the Sri Lankan Tamils’ problems.
Delegates from across India and abroad sent out a strong message that “excessive delay” in resolving the Eelam Tamils issues will be a cultural blot, and “pull back” human civilisation “several centuries backwards”.
The conclave prior to the main conference, where the delegates discussed the resolutions to be adopted, was a low-profile affair with national political leaders like NCP chief Sharad Pawar and National Conference leader Farook Abdullah giving the event a miss. But they send their representatives Govind Rao Adik and S D Shariq respectively.
Other noted political leaders who made it included Lok Jana Sakthi president Ram Vilas Paswan, Samajwadi Party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav and JD(U) functionary K C Tyagi. But the much-awaited Tamil MPs from Sri Lanka, part of the Tamil National Alliance, pulled out of the conclave in the 11th hour in the wake of uncertainty and unseemly row over the meet.
However, the saving grace was the participation of foreign delegates working for the Sri Lankan Tamils cause, besides top party leaders from the DMK and its allies.
Among the noted foreign dignitaries were Dr Vikrama Bahgu Karuna Ratne, president of the Nava Sama Samaja Party in Sri Lanka, M Ahmed (Nigeria), Aflkough Mubarak (Morocco), Nazim Malik, MP from Sweden, Abdul Razak Momoh, MP from Nigeria, and a few others from Turkey, Singapore and Malaysia.
Setting the tone for the TESO conference, Karunanidhi regretted that even after the recent Geneva conference, which called upon the Rajapakshe regime in Colombo to promote post-war reconciliation with the Tamils, “Sri Lankan military runs a state of emergency in the Tamil areas.”
“Harassment, persecutions, tortures” against the Tamils, even in their day-to-day living, was the order of the day. All this called for an immediate solution,” he emphasised.
Urging that the initiatives to end the unthinkable suffering of the war-torn Sri Lankan Tamils be taken up at three levels, Karunanidhi said the short-term measures should be taken to ensure their resettlement and rehabilitation immediately.
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