Ready to send medicines to Tamils in Lanka via ship: Stalin to Centre

Tamil Nadu government on Thursday expressed its interest to send life-saving medicines, and essential commodities like rice via ship from Thoothukudi to Sri Lanka to be distributed to Tamils in the island affected by the economic crisis through Indian Missions.

Chief Minister M K Stalin sought the Union Government’s permission to help the suffering Tamil brethren in Sri Lanka during a telephonic conversation with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. The request by Stalin comes exactly a week after he urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allow the Tamil Nadu government to help the Tamils in northern Sri Lanka as the island suffers its worst-ever economic crisis.

During the telephonic conversation on Thursday, Stalin told Jaishankar that the Tamil Nadu government was ready to ship the essential commodities like rice and pulses and life-saving medicines to Sri Lanka from the Thoothukudi port.

“These articles, being sent as part of the humanitarian gesture of the Tamil Nadu government, can be distributed among ethnic Tamils living in Colombo, north and east Sri Lanka and among plantation Tamils through our Indian Missions in Colombo and Jaffna. The Chief Minister requested the External Affairs Minister’s help in this regard,” a statement said.

It said Stalin also asked Jaishankar to intervene and ensure the release of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu who have been taken into custody by the Sri Lankan Navy.

Stalin, who met Modi on March 31, said the Government of Tamil Nadu is willing to provide essential commodities and life-saving medicines to the Sri Lankan Tamils living in the Northern and Eastern parts of Sri Lanka and Colombo as well as those working in the plantation sector.

“(They) are reeling under severe food crisis as a life-saving measure and help the Sri Lankan Tamils, especially the vulnerable group of women and children. It is requested to accord necessary permission to undertake this benevolent activity,” Stalin had said in the memorandum.

The request by Stalin comes two weeks after 16 ethnic Tamils, including children, fled their homes in northern Lanka and reached Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu through illegal boats.

The Lankan nationals are now lodged at the permanent transit camp in Mandapam near Rameswaram. The development rekindled memories of an earlier exodus in the 1980s when thousands of Sri Lankans from the Tamil-dominated north fled the island as a bloody civil war raged between the Sri Lankan Army and the erstwhile LTTE.

Sri Lanka is facing its worst-ever economic crisis with people standing in long queues waiting to buy fuel and essential items. The sky-rocketing prices of essential items have pushed lakhs of people into poverty in the island nation.