COLOMBO: Amidst intense effort by the Sri Lankan government to stop the international human rights body, Amnesty International (AI), from carrying out a human rights campaign involving the Sri Lankan team at the ongoing cricket world cup match held in the Carribean, the Tamil Tiger rebels earlier this week began a counter campaign to support Amnesty International’s move.
Local cricketing authorities and the Sri Lankan government went into an uproar when AI recently announced its launch of a campaign, titled ‘Play by the Rules’, involving the signing of a foam cricket ball with the slogan ‘Play by the rules”, in order to get a better commitment of human rights from the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE.
Despite the fact that the human rights campaign targets both the government as well as the Tamil Tigers, the guerilla group has called for a ‘sports boycott’ against the Sri Lankan cricket team and declared that it supports the move by AI.
The pro rebel website Tamil Net publishing excerpts of an interview given by rebel spokeswoman Selvy Navaruban to reporters said the LTTE ‘welcomes’ the AI campaign.
Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry officials in Colombo in turn insisted that the International Cricket Council (ICC) have given their assurances that AI would have no room at the World Cup venues to carry out its publicity campaign.
Amnesty has claimed that the campaign is not targeted at the Sri Lankan cricket team and has declared that thousands of people have already joined the call for Sri Lanka to ‘play by the rules’.
The human rights campaign targeting Sri Lanka comes amidst escalating disappearances, abductions and killings of civilians.
The AI move coincides with the proposed Human Rights Council action against Sri Lanka. Although the HRC deferred its resolution on Sri Lanka’s human rights situation at the conclusion of its recent sessions in Geneva, the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse is under heavy pressure to suspend the ongoing undeclared war with the LTTE.
