In line with one of its assurances on the Tamil question, the Sri Lankan government has lifted ban on eight bodies of Tamil diaspora.
However, in respect of eight other bodies including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, the ban continues to be in force. In March 2014, the then Rajapaksa regime had imposed the restrictions on 16 bodies and 424 individuals.
On Friday, the Defence Ministry, through a gazette notification, brought down the number of banned individuals to 155.
Among the organisations which were removed from the list of designated persons were the British Tamil Forum and the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), both headquartered in the United Kingdom; Canadian Tamil Congress and the Australian Tamil Congress.
The lifting of the ban on the GTF and a few others was seen as a matter of formality even in June when Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera took part in a meeting between the Forum and the Tamil National Alliance in London.
As for continuing the ban on the LTTE, the Defence Ministry’s notification stated that despite the military defeat in Sri Lanka, the LTTE's “front organisations and structures continue to remain active overseas promoting [the] LTTE ideology of creating a mono ethnic separate state of Tamil Eelam through terrorist means.”
US envoy’s visit
Samantha Power, United States’ Permanent Representative to the United Nations, who arrived in Colombo on Saturday, met Mr Samaraweera at the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Pointing out that the changes that Sri Lanka had put in place in “a very complex and diverse political environment” had grabbed attention of other countries, she told reporters that “the world is watching what his happening in Sri Lanka far more closely than what anyone of you can imagine.” Ms Power would visit the Northern Province on Sunday.
