A Sri Lankan government minister stated that no one has “the right to tell how many soldiers should be kept in the north or in the east,” in a defiant address to parliament this week.
Minister of Skills Development and Vocational Training Mahinda Samarasinghe said that it is only Sri Lanka’s “national security council that decides the number of troops in north and east”.
Mr Samarasinghe, who was previously Mahinda Rajapaksa’s special envoy on human rights and rejected war crimes reports at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, went on to add that despite former Tamil fighters undergoing an infamous government “rehabilitation” programme, troop numbers needed to be maintained in the North-East.
“We have not forgotten the way how the war came to an end (in May 2009),” he said. “12,000 LTTE cadres surrendered. Like our Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka says, they have not been rehabilitated properly.”
“However, these LTTE cadres were released to the society” the minister added. “There are no reports of where they are and what they do. How can we withdraw troops from the north and the east under these circumstances? The country’s safety and security is of paramount importance.”
His comments came as Sri Lanka’s president also maintained that the number of soldiers in the Tamil North-East would not be reduced.
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