adminCOLOMBO — Sri Lanka risks a “re-emergence of terrorism” as Tamil Tiger rebels and their sympathisers living abroad revive a campaign for a separate state, the country’s top defence official said yesterday.Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said rebel attacks were still a possibility four years after the end of the separatist war.
“Although the war ended in 2009, the re-emergence of terrorism is still a threat,” Rajapakse told a defence seminar organised by the military in Colombo.
“While taking every possible counter-measure to prevent the recurrence of terrorism in Sri Lanka, the country also faces the significant challenge of effectively countering the LTTE’s propaganda machine.”
Sri Lanka’s military crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 after a nearly four-decade-long struggle for a separate Tamil homeland.
UN rights chief Navi Pillay on Saturday accused the nation’s rulers of becoming increasingly authoritarian, with activists facing growing military harassment, four years after the end of the conflict.
Pillay accused the military of intimidating priests, journalists and other civilians as punishment for meeting her during a week-long trip to the island to probe allegations of war crimes. — AFP.
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