Dear Mr. President and Madam Secretary,
The people who signed this formal request are humbly asking you to take action to end the war in Sri Lanka.
The reasons you should take action are the following:
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The war that has been initiated by Sri Lanka on the Tamils in its territory is a genocidal war. Its purpose is to uproot all the Tamils from the northeast of Sri Lanka. It has provoked a mass exodus and dispersal of Tamils from the island, analogous to the Roman dispersal of Jews from Palestine in the first century or any other ethnic cleansing meant to remove an entire population. |
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The war began almost the day Ceylon gained independence from Britain in 1948. It has involved grabbing lands from Tamils and resettling these lands with Singhalese convicts and/or Sri Lankan armed forces; discriminating against Tamils in employment and education; renaming Tamil areas with Singhalese names; and (for the last 25 years) bombing, shelling, and disappearing Tamil civilians. |
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The government made Buddhism the state religion and has bombed Hindu and Christian places of worship, frequently replacing them with Buddhist temples. |
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All efforts at mediation, negotiation, compromise, or peaceful resolution have failed due to stubbornness and insincerity by the Singhalese-dominated government. |
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All international efforts at bringing peace and humanitarian assistance have ended with refusal of the Sri Lankan government to cooperate and the expulsion (and sometimes killing) of international observers and helpers. |
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We hope that the new Obama administration will act promptly and forcefully to end this ongoing genocidal war.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
The following signatures were collected by Tamils for Obama.
Further information about the ongoing genocide and its history is available at:
/Slow_Genocide.html
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