Nothing had come out yesterday’s meeting with President regarding the release of TPPs
The TNA announced yesterday that their meeting with the President, regarding the release of the TPPs, had not yielded anything constructive, but an agreement had been reached to hold a meeting next meeting regarding the TPPs with the participation of Prime minister, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, to be presided by the President.
The president and the TNA team led by Sampanthan met yesterday. Main things transpired in this are given below.
- As the problem of the TPPs is not a legal matter but connected to Tamil National problem, which should be handled in a political hitherto not adhered.
- Either a solution to this problem should have been found immediately after the war or they should have been punished. Then they would have by now served their sentence and come out of prison.
3.All the TPPs had been arrested, detained and charged under PTA, on the basis of only their respective Confessions. In the new PTA, charging on the basis of Confessions is not incorporated. Hence, it was insisted that the TPPs should be released.
- In the context of the JVP members were released on general Amnesty after the insurrections in 1971, 1988,89 and more than 12,000 former LTTE members being released after rehabilitation, it is not appropriate that these TPPs being kept in prison. They also should be released.
- TPPs undertook fasting protests and gave up it on the requests from us and there are several protest rallies held by the students of the university and public organizations, all of which are reflecting the feelings of the Tamil people.
- The Tamil people think that the Government is not paying much interest on TPPs, just because of them being Tamils. It had been insisted that this is detrimental to Reconciliation.
After listening to these the President had suggested that a meeting could be convened next week and make a decision on how to effect the release of the TPPs.
TNA MPs, Mawai Senathyrasa, Selvam Adaikalanathan, M.A.Sumanthiran Dr. S.Sivamohan and K.kodeeswaran had accompanied Sampanthan to this meeting.
