A four-member delegation from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) held a meeting with Swiss Ambassador to Sri Lanka Dominik Furgler and Political Secretary Sidonia Gabriel at the Embassy in Colombo on Friday.
The TNA delegation was headed by Vanni MP Selvam Adaikalanathan, with two other parliamentarians, Vino Norathalingam and Ko. Karunakaram, and a spokesperson of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), Surendran Gurusamy, also participated in the discussion.
Speaking to the press, Norathalingam said that the delegation conferred with the Swiss Ambassador on contemporary political developments in the island and in particular, emphasised the government’s attempts to destroy provincial autonomy that was established by the 13th Amendment.
“We pointed out that the government is unwilling to share power and is instead appropriating the residual powers that the provinces currently have and it is also reluctant to conduct elections for the provinces,” Norathalingam said.
“We also discussed the land-grabs and the settlement of Sinhalese in Tamil lands in the North and East,” he added.
The MP said that the meeting is a continuation of the discussions they have previously had with Ambassadors of other countries in a mission to explain the difficulties faced by Tamil people in everyday life.
He noted that in the previous weeks, they had had meetings with Ambassadors from Britain, Canada, Germany and Norway and discussed the political issues faced by the Tamil people in addition to the daily problems they encounter including forced land-grabs.
