Colombo: Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s legislator son Namal on Sunday indicated the long held demand of the Tamil minority community to release all Tamil prisoners may be fulfilled soon, a move aimed at persuading the Tamil legislators to support Rajapaksa.
“President (Maithripala) Sirisena and Prime Minister Rajapaksa would make a decision (on the issue) very soon,” Namal tweeted in Tamil language.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had run a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Rajapaksa, the president at the time, has repeatedly said the war was against LTTE and not against the Tamil community.
Since the war with the LTTE ended in 2009, the Lankan government has denied the imprisoned LTTE members are political prisoners.