Rajapaksa slams Western countries; cites SRK’s incident

Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that some Western countries were discriminatory while raising concerns over resettlement of Tamil refugees.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that some Western countries were discriminatory while raising concerns over resettlement of Tamil refugees and likened their attitude to questioning faced by Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan at a US airport.

Rajapaksa said that while some Western countries urged Sri Lanka to re-settle internal refugees with whom more than 20,000 (LTTE) terrorist suspects were found,those countries discriminated people on their ethnicity.

“The President said they did not spare even popular and famous stars if they had names like Khan,” the Daily Mirror reported on Saturday.

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Khan was questioned at Liberty international airport in Newark,New Jersey after his arrival last month apparently because of his surname ‘Khan’.

Addressing a Buddhist felicitation ceremony at the Panduwasnuwara Rajamaha Vihara in North Western Sri Lanka on Friday,the President also said those who attempted to dictate terms to Sri Lanka in particular should know that it was the people of Sri Lanka who suffered under the 30 years of terrorism.

“They must not forget that it was my people who vanquished the most ruthless and powerful terrorist outfit and won the war against the LTTE and it was my people who would pay back the loans obtained to win the war against terrorism,” President Rajapaksa said.

“Those who laid conditions and urged to resettle IDPs in a haphazard manner without thinking of their safety or livelihood must realise that we did not win the war on a paddy land,” Rajapaksa said.

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“We did not drive away the terrorists from a mere marshy land. The entire terrain was infected with landmines and personal mines. They must see the amount of land mines we have unearthed,” he said.

The government does not want to see a group of its people live in makeshift camps forever,Rajapaksa said,adding these people did not come to the camps as flood victims.

“They became Internally Displace People as they fled the LTTE for their life. There are thousands of people in other countries who live in makeshift camps as flood victims for the entirety of their life,” the newspaper quoted Rajapaksa as saying.