AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa said India should send relief materials to the 'suffering' Sri Lankan Tamils caught in the ongoing military offensive.
CHENNAI: AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa on Thursday said India should send relief materials to the "suffering" Sri Lankan Tamils caught in the ongoing military offensive in the north of the island nation.
Criticising Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's call to the people of the state to send telegrams to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to step up efforts to find a solution to the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, she said such moves would be of no help.
She called for concrete action from Karunanidhi such as asking the Prime Minister to tell his Sri Lankan counterpart to stop the "killing of innocent Tamils".
Referring to the summoning of Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner to New Delhi by the National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, she said "Sending telegrams or reprimanding a low-level official is of no use to these suffering people... I demand that the Government of India mobilise the necessary relief materials for the Sri Lankan Tamil people suffering without food, clothing, shelter or medicines."
Elaborating her party's stand on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue, she said AIADMK was opposed to armed struggle by the militant groups and favoured an autonomous 'homeland' for the Tamils under the federal set up of the neighbouring country.
She, however, said her party recognised their "just" struggle for self-determination and equality with their "Sinhala brethren."
"We are opposed to an armed struggle, which has lost its way, resulting in killing of thousands of innocent people on both sides.. we are distressed that a former Indian Prime Minister (Rajiv Gandhi) was brutally assassinated on Tamil soil as a fallout of this armed struggle," she said in an apparent reference to the LTTE.
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