Activists protest killing of Tamils in Sri Lanka

Coimbatore, Oct 14 (ANI): Thousands of Tamil activists here staged demonstration against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and protested against the killing of Tamils in the country.

Shouting slogans, the protesters later torched an effigy of Rajapaksa.

They demanded the intervention of the Indian Government to save the life of "innocents".

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"As a mark of protest today, we urge the Indian Government to take back all the arms given to Sri Lankan army. Military experts sent to Sri Lanka should be withdrawn immediately, no military training programmes should be conducted with Sri Lankan army on Indian soil, and financial aid should be halted to Sri Lanka," said Ramakrishnan, a leader of the Thandai Periyar Dravida Kazhagam.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Government in January accused the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of using a ceasefire brokered in 2002 to re-arm itself, and threw out the truce both sides had mostly ignored for two years.

He has vowed to militarily wipe out the Tigers, which are on U.S., E.U. and Indian terrorism lists, and retake the northern territory the group has fought since 1983 to claim as a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority.

The LTTE says it is fighting to create a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils, who have complained of marginalisation by successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority since independence from Britain in 1948. (ANI)