SLDF In Crisis

(September 14, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lanka Democratic Forum (SLDF), run by Tamils in the USA and UK are going through a difficult period following revelation that some of its members were involved in the burglary at the Tamil Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) in 2005.

Instead of responding to specific charges against the members of the organisation for their part in the break in, the SLDF has ventured into a fishing expedition to solicit support from many individuals and organisations to cover up its bad publicity by providing extraneous facts and accusations to circumvent the accusation of its involvement.

A report published in the Tamil websites has singled out the independent ‘Thesamnet’ website for debating the burglary and taking up other issues relating to the SLDF. The report has given scant regard to major revelation about burglary at TBC by its members. The SLDF is being accused of publishing the report exclusively in Tamil and not in English for the English speaking readers to know about their campaign.

SLDF members Keeran, Ragavan and Dr Neethirajah remain accused of involvement in the burglary and they and another member Mrs Nirmala Rajasingam are signatories to the report. Seventy others have signed the document.

The report allege that the gutter Tamil media’s are targeting individuals and have quoted the LTTE websites nitharsam.com and the ENDLF website theepori.com as scandalous and the Thesamnet.com has been singularly attacked for debating about SLDF activities.

The report has vaguely touched on the burglary and it states:’Thesamnet.com has published unsubstantiated charges that SLDF members were involved in the burglary at the TBC radio station’. The core purpose of coming out of this statement was following revelation about their involvement in the burglary, but it remained diluted when the report digressed to discuss about democracy, freedom and strongly accusing the gutter media.

The four page report stated: ‘Unsubstantiated charges and abuse are being published in a calculated manner with the view to isolate the individuals and organisations and to cunningly marginalise the organisations and individuals who had sacrificed their blood to form a collective democratic voice’.

Some of those signatories claim the report has been substantially amended after giving their approval to project a different perspective and they are expressing disappointment that they have been implicated in the amended report.

The report failed to point its finger at the pro-LTTE sewage neruppu.org. This website was formed to undermine the independent neruppu.com by the LTTE men with the identical web design to character assassinate and publish abuse against some anti-LTTE individuals. There are accusations that some members of the SLDF are responsible for uploading the materials for neruppu.org and this has prevented it being implicated in the report. In further consideration, Neruppu.org whilst targeting certain individuals failed to attack neither the SLDF nor its members individually at anytime despite they taking an anti-LTTE stand.

The SLDF has not publicly acknowledged or denied its members involvement in the break in at TBC. The charges are specific that a computer consultant, an immigration adviser and non practicing medical doctor were involved with a LTTE man in the operations to break in and rob the radio equipment from the TBC radio station. The fifth man had taken the stolen goods to a car boot sale and disposed them for a meagre sum.

TBC expended over £10,000 to replace the stolen equipment.

The SLDF has come under scrutiny for maintaining silence and not spearheading a campaign when Tamil democratic voices in the community were singled out and demeaned by the LTTE’s sewage websites like neruppu.org, and nitharsanam.com.

Until and unless these charges relating to the robbery are responded, SLDF will be will in a twisted situation and expected to embroil in difficulties further.- Sri Lanka Guardian