Daily News on May 10, 2000 reported that a suspected LTTE gunrunner was arrested with communication equipment in Thailand.

The report said that a suspected leading gun runner of the LTTE serving LTTE ships in Thailand had been arrested with a large haul of radar, sonar and other sophisticated communication equipment by the marine police of the Phuket port in Thailand on April 9.

This suspect was a Sri Lankan Tamil named Reginald Christie Lawrence who is now a Norwegian citizen. He had held this equipment packed and ready for transportation to Sri Lanka when the Phuket marine police raided his office, which had been a false tourist agency office according to the Phuket police.

It had also been reported that the Phuket authorities were surprised when a British woman claiming to be a representative of Amnesty International visited Phuket and interviewed the suspect and urged the authorities to deport him to Norway without prosecuting him.

No wonder that the Sri Lankan authorities are anxious about this case in which a leading LTTE suspect gunrunner is involved, and the action of the AI in trying to prevent legal action being taken against the suspect. As the report points out, this suspicious conduct of the British woman is an unwarranted action. This shows that some of the AI persons have been acting on behalf of the LTTE.

It is with relentless dismay that the Sri Lankan people repudiate this sort of unethical action. This is not the only instance when the Sri Lankan people descried the partial treatment of some of these NGOs including Amnesty International.

The report said, according to a top government spokesman, the AI during the early part of this year had refused to condemn the killing of Kumar Ponnambalam, unlike so many others that had done so. The AI was careful to make further investigations and consider several plausible different theories as to the killing of Mr. Ponnambalam. They were not satisfied with the claims made immediately by an extremist group claiming responsibility for the killing. That claim through a fax dispatched, was considered by the AI as a joke or a "prank". The jest is that why AI is so biased in the activities when it comes to terrorism in Sri Lanka.

The activities of some of these NGOs seem ludicrous when it comes to the context of terrorism of LTTE. Amnesty International has stated its concern whenever a launched attack flouts the principle of distinction set out in international humanitarian standards, which governs the conduct of hostilities. According to this principle, armed forces of all sides to a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilian and military targets and must not target civilians. In the past the organization had reiterated its call to the LTTE to ensure that its forces abide by basic principles of international humanitarian law, in particular, common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II. However, LTTE has never seemed to abide to any of these protocols and in contrast, Sri Lankan people like to know whether AI has taken any strenuous action against LTTE when these protocols had been continuously repudiated.

The best example if I may point is the cold blooded slaughtering of 800 service personnel who surrendered to LTTE without a fight at the request of late President Mr. R. Premadasa. He ordered this surrender to save then on-going peace negotiation with the terrorist organization. To the blatant violation and neglect of Geneva Convention these 800 service personnel who surrendered were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. Where was Amnesty International in 1990 when this occurred. Are you Human Rights selective enterprise like the slavery of old age.

The innocuous Sri Lankan people who have had enough suffocation for over seventeen years of physiological and psychological skirmish will never tolerate incidents of partialness especially by organizations that apt to be working for justice. We ask these NGOs, have they done enough when human rights of the innocent Tamil civilians were erred by the LTTE itself. Have they done enough to abridge the children who been abducted and massively deployed to the war front openly by LTTE. Did they make any fruitful noise when hundreds of innocent Sinhalese civilians in the villages of the affected areas were massacred by the bloodthirsty tigers. Are they really vociferous when hundreds of innocent civilians are routed into pieces by island wide scattered bombing. Is the duty of AI limited only to send a condemning message appalling some violent activities?

The Sri Lankans ponder that AI can pragmatically contribute to stamp terrorism in a more meaningful way, by appealing exuberantly to the countries that still abet Tamil tigers. They should raise a huge utterance around the world condemning the activities of LTTE and soliciting countries to ban LTTE and their fund raising activities. At least this will bring some relief for the innocent Sri Lankan civilians to stay with dignity and more over, as a wise first step to eradicate the weed of terrorism that has engulfed the whole South Asian region.

We wonder on the view of your track record with respect to Sri Lankan crisis whether AI is a neo colonial apparatus funded by British government who openly support LTTE terrorism by allowing to run LTTE Head Quarters just a stone's throw away from British Parliament. This Office is the launching pad for their fund raising, arms purchasing, and human smuggling activities that pump the profit from such clandestine operations to the terrorist war in Sri Lanka.

In the name of Humanity and Human Rights I appeal to you to take corrective action sooner rather than later to make sure that your organization does not aid abet terrorism behind the veil of International Human Rights.

To this end I expect a comprehensive reply questions that I have raised in this letter. And if your Human Rights endeavor is true declare LTTE as a Terrorist organization rather than a group of freedom fighters.

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