LTTE Headquarters,
                                                Tamil Eelam.
                                                24. February 1997


PRESS RELEASE
NEWS FROM TAMIL EELAM


ALL VILLAGES ON "EDIBALA" ROUTE DESERTED
	Tamils living along the Vavuniya-Mannar highway have abandoned
	their homes en masse in the face of Sri Lanka's military drive
	westward to Mannar. Operation Edibala proceeded with large-scale
	shelling of surrounding villages causing the flight of thousands
	of families to refugee camps in Madhu Church and Palampiddy. The
	total number of people displaced in the Edibala operation has now
	risen to 17,500. The villages of Paranaddan, Sastrikoolankulam,
	Puthukulam, Mahilankulam, Panrikulam, and Malikai have been
	totally deserted.
	
	The Sri Lankan media does not highlight the desperate plight of
	these Tamil people revealing once again that Tamils occupy a
	second-class status in the country. And with foreign journalists
	blocked from the war-zone, the government has secured the
	necessary blindfold with which to pursue what is fast-dawning as
	a genocidal policy against Tamils.
	
	While the humanitarian emergency reaches the same proportions as
	occurred in Zaire, the government deliberately blocks the passage
	of relief - even temporary shelter - to families made homeless by
	the offensive. Despite this, the UNHCR has not yet made any
	meaningful steps to press Sri Lanka into easing its embargo to
	refugee areas. The inactivity of the UNHCR over the past two
	years has been astounding. As the situation stands, even drinking
	water is running low for the families who have found themselves
	stranded in refugee camps or strewn along roadsides.
	
	Since government offensives resumed in 1995 the Tamil population
	in the north has been systematically uprooted, their crops burnt
	by advancing troops and their homes bombed to rubble. As a result
	of their mass displacement, diseases like diarrhoea, malaria and
	enteric fever are killing babies and young children every day.
	Meanwhile, in areas that have come under army control, Tamils are
	treated despicably - detained indefinitely, kept under
	army-curfew and subject to mass arrests and even ritual beatings
	at the hands of the military forces.
	
	This is the price Tamils are paying to be "liberated" by the Sri
	Lankan government..

MOTHER TELLS PRESIDENT
	-'MY SON WAS SHOT ON HIS KNEES' A Tamil
	mother whose son was executed by Sri Lankan police in Batticaloa
	last week has written to the Sri Lankan president about the
	incident. The boy, Kanapathipillai Suthakaran, who had only just
	sat his 'O' levels, met his death at the hands of police in
	Punnaichollai. They first tied his wrists and made him kneel.
	Then they shot both his shoulders off. While he was wincing in
	pain, a policeman put a final bullet in his head. Even at his
	funeral, the mother says, local police intruded into the premises
	of the funeral home. The boy was a student of the Sithi Vinayagar
	Vidyalayam. Incidents like this are not isolated. They are
	symptoms of an ever-worsening trend in the behaviour of Sri
	Lankan authorities towards Tamil civilians. The mother's letter,
	meanwhile, has little chance of affecting the president who, if
	anything, might ask the Punnaicholla police to carry out an
	investigation into their own conduct.

BOY DIES OF MALARIA
	A Tamil boy has died of malaria after being held for months in
	one of Vavuniya's military detention centres. He had just been
	released because he agreed to be shipped to Jaffna - the only
	accepted condition for release from the camps - but on arriving
	at Trincomalee harbour he was again denied hospital treatment by
	military officials and was instead detained in the Glass Factory
	detention camp despite his worsening condition. Two weeks later
	he died. He was 19. Meanwhile, a Tamil woman, Arumugam Maheswary,
	is unconscious in the same camp also suffering from malaria. She
	is from Nallur. Malaria is rife among inmates of Sri Lanka's
	military detention camps. There are no proper toilet facilities
	and men, women and children are kept huddled together for months
	under appalling conditions. All people detained are Tamil
	travellers who were trying to get to other parts of the island
	when soldiers rounded them up. Their only chance of release is if
	they agree to go to army-occupied Jaffna where the government is
	trying to create a facade of normalcy to the outside world.

Political Committee,
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

(English translation of the LTTE statement released by
LTTE International Secretariat, 211 Katherine Road, London E6 1BU,
United Kingdom. Tel:0181- 503 4294 / Fax: 0181-470 8593)