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Appeal against LTTE ban: Lanka’s London HC offers help to Home Office to rectify flaws
While a Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora organisation hopefully awaits a formal lifting of the British Government’s 20-year ban on the LTTE, the Home Office here is said to be pondering rectifying flaws it had made in its submission to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC), a special tribunal that held the hearing.
During its hearing of an appeal last week from the New York-based Transnational of Tamil Eelam(TGTE), the Commission raised the issue of the “flaws” in the submissions made by the Home Secretary in his defence of the British Government’s proscription of the LTTE. The Commission pointed to errors of fact and other lapses in the decision-making process.
Shortly after the Commission’s judgement Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to London Saroja Sirisena was in contact with Fergus Auld, Director South Asian Department of the Foreign Office via zoom as much of London was under travel and movement restrictions over the corona epidemic.
Next day High Commissioner Sirisena wrote to the Secretary to the Home Office saying the Sri Lanka Government is ready to help the Home Office with any information pertaining to LTTE activities available to it and the dangers inherent to the international community in de-proscribing the LTTE which had caused much violence here and elsewhere in the world.
The High Commissioner has said that most of the Tamil diaspora have integrated well with society in which they have settled and delisting the LTTE could cause the revival of divisive activity.
Some Tamil diaspora members who have opposed the LTTE in the UK and have gone through hard times have said they hope to write to the UK government not to lift the ban as it would only help to revive former antagonisms, Tamil sources told the Sunday Times.
It is understood that the Commission will meet on one of two days next month when the Commission would take up the issue of relief to the applicants.
However the Home Office is unlikely to agree to relief permitted this way and is expected to request that the matter of submissions be referred back to the Home Secretary to rework its decision on the ban incorporating all evidence available to it now.