Chennai, Sep 30 (ANI): Spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has said Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, living in camps in south India must be rehabilitated now that the civil war that drove them out is over.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar told media here said that the refugees must either be sent back to Sri Lanka with an assurance of their safety, or given Indian citizenship.
"Now that the Sri Lanka problem is over, resolved, we should either settle them well, give them assurance, that they will be safe in their country, or give them proper citizenship, and the right to work and live in our country. We have done that to a lot of Bangladeshis," he said.
According to United Nations panel tens of thousands of civilians were killed in 2009 in the final months of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war, as government troops advanced on the ever-shrinking northern tip of the island controlled by Tamil forces fighting for an independent homeland. Sri Lanka has acknowledged that some civilians were killed in the last months of the offensive, but says the numbers cited by the UN panel are vastly exaggerated.
It has also said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fighters - a group classified as a terrorist organisation by more than 30 countries - often dressed in civilian garb, making it unclear who was a combatant.
Minority Tamils have long complained of persecution by successive governments dominated by the Indian Ocean Island's Sinhalese majority since independence from Britain in 1948. (ANI)
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