Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa was “totally wrong” in his comment that all those in Tamil Nadu who supported the Sri Lankan Tamil cause were doing it for political mileage, DMK president M. Karunanidhi said on Tuesdaay.
“If Gotabaya thinks DMK is doing it for political mileage he is totally wrong as the party has been fighting for the cause for long. He knows full well that DMK is for liberation of the Tamil race in Sri Lanka,” he said.
Mr. Karunanidhi said he could not accept the Sri Lankan Defence Secretary’s remarks that the island government has taken all political steps to mitigate sufferings of the Tamil minority.
“Those who wanted to get the rights through fighting cannot accept the remarks of those who denied them their political rights,” he said.
Mr. Karunanidhi said DMK has never supported the ‘genocide’ of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
“We are not like Jayalalithaa who had said that it was natural for people to die in a war,” he said.
He warned of legal steps against a Tamil daily which had published an article alleging he had stashed Rs. 35,000 crore in a Swiss bank and described the report as fictitious.
He welcomed the Supreme Court judgement directing the state government to implement Uniform Syllabus for schools from the current academic year itself. Academicians and teachers should do something to compensate for time lost due to government’s decision to defer implementation of the scheme, he said.
