TNA’s Northern Provincial Council member Anandi Saseedaran today strongly criticized TNA Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran for not allowing her to address the international community as part of the Tamil party’s delegation to Geneva.

Addressing a press conference in Jaffna today, she stated that the Tamil people had placed their trust on the resolution moved at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling for an investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.

However, that trust has been now been broken and the Tamil people are disappointed by this, she said.

 Saseedaran stated that the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) had sent a delegation of representatives to Geneva, in order to brief the international community ahead of the 22nd session of the UNHRC on the prevailing situation in the country, and that she too was part of it. 

She stated that on February 13 they met and spoke with representatives from 18 different nations in the city in Switzerland.

However, she says, that MP Sumanthiran prevented her from making any statements and that he too avoided speaking about an international probe into allegation of human rights in the final stages of the war.

Saseedaran said that the TNA MP had asked her to refrain from making any statement or speaking to any member of the international community, saying that she would be seen as a LTTE sympathizer as she is the wife of former LTTE Trincomalee political head S. Elilan.

He asked me to let him do all the talking, she told reporters.

Saseedaran further charged that Sumanthiran did not speak about an “international investigation” or about the “genocide” in Sri Lanka.   

The Northern Provincial Councilor said she would have never gone to Geneva as part of the TNA delegation had she known that she would only be a mute spectator.