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Arms deal with Slovakia: a response

These are excerpts from a communication received from Ivan Pedropillai, who has provided his address as at Cheam, Surrey, UK, in response to a report headlined “Panic in LTTE over arms deal with Slovakia,” published in The Hindu on April 17, including in the online edition. That report named him, as quoted from a Sri Lankan Information Department report, as a “senior figure within the LTTE hierarchy in the United Kingdom and one of the LTTE’s main fundraisers who has generously funded most of the meetings organised by the British Tamil Forum” who handed over a letter to Slovakian diplomatic staff following a protest by an LTTE front organisation in front of the Slovakian Embassy in London opposing the deal: “I was not present at the Slovakian Embassy demonstration at which the petition was presented… I am not a member of the LTTE… I am not a fundraiser for the LTTE and have not contributed a single penny to it since it was outlawed some five years ago.

“I am a retired senior executive from one of the world’s leading multinational groups and my reputation and integrity are well established in the U.K. I am involved in absolutely permissible democratic political activity in this country, where the law does not take away our rights to aspire for freedom and democracy for the oppressed Tamils of Eelam. All that I do for the Tamils is perfectly open and legal. But I must be doing something good for the Tamil community, as the mouthpieces of racism in Sri Lanka have started to notice me and defame me in this fashion. Everyone involved as a Tamil activist knows that being a member of the LTTE or giving funds or raising funds for the LTTE or its associates is illegal in this country. I have not done any of these…”

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