‘Tamils for Obama’, a Diaspora Group in US make appeal to Barack Obama, to delist the LTTE as Terror Outfit in the Country

December 21, 2016: An appeal was made to the President Barack Obama by the Tamil diaspora group 'Tamils for Obama' in the US to de-proscribe LTTE as a terror outfit in the country. They believe that this would help the community while travelling abroad.

The diaspora group claims that LTTE has been defunct since 2009. They have been completely inactive. According to a report by PTI, the group said that the listing of LTTE as a terror group in the USA has created many problems for Tamils living there.

LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) was a Tamil militant force that fought for a separate nation for Sri Lankan Tamils. They were active from 1983 to 2009.

The statement said, "Because of the listing of Tamil Tigers, it creates pain for many US Tamils when they travel to abroad and when they return to the US."

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"They have to go through many hours of interrogation. Some US Tamils have asked us to convince Obama to help us by removing Tamil Tigers from the list. Obama can give Tamils a little relief by de-listing the Tamil Tiger during this Christmas and giving season. There is no reason to keep them on the list," it said.

The PTI report said that the group thinks that George Bush's administration made a mistake by supporting the mass killings of innocent Tamils in Sri Lanka. The group also hopes that the LTTE would also be de-listed from the European Union.

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The LTTE was banned by the US in 1997 followed by EU, UK and India.

According to a report by UN, around 40,000 people died, including civilians, during the three-decade long civil war that finally ended in 2009. The Sri Lankan forces, under the tenure of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

– Prepared by Diksha Arya of NewsGram. Twitter: @diksha_arya53