UK: Hindus and Tamils join forces to highlight crisis

http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/4703645.Hindus_and_Tamils_join_forces_to_highlight_crisis/

4:30pm Monday 26th October 2009

Hindu and Tamil organisations from across the UK have announced a campaign to highlight the humanitarian crisis facing the Tamil community.

The majority of those affected are Hindus and in the aftermath of the latest fighting between the Sri Lankan forces and the Tamil Tigers, have become Internally Displaced people (IDP).

Representatives of British Hindu organisations, including Hindu Forum of Britain, Hindu Council UK, National Council of Hindu Temples UK, Vishwa Hindu Parishad UK, National Hindu Students Forum, recently met with Global Human Rights Defence and the British Tamil Forum to discuss ways of bringing to the attention to politicians, and the public the suffering the Tamil IDPs are undergoing in Sri Lanka.

The Hindu Community has resolved to: • organise prayers in all Hindu Temple and Community Centres on 1 November 2009 • hold a candle-lit vigil in front of the British Parliament on December 9, 2009 • urge the Sri Lankan Government to allow Aid Providing Organisations to distribute humanitarian aid direct to the IDPs. • request the Sri Lankan Government to allow access to a European Delegation to visit the camps in which the IDPs are held.

At a conference held in October, representatives of the Hindu community and Tamil community domiciled in Britain offered their full support to the cause of the Tamil IDPs in Sri Lanka.

Up to a third of a million people have lost their homes and other moorings and forced to live in appalling, inhuman conditions in detention camps.

The inmates, short of drinking water, food, and healthcare, living in the midst of filth, are prey to preventable illness, infection, malnutrition, depression and other psychological disorders, resulting in large numbers of inmates dying on a weekly basis.