COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, January 11, 2016 /EINPresswire.com/ --

Tamils from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka are organizing a protest against the visit of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and the Prime Minister Ranil Wikramasinghe. These two leaders are visiting the Tamil heartland to celebrate the annual Hindu festival Thai Pongal on January 15th.

Even though these two leaders are visiting to celebrate a Hindu festival; only Buddhism is recognized as the State religion and other religions, including Hinduism, does not enjoy the same Constitutional protection as Buddhism.

Supporters of these two leader’s visit believe that their visit may be a signal to give equal status to all religions and to remove Buddhism as the only State religion in the new Constitution that’s being drafted now.

The protest is to highlight the failure of the Sri Lankan Government - even after one year in power - to address the plight of thousands of Tamils who disappeared, continued imprisonment of Tamil political prisoners and overwhelming presence of Sri Lankan military in Tamil areas.

This protest is spearheaded by organizations representing families of the disappeared, families of the political prisoners and Tamil war widows. Several civil society groups and other organizations are joining this protest.

There are also concerns that the Sri Lankan Government is ignoring a UN request to hold an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for the large scale killings of Tamils and rape of Tamil women by the Sri Lankan military.

According to UN internal review report on Sri Lanka, over 70,000 Tamils were killed in five months in early 2009 and Tamil women were sexually assaulted and raped by Sri Lankan Security forces. There are over 90,000 Tamil war widows and thousands of Tamils disappeared during the conflict.

Two recent reports by International Truth & Justice Project and Freedom from Torture, documents continuing abduction of Tamils and sexual violence against Tamil women.

There is large scale presence of Sri Lankan army in Tamil areas, even after the end of the war six years ago. According to several reports, there is one security officer for every four Tamils. This is believed to be the highest ratio of civilian to security forces in the world.

Members of the Sri Lankan security forces are almost exclusively from the majority Sinhalese ethnic community and the victims are all from the Tamil ethnic community.

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