EditorâÄôs Note: The Sri Lankan Student Association was originally listed as the author of this column. That was incorrect and the byline should have listed University of Minnesota Sri Lankan Students against Terrorism as the author of this column. The Minnesota Daily apologizes for the error. Please send any comments or concerns to [email protected]. The people in Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim alike, have suffered at the hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a violent terrorist organization waging war against the Sri Lankan state since the 1970s. It is considered a terrorist organization in many countries which includes the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, because of their nonadherence to any modicum of human rights, use of child soldiers, complete intolerance of dissent, killing of innocent civilians and the use of suicide tactics. Despite claims that âÄúbloodletting in Sri Lanka ignored,âÄù published in the April 8 edition of The Minnesota Daily, the war in Sri Lanka is a civil war; people who have lived through it understand it perfectly well as a gruesome and foul attack against all Sri Lankan people by the most hideous extremist terror group in the world. Over and over, successive Sri Lankan governments from 1985 have participated and tried for a nonmilitary solution for this crisis with the help of the international community. In 2008, the current government officially withdrew from the ceasefire agreement because in fact, the LTTE has long violated the pact to the tune of thousands of violations recorded by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. As befits a terrorist organization without a grain of respect for any political solution to this crisis, the LTTE used every lull in the ceasefire periods to recharge their military outfit. The Tamil diaspora carrying slogans and crying genocide paint a picture that is far from the truth on the ground. One has to look at the population distribution in Sri Lanka to see that if there is a genocide taking place 60 percent of the Tamil population will not be living in areas other than the northern and eastern provinces of the country, conducting business, attending schools and working as leaders in the government. The fact is that if the government is keen on systemically destroying the Tamil population, they would not have sent food and necessities to the people living in war-torn areas at the expense of hardworking Sri Lankan tax payersâÄô money throughout this war. If there is indeed genocide, innocent Tamil civilians most definitely would not have walked into the government controlled areas since the beginning of this last offensive against the well armed terrorist group. In November 2008, when the government forces liberated Pooneryn in Northern Sri Lanka, Tamil civilians by the thousands held grand celebratory marches on the streets. So, doesnâÄôt this accusation of genocide seem ridiculous and colossally exaggerated? Just because an organized group says there is genocide being committed it does not make it so. Clearly, all these people in the war-torn areas and the rest of Sri Lanka are exhausted and devastated by the continuous terror to which they are subjected. We have lived with this for the last 30 years. All of us have lost friends, relatives, mothers, fathers and children to this sickening war. If political solutions have failed during the years repeatedly, then everyone is glad that the war is coming to an end like this with the defeat of the LTTE. The Sri Lankan government has announced a ceasefire of two days on April 12th, 2009 to allow more innocent civilians to escape the no-fire zone. A group of LTTE cadres recently massacred nine civilians in a village in the south of Sri Lanka. Among the dead were three children. And that is how these extremist terrorists honor the ceasefire proclaimed by the government, and that will be how they will carry out if we divide this tiny island nation into two states. What more can you expect from an outfit that uses their children as soldiers, women as suicide attackers, a cyanide capsule as their promised fate and who massacre their own people if they try to escape? Please send comments to [email protected].