Inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar seems to think, on the basis of inadequate information, that members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are hiding and carrying out activities to the detriment of both Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

On May 15, the special terrorist unit of the Malaysian police arrested three Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka who have been staying in the country since 2004. According to the IGP, these refugees, aged 30 to 45 years, hold refugee visas issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR).

Khalid further said that in an earlier arrest, police detained and deported a Tamil who was considered to be the number two in the LTTE hierarchy. However, such information was never disclosed to the Malaysian public.

He added that there are 4,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Malaysia and the police would be screening them soon to flush out the LTTE “terrorists”.

Whether the three arrested are genuine refugees or not cannot be established on the basis of police investigation alone. We need UNCHR to corroborate the police story. Whether UNCHR will do this remains in doubt.

Thousands fled to escape the horrors

In the case of Tamils of Sri Lanka, the IGP does not seem to realise that thousands of Tamils fled the civil war to Malaysia and many other countries in the West to escape the horrors inflicted on them.

These Tamils are not keen to make their home in Malaysia, but merely as temporary stop before they can go to places such as the United Kingdom, United States and Europe.

The UNCHR officials interviewed and provided visas for Tamil refugees for a temporary stay in Malaysia. There is no basis for the police to say that the visas issued by the UNCHR have been used as a cover for “terrorist” activities by Tamils.

In arresting the three Tamils, the police were also oblivious to the grand strategy employed by the government of Sri Lanka to thwart and eventually frustrate efforts for an international investigation into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

This grand strategy of the Sri Lankan government is to “invent” the threat of LTTE’s revival danger to countries where there are sizeable Tamil populations.

About two months ago, the Sri Lankan armed forces shot dead three Tamils on grounds that they were LTTE activists. In a recent clandestine visit to Malaysia, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapakse is said have furnished the Malaysian government with information on Tamil organisations and individuals who are associated with the LTTE.

For the IGP’s information, the LTTE is dead and gone. Most of its top leaders died in the civil war, some were captured and shot dead by the armed forces and the remainder fled Sri Lanka.

The question of the revival of the LTTE does not arise at all. It is the figment of the imagination of those in power, both in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. It is trap set by the Sri Lankan authorities that the Malaysian police have fallen into, with disastrous consequences for the refugees.

It is not for the Malaysian police to determine whether Tamils are genuine refugees or not, the matter should be left to the UNCHR. The IGP should not interfere with the work of the UNCHR, a body of the United Nations. Khalid should desist from following the dictates of the racist and murderous Sri Lankan regime.

It is not for the Malaysian police to determine whether Tamils from Sri Lanka are genuine refugees or not. Such a task should be left to the United Nations, such as the UNCHR. The Malaysian public expects objectivity and professionalism from the head of the police force, not adherence to the dictates of a foreign country.

More than 90 percent of Malaysian Tamils are ardent supporters of the Tamil freedom movement in Sri Lanka. Is the IGP going to arrest more than two million Malaysian Tamils just because they support the struggle of their brothers and sisters in the north and east of Sri Lanka?

DR P RAMASAMY is Penang Deputy Chief Minister II.