Re: Support the UN Recommendation on Sri Lanka

April 26, 2011

Dear President Hu Jintao,

Tamils for Obama recognizes China as a growing military and economic power. It is plain that in the future China’s influence will only grow.

Military and economic power are what diplomats often refer to as “hard power.” Tamils for Obama, which is a group of overseas Tamils in the US, believes that in growing into a larger role and taking their rightful place among the world’s leading nations, China should embrace the important effects of “soft power.” This, as the president of China is well aware, is the influence that comes from affection and respect. Soft power arises and increases when the peoples of the world have become accustomed to thinking of China as a benign world power. The world’s nations must see China as a good moral influence and an admirable leader whose example they will willingly follow.

Tamils for Obama hopes that the People’s’ Republic of China will note and support the recommendations made in the Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka. The world recognizes that China is a great power and that the Colombo government controls a strategically placed island in a large and vital ocean. The world understands that China may have cultivated good relations with Sri Lanka for this reason.

The Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka was published last Monday. The report referred to “Killing of civilians through widespread shelling; (ii) Shelling of hospitals and humanitarian objects; (iii) Denial of humanitarian assistance; (iv) Human rights violations suffered by victims and survivors of the conflict, including both IDPs and suspected LTTE cadre; and (v) Human rights violations outside the conflict zone, including against the media and other critics of the Government." The report recommends international investigations.


Tamils for Obama hopes that in the matter of Colombo’s culpability in its recent civil war China will pursue not power politics but the politics of moral leadership and international admiration. Tamils for Obama thinks that China and the world will benefit most from the People’s Republic taking a morally defensible and responsible position in condemning the Colombo government’s history of brutality and criminal behavior.

Tamils for Obama writes this with sincere admiration for the People’s Republic of China and a genuine wish to see the People’s Republic take its place among the world’s respected leaders. Tamils for Obama believes this requires the People’s Republic to speak the truth to the world about Colombo and its polices of ethnic persecution which have led to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Tamils for Obama