COLOMBO, Oct 13, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Sri Lanka's Tamil minority political parities said Tuesday that the 10,000 Tamil Tiger rebels surrendered to the military in the final battles between the government troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are safely housed in state-run camps.
Several parties representing the island's Tamil community told the visiting 10-member delegation from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu that the Sri Lankan government has implemented a separate rehabilitation program to integrate them back to the society.
D. Sidharathan, leader of the PLOTE (People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam) said the delegation met leaders of the Tamil National Alliance, the Democratic National Alliance, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the estate political parties and the PLOTE on Tuesday.
Sidharathan said some of the politicians in Tamil Nadu were misled by the remaining LTTE sympathizers that 10,000 ex- combatants of the LTTE had gone missing from the camps in northern Sri Lanka where about 250,000 civilians are being housed.
"We have explained to them that it was a rumor and a propaganda by those who are still backing the LTTE,"Sidharathan said.
The Sri Lankan Tamil politicians also told the Indian delegation that the ICRC (the International Committee of the Red Cross) has a record of the former LTTE members under rehabilitation and they are undergoing rehabilitation.
Apart from providing vocational training, the government is holding classes for those who missed education, said Sidharathan.
The delegation arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday to get a firsthand account about the on-going process to resettle the war- displaced civilians and re-build the north and east once controlled by the LTTE.
There are over 65 million Tamils in Tamil Nadu. It had put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to halt military offensives against the LTTE during the last days of the battle.
The LTTE had been fighting for more than two decades to carve out an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east before it was defeated by the troops in May.