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Tamil groups banned from Sri Lanka

Government accuses them of committing and supporting terrorism

Sri Lanka said today that it had banned the self-declared government-in-exile of ethnic minority Tamils and over a dozen other Tamil diaspora groups.

The government accused them of committing and supporting terrorism and said it would freeze their assets.

All the banned groups support an independent state for Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamils.

The ban comes less than a week after the top United Nations human rights body launched an investigation into abuses during Sri Lanka’s civil war, which ended five years ago when government forces defeated rebels fighting to create a separate Tamil state.

External Affairs Minister GL Peiris signed an order banning the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam and 15 other groups operating in the US, Canada, Australia, Britain and Norway.

The organisations were banned under UN security council resolution 1373, which sets out strategies to combat terrorism and control terrorist financing.

All funds, assets and economic resources will be frozen until the groups are removed from the designated list, the external affairs ministry said.

The ban comes a week after the government claimed “credible evidence” of a resurgence in domestic activity by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — the Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lanka’s quarter-century civil war ended in May 2009 after government forces defeated the Tigers.

Between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed in the conflict.

The UN says up to 40,000 people may have been killed in the final phase of the war, but the government disputes the figure.

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