FRANCE: Slain Sri Lankan aid workers remembered by colleagues

: Staff working for French aid agency Action Contre la Faim (ACF - also known as 'Action Against Hunger') mourned their colleagues who were killed in Sri Lanka a week ago. Memorial services were held in Tricomalee, Sri Lanka and Paris, France simultaneously on Friday (August 11). Trincomalee is the town closest to the base in Mutur, northeastern Sri Lanka, where the aid workers were killed on August 4. Fierce battles had been raging between government forces and Tamil Tiger militias in the region at the time of the killings. Rumours circulated for several days that the staff were dead, but with the town practically cut off it was not confirmed until the first aid mission found them on Sunday August 6 on the floor of their office wearing ACF T-shirts. They had been shot in the head. Pro-rebel website Tamilnet blamed the government for the killings, while the army pointed the finger at the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have fought for an ethnic Tamil homeland for two decades. Hardline government allies from the majority Sinhalese community have long accused aid agencies of favouring Tamils and aiding the rebels. Angry mobs had attacked several aid agencies trying to move into the conflict area over several days. ACF President, Jean Christophe Rufin, angrily condemned the killings earlier this week, saying that his colleagues had been "deliberately executed." The senior management of ACF is in Trincomalee for the memorial service there; here in Paris, Assistant Director François Danel urged his colleagues "to focus on your sadness and your memories, and leave aside for the moment your feelings of anger." ACF staff and sympathisers held one minute's silence, and then each colleague was individually remembered, both for the way he or she was as a colleague - and as a private individual. The team leader, Sritharan Gangatharan, was a 36-year-old father of two who loved his work. Another colleague had dreamed all his life of going to India, and was due to finally make his dream come true just a few days after his death. The aid workers killed were local staff, mostly Tamil in origin. Their mission in Mutur was to help rebuild after the 2004 tsunami.

ITN Source | August 13, 2006

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