By IANS,
Chennai: AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa Friday said the huge Indian financial assistance to Sri Lanka was benefiting the Chinese, who had won all the reconstruction contracts in the country.
Noting that India has sanctioned Rs.1,000 crore towards reconstruction of the war-ravaged Tamil areas in Sri Lanka, she said that the reconstruction contracts have now been awarded by the Sri Lankan Government to China.
“So the Indian taxpayers’ money, sent for the benefit of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, is ending up in China’s kitty,” she said, according to a statement here.
Terming as “alarming” media reports that more than 25,000 convict labourers from China have landed in Sri Lanka to execute contract works relating to highways and railways, she alleged that this labour force has been “infiltrated with Chinese spies and intelligence personnel with a specific mandate to commence anti-Indian surveillance and espionage operations”.
According to Jayalalithaa, India should have used Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakshe’s recent visit to India to put things in perspective rather than merely exchange empty pleasantries.
“A large number of Tamil men-folk have died in the war. Several thousands of able-bodied young men are still interned in concentration camps, branded as suspected LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) activists. To expose the hapless and vulnerable remnants of the Tamil population, consisting of the old, the disabled and the womenfolk, to the overtures and excesses of a 25,000 strong prison-labour force from China would be disastrous,” Jayalalithaa warned.
She demanded that the Indian government act before it is too late.
“It has to talk to Sri Lanka, and talk tough,” she added.