Sri Lankan gov't releases 1,800 former Tamil rebels

Sri Lankan gov't releases 1,800 former Tamil rebels

The Sri Lankan government released 1,800 rehabilitated former Tamil tiger rebels at a ceremony held in the President's House on Friday.

The former Tamil rebels who underwent various vocational training at seven military-run rehabilitation centers over the last two years were those surrendered to the Sri Lankan army at the end of the civil war in May 2009.

Over a thousand more former Tamil Tigers who are to be cleared from courts are still undergoing training in masonry, carpentry, tailoring and agriculture as part of the rehabilitation process.

President Rajapaksa addressing the rehabilitated youths, their family members and some of the diplomatic representatives attended said these former LTTE members were deprived of the opportunity to live as free citizens and added that measures are being taken to erase their dark past.

Sri Lanka has shown an example to the world on rehabilitation and social integration of ex-combatants by rehabilitating and conducting skills development training for nearly 10,000 ex-LTTE cadres in less than 20 months, the president said.

The government says it has spent 2.5 billion rupees on the rehabilitation of ex-LTTE cadres since the conclusion of the conflict in May 2009 and for this year along it had allocated 750 million rupees for the rehabilitation process.

Editor: Yamei Wang

English.news.cn   2011-10-01 19:34:59 FeedbackPrintRSS
COLOMBO, Oct. 1 (Xinhua)