New Delhi, Sep 22 (IANS) A group of cabinet ministers and MPs from Tamil Nadu Tuesday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi to send a team to Sri Lanka where they said the military was “mistreating” Tamils displaced by the war and interned in camps.
“We met the prime minister and the Congress president and appraised them about the plight of Tamil civilians living in refugee camps,” said DMK leader and former cabinet minister T.R. Baalu.

“We said that the displaced Tamil civilians were being mistreated by the Sri Lankan military officials. We told them that steps should be initiated to rehabilitate the displaced Tamils,” Baalu told IANS.

India, the delegation pointed out, should send a team of Tamil Nadu MPs to Sri Lanka to study the situation there, Baalu added.

The MPs who called on Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi also included Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Communication Minister A. Raja, Textiles Minister Dayanidhi Maran, Shipping Minister G.K. Vasan as well as Kanimozhi, a Rajya Sabha MP and daughter of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.

Among the others were ministers of state S.S. Palanimanickam, S. Gandhiselvan and S. Jagathrakshakan (all DMK) as well as Congress leader K.V. Thangabalu.

The detention in barbed wire camps in Sri Lanka’s north of some 280,000 Tamil civilians since they fled Tamil Tigers territory before the military crushed the rebels has caused widespread concern.

On Friday, Maran had separately called on the prime minister as an emissary of Karunanidhi to “highlight the plight of the displaced Tamils” in the Sri Lankan camps.

Karunanidhi wanted Manmohan Singh to “exert diplomatic pressure at appropriate levels” on Colombo to end what he said was “untold suffering” of the displaced Tamils.

Baalu alleged that the Sri Lankan government was not allowing the Tamil refugees to return to their native places, which were under the control of the LTTE before it was defeated.

“We told the prime minister that Tamils are stranded in the refugee camps. Around 2,000 Tamil civilians who were allowed to move to their native places have not reached there,” Baalu said. “We want to know what happened to them.”

The delegation also urged the prime minister to take immediate steps to stop attacks by the Sri Lanka Navy against Indian fishermen in the sea, Baalu said.