He was speaking at a meeting with the International Association of Tamil Journalists at Harrow in London on July 17, jdslanka.org reports.

As a person bred in Colombo and having Sinhalese as friends and relatives, Vigneswaran said he once honestly believed the Tamils’ issue could be resolved with Sinhalese rulers at the negotiating table, but that he had come to realize the gravity of the matter only after he started living in the north.

Tamil leaders living in Colombo mostly think of acting diplomatically to prevent damage to the goodwill of the international community and try to find a solution by suppressing the real issues and demands of their people, he said.

Although the war is over, the Tamil genocidal policy is still on, he said, adding that he is branded dogmatic by some as he got proposals adopted to expose the genocide against his people.

Vigneswaran noted that it was not him, but S.J.V. Chelvanayagam who had first used the word ‘genocide’, when he handed over a petition to foreign delegates at the September 1974 commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka.

That petition clearly explained the genocidal policy of the Sinhala state against the Tamil people, in order to establish Sinhala as the only language and Buddhism as the only religion, although there are two main ethnic groups, two languages and many religions.

Sri Lankan Tamils live according to their traditions, and had not dropped from nowhere after being expelled, but are a traditional community that had contributed towards the creation of the earliest settlements in Sri Lanka, he added.