Seran Sribalan and Vishna Sivaraj have arrived in Canberra on the 9th day of their 300km walk from Sydney to Canberra. The duo wish to raise awareness of the plight of 300,000 Tamil civilians being forcibly detained in military controlled internment camps in the island of Sri Lanka.
The final leg of their walk will comprise of an awareness campaign today at 9AM at Garema Place, Canberra City, where speeches will be delivered by the pair. They will then walk to Parliament House where the ‘300km for 300,000 lives’ campaign will conclude at 12.30pm with a lunch time discussion with Parliamentarians. Family and friends from around Australia are expected to gather outside Parliament House to greet the pair.
The duo who currently have family members trapped within these camps, which have been compared to concentration camps by rights groups and European Parliamentarians, have walked a total of 9 days passing through Sydney city and country towns en route to Canberra.
Several Members of Federal and State Parliament have shown their support including Labour MP Julie Owens who visited the pair at their pit stop in Bowral.
Prostitution rings are now rife in Sri Lanka within the military run internment camps with many of the Tamil women forced into them by military personnel [The Australian, 02/07/09]. Rape and other forms of psychological and mental abuse against women, amongst whom many have lost their children and loved ones, are also prevalent within the these camps where Tamils are being forcibly detained indefinitely [Channel 4, 05/05/09]. Furthermore, aid workers have revealed that 1,400 deaths a week are occurring in the Manik Farm camp alone, due to disease, lack of food, poor sanitation and inadequate shelter [Times UK, 10/07/09].
Seran and Vishna propose to appeal to the Australian government to apply more diplomatic pressure upon the Sri Lankan government to ensure the Tamils detained within the camps are released and re-settled back in their own villages.
Both have no professional athletic background and have had no professional training.
