DMK asks PM to call off Sri Lanka CHOGM visit

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party leader Kanimozhi Karunanidhi on Saturday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to boycott the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo in wake of alleged war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government.

DMK women members organised a protest march in Chennai, demanding Singh to cancel his visit to the meeting.

"India has to rethink its relationship with Sri Lanka and not to empower it to turn against our own people there. We all have been saying that he shouldn't participate in the CHOGM and we really wish that he will not participate," she said.

Survivors of Sri Lanka's civil war on August 27 complained to the United Nations' human rights chief about missing relatives, military land grabs and a life without basic facilities more than four years after the end of the quarter-century war.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay visited Mullivaikkal village in northern Sri Lanka last week. The site was said to be the final battleground between government troops and separatist LTTE.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is under fire from the UN Human Rights Council, which last year adopted a United States-sponsored resolution demanding that Sri Lanka ensure that the government troops who committed war crimes during the final stages of the war against Tamil rebels be brought to justice.