AN ENFIELD MP who joined the Tamil rally in Parliament square yesterday said that hundreds of local families have no idea what is happening to relatives in war-torn Sri Lanka.

According to Joan Ryan, MP, a founder member of the all party parliamentary group on Tamils, there are between three and five hundred Tamils living in her Enfield North constituency.

In “nearly every case” she hears of, her constituents’ family and friends have been killed or displaced.

Having gone to a mass-demonstration yesterday in Parliament Square, Ms Ryan got involved because of the number of visits she had had from distressed Tamil constituents, many of whose relatives have been caught up in a civil war for the past 20 years.

The protest continued today for a few hundred people, while yesterday‘s rally involved about 2,000 members of the Tamil community. Two protestors had to be pulled out of the river Thames after jumping in.

She said: “It just happened out of distress over reports of what was happening there, and was largely peaceful.

“A lot of my constituents came to my surgeries very distressed and upset with family members dying in bombings. A lot of the people I represent don’t know what is happening to their families - they can’t get any contact with them whatsoever.

“Tamils are being subjected to a large-scale military campaign. The Government of Sri Lanka has spent 25 per cent of its GDP on arms and there is very strong evidence of cluster bombings. It is one of the most dangerous places in the world.

“I am not saying I defend the Tamil Tigers, I just expect high standards from the Government of Sri Lanka. They say they are a democratic government, but why are they killing such large numbers of their own population?”

The Tamil Tigers are widely thought of as a terrorist organisation since their campaign to create an autonomous state in the mid-seventies. The struggle between them and the Government, which has a Sinhalese majority, has led to the more than 70,000 deaths in this time.

Reports, which are denied by the Sri Lankan Government, suggest that a safe zone set up to protect displaced civilians has been attacked by the military.

A week ago UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called for an urgent ceasefire in Sri Lanka, which was rejected by the Sri Lankan President. The British government has already called for an immediate ceasefire. Des Browne, the PM’s envoy to Sri Lanka, plans to go to the UN to ask for an international declaration against the conflict. It is estimated there are 2,000 to 2,500 Tamil families in Enfield.