Appealing for peace in Sri Lanka where hundreds of Tamil civilians have been reportedly killed in the ongoing conflict between Army and the LTTE, veteran American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson has said that the world has a “moral obligation” to stop the killings.
Jackson who addressed the diaspora Tamil conference in London on Thursday said that “we [the global community] have a moral obligation to stop the killings” in Sri Lanka, the Pro-LTTE website Tamilnet said.
The American civil rights activist also raised the need to increase the international awareness of the crisis and asked what his organisation, the Rainbow Push Coalition could do to help, the website said.
Jackson stated that the crisis can only be resolved by “thinking it out, and not by shooting it out.”
He called for a commitment to a ceasefire because “we cannot negotiate to the sound of bullets whizzing over our heads,” the Tamilnet said.
“We know that there has to be a cessation of violence to get back to the table to resolve the conflict. Whenever there is human misery, whenever there is fear, we have a moral obligation,” he said, saying that he was aware of the crisis in Sri Lanka and asked “what can we do to help?”