DPA

COLOMBO

SRI Lanka’s main opposition and a key minority party used May Day, international labour day, to demand that the country find a way to ease ethnic tensions, three years after the end of a war in which the government defeated a decades-long Tamil rebel uprising.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, a former prime minister, selected a former Tamil rebelheld area in the northern part of the country to hold the United National Party’s (UNP) May Day rally.

“The war is over now and it is enough that the people have suffered. They need a solution to their problems,” Wickremesinghe said.

The Tamils had pushed for a separate homeland amid allegations of being discriminated against by the government.

Since the Tamil rebels were defeated, the government has promised to reach out to ethnic Tamils, but many still feel they are not being treated equally in the country. The UNP was joined by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a party accused of working as a proxy of the former Tamil rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were defeated in May 2009 by the military.

“It is time that the people are given equal political rights to live equally”, the former prime minister said, addressing the rally.

The leader of the TNA, R Sampanthan, said he expects the support of the main opposition to win the demands of the minority Tamils.

“We have been speaking to the government and raising the demands of the minorities with them. But the talks have not been successful, so far”, Sampanthan, who is also a member of parliament, said.

Sampanthan’s party has demanded the settlement of all those who were displaced during the battle between Tamil rebels and the government forces.

Talks between the TNA and the government for working out a political settlement on minority issues have stalled since December, he said.

The ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, marked May Day celebrations in the capital, Colombo.

During an another rally in Colombo, supporters of Sri Lanka’s Marxist JVP party demanded a rise in salaries to keep up with galloping consumer prices during the annual May Day parade.

The main JVP which once supported the ruling party is now out of power and is vowing to step trade union demands for higher pay in a country emerging after nearly four decades of ethnic war and have been recording growth rates of over 8 percent since the end of fighting in May 2009.