The Sinhalese living in Leicester have been threatened by LTTE members after a group Sinhala residents staged a demonstration in front of the office of the Leicester Member of Parliament Keith Vaz last week.

 Krishantha Peiris, one of the organizers of the protest, said that he and Yohan Perera, the other main organizer, were receiving threatening phone calls. One of his colleagues E. M. Ekanayake was also threatened at his workplace by a group of Tamils.

 Peiris said that they held a successful demonstration on Saturday, February 28 against Vaz, who is alleged to be backing LTTE activists, with the help of the organization of Sri Lankans Against Terrorism.

 "While we were demonstrating a group of pro-LTTE Tamils drove around in cars with anti-Sinhala banners. We alerted the police and four of them were arrested", Peiris said told the Sunday Island.

 "We had a petition prepared for Vaz and a person named N. Kumar of the British Tamil Forum came from the MP’s office and wanted to accept the petition on his behalf. When we refused to hand it over to him, Vaz  came out and took some of us into his office for a discussion", he noted.

 At the meeting, when Peiris  accused him of supporting the LTTE, Vaz  had replied that it is his duty to listen to the grievances of his Tamil constituents. The MP further said that there are over 300,000 Tamil refugees in the UK and  it is evident they are being  discriminated by the majority Sinhalese.  The Sinhala group countered this by pointing out that most of them were not political refugees but economic migrants and that  Vaz was being misled by LTTE propaganda.

 MP Vaz had requested the Sinhala group to arrange a trip to Sri Lanka to give him the chance to meet with President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The group promised to contact the Sri Lankan High Commission in London regarding this request.