Is Mahinda Rajapaksa as Mindless as a Tiger Bus Bomber? February 10, 2007
Posted by ravana in Uncategorized.trackback
The article below was published in yesterday’s Guardian, one of
Britain’s most respected newspapers, which has a circulation of 378,000 copies and a centre-left liberal stance. The author of the article, Jonathan Steele, calls Mahinda Rajapaksa “mindless”, comparing him to the bomber that blew up the civilian bus in Hikkaduwa. He also says that the EU’s decision to ban the LTTE last year was “badly timed and stupid”.
Sri Lanka’s president seems as mindless as any bomber
A four-year-old peace deal has been shattered by a government that has resorted to copying its opponents’ brutal tactics
Jonathan Steele in Colombo Friday February 9, 2007
The roadblock was unexpected. Driving to Colombo along Sri Lanka’s south-west coast, we were forced on to a sidestreet by police in Hikkaduwa, one of the island’s main tourist centres. There must have been a multiple crash, we assumed, as the detour along narrow village lanes took us past rice paddies shimmering in the afternoon sun. Back on the coast road, fleets of ambulances racing south seemed to confirm our suspicions.
Later we discovered the problem was a bomb. Eleven people had died when a rucksack detonated in a crowded long-distance bus. Although not targeted at foreigners, the site chosen for the atrocity was in part a blow at the country’s weakened tourist economy which has not yet recovered from the 2004 tsunami. Buses have never been hit in tourist areas before. Along with a bomb on a bus going east out of Colombo the previous day, the explosion was also designed to strike fear into every Sri Lankan traveller.
Like terrorist attacks on civilians anywhere in the world, this one was “mindless”, to use the epithet that politicians and editorial writers always employ on these occasions. Killing people who have no connection to political decision-making is never right. But the bus bombs did not happen in a vacuum, according to analysts in Colombo. They were a predictable stage in the cycle of violence involving the Sri Lankan government and its guerrilla opponents that is making a mockery ofSri Lanka’s so-called peace process.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been fighting for a separate homeland for decades. As usual, they denied responsibility for the bombs, but it is assumed this was their answer to an escalating military campaign by the most hardline government since independence.
Sri Lanka has long been a test case for the complexity of dealing with political movements that turn to terrorist methods, almost always as a last resort. Condemning their choice of targets while ignoring their complaints and the degree of support they command leads only to political stalemate and more bloodshed. Northern Ireland, the Basque country and the Palestinian issue show it is better to talk to terror users who have significant popular backing than to isolate them.
Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese elite seemed to know this. Under Norwegian mediation the then government made an interim peace deal with the LTTE four years ago. Although the EU listed the Tigers as a terrorist organisation last year (a badly timed and stupid move), it still urges the new government to go on talking. So does the US, in spite of its war on terror. The Tigers are not Muslim. They have a local, not global, agenda, so any attempt to link them with an anti-western jihad is laughable.
It is equally absurd to use war to disarm them. Yet this is what President Mahinda Rajapakse is attempting, perhaps motivated by revenge after his brother, the defence secretary, and his army commander survived assassination attempts. Rajapakse’s picture bedecks hoardings around Sri Lanka in an unprecedented cult of personality. He has taken to visiting Buddhist shrines on state occasions in a chauvinistic sop to the most dominant of Sri Lanka’s four religious communities.
Worst of all, he is destroying the peace deal by trying to reoccupy the areas recognised as under Tiger control. Almost 4,000 people have died since fighting resumed last year; tens of thousands are homeless after government artillery and air attacks in the east of the island. The government has succeeded in capturing most of the Tiger areas there, and now appears to want to hold provincial elections and install a puppet ruler. Rajapakse’s chosen candidate would be Colonel Karuna, a commander who broke from the LTTE three years ago and was quickly recruited by the Sri Lankan army to work with them. The government initially denied this, and because of heavy censorship local media had difficulty reporting it. But visitors to Batticaloa in the east now say no attempt is made to hide it. Karuna’s camps are close to army bases and police checkpoints, and his ground attacks coincide with government offensives.
According to Unicef, the UN children’s agency, the government is complicit in Karuna’s abductions of hundreds of children to become soldiers. A UN security council working group will take up the issue of Sri Lanka (and Nepal) in New York today.Sri Lanka is one of several countries under the UN spotlight, and Ban Ki-Moon, the new secretary general, has warned of “targeted measures” (ie sanctions) if the practice is not stopped. Ironically, Sri Lanka chose to be on the list that was drawn up when only the Tigers were seizing children.
The government promised to investigate the charges, but abductions continue, says Unicef. The security council must not let Sri Lanka off the hook until proof emerges that it has stopped the practice and got Karuna to release all the children he has seized. The LTTE’s use of child soldiers is on a far greater scale than the army’s (Karuna was notorious for it when he was still with the Tigers), but elected governments have a duty to show they are not adopting the crimes and brutalities of their opponents. Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, Mangala Samaraweera, was brave enough to make that point last month. Rajapakse promptly took his job away.
Sri Lanka’s humanitarian crisis is dire. Kidnappings and disappearances, apparently by the police and allied forces, have resumed in Colombo. The civil war has made more than 200,000 people homeless in the past year, almost as many in the same period as in Darfur, which gets 10 times the international attention. Like the Sudanese authorities, the government is using its monopoly of air power to conduct a vicious counter-insurgency in the face of lesser rebel provocations.
The outside world can have a role and India may be the most important player. Floods of Tamil refugees are forcing it to take a renewed interest in its neighbour. It has warned Rajapakse against trying to split the east from the north, a device to foreclose a viable homeland for Tamils and reject a federal solution that most independent experts see as the only compromise likely to end the war.
Above all, India is refusing to sell arms that can be used for counter-insurgency. That is the best signal. If he believes he can defeat an enemy as widely supported by Tamils as the Tigers are, Sri Lanka’s president is as “mindless” as any bus bomber.
_ _ _ _
You can debate the accuracy and justifiability of this article on the comments section below, or you can mail your spiele to the author, or both. His address is j.steele@guardian.co.uk. But, let me leave that aside for a minute, and focus on a related issue.
The opinion of the international media is important… and fickle. Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government (1994-2005) accepted the moral right of the Tamil people to greater autonomy and wooed the goodwill of the Sri Lankan Tamil community. Thanks partly to the efforts of the late foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, that government also managed to repair Sri Lanka’s badly tarnished human rights reputation, and subsequently leveraged this to gain international support for its stance on the LTTE. Ranil Wickramasinghe’s government (2002 to 2004) continued this policy direction, and many more international bans resulted. 9/11 and the War on Terror certainly helped, but the international media was an important instrument in lobbying foreign governments to impose these bans on the LTTE.
Now, the tide is turning on the War on Terror, and a Democrat-led Congress in the US is resulting in increasing numbers of Americans agreeing with the rest of the world that the War on Terror is more a construct of President Bush’s imagination than a feature of reality. In the meantime, if respected international media organisations, like The Guardian, start a rallying cry for human rights in
Sri Lanka, and they persevere in adopting an anti-GoSL stance that is sympathetic to the cause of Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan government is going to find itself in a unpleasant mulligatawny.
Clearly, the primary reason the government now seems to dominate the LTTE militarily is because the LTTE’s funding has been heavily compromised by the ban in the EU, Canada, UK and the US. It is possible that even the erosion of the LTTE’s power towards the direction of the Karuna faction is related to the depletion of funding. However, further lobbying is necessary to ban the LTTE in Malaysia and Australia, both countries with large Tamil populations. Is this present government capable of achieving this?
In retrospect, it is clear that the long-term government strategy of gradually weakening the inter-related sources of the LTTE’s financial, political, moral and diplomatic strength led to the position of relative strength Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government enjoyed at the beginning of his term in office. Despite claims to the contrary from LTTE apologists and Rajapaksa supporters alike, the LTTE was not gaining in strength during the period of the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) with the government of Ranil Wickramasinghe. It was quite the opposite.
The Wickramasinghe government when compared with the LTTE, made relative gains in political, economic, diplomatic, moral and even military strength. Key tactics were banning the LTTE internationally, proactively addressing a federal solution, focusing on economic growth, and engineering the Karuna split. The then GoSL had the support of the international community, and the Sri Lankan Tamils. No wonder the LTTE did not want Wickramasinghe as President.
The situation now is entirely different. This government is gambling away the chips earned with the hard earned successes of past governments for short-term populist objectives. Among other things, this government’s rapidly deteriorating human rights reputation is eroding our diplomatic and moral strength. It is the same with our economic strength because the financing of projects (including military ones) is funded by increasing the money supply, and thereby increasing inflation.
Similarly, the present military escalation may very well be short-term. The capture and occupation of enemy territory is likely to lead to a stretching of military resources and an increase in level of vulnerability.
Also, the government is on weak moral ground and, as far as Tamil constituents go, they are politically weak as well. The goodwill of the Tamil Sri Lankan community, so carefully won back by Kumaratunga and Wickramasinghe, has been eroded - perhaps permanently – by the perceived jingoism of President Rajapaksa, which he does not seem to care about. Another reason to question this government’s good intentions is that it seems to have no idea what a permanent solution will look like for the Tamil people. Without this in their mind, the war is seemingly only for the defeat of the LTTE. This brings their moral superiority into question again.
Is the ultimate military defeat of the LTTE achievable? This brings into question the sanity of the present governments’ leadership. What this government is doing is transforming all their diplomatic, moral, economic and political superiority into military superiority. I hope President Mahinda Rajapaksa realises that in the long-term, this policy is unsustainable, since military strength is heavily dependent on the other four strengths. As the article in The Guardian proves though, the mindfulness of presidents and suicide bombers are both questionable.
There comes a time in any conflict whehn you have to fight fire with fire. This is one of those timeds in SL, sadly.
Thanks for the write up Ravana. Actually the Sinhalese population outnumbers the Tamils in Australia.
http://www.spur.asn.au is one association based in Melbourne.
A sample reply that was sent out.
SOURCE: http://www.clublk.us/postp437122.html
———————————-
Dear Mr.Steele,
Well, the heading says it all. Mindless for defending his own country against fully fledged terrorism? How can it be mindless? And the four-year-old peace deal has been shattered by a government that has resorted to copying its opponents’ brutal tactics?
Let me walk you down the memory lane to show you.
Despite the serious peace initiatives practiced by Mr. Wickramasinghe granting concession upon concession jeopardising national security in the process (Read Jane’s Intelligence Analyst Paul Harris’s ” The appeasement of terrorism – doomed to failure”) the LTTE popped him out of office by not letting the Tamils under its occupation to practice the very basics of democratic rights – voting. Hence paved the way for the current president to commence office in late 2005. Soon as he took oaths the LTTE went about its rampage with impunity in an attempt to carve out the Eelam state.
Here ’s a short summary of the ‘major’ attacks that took place:
4th December 2005, Tamil Tigers (LTTE) activated a claymore mine killing seven soldiers on a tractor at Kondavil on the Jaffna – Palaly main road.
6th December 2005 : Barely 48 hours after the slaying at Kondavil, Tamil Tigers in hiding triggered one more claymore mine close to Irrupalai centre, Nallur on 6th December 2005 claiming the lives of eight more soldiers.
23rd December 2005 : LTTE blew up two Navy vehicles (bus and truck) and killed thirteen naval troops at Nadukuda, Mannar. (suspected Thermobarics)
27th December 2005 : Tamil terrorists ambushed an Army truck and killed eleven soldiers in one more brutal claymore mine attack on Point-Pedro – Jaffna Main Road.
7th January : 13 sailors killed at sea off Trincomalee after a Navy Shandag class FAC was ambushed by an explosive laden boat operated by a female suicide cadre
12th January: At least nine sailors were killed and another ten were injured this afternoon when alleged LTTE cadres detonated a claymore mine as a Navy welfare bus passed the Kurusa Junction on the Medawachchiya-Mannar road.
23rd January: At least three soldiers were killed and two injured in a claymore blast
in Urani, about three kilometers from the town.
25th March 2006 – Eight Sri Lankan navy sailors were missing at sea on Saturday after suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blew up their own trawler off Sri Lanka’s west coast and sank an approaching navy vessel
10th April 2006 – 5 soldiers of S.L. Army and 2 personnel from an NGO were killed when members of tiger organization exploded a claymore bomb. The attack carried out at 2.45 p.m. when an S.L. Army double cab was travelling between Kodikamam and Mirusuvil.
11th April 2006 – A bus carrying sailors from Trincomalee to Colombo was hit by an anti-personnel mine today killing 12 sailors and injuring another eight
12th April 2006 – At least 14 people have been killed in a suspected bomb attack at a market in eastern Sri Lanka, officials say. More than 40 others have been injured in the blast in Trincomalee which brought angry crowds onto the streets who set several shops on fire
15th April 2006 – A powerful bomb which went off as a bus transporting troops passed by in the district of Vavuniya, may have been fixed to a farm vehicle parked on the road, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12
16th April 2006- Another LTTE claymore mine in Kappalthurai in Trincomalee killed three Air Force personnel who were traveling by jeep.
17th April 2006 – The Tigers reportedly exploded two more powerful claymore mines, killing at least four soldiers and injuring a dozen others in two separate incidents this morning. at about 8.50 AM at Veppankulam, Vavuniya, LTTE cadres killed four soldiers and injured seven others by exploding a claymore mine. In the second incident, the LTTE exploded a claymore targeting a military convoy at Kiran in Batticaloa around noon, injuring at least five Air Force personnel. Sources said the LTTE cadres also fired at the Air Force convoy soon after triggering the claymore mine.
Up until March 2006 the trend continued. Since November 18, 2006, the day President Mahinda Rajapaksa was voted to office, until March 2006, an average of three security forces personnel and policemen have been killed every day in Tiger guerrilla attacks. The total for the period is over 212. Here is a break down: Army 99, Navy 71, Air Force 3, Police 22 and Auxilliary Forces 17. In addition over 176 civilians have been killed. This precludes civilian deaths in guerrilla-dominated areas. Since the Ceasefire Agreement of February 22, 2002, over 645 Government troops have been reported killed and over 360 said to be missing. And barely a day passes without guerrilla attacks.
Did this bring forth any Military retaliation? Did it lead to any military offensives that we see today? Since the Ceasefire was signed in 2002, more than 645 government service personnel had sacrificed their lives. The list also includes the prominent Mr. Lakshman Kadiragarmar which according to Jane’s Intelligence review in its March 2006 edition went on to say that it was the reason the Ceasefire Agreement to be shattered . But yet the government in honour to the ceasefire agreement signed by the previous regime restrained itself to give peace a chance.
As if the LTTE didn’t have enough blood to clench its thirst with its string of Claymore carnage, it made an abortive attempt on the life of the top most general – Sarath Fonseka. Enough was enough. This brought forth Aerial bombings of LTTE targets as a measure to avert future attacks particularly on the Trinco harbour as pointed out by the US Pacific Command – PACOM.
During this same period the LTTE also staged a massive sea borne suicide attack on the Navy’s chartered vessel “pearl Cruiser II” which was carrying over 700 unarmed servicemen. Furthermore the ship was flying the SLMM flag which meant the passengers also included two European members of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. Two members in fact – Mr. Ilkka Happlina and Mr. Lars Bleymann. This unprovoked attack brought forth the EU ban. This was made abundantly clear in media interviews. Referring to the ban, Netherlands Ambassador Reynout Van Dijk reportedly said “What really, really, really did it……….was attacking the Dvoras protecting the troop ship with an SLMM flag on it. They knew that the SLMM was aboard and they said they were not interested in talks.”
Then came the most inhuman of them all, the Mavilaru incident. How can the President be mindless if he orders his commanders to re-open the anicut to give water to over 50000 acres of farmland? It would definitely be mindless if he ignored the human catastrophe and starvation of the very people he has vowed to protect and serve.
Wonder what the retaliation would have been if the British Chief of Staff or the Foreign Mnister was targetted by the IRA during peace negotiations? It would have been pretty interesting wouldn’t it Mr. Steele?
By going through the above summarised list of terror atrocities or provocations in the LTTE’s point of view, isn’t it obvious even to the most dim-witted that the government was restraining itself to the utmost imaginable?
Veteran journalist Rajpal Abenayake once said the international media is something of a cricket match, which does not keep scores.
He further wanted us to think of a cricket match in which every ball bowled is the first ball, be it the last ball on the third day. This ball alone decides who is winning at the current moment. Say Sri Lanka is close to defeating England by an innings. Now, suppose the last ball bowled would get a wicket for England. That would get England on the winning side in a cricket match in which no scores are either kept or respected.
No scores are kept or respected in the international media wire-services or the NGO and diplomatic information conduits. All previous scores are obliterated, and if the current ‘delivery’ shows that Sri Lanka is refusing to talk when the LTTE wants to talk — the Sri Lankans would be called intransigent faster than Darryl Hair calls a team has forfeited a match.
That the LTTE didn’t want talks a year earlier , when it wasn’t getting battered, would be the score that was clean wiped out and licked off the board. That’s exactly what you’ve done Mr. Steele.
On the Sri Lankan separatist war front the first and foremost question to be raised is, what the entire ball game for peace depends on – that is – whether the LTTE wants peace or war. The track record of the LTTE and their chicanery during four cease-fire peace initiatives does not support any other alternative than their death wish for war and more war. This is not only against the perceived enemy, the Sinhalese, but also against their own community or those of other Tamil speaking communities – the Muslims – who stand in the way of their mono-ethnic separatist state – Tamil Eelam. How can there be any hope for peace when their leader whips up the eelam dream annually on November 27th. That brings us to the question of militarily weakening the LTTE. Unlike the situation in Northern Ireland, where the Sinn Fein is the political arm of the IRA, the LTTE has no overt political front. The only political appendage of the LTTE, if one may call it is the TNA. Not even they are allowed to talk on behalf of their wanni masters since they wanted the President to talk to the LTTE, NOT TO THEM, when he invited them to solve the crisis on Independence day.
The main problem is many fail to envisage the fact that the Democratically elected Sri Lankan State and the Internationally banned terror organisation – the LTTE can never be deemed as equal entities. This is also highlighted clearly in the Ceasefire agreement article 1.3 where it states that the Sri Lankan armed forces shall continue to perform their legitimate task of safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. Unlike the LTTE who does not spend a single dime towards the people it claims to represent, the government spends millions just on the food and medicine towards the people held in LTTE ‘controlled’ territories. Even the doctors, nurses, labourers working in so called “LTTE hospitals” are government paid. Others include various government agents ranging from Agriculture/irrigation to teachers and school principals. Hence it is no surprise that James P. Grant, the visionary Executive Director of UNICEF, who declared war on ‘global silent emergency’ (read deaths of millions of children from preventable diseases) considered Sri Lanka’s conflict a ‘civilised one’ in that the state feeds the LTTE and wounded LTTE cadres receive treatment in state-run hospitals. Isn’t that the best example one can get on biting the feeding hand Mr. Steele?
The Hindu hit the nail on the head when it wrote: “After four agonising years, the Sri Lankan peace process has boiled down to a single issue that has nothing to do with the rights of Tamils. It is the survival of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which has centre-staged the bizarre demand that the Sri Lankan Government should guarantee its welfare by disarming Karuna, the breakaway LTTE leader.” Practically all the demands of the LTTE – whether it is to remove Karuna, or to get transport for their cadres under Army escort, or to get the Army out of the High Security Zones, or to open up the A9 highway (which was closed due to their own offensive in August 06) etc – are nothing but for the very own survival of the LTTE and have nothing with rights of Tamils.
Otherwise why on earth would they blow up the “City of Liverpool” just weeks ago which was delivering tonnes of flour to the residents of Jaffna the very people it claims to represent. Of course the only reason they would blow it up is their hope that selectively-amnesic journalists like yourself would write up volumes and volumes on starving families and how mindless their arch enemy is – the Commander in Chief – the President of Sri Lanka.
Thank You,
Yours truly,
***********
PS –
Since you mentioned that Mr. Ban-ki-Moon had directed targeted measures towards the Sri Lankan government – I would really love to see your source. It was targeted measures against the LTTE Mr. Steele. It was under number 2 of his recommendations which is to be brought up at the security council on the 9th of February 2007:
2. Although limited progress has been made in the release of some children from the LTTE over the last three years, the LTTE’s refusal to completely cease recruitment and use of children, release all children remaining on the UNICEF database, and engage in transparent procedures for release and verification of demobilization merits that targeted measures be undertaken against LTTE political and military leadership.
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/411 4
1>Hon.Mahinda Rajapaksha has not ignored “The Kyoto Protocol”, Like George Bush and John Winston Howard.
2>Mahinda Rajapaksha has not invade Iraque.Nor he never even invaded the North.He is just trying to claim the land belongs to him!
3>He never sent the “prabakaran” to the gallows,like George bush hanged Sadamm!
4> Mahinda has not trying to make a fence like Bush is planning to fence along 698 miles (1123 km) of the Mexican border.
5>Mahinda is not clearing any Sri Lanka’s Forests like Bush is trying to clear Alaskan forests.
So we can treat George Bush ,John Winston Howard and Anthony Charles Lynton Blair are Mindless as a Tiger Bus Bomber’s!
Not Mahinda Rajapaksha anyway!
Why you people not talk about those grand eneimies of the planet earth???and talking about Micky mouse Mahinda????
Wheather He is right or wrong,He is our KING!And We are with him!
So Don’t bother us! Mind your own business! You Fcuking YUPPIES!
Long live Mahinda!
“As usual, they denied responsibility for the bombs, but it is assumed this was their answer to an escalating military campaign by the most hardline government since independence.”
How incredibly uninformed.
A lot of this article is nothing but conjecture.
Good analysis Ravana, although the mindlessness of the president was never in any doubt.
As usual the Mihin-trolls seems to have their heads on their penises.
1>Hon.Mahinda Rajapaksha has not ignored “The Kyoto Protocol”, Like George Bush and John Winston Howard.
2>Mahinda Rajapaksha has not invade Iraque.Nor he never even invaded the North.He is just trying to claim the land belongs to him!
3>He never sent the “prabakaran” to the gallows,like George bush hanged Sadamm!
4> Mahinda has not trying to make a fence like Bush is planning to fence along 698 miles (1123 km) of the Mexican border.
5>Mahinda is not clearing any Sri Lanka’s Forests like Bush is trying to clear Alaskan forests.
So we can treat George Bush ,John Winston Howard and Anthony Charles Lynton Blair are Mindless as a Tiger Bus Bomber’s!
Not Mahinda Rajapaksha anyway!
Why you people not talk about those grand eneimies of the planet earth???and talking about Micky mouse Mahinda????
Wheather He is right or wrong,He is our KING!And We are with him!
So Don’t bother us! Mind your own business! You Fcuking YUPPIES!
Long live Mahinda!
Hey u selfish yuppie’s!
Do you wish to talk about how ENGLISH slaughter more than150,000 Innocent civilians at Welassa –revolution1818 and same numbers at Matale-revolution1848???
And also how the English hunters kept records of killing wild elephants that era???
And also how they planted Tea and coffee in our homelands???
Just shut the fcuk up man! You even have no clue of who RAVANA is? You think he is a demon king!lol
“Sinha hamak porogathata api dannawa athule inne London wala boruwata refugee daala doll eka ganna nariyek kiyala”Umba london wala idan ohomawath pada arapan!aduma umba dannawada gono Ravanata puthek hitiya Indrajith kiya???
Let us mind our business! Simply your barking won’t change any thing in Sri Lanka!
You’ll are just farting soundless!!!selfish yuppie’s!
Why don’t Jonathan steele cast his gaze closer to home.
Let us talk about how his PM with his counterpart hoodwinked the entire world into believing in the certainty of WMD to invade Iraq & the self-serving mindlessness of that act.
IN 1813, The English invade Sri Lanka and set divide and rule! And that’s the root of this ethnic conflict!LOL
This is what any government with responsibility will do. LTTE were given enough chances, and if they represented Tamil people and were really concerned about winning them something, they could’ve done that. But they have confirmed that they were just another ‘mob’, only bigger this time.
They will be wiped out, by the government which at last has been brave enough to recognize terrorism as terrorism.
Mahinda -The Great Warrior of our TIME!
Reborn-King Dhutugamunu!
[img]http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o222/i-monk/mahinda-.jpg[/img]
Mahinda -The Great Warrior of our TIME!
http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o222/i-monk/mahinda-.jpg
Dear Mr.Steele,
Well, the heading says it all. Mindless for defending his own country against fully fledged terrorism? How can it be mindless? And the four-year-old peace deal has been shattered by a government that has resorted to copying its opponents’ brutal tactics?
Let me walk you down the memory lane to show you.
Despite the serious peace initiatives practiced by Mr. Wickramasinghe granting concession upon concession jeopardising national security in the process (Read Jane’s Intelligence Analyst Paul Harris’s ” The appeasement of terrorism – doomed to failure”) the LTTE popped him out of office by not letting the Tamils under its occupation to practice the very basics of democratic rights – voting. Hence paved the way for the current president to commence office in late 2005. Soon as he took oaths the LTTE went about its rampage with impunity in an attempt to carve out the Eelam state.
Here ’s a short summary of the ‘major’ attacks that took place:
4th December 2005, Tamil Tigers (LTTE) activated a claymore mine killing seven soldiers on a tractor at Kondavil on the Jaffna – Palaly main road.
6th December 2005 : Barely 48 hours after the slaying at Kondavil, Tamil Tigers in hiding triggered one more claymore mine close to Irrupalai centre, Nallur on 6th December 2005 claiming the lives of eight more soldiers.
23rd December 2005 : LTTE blew up two Navy vehicles (bus and truck) and killed thirteen naval troops at Nadukuda, Mannar. (suspected Thermobarics)
27th December 2005 : Tamil terrorists ambushed an Army truck and killed eleven soldiers in one more brutal claymore mine attack on Point-Pedro – Jaffna Main Road.
7th January : 13 sailors killed at sea off Trincomalee after a Navy Shandag class FAC was ambushed by an explosive laden boat operated by a female suicide cadre
12th January: At least nine sailors were killed and another ten were injured this afternoon when alleged LTTE cadres detonated a claymore mine as a Navy welfare bus passed the Kurusa Junction on the Medawachchiya-Mannar road.
23rd January: At least three soldiers were killed and two injured in a claymore blast
in Urani, about three kilometers from the town.
25th March 2006 – Eight Sri Lankan navy sailors were missing at sea on Saturday after suspected Tamil Tiger rebels blew up their own trawler off Sri Lanka’s west coast and sank an approaching navy vessel
10th April 2006 – 5 soldiers of S.L. Army and 2 personnel from an NGO were killed when members of tiger organization exploded a claymore bomb. The attack carried out at 2.45 p.m. when an S.L. Army double cab was travelling between Kodikamam and Mirusuvil.
11th April 2006 – A bus carrying sailors from Trincomalee to Colombo was hit by an anti-personnel mine today killing 12 sailors and injuring another eight
12th April 2006 – At least 14 people have been killed in a suspected bomb attack at a market in eastern Sri Lanka, officials say. More than 40 others have been injured in the blast in Trincomalee which brought angry crowds onto the streets who set several shops on fire
15th April 2006 – A powerful bomb which went off as a bus transporting troops passed by in the district of Vavuniya, may have been fixed to a farm vehicle parked on the road, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12
16th April 2006- Another LTTE claymore mine in Kappalthurai in Trincomalee killed three Air Force personnel who were traveling by jeep.
17th April 2006 – The Tigers reportedly exploded two more powerful claymore mines, killing at least four soldiers and injuring a dozen others in two separate incidents this morning. at about 8.50 AM at Veppankulam, Vavuniya, LTTE cadres killed four soldiers and injured seven others by exploding a claymore mine. In the second incident, the LTTE exploded a claymore targeting a military convoy at Kiran in Batticaloa around noon, injuring at least five Air Force personnel. Sources said the LTTE cadres also fired at the Air Force convoy soon after triggering the claymore mine.
Up until March 2006 the trend continued. Since November 18, 2006, the day President Mahinda Rajapaksa was voted to office, until March 2006, an average of three security forces personnel and policemen have been killed every day in Tiger guerrilla attacks. The total for the period is over 212. Here is a break down: Army 99, Navy 71, Air Force 3, Police 22 and Auxilliary Forces 17. In addition over 176 civilians have been killed. This precludes civilian deaths in guerrilla-dominated areas. Since the Ceasefire Agreement of February 22, 2002, over 645 Government troops have been reported killed and over 360 said to be missing. And barely a day passes without guerrilla attacks.
Did this bring forth any Military retaliation? Did it lead to any military offensives that we see today? Since the Ceasefire was signed in 2002, more than 645 government service personnel had sacrificed their lives. The list also includes the prominent Mr. Lakshman Kadiragarmar which according to Jane’s Intelligence review in its March 2006 edition went on to say that it was the reason the Ceasefire Agreement to be shattered . But yet the government in honour to the ceasefire agreement signed by the previous regime restrained itself to give peace a chance.
As if the LTTE didn’t have enough blood to clench its thirst with its string of Claymore carnage, it made an abortive attempt on the life of the top most general – Sarath Fonseka. Enough was enough. This brought forth Aerial bombings of LTTE targets as a measure to avert future attacks particularly on the Trinco harbour as pointed out by the US Pacific Command – PACOM.
During this same period the LTTE also staged a massive sea borne suicide attack on the Navy’s chartered vessel “pearl Cruiser II” which was carrying over 700 unarmed servicemen. Furthermore the ship was flying the SLMM flag which meant the passengers also included two European members of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. Two members in fact – Mr. Ilkka Happlina and Mr. Lars Bleymann. This unprovoked attack brought forth the EU ban. This was made abundantly clear in media interviews. Referring to the ban, Netherlands Ambassador Reynout Van Dijk reportedly said “What really, really, really did it……….was attacking the Dvoras protecting the troop ship with an SLMM flag on it. They knew that the SLMM was aboard and they said they were not interested in talks.”
Then came the most inhuman of them all, the Mavilaru incident. How can the President be mindless if he orders his commanders to re-open the anicut to give water to over 50000 acres of farmland? It would definitely be mindless if he ignored the human catastrophe and starvation of the very people he has vowed to protect and serve.
Wonder what the retaliation would have been if the British Chief of Staff or the Foreign Mnister was targetted by the IRA during peace negotiations? It would have been pretty interesting wouldn’t it Mr. Steele?
By going through the above summarised list of terror atrocities or provocations in the LTTE’s point of view, isn’t it obvious even to the most dim-witted that the government was restraining itself to the utmost imaginable?
Veteran journalist Rajpal Abenayake once said the international media is something of a cricket match, which does not keep scores.
He further wanted us to think of a cricket match in which every ball bowled is the first ball, be it the last ball on the third day. This ball alone decides who is winning at the current moment. Say Sri Lanka is close to defeating England by an innings. Now, suppose the last ball bowled would get a wicket for England. That would get England on the winning side in a cricket match in which no scores are either kept or respected.
No scores are kept or respected in the international media wire-services or the NGO and diplomatic information conduits. All previous scores are obliterated, and if the current ‘delivery’ shows that Sri Lanka is refusing to talk when the LTTE wants to talk — the Sri Lankans would be called intransigent faster than Darryl Hair calls a team has forfeited a match.
That the LTTE didn’t want talks a year earlier , when it wasn’t getting battered, would be the score that was clean wiped out and licked off the board. That’s exactly what you’ve done Mr. Steele.
On the Sri Lankan separatist war front the first and foremost question to be raised is, what the entire ball game for peace depends on – that is – whether the LTTE wants peace or war. The track record of the LTTE and their chicanery during four cease-fire peace initiatives does not support any other alternative than their death wish for war and more war. This is not only against the perceived enemy, the Sinhalese, but also against their own community or those of other Tamil speaking communities – the Muslims – who stand in the way of their mono-ethnic separatist state – Tamil Eelam. How can there be any hope for peace when their leader whips up the eelam dream annually on November 27th. That brings us to the question of militarily weakening the LTTE. Unlike the situation in Northern Ireland, where the Sinn Fein is the political arm of the IRA, the LTTE has no overt political front. The only political appendage of the LTTE, if one may call it is the TNA. Not even they are allowed to talk on behalf of their wanni masters since they wanted the President to talk to the LTTE, NOT TO THEM, when he invited them to solve the crisis on Independence day.
The main problem is many fail to envisage the fact that the Democratically elected Sri Lankan State and the Internationally banned terror organisation – the LTTE can never be deemed as equal entities. This is also highlighted clearly in the Ceasefire agreement article 1.3 where it states that the Sri Lankan armed forces shall continue to perform their legitimate task of safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. Unlike the LTTE who does not spend a single dime towards the people it claims to represent, the government spends millions just on the food and medicine towards the people held in LTTE ‘controlled’ territories. Even the doctors, nurses, labourers working in so called “LTTE hospitals” are government paid. Others include various government agents ranging from Agriculture/irrigation to teachers and school principals. Hence it is no surprise that James P. Grant, the visionary Executive Director of UNICEF, who declared war on ‘global silent emergency’ (read deaths of millions of children from preventable diseases) considered Sri Lanka’s conflict a ‘civilised one’ in that the state feeds the LTTE and wounded LTTE cadres receive treatment in state-run hospitals. Isn’t that the best example one can get on biting the feeding hand Mr. Steele?
The Hindu hit the nail on the head when it wrote: “After four agonising years, the Sri Lankan peace process has boiled down to a single issue that has nothing to do with the rights of Tamils. It is the survival of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which has centre-staged the bizarre demand that the Sri Lankan Government should guarantee its welfare by disarming Karuna, the breakaway LTTE leader.” Practically all the demands of the LTTE – whether it is to remove Karuna, or to get transport for their cadres under Army escort, or to get the Army out of the High Security Zones, or to open up the A9 highway (which was closed due to their own offensive in August 06) etc – are nothing but for the very own survival of the LTTE and have nothing with rights of Tamils.
Otherwise why on earth would they blow up the “City of Liverpool” just weeks ago which was delivering tonnes of flour to the residents of Jaffna the very people it claims to represent. Of course the only reason they would blow it up is their hope that selectively-amnesic journalists like yourself would write up volumes and volumes on starving families and how mindless their arch enemy is – the Commander in Chief – the President of Sri Lanka.
Thank You,
Yours truly,
***********
PS –
Since you mentioned that Mr. Ban-ki-Moon had directed targeted measures towards the Sri Lankan government – I would really love to see your source. It was targeted measures against the LTTE Mr. Steele. It was under number 2 of his recommendations which is to be brought up at the security council on the 9th of February 2007:
2. Although limited progress has been made in the release of some children from the LTTE over the last three years, the LTTE’s refusal to completely cease recruitment and use of children, release all children remaining on the UNICEF database, and engage in transparent procedures for release and verification of demobilization merits that targeted measures be undertaken against LTTE political and military leadership.
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/411 4
I think DivX should send his steel response to the Guardian, to melt the weak Steele.
Hey Indrajith you know-it-all: is global WORMing a big threat to the world? Really? Is this breaking news I missed? Tell, me what kinda worms are these?
Must be those one-track minded, idiots who can’t see till the end of the their noses, who can’t make one coherent sentence to save their lives kind of worms like you.
DivX: great response – i hope it was forwarded to the Guardian too.
Hey Rama,u monster!
Dont mind the fcuking spellings you arshole!if its wrong,just correct it and read,basically if u understand the fcuk i am talking,thats all i care!And fcuking english is a Alien 2me.and am the worst writer on the planet,i admit it!
Fcuk off you ugly monkey!
AY KAria Rama!
Thota mama liyapu akurak waradilanam akata thota hari puke amaruwak thiyanawa kiyala therenawa.worms inne umbe ammage huththei kariyo!akurak waradunanam aka hadagana kiyawapan kari ponnaya.
thothat pissu,nathnam wesige putho tho hithaida tho RAMA kiyala.thyo SEETHA hithen mawaganada athe gahanne????
thota hoda puke amaruwak thiyanawa kiyala penawa.Hoda gada demalekuta kiyala hodata puke araganin gas gada gahana gemba.
meka mathaka thiyaganin-umbai loke inna lokuma worm!anith ithuru panuwo inne thoge ammage huththe!Kari ponna kariya!ganin mage paka katata!
Ane pol kari RAMA!
tho nikam english suddanta puka deela,thoge wife deela,dan english tikak kate gagaththata yako,tho me sakkili kanuwaka ballekuta jathaka wecha awajathaka kariyek!
Tho danawane thota horen Ravana Pol kariya thoge wife SEETHAta hikkuwa kiyala.tho aye seethawa genihin a kimbama lewakapu gas kariyane!
Yako!tho me forum ekata awidin ravanayata puka nodee gedara pala!tho nathiwelawata thoge wifeta gedara ballai,ahalapahala kolloi hukanawa,ay thoge paiya pana nane!
Tho asada mata kiyala thoge puke araganna???mama arinne na huththo tho wage puke maiyl thiyana naaki katha huthige puthalata!
Thoge amma hari,thoge gaani hari,thoge duwa hari,nathnam thoge puthage gaani hari ewapiya,mama hodata riddenna hukkanam,ethakota un umbata kiyaine Lankawe sinhala ewunge paiy podida kiyala!
Nikam pala kari wesige putho yanna!Thoge amma wesiyek!Thoge gaanith wesi!thoge duwath wesi!Tho ponnaya!
I is jus’ frikkin’ amazed.
yo son izza crazy piece maan… Ravana yo need ta use da rubber ‘fore you do the ‘dubber.
Indrajit aka Ravana’s son is a peacenik troll pretending to be a Sinhalese.
I don’t think Guardian’s article even deserves serious discussion. Steele is completely off the mark.
How can you people completely dismiss this article?
If Mahinda’s strategy is war then we are doomed is the crux of the message.
The LTTE is the enemy and they are terrorists but (for an SL audience) that point doesn’t need to be made.
The point is we are never going to get rid of the LTTE as a threat militarily if the majority of Tamils actually SUPPORT the LTTE as the only way of getting their demands.
This Indrajith bugger is hilarious, no? I’m really not sure whether to ban him and remove his comments because they might be offensive to some, or keep them because they are so hilarious.
Check out what he has to say on http://www.lankansonline.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1425
He’s even called for support for his disruption campaign in a post entitled “Gang,Pl.support me!”
“hey Gang,
ravana.wordpress.com/
menna me web site eke inna **** tika nikam sinhala apata ****part ekak daanawa wagei mata hithenne!
Unta kohe thiyana aythiyakda?api gana katha karanna!
kokatath tikak me site ekata godawela me yuppie -yange daala thiyana topic walata reply tikak dapalla!
Api api meka athule mona *** katha karath awa gedara athulene machan!
mun me loketama ****akalpa denawa.
ape **** podilu!mahinda modayalu!ara ape ewun baduwata porakana pic eka ganai,bla ,bla,bla….
mama mahindage wada piliwela anumatha karannewath, uge supporter kenekwath nemei.
monawa unath U ape lokkane bun,uta **** kathawak kiwoth apita kiwa wagene!
Api api lankawa athule unp,slfp,jvp… kiya gaha bana ganna eka wenama kathawak.awa api api danna dewalne!
un hena yuppies la gang ekak!api madyama panthiyalu!munge ammalata…
“mama INDRAJITH-RAVANA’S ONLY SON” kiyala unta nahutheta thadawenna reply tikak add kara!
umbalath monawa monawa hari daapalla!
Jayawewa!”
Aney bung, Indrajith, umba tharam modayo may lokay innawai kiyala apata mathakkeruwata umbata godak sthuthi. Umba Mahindagay prathipaththi walata ekanga natthnam, mona pukay amaruwakatada oi metana berihan dennay? Umbata mokada mung magay blog ekay monawa kiwwath? Ai umbata ridhennay? Umba wagay kala kanni jathiwadhi modayo nisa thamai adha may rata vatila thiyennay.
Umba hithenawanam mung Sinhalayinta naraka namak denawai kiyala umbata pissu. Thamusei eka karrannay. Balapang: nitharama jathiya gana kagahana Just Mal ta vunath umba Sinhalayek kiyala lajjaway ba (comment no. 25).
Metana liyala thiyana day ganawath, mung ganawath thamuseta kisima avabodhayak nethi eka thamusegay lankaonline post valin penawa. Ekai mama thamuseta hondata therena bhashawen kiyannay: puluwang deyak karapang, bung, metana nondi wen nathuwa. Thamuseta hondata puluwan widiheta gihilla kotayakata kota kota hitapang.
The rest of you – Actually, his wood sculpture is surprisingly good. Check it out: http://s121.photobucket.com/albums/o222/i-monk/My%20Wood%20Carvings/
Ravana,please don’t ban your son AKA Indrajith. He’s funny, albeit his writings are laced with expletives most of the time. (which I do not like)
Nevertheless, he can be funny.
I hope Indrajith sticks to the vernacular that he knows best. He could do a shit load of damage if he starts trolling in English. All the best for the disruption campaign matchang. Just don’t forget that patricide is an irredeemable sin in classical Buddhist teachings.
NKR, I don’t think Steele’s ominous conclusions carry much weight when they are built on such obvious misinformation and prejudices. He’s not worth discussing not merely because we disagree with his judgement, but because his arguments are so clearly based on a flawed one sided intepretation of events, and a selective blindness to anything inconvenient in true Guardian fashion. This certainly is nothing new, and if anything, we should rest assured that GOSL must be doing something right if it upsets LTTE’s sympathisers this much. As to your question, we’ve got rid of the LTTE in most parts of the East, and if I remember correctly the Tamil people welcomed the army waving white flags after trekking through the jungle for days without food. I agree that we’ll never win anything if the Tamil people continue to believe that they will be able to realise all their (fair and not so fair) demands by supporting the LTTE. That’s why the government is not making any concessions to the Tigers. Tamils, like all humans, value their immediate parochial interests more than distant collective political goals, and they will lose faith in the Tigers when they fail to deliver *anything* let alone a semblance of the promised land, despite putting them through so much hardship. Steele’s problem is that his fanatical left wing pro-rebel anti-government bias blinds him to the reality that despite how bad the government is, the LTTE is always worse.
PS
Guardian is hardly a well respected newspaper. This is a paper that once published archived pictures of 1971 JVP detainees saying they are Tamils being taken to torture chambers.
In a word…no….but then such complexities are probably beyond someone like Jonathan Steele’s cognitive abilities…
lol. adoh, ela porak. typical.
but he might not come again, oota job kattak set wela.
http://www.lankansonline.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1431
Hey Sri Lankan yuppies!
Yeah, I agreed that I am the worse writer and I write with sufficiently poor English!
What to do???May b it is a Bastard ’s language and my mind is not grasp it properly!
MAY B AM NOT A YUPPIEE and Seems like some sort of unknown chemical does work in the brains of yuppies. But when I asked the question Where is the Mind???Still nobody replied! Even My Good Father Ravana thinks it is inside the Brain.lol
Though Guardian is one of Britain’s most respected newspapers!It is a one among millions of papers printing daily on the planet!So Don’t bother!Lets stop slinging mud on Poor Sinhalish nation!There are loads of other Interesting Topics,Like Sex which most of the people here preffer deep inside your Hearts!
Anyway my good friends London is not the planet earth! lol
However Ravana’s universe is just Colombo-London!He and his friendly yuppies have no clue of the multiverse outside.LOL
RAMA!
MY FRIEND! I AM SO SORRY2ABUSE U IN THAT WAY!
Once again I am sorry! Please Dont mind I am crazy!
PS:Ravana my yuppie Dad,pl.remove my bad replies2Our Good Friend RAMA!
Quote:
My Father wrote;Aney bung, Indrajith, umba tharam MODAYO may lokay innawai kiyala apata mathakkeruwata umbata godak sthuthi…..
indrajith-Ravana’s son:
Yeah,True!
Like father,Like son!Same Genetic code!
LOL
So umm, Ravana’s son is a monk?
Aney Ravana, Indrajith oyage putha ne? E kiyana oya thamai Indrajith ge ammata hukapu eka. Indrajith ge amma kalu balliyekda, para balliyekda?
Lol @ sophist.
Quote:Sophist – February 13, 2007
Aney Ravana, Indrajith oyage putha ne? E kiyana oya thamai Indrajith ge ammata hukapu eka. Indrajith ge amma kalu balliyekda, para balliyekda?
indrajith>>>I dont know my mom is which kind of Bitch,but surely not a YUPPIE SLUT, LIKE YOUR MOM!
So Ranil signed a paper saying part of our country belongs to LTTE? So invading that is worng? How stupid of RANIL
people are stranger
fuck off all ppls
umbay ammlata hukanna kari ponna wesi ge puthala hukanna hadanawada hutto kari ponnayo?
Tho asada mata kiyala thoge puke araganna???mama arinne na huththo tho wage puke maiyl thiyana naaki katha huthige puthalata! …
The Tigers have carried out more suicide bombings than Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda combined.
The actions of Velupillai Pirabhakaran, the leader of Tamil Tigers prove he is real tiger. The only business he knows is killing. He killed Kalvian Kaadu Chetty, the person who named the group “Tigers” and the original leader of the Tiger group
Then Pirabhakaran tried to kill the next leader of Tigers, Uma Maheswaran in a shoot out in India . He killed the founding members of the Tigers, Michael and Pat Kunam. Pirabhakaran himself tipped off the Police about the then leaders of Tigers, Kuttimani and Thangathurai and their whereabouts. This incident led to Kuttimani and Thangathurai’s incarceration until their terrible deaths in the Welikade jail.
Pirabhakaran killed all the persons he worked with before he became the leader of the Tigers. He even killed the last surviving Tiger group founding member Sabalingam who was residing in France, because Sabalingam started writing about Pirabhakaran’s power hungry killings
After Pirabhakaran became the leader of the Tigers, he started killing all Tamil political leaders, elected mayors, university professors and many innocent Tamils who had criticized Tigers. Pirabhakaran banned all Tamil political organizations for the last twenty years and finally the international community including USA, Canada, European Union, India and Australia has banned the Tigers, mainly due to Tigers’ continuous use of child soldiers and their terror activities.
Pirabhakaran also killed hundreds of people who were members and supporters of Tamil political organizations. The Tamil Tigers have twice attacked Colombo’s only skyscrapers, the twin-towered World Trade Center. They’ve also killed Sri Lankan president Premadasa who had provided helicopter loads of weapons and money to Tigers, blinded another Sri Lankan President, and assassinated a former leader of the world’s largest democracy India’s Rajiv Gandhi. Pirabhakaran clearly knows that under any circumstances except at gunpoint, majority of Tamils won’t accept his leadership. That’s why he killed all other Tamil Political leaders, to become as the so-called “Sole Leader of Tamils”.
Ramachandran a.k.a MGR, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu gave Pirabhakaran more than 1.25 billion rupees in 1985. Tamils provided their support to Tigers at gunpoint only and never helped Tigers to grow to this extent. Without MGR massive financial support and Premadasa’s supply of weapons and money, Tigers won’t exist today.
Tigers are terror loving trigger-happy killers, created by MGR and Premadasa. Tigers’ killings are severely affecting the future of Tamils since the killings created a huge political vacuum.
In 1990 Pirabhakaran wanted 100,000 Muslims in the North of Sri Lanka to get out within 24 hours, leaving their belongings and treasured valuables – that was a text book example of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Prabhakaran made Idi Amin look like an angel as Idi Amin had a heart to give the Asians in Uganda three months to leave the country and not 24 hours.
Most of the young people who are younger than 35 years, do not know the history of Tigers. They believe that, Tigers became so powerful, because of continuous outpouring support from majority of the Tamils,
Over the past three decades, the LTTE has been portrayed as a brutal organization, with its structure, motivations and strategies all shrouded in secrecy. Some have rejected the force as politically bankrupt and irredeemably nihilist, while others have claimed (and continue to claim) it to be the only entity that has a chance of steering the political future of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Over the last few years, however, a greater degree of sober public analysis has emerged on the LTTE. This has been due to several factors: the internationalized Norwegian-led peace process; the no-war situation, in which dissident voices from within the Tamil polity were able to bring to light some of the inner workings of the Tamil Tigers; and also the split in the organization, with its former Eastern Command being used as a paramilitary arm of the government against the LTTE. Few will disagree, however, that the Tigers have radically changed the security situation and the political landscape in Sri Lanka, mainly through its military strategies and guerrilla tactics. Indeed, the LTTE’s growth and survival over the last 30 years were solely dependent on its singular focus on militarism. In this context, the organization’s weakening, caused by defeats on the battlefield over the last two years, become significantly more difficult to explain, as it is its subordination of politics to conventional military efforts that could well be the cause for its seemingly irreversible decline.
If Tamils like Tigers, why is Greater Colombo flooded with Tamils from Tiger controlled areas? If majority of Tamils like Tigers, Tiger controlled areas should be flooded with Tamils from other areas. Why are Tamils trying to escape Tiger controlled areas, rather than migrating to Tiger controlled area?
If Tigers lift the exit pass system and allow free movement in the Tiger controlled areas, except the people on Tigers’ payroll, every body else will leave Tiger controlled area. The only supporters of Tigers are that they either do not know anything about Tigers or gain benefits from Tigers.
Why are none of the Tamil business people investing in Tiger controlled areas? Why are even farmers leaving Tiger controlled areas? Why are Tamils living abroad trying to help their relatives to leave Tiger controlled areas? In Tiger controlled areas nobody can express any political opinions or different ideas.
Only things allowed to say are those that support Tigers. No way can anyone criticize Tigers and live the next day in a Tiger controlled area. Tigers that do not care about human lives will never understand even the basics of human rights. Even the hardcore Tiger supporters are not willing to relocate to Tiger controlled areas.
Majority of the Tamil refugees, who claimed asylum in western countries, told the authorities that they were running away from Tigers. If majority of Tamils who live abroad support Tigers, why do they have to be threatened to collect money for Tigers as reported by the Human Rights Watch?
If majority of the Tamils who live abroad support Tigers, those Tamils would line up in front of the Tiger branch offices to drop off money. The major serious problem Tamils are facing right now is there are hundreds of very young terror loving trigger happy Tigers who know only one thing, which is killing another human. Last thirty years, Tigers killed more Tamils than any body else. Also more Tigers were killed by Pirabhakaran than any body else.
The evolution of the LTTE has been characterised by one constant – its pyramidal structure, with the entire organisation built around its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. The organisation rests on a fragile balance around the personality cult of Prabhakaran and the demand for Tamil Eelam. While its previous political advisor, the late Anton Balasingham, described the LTTE as a politico-military organization, in practice politics was always subordinated to the military agenda. While the international community engaged extensively with Balasingham and the LTTE’s political wing during the Norwegian-led peace process, in reality the political wing has always been in existence merely to justify the military actions.
In building the organization as a military institution, there has been a complete lack of internal political debate, with the LTTE cadres reduced to mere fighters. In fact, there is little critical discussion about military matters in general, with a clear top-down command structure that even limits critical feedback on military setbacks. The LTTE’s strength as well as its limitations are centred around complete loyalty to Prabhakaran, internal fear and, most of all, the suicide cult extensively used to pursue military gains. The LTTE’s former senior commanders, such as Karuna and Mahendrarajah Mahattya, have shown little political maturity, reflecting the lack of political development of even the deputy leaders. Although they were held in very high esteem while in the organization, they were incapable of putting forward any serious alternative political vision.
Majority of Sri Lankan Tamils are patiently hoping, praying and waiting for a new young democratic political visionary as a leader. Until then, gunpoint Tiger culture and never ending killing spree by Tigers will grow and continue.
The continued extreme demand for a separate Tamil Eelam, coupled with the unwillingness to engage with any political process, has inhibited the LTTE’s military advances from transforming into political gains. Rather, the LTTE seems to believe that its own relationship with the Tamil people would be threatened if there were political progress and the state moved toward addressing grievances of the Tamil people. It is such an exclusivist politics, particularly the Tigers’ claim of ‘sole representation’, that has made it impossible to form any sustainable alliance in partnership with other Tamil organizations. Furthermore, by engaging in attacks on civilians, the LTTE has also isolated itself from the island’s Muslim and Sinhalese communities. This inability to engage politically with other actors has, furthermore, isolated it further from the international community.
Two decades after the LTTE’s decision to fight India, followed by its assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the negative attitude is beginning to prove militarily costly. Indian surveillance and support for the Colombo government are both significantly contributing to the weakening of the LTTE. Despite the legitimacy given it by the West during the Norwegian-aided peace process, including peace negotiations and tours of Europe for Tigers negotiators, the LTTE engaged arrogantly with the Western interlocutors. It refused to attend the Tokyo donor conference in June 2003 attended by some 50 governments and 20 multilateral organizations, nor did it respond to human-rights-related concerns, including on child soldiers and political killings. Ultimately, this intransigence culminated in the Canadian and EU bans on the LTTE, in April and June 2006, respectively. Such international isolation has weakened the LTTE’s political and financial base in the Tamil diaspora, and also crippled its international arms-smuggling network.
The recent military defeats suffered by the LTTE have surfaced during discussions of the possibility of the organization reverting to action as a guerrilla force. But such a change is unlikely for a number of reasons. The LTTE’s own mindset has changed as it transformed itself into a conventional force, with Prabhakaran emphasizing that his force now has a full spectrum of land, sea and air capabilities. While this illusion of an emerging state with a full fledged conventional military helped mobilize support in the Diaspora, in reality there are serious limitations to the organization’s capacity. The transformation in the LTTE hierarchy, including in terms of military status and position, has also alienated the organization from the masses – a critical relationship for any guerrilla war. Finally, the Tamil people in general are suffering from severe fatigue after a quarter-century of conflict, and few youths today join the LTTE voluntarily.
In the event that Prabhakaran is at some point killed or removed from the scene due to illness, the absence of politicization among the LTTE cadres would mean that the organization would most likely not be able to continue as a sustainable resistance movement. Instead, the apolitical LTTE cadres would undoubtedly disperse, to be appropriated by the state, function as isolated cells or be reduced to criminal activities. Ultimately, armed resistance needs to be transformed into political gains, all within a sustainable timeframe. Many Tamil moderates now argue that the LTTE has done more than any other actor to destroy the Tamil community. In counting on gains through its strength as a conventional military force, and dragging out the war in Sri Lanka for two and a half decades, the LTTE may well have missed the opportunity to even entrench its own position. The LTTE’s singular focus on its own military strength, to the detriment of political gains and support from the people on the ground, all while ensuring its emergence as the dominant Tamil armed force, could now well be the cause of its demise.
Me site 1 hadala tiyenne Dammika kiyala custom 1 inna horek. Mu singhala kamai Buddagamai arakshakaranawa kiyala me wage site hadagena kunuharpa wapuranawa. Jatiyai agamai dekama kanawa.
ADO KERI DAMMIKA RAWANA MEETA WEDIYA HONDAI WARAYA LANGA RETARETA PUKA DUNNANAM.
we are the laughing stock of the world – dancing to the tune of our colonial masters – sri lanka will never be free unless the constitution is changed – all the sri lankans known as ‘Sirs’ are the ones that played their part in destryoing the country..
there is a silent genocidal war going on in india and sri lanka – aryan vs dravidian – its so obvious that people ignore it – mahinda is a puppet of the sudhas