|
|
|
 |
 |
|||
|
|
The savagery
continues Less that 14 hours after his “Heroes Day” speech when he appealed to the world to counsel the Sri Lanka Government not to pursue a military solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka, on November 28 the LTTE carried out two bomb attacks in Colombo. The first was a failed attempt to assassinate the Minister of Social Services and Social Welfare, Mr. Douglas Devananda, a Tamil, using a woman suicide bomber. The other, took place later the same day at a crowded shop in a city suburb, killing 17 including several children and injuring many more. Less than a week since those brutal attacks the LTTE led by Prabhakaran demonstrated its savagery again when it carried a claymore bomb attack on a civilian bus at Kebethigollawa in the Anuradhapura District in the North Central Province, killing 16 civilians and injuring 35. This is the second major LTTE attack on civilians at Kebethigollawa in the past 18 months. The last was on June 15, 2006, when a similar attack on a civilian bus killed 68 – including many women and children and injured 66. The PRIU sees this as the continuing savagery of the LTTE, which is extolled and promoted by the terror arms of the LTTE such as the Voice of Tigers radio, which is operated by the cadres of the LTTE, and helps raise funds from the Tamil Diaspora for the continuing terror of the LTTE. In this context we public below the full text of an editorial in Hindu of India, published yesterday (Dec 5), which in a study of the LTTE leader’s policies, concludes that: “The Tamil question cannot be resolved in any just and enduring way as long as the LTTE remains a politico-military force to reckon with — or at least as long as Mr. Prabakaran remains its supremo.” Here the text of the Hindu editorial “LTTE supremo’s plaint “The proof, if any were required, of the complete isolation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from the modern world came in bold letters in the 2007 ‘Hero’s Day Statement’ of its Pol Potist leader, Velupillai Prabakaran. It is an extraordinary confession of political frustration. The 2,700-word speech is a litany of grievances against everyone under the sun — except the talented military leader who has brought such cruelty, suffering, and uncertainty to his own people and of course their compatriots belonging to other ethnic communities in the island. Thus Mr. Prabakaran blames the international community for the collapse of the Norwegian brokered 2002 Cease Fire Agreement and the plight of hundreds of thousands of people caught in the ongoing undeclared war between the armed forces and the much-weakened, down-but-not-yet-out LTTE. Mr. Prabakaran’s latest plaint is that the world has been infected by ‘Sinhala chauvinism’; that it has ganged up with the Sri Lankan government to “suppress the legitimate freedom struggle” of the Tamils; and indeed that the international community is committing the “same mistake” India did two decades ago. No reference of course to what really happened post-July 1987, such as the LTTE’s assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the numerous acts of extremism and terrorism. It is a telling commentary on the Pol Potist vision kept alive in a bunker in the Wanni jungles that Mr. Prabakaran does not ask himself how and why the world looks and acts towards his organisation the way it does. That he lacks the faculty of introspection is evident in the gulf between precept and practice. Less than 14 hours after morally beseeching the world to counsel Colombo not to pursue a “military solution” to Sri Lanka’s ethnic question, Mr. Prabakaran had no qualms in deploying a physically disabled woman suicide bomber in the nth attempt on the life of his mortal enemy and Social Welfare Minister, Douglas Devananda. Twenty-four hours after that, an LTTE squad set off a parcel bomb in a popular apparel shop on the outskirts of Colombo, taking 19 innocent lives. Sri Lanka’s unresolved ethnic problem, the Tamil question, cannot be resolved by military means. The just and sustainable solution waits to be negotiated along federal lines within the framework of Sri Lankan unity and integrity. But what most of the world understands today is not just that the terrorist LTTE is constitutionally incapable of accepting that kind of solution. The Tamil question cannot be resolved in any just and enduring way as long as the LTTE remains a politico-military force to reckon with — or at least as long as Mr. Prabakaran remains its supremo.
|
|
Contact Information: Send mail to
