Pirabakaran! It is too late.

by. R Jayadevan

(November, 29, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) I thought of responding to Pirabakaran’s Hero’s Day speech in a very simple way. The main theme of his speech was his condemnation of the international community for taking a partisan stand in favour of the Sri Lankan government and an appeal to the Tamil Diaspora to support his organisation to extend the war further. Sixty years of Sinhala dominated anti-Tamil flavoured post independence and the past three decades old warfare and the terror regime prevailing in Sri Lanka has caused considerable harm to the Tamil people.

Unfortunately, Pirabakaran’s speech failed to deal with the failures of the LTTE and its irredeemable decline which will soon lead to its disappearance from the Tamil politics. For the LTTE to be acceptable, it has to change from its present shape and formation. The first thing it must do, is to publicly acknowledge its culpability of various crimes against humanity over the very same people it claims to represent and its many forms of terrorist activities that had brought the LTTE to its present predicament.

When will Pirabakaran say?

I was wrong in killing my own people for having differing opinion and representing different organisations.

I was wrong in killing the Tamil democratic leaders.

I was wrong in chasing away the Muslims in mass scale from the Tamil areas.

I was wrong in killing religious leaders of all religious denominations including the Japanese peace priests.

I was wrong in killing the Late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

I was wrong in undermining fair representation of Tamils and Muslims from the eastern Sri Lanka.

I was wrong in reducing the Tamil national liberation struggle into an exclusively Valvettithurai (Vadamarachchi) club.

I was wrong in ignoring the plight of the upcountry Tamil people.

I was wrong in torturing and detaining the fellow Tamils indefinitely for all kinds of reasons.
I am wrong in committing terrorist activities on civilian targets.

I am wrong in violently purging my own military cadres for all kinds of reasons without rehabilitating them.

I am wrong in forcefully recruiting children to fight the war.

I am wrong in not developing a political leadership.

I am wrong in not proceeding towards the path of not accepting some form devolution on many favourable occasions.

Mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and the friends of LTTE crimes have not forgotten the terrible crimes committed by the LTTE. Pirabakaran will say these are necessity and unavoidable in a liberation struggle. Unfortunately, what LTTE did to its own people cannot be removed from the collective memory of the people it claims to represent. The LTTE believes it is lager than the Tamil people and could live longer than them. The LTTE war is a war carried with forced conscription and a proxy war funded by the run away Tamils to greener pastures in the world, whilst they and their family are not harmed by the brutal war.

Pirabakaran has disappointed his Diaspora (proxy) fund providers. In the last round of major fund raising a year ago they were told Pirabakaran is going to declare Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) with a backing of a country. This did not come about and Pirabakaran’s speech clearly confirms there is no country in the world supporting his struggle.

(November, 27, 2007)