Wickremesinghe, handled the issues of the Tamils. Wickremesinghe, they felt, failed to address the grievances of Tamils, even though the government negotiating team promised to create normalcy in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Ranil’s UNP was the mastermind in breaking the LTTE in Batticaloa. The government at the time gave shelter to and accommodated an LTTE faction, under former-LTTE commander Karuna, in Batticaloa. Ranil did so during a time of peace.”by Satheesan Kumaaran
(December, 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but, the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property –Thomas Jefferson
The leader of the LTTE, in his Great Heroes’ Day (Maaveerar) speech, broadcast from an unknown location in northern Sri Lanka on November 27, 2007, put much more weight than on previous occasions on the need for Tamils around the world to rally in solidarity with the Sri Lankan Tamils if negotiations with the Sri Lankan government break down and war results. Such solidarity may very well determine the eventual destiny of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the LTTE leader, unlike on previous occasions, when his statements were directed solely toward the Sinhala nation, made it a top priority to blame members of the International Community (IC) for their failure to stand by the LTTE’s just and fair struggle to find a permanent solution, through peaceful means, for the liberation of East Timor and Montenegro, despite the fact that the Tamils in Sri Lanka have been fighting for justice, both militarily and peacefully, since the island gained its independence from Britain in 1948.
The LTTE Leader’s Earlier Heroes’ Day Speeches
Although LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan has been addressing the general Tamil public since 1987, these annual policy speeches did not gain much in significance because the LTTE focussed on military tactics rather than on ending the ethnic conflict through peace talks. The speeches of the LTTE supremo and, with them, the concerns of the Tamils of Sri Lanka began to get international attention only since November 27, 2002, when the IC and Tamils elsewhere around the world began to observe the Eelam problem closely because they wanted to know whether the parties in conflict would find a peaceful settlement. The LTTE leader, in 2002, 2003, and 2004, urged the Sri Lankan government to enter into genuine peace talks with the LTTE, despite the fact that the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government had already entered into several rounds of peace talks in foreign countries under the Sinhala leaderships of Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP and Chandrika of the People’s Alliance. LTTE leaders did not approve of the way the UNP leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, handled the issues of the Tamils. Wickremesinghe, they felt, failed to address the grievances of Tamils, even though the government negotiating team promised to create normalcy in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Ranil’s UNP was the mastermind in breaking the LTTE in Batticaloa. The government at the time gave shelter to and accommodated an LTTE faction, under former-LTTE commander Karuna, in Batticaloa. Ranil did so during a time of peace. The LTTE was not in a situation to blame the Sri Lankan government alone because the issue involved an internal matter within the LTTE movement. So, the LTTE leadership took quick action to expel the breakaway group and name its members traitors. But the LTTE leadership did not forget the activities of the UNPers. This was the not the first time the LTTE leadership had discerned a move to create internal fighting within the LTTE and, thereby, to weaken it. The Indian government, for instance, did this, but without success. India managed to infiltrate the LTTE, to use its second-in-command, Mahthaya, and to name a few other leaders; these attempts were foiled by members of the LTTE intelligence, led by Pottu Amman. When Chandrika Kumaratunga came to power, she tried not to antagonize the LTTE. Hence, she continued the peace process, but she did not enter into genuine peace talks. She even managed to hoodwink the IC.
Chandrika’s government played a crucial role in 2004, when a tsunami hit countries adjoining the Indian Ocean, including Sri Lanka. She did not permit former American presidents George Bush, Sr. and Bill Clinton or other dignitaries, such as United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to visit LTTE-controlled areas, even though many people in the Tamil areas in the north and east suffered from the effects of the tsunami, because she claimed their visits to these areas would sanction LTTE claims for a separate state.
In 2005, just nine days after President Mahinda Rajapaksa won the presidential race, the LTTE leader said he was willing to give Rajapaksa time. The LTTE leader believed that, unlike other presidents of the country, Rajapaksa would be sincere and honest in pursuing a peaceful settlement to the ethnic issue. The goodwill of the LTTE, however, was of no avail because the Sri Lankan armed forces began killing Tamils in the north and east. The LTTE, in return, began defensive attacks against Sri Lankan troops. One took place on December 4, 2005, when they killed 10 troops in an attack in Jaffna. On December 5, 2005, they killed another four troops. Sporadic clashes between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan armed forces continued, but the attacks were viewed by the LTTE as defensive one.
Things got worse in 2006, when the Sri Lankan armed forces captured areas controlled by the LTTE, thereby violating the Cease-Fire Agreement (CFA) signed between the LTTE leader and Sri Lanka’s premier, Ranil Wickremesinghe, in 2002. In return, the LTTE launched defensive attacks, but refrained from launching major military attacks, except the one in Trincomalee. The LTTE fighters returned to their camps, due to the pressure of the IC over violations of the CFA. LTTE members once again proved they respected the CFA, but the government violated it many times. The LTTE leadership took the issue to the IC, asking its members to exert pressure on the Sri Lankan government to refrain from capturing LTTE-held areas, as stated in the CFA. The Sri Lankan government, however, did not follow the demands of the IC.
On November 27, 2006, the LTTE leader, Pirapaharan, in his Martyrs’ Day speech, clarified the prevailing LTTE position. He made a strongly-worded statement: “Both our liberation movement and our people never preferred war to a peaceful resolution. We have always preferred a peaceful approach to win the political rights of our people. We have never hesitated to follow the peaceful path to win our political rights. That is why we held peace talks, beginning in Thimpu right through to Geneva, on several occasions, at various times, and in many countries”. He also stated that Rajapaksa had rejected his final call, pronounced in his Heroes’ Day statement of 2005, to give more time to finding a resolution to the urgent Tamil National Question. He added that Rajapaksa, instead, had intensified the war, even as he had claimed to want to find a peaceful resolution. Pirapaharan noted this dual war and peace approach is fundamentally flawed: “It is not possible to find a resolution by marginalizing and destroying the freedom movement with which talks must be held to find the resolution. This is political absurdity on the part of the Sinhala leaders. Due to this strategy of the Rajapaksa regime, the CFA has become defunct”. The LTTE leader added that Rajapaksa’s regime, which denied the people food and medicine, thereby starving them, could not be expected to show compassion and give the Tamil people their political rights. He said that the Sinhala nation, eternally trapped in the mythical ideology of the Mahavamsa, has failed to think afresh and has left the Tamils with only one option, political independence and statehood for the people of Tamil Eelam.
The LTTE Leader’s 2007 Heroes’ Day Speech
The LTTE leader’s speech of November 27, 2007 was seen as important, even crucial, by all Tamils around the world and the IC for various obvious reasons. First, Tamils the world over wanted to know what their leaders had to say because Tamils from other parts of the world could not pay a visit to their brethren in the north and east due to security reasons, the closure of roads, and unsafe air, land, and sea passages to the Tamil homeland. Secondly, many Tamils from other parts of the world had gone to the Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka and their youngsters had married there; however, spouses had been left behind, waiting for foreign embassies to approve their sponsorship applications. At the same time, many of the Tamils from abroad who had married in northern and eastern Sri Lanka and were forced to leave their spouses there were unable to make safe passage to Colombo, where their sponsorship procedures had to be completed. Thirdly, some Tamils who visited Sri Lanka were abducted for ransom, and, on many occasions, the Sri Lankan armed forces or their sponsored militant groups kidnapped foreign Tamil nationals. The Tamils around the world, therefore, yearned for a peaceful atmosphere. The IC also wanted to ensure peace prevailed on the island for various reasons. The war against extremists was taking place in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. The Americans and their allies wanted safe sea passage through Sri Lanka from American and British bases in the Indian Ocean, especially from Diego Garcia, near Madagascar. Neighbouring India wanted peace in Sri Lanka, even though India does not want greater autonomy for Tamils in Sri Lanka, fearing that greater autonomy for the Tamils in Sri Lanka will create internal problems for India; India especially fears that the Tamils in Sri Lanka will give moral and material support to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which could demand separation from India. This latter myth has existed for quite some time in New Delhi. The idea was first sown by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), during the early 1980s, when Sri Lankan militant groups became leading players in the fight against the Sri Lankan armed forces and Tamil militants got training, money, and support from India. China, Pakistan, Japan, Israel, and Russia are only a few of the countries that supported the Sri Lankan government for various reasons, including geo-political and security reasons, and that now also see the problem in Sri Lanka as critical. The IC has economic interests in the region, especially with India; that makes Sri Lanka important. The IC also wants to play a critical role in ending the conflict through peaceful means, in order to save the people from gross violations of human rights.
Whatever the consequences to the IC, it is important to highlight the speech the LTTE leader made on November 27 of this year because he said he had lost faith in the IC and urged Tamils throughout the world to stand behind him in the days, months, and years to come, days that will be the darkest for the freedom struggle because LTTE fighters are determined to liberate the Tamil Nation from the wrath of the Sinhala occupation. The LTTE leader, this time, signalled clearly that the country was heading for a bloody, no-holds-barred war because the government has unilaterally broken the CFA, which, today, is only a paper document. He sent two politically-laden messages to the south. He stated that, since the CFA is no longer in force, everything and everyone is fair game and that he was going add to Rajapaksa’s woes by giving the JVP more teeth with which to call on the government formally to abrogate the agreement. The day after the LTTE leader delivered his speech, the JVP did call on the government formally to abrogate the CFA. That evening, a bomb explosion in the heart of Nugegoda killed 20 civilians and injured 36 more. In addition, there was a suicide bomb attack, during the early hours of the same day, at the office of former Tamil militant leader Douglas Devananda, who is today a cabinet minister in the Rajapaksa government, even though his EPDP party members are wandering around the country with weapons. For hours after the bomb attacks, the government, fearing a retaliatory attack based on the LTTE claim of 11 students being killed in a blast in the north, rushed to close all schools in the Western Province. Vehicles were banned from entering the World Trade Centre and the Liberty Plaza shopping complex was searched following a bomb scare. Over 18,000 police and army soldiers are guarding Colombo and its suburbs. These security personnel are conducting door-to-door searches in the Sinhala south. Over 3,000 Tamils have been arrested and put in prison, regardless of their age and gender. All these people were taken to prison because they were born to Tamils. The IC has not responded to the arrests made by the Sri Lankan government. The IC, however, responded immediately, condemning the perpetrators of the November 28 attack on Nugegoda, an attack that killed 20 people.
On the eve of Heroes’ Day, while the LTTE leader was preparing his speech, the Sri Lankan government flattened the building of the ‘Voice of Tigers’ radio in Kilinochchi. Nevertheless, the ‘Voice of Tigers’ and other media outlets of the LTTE, as well as other broadcasting and television media around the world, aired the speech in full. Although the building of the ‘Voice of Tigers’ radio was flattened in the raid, the ‘Voice of Tigers’ radio broadcast continued through a backup station. Ten people at the radio station, including three employees, were killed. Reporters Without Borders and some international media organizations described the attack as a war crime. On the same day, 13 civilians in the north, including 11 children, were killed, allegedly by a deep penetration unit of the Sri Lankan army. Defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brother of the Sri Lankan president, vowed his army forces would kill the LTTE leader soon. Vowing to kill or arrest senior LTTE leaders is something Sri Lankan and Indian leaders have always done; in fact, this is difficult to do.
(To be continued)
The author can be reached at e-mail: satheessan_kumaaran@yahoo.com.
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