Prabhakaran – The happy man

"And the majority of those other Tamils living in the safe shadow of Colombo and other majority Sinhalese towns, in their heart of hearts worshipping Prabakaran as the heroic leader of all Tamils."

by Hubert E. Weerasooriya

(January 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Prabakaran, in his jungle fastness in the Wanni, must be one of the happiest men in the world. Starting from scratch, unknown and unsung, with little education, he has risen to world fame having liquidated all his rivals, and been acclaimed as the most ruthless terrorist leader of the world. He is adulated and his praise sung by virtually every Tamil of Sri Lankan origin living all over the world, not to speak of a host of foreign Tamils and even some Christian clergy.

He has no worries. An army of intelligent Tamils are working overtime to fill his coffers to run the war. They are routinely pinching the hard earned pennies of fellow Tamils living safely in foreign lands, glorifying in the victories of Prabakaran’s armies which they swallow from the website. Well they have to pay for their entertainment while not risking themselves to any danger of facing a bullet or shrapnel. A few, with memories of the 1983 holocaust may even feel a vestige of justification in the massacre of the innocent peasants of whole villages with the brutal butchery of all their women, children and babies in arms the horrendous slaughter of 800 unarmed policemen, not to mention the number of Buddhist priests young and old killed, and pious Muslims at prayers in their mosques. Then a host of other Tamils, misdirection their talents and energies are globe trotting and buying up the most murderous weapons of war. Yet others business minded Tamils who could have been business tycoons in ordinary life bringing wealth to the nation and their own Tamils are busy organising fleets of ships to send these death dealing instruments of war to Lanka to kill fellow beings.

And the majority of those other Tamils living in the safe shadow of Colombo and other majority Sinhalese towns, in their heart of hearts worshipping Prabakaran as the heroic leader of all Tamils. For did not their parties with one accord (except for a brave lone exception) pray to the British government not to proclaim LTTE as a terrorist organisation and are now calling on the government to lift the proscription. And Prabakaran must be contemptuously witnessing the Sri Lanka government coming on banded knees praying for "PEACE". Of course he knows the Sri Lanka government has to do so to stave off an immediate economic disaster.

But Prabakaran finds these occasional cries for "Peace Negotiations" useful. It is during negotiations that he replenishes his supplies.

Last time he fooled the world with a ploy of Unilateral Cessation of Hostilities. He found the four months sufficient to build up his arsenal with the most sophisticate weapons of war brought in his ships and surreptitiously landed ashore.

Now he has to stave off these "Peace Negotiations". But he has to do so subtly, unlike last time when he suddenly downed two of our war planes. For, a friendly foreign country. Norway has come on the scene. So what better way than asking for impossible conditions such as de-banning and lifting the Government Proscription against the LTTE. He must be smiling to himself, that he has even bluffed the ambassadors of such world giants as the U.S.A. and England in making them believe that he is serious about Peace.

And who suffers?

When I saw that revealing picture in a Sunday Paper of two good looking Tamil girls probably in their late teens learning to fire a 120 m.m. mortar as members of an Artillery Brigade of young women of the LTTE, I was saddened. For most of them would be scattered pieces of flesh if a bomber of the government forces spotted them. Surely they were not born for this. Should they not have blossomed out to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, artists, writers and even professors of Universities?

But do the diaspora of Tamils overseas, or those snug in the safe towns of the rest of Sri Lanka care for their kith and kin?

Of Course Prabakaran does not. They are only cannon fodder for him. He has no place in a world without war.