Is it Daydream?

By Spy Catcher

(January 25, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan media is dishing out daily fairy tales about the possible fate of Pirabakaran following the final assault of the army to capture the Vanni jungle he is presumed to be hiding.

All kinds of stories are being engineered to keep the southern consensus in favour of the government. News ranging from Pirabakaran ‘has only one option to commit suicide’ to ‘handing him over to India’ is well cooked and dished out in the government’s propaganda campaign.

The latest of government euphoria is that Pirabakaran has run away to Malaysia. Of all the hotbed counties for the LTTE in the far-east, why Malaysia has been invented is not difficult to guess. There was strong uproar in Malaysia last week about the catastrophe facing the Tamil people in the war front in Sri Lanka. In order to make political mileage, the government of Sri Lanka has let loose its latest hilarious news to dampen the public opinion in Malaysia against the war.

Since mid 1970’s Pirabakaran is the most wanted man in Sri Lanka and also wanted by the Interpol and India. We have heard very many fabricated stories about his whereabouts and fate for the past thirty years. The government controlled and sympathetic media in Colombo are in the forefront to generate euphoric news about his fate and the poor Sinhala masses too are digesting them without any difficulties.

I can recall reading some news in the early 1980’s that Pirabakaran was seriously injured and received treatment in Manthikai hospital in the Jaffna peninsula. Another story followed few months later stating Pirabakaran was seen in priests cassock dress in the eastern Batticaloa town.

The latest wild claims of the government come at the time when the army had made significant advances into the LTTE controlled territories. With its egalitarian control of the media preventing it from reporting news about the war and the human sufferings in the war front, the government is furthering its cause by deceiving the people by planting framed news about the situation in the war front.

This deceptive campaign of the government is even influencing the international media reporting news from Sri Lanka. Unable be verify the news disseminated by the government, the international news agencies too have succumbed to the pressures. Even when some credible news is available, they fear to report them to avoid being hounded by the government.

At the time when the army has made significant advances into LTTE territories, the forces are still to find the rouge planes used by the LTTE and any of its arms and ammunitions storages.

The pathetic of all is, the frenzied government is making ecstatic claim when it is unable to catch even a person involved in the murder of the Sunday Leader Chief Editor Lasantha Wickramatunga or even unable to track down the white vans roaming around Colombo in their kidnapping and killing spree.

In the late 1980’s when the north and east security came under the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), the Indian army made significant inroads into the LTTE territories. Vanni was literally under the control of the IPKF. But Pirabakaran remained in Vanni and sent some of his senior confidants overseas with the instructions that they should carry on the struggle even if he was killed by the IPKF.

A Vanni man in London said ‘even if Sri Lanka looses its entire body of army of 250,000 men, they will not catch Pirabakaran’. ‘Only way Pirabakaran could be caught or disabled is when the Tamil people are politically empowered to deal with him’ said the Vanni man. - Sri Lanka Guardian