TULF calls upon the TNA to save the Innocent Tamils

By V. Anandasangaree

(January 12, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I call upon the 22 Tamil National Alliance Parliamentarians to do their duty or to honourably vacate their seats in Parliament. They have fooled enough, the people whom they claim to represent in Parliament, but never championed their cause. Instead they always defended the LTTE at whose mercy they got elected fraudulently to Parliament. They have mis-led the International Community, the people of Tamil Nadu in particular. Tamil Nadu if left alone or properly briefed would have contributed their best towards a workable solution, without earning the dis-pleasure of the people of Sri Lanka and without causing embarrassment to their own Central Government, with un-fair and un-implementable demands.

Unfortunately the people of Tamil Nadu got mis-led by the advice given by the TNA Parliamentarians. Without demanding the war to stop, if they had, in a friendly way, agitated for a reasonable settlement of the ethnic problem, they might have succeeded. I extended my invitation to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Hon. Dr. M. Karunanithy four years back to pay a visit to Sri Lanka. Let us not forget that the President His Excellency Mahinda Rajapakse himself invited the Chief Minister Hon. Dr. M. Karunanithy, a couple of months back when a mass scale agitation was going on in Tamil Nadu, to visit Sri Lanka and would have been very happy, if the Chief Minister had accepted the invitation, came to Sri Lanka and offered to mediate. This is yet another lost opportunity for which the TNA should bear the blame for not making use of this opportunity.

“What sin have we committed to undergo this agony all these long years, extending to a period of quarter of a century and how long are we to endure this?”, ask the people of Kilinochchi, who are all now displaced and living at Dharmapuram, a small village in the district of Kilinochchi. I know most of them because I lived with them and represented them in Parliament for many years. Apart from this more than a hundred thousand people men, women and children, including the sick and the toddlers, deprived of their normal life, had been mercilessly driven like cattle into Kilinochchi by the LTTE from the areas under their control in the neighboring districts of Mannar, Vavuniya and Mullaitheevu. They were pushed into Kilinochchi by the withdrawing LTTE cadre, unable to confront the advancing Government Forces. Left alone most of them would have stayed in their homes or could have gone to their respective homes and saved whatever left over after being looted or robbed. Instead they are brought from far off places and squeezed into small villages already over crowded with the locally displaced persons from the Kilinochchi district itself. The LTTE holds these people to ransom for no fault of theirs, but only for the sole purpose of using them as human shield for their own protection. The distress call of these unfortunate people is not heard in Tamil Nadu.

The International Community which is much concerned of the Human Rights Violations in the LTTE held areas also, is compelled to keep silent, perhaps due to their reluctance to go against the demand of Tamil Nadu for a Cease Fire although it is very obvious that, the demand is more in support of the LTTE, than in the interest of the Tamils trapped in the LTTE areas. It is very unfortunate that Tamil Nadu is refusing and the TNA is ignoring to respond to the distress call of these two hundred and fifty thousand people who are caught up between the LTTE which is compulsorily recruiting men and women only to sacrifice them at the battle front and the deadly snakes that are multiplying in their thousands. Hundreds had been stung by snake and many have died. Leave aside the TNA, even nature is against them. The down pour of rain is so heavy that all areas are flooded and people have to move from place to place in search of highland to camp and to cook their food. Apart from the snake menace the other one is the mosquitoes with the threat of an out-brake of malaria or dengue. I dare say that all these sufferings of the people do not seem to be of any concern for the TNA Members of Parliament in Sri Lanka and some leaders of Tamil Nadu, who were in the fore-front of the recent uprising in Tamil Nadu, most of whom take pride in boasting of “umbilicus code relationship”, between the Tamils of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. They least know of the same relationship the Sinhalese have with the Tamils of Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Their only concern seem to be saving the LTTE under the pretext of stopping the war. A TNA Parliamentarian had said in Parliament recently that 55000 children from 190 schools are not attending school. He did not have the guts to tell the world as to why this has happened?, because of whom? and where? To add to what he said, in the Eastern Province more than 6000 children do not know their alphabet. The MP did not tell how teachers on the Government’s pay roll are fighting in the war front for the LTTE. These MP’s children are quite safe in foreign countries having good education. The irony is a TNA Member of Parliament whose entire family is in Australia, recently referred to me in Parliament as a traitor.

The people in Vanni want the war to continue, because they want the war to end with the LTTE defeated. The forces that had marched forward about 200 miles liberating the people all along, has only a few more miles to go. The people only plead that the forces should avoid civilian targets and night time aerial bombings.

Everyday a few dead bodies of the LTTE fighters are handed over to the ICRC to be delivered to the LTTE. They are young boys and girls, children of poor parents compulsorily recruited by the LTTE and sent to the battle front with hardly any or very little training. One can understand the TNA Members of Parliament remaining silent on this type of matters merely to please the LTTE and to save their seats in Parliament. But one cannot understand as to why Tamil Nadu, which is rich in culture and civilization, God fearing and pious, always sympathetic towards the Sri Lankan Tamils and proudly boast of its “umbilicus code relationship” with them, should remain silent without raising one word of protest against the cruel and uncivilized manner in which the brutal LTTE is treating the innocent Tamils whom they are keeping under compulsion in a pre-dominantly jungle area, infested with snakes and mosquitoes, in chilly weather and pouring rain, without timely food and proper shelter, shifting their temporary abode from place to place off and on like nomads. It is traditional for the LTTE to take away first, all what they need and only what is remaining is distributed to the people. This is happening even today. The TNA Members did not protest when the LTTE ordered all those 8000 students who sat for the G.C.E(O/L) examination held recently, to under-go trainings while the Catholic Church protested against the attempt of the LTTE to take away some orphans from an orphanage run by the church.

All what is mentioned here is only a minor fraction of the sufferings of our people. Why can’t Tamil Nadu, which is partly responsible for the present situation, wake up from its deep slumber and persuade them or, if unyielding, warn them to release the people to go anywhere they want.

If Tamil Nadu, adamantly keeps silent or out of fear for a handful of pro-LTTE leaders of Tamil Nadu and also if the TNA Members of Parliament who misled Tamil Nadu and roused the feelings of the people there, fail to move them inspite of all these pleadings, I have to look upon the expatriate Tamils who had largely helped the LTTE to grow, with substantial financial assistance, to intervene and bring pressure on them to free the people detained. The LTTE has lost the war and it is ridiculous for anyone to still believe that they will regain all what they have lost.

If the LTTE is willing to lay down their arms they can do so and negotiate with the Government for a solution within a united Sri Lanka, wherein all ethnic groups can live as equals, enjoying all rights without any form of discrimination what so ever. Failure to do so, will only pave the way for some unscrupulous elements to takeover, like snakes taking up residence in the anthills built by the labour of infinite number of white-ants. The Government of Sri Lanka and the International Community has a morel duty to see that the Tamils are not allowed to jump from the frying pan into the fire. I assure the TNA Members of Parliament that I sincerely feel that they have failed in their mission and therefore to quit their seats in Parliament. As for me I am not interested in any office but my whole interest is only on the people who are suffering for the last quarter of a century.

( V. Anandasangareeis the President – TULF.) - Sri Lanka Guardian