Will the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora demand the hostages be released?

By Ranjit Surendran and Roshanti Arasakularatne in Kilinochchi

(January 31, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The fact of the matter is that the LTTE are holding about 400,000 Wanni Tamils hostage as human shield in sheer desperation when, if they had any consideration for the civilian population, they would have by now surrendered to the Sri Lankan Forces. The game is up and there is not going to be any miracle to aid this brutal, bestial force. In 1995 with heavy monsoon rains at its most vicious beating, people from Jaffna were force-marched by the Tigers to Vadamarachchi and beyond and many perished along the route.


It was an unbelievable spectacle of utter brutality and only Adolf Hitler bettered it by railroading the Jews to their infamous camps. Pol Pot of Cambodia too did what Prabhakaran did to the Tamils.

The people from this district were literally marched at gun point because their cadres needed to escape from the peninsula into Wanni. In the process, the LTTE cadres also ransacked the emptied houses and some people who stayed back hiding were shot to death. The cadres even removed doors and asbestos roofing and just about every furniture they could transport to Wanni.

The pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora has been blind and indifferent to all these atrocities. They also depended for their information on the traitorous group of Tamil National Alliance Members of Parliament, a cowardly lot who in the history of the Tamils will certainly be branded as opportunist traitors. May be it is time for them to flee Sri Lanka and seek refuge elsewhere in case people turn their anger against them.

Today’s (January 30, 2009) Tamilnet’s leading feature titled “SLA separates relatives of seriously wounded to Vavuniya internment camp” is a mischievous contortion of what really is happening under the worrying circumstances existing in Wanni. The whole world knows that the government has given a 48-hour respite for the thousands held in hostage to be released. An LTTE spokesperson has said that the people do not want to go away from their custody. Our impression is totally the very opposite and they fear the LTTE guns and grenades.

Are their people who can really believe this statement as true unless they are moonstruck with madness? Typically a Tamil National Alliance MP Shivasakthi Anandan with comments and statements is behaving like how a TNA MP has been behaving all these years. They dance to the organ grinder, Prabhakaran himself. The pro-LTTE Diaspora does the same.

There are news about pro-LTTE and anti-Sri Lankan Government demonstrations in Toronto and London but is there anybody with guts to ask the Tamils held in hostage by the LTTE be released? The answer is a loud and emphatic “NO” – they will not do so. They would rather have these innocent thousands slaughtered so that they can make much out of it to their sadistic satisfaction. LTTE alive is what they want whatever the cost of lives be of their kith and kin.

Several international organizations are demanding that the Tamils held hostage are released and so are some countries that have shown their concerns in respect of the ethnic problems in Sri Lanka, but not the Pro-Tamil Diaspora in Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

Terrorism as a means of political action will not hold water anymore anywhere in the world. Even in Sri Lanka, the government is well advised to ensure that there is no more any semblance or racial or Buddhist fundamental terrorism that largely contributed to the rise of Tiger terrorism. Looking at events in the world over the last one hundred years, all those leaders who took to terrorism failed and have done immense harm to humanity.

Prabhakaran himself prescribed cyanide pills to his followers and even had his agents steal into the prison where some LTTE leaders were held by the Indian Peace-Keeping Forces with the order that they take the cyanide way out. Has this man not the guts to do that himself now that the whole horrendous farce has virtually come to an end? Hundreds of Tamil youth perished the cyanide way during the last three decades.

People who stand out as great leaders are those who opted for passive and non-violent leadership and the most remarkable ones are Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, all of whom achieved not only what looked impossible but in their leadership enshrined the humanity of the human beings.

Adolf Hitler and his company like Pol Pot and Prabhakaran opted for the evil and as is always true, evil begets evil. It is a fact the Sri Lankan Government has been most unfair to the minority Tamils and have still not awoken to the fundamental reality that every citizen of Sri Lanka has the right to be equally treated and no community is lesser in status than the other. Furthermore the minorities are not living in Sri Lanka by the grace of the majority.

The country has come to a situation when a terrible chapter of brutal terrorism is going to end. This must be greeted with the hope that very soon every citizen of Sri Lanka will live as equal citizens to one another and where the freedoms fundamental to the wellbeing of a nation will be zealously guarded and held sacrosanct.

Here below is the Tamilnet feature dated January 30, 2009:

SLA separates relatives of seriously wounded to Vavuniya internment camp

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 January 2009, 19:56 GMT]: Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vavuniya, inhumanely separated 122 immediate family members accompanying the seriously wounded 226 civilians transported by the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), and sent them to an internment camp in Nelukku'lam, Vavuniyaa, medical sources in Vavuniyaa told TamilNet. Mothers of number of injured children, between ages 8 and 10 years, were also not allowed to remain with their children, and were transferred to the internment camp. When the Vanni district Tamil National Alliance MP Shivashakthi Anandan visited the hospital to see the newly arrived injured patients, he witnessed the pathetic plight of the children who were injured and admitted on Thursday, mentally traumatized staying alone in the hospital without their mothers. Patients requiring additional help struggled to manage alone in the Vavuniyaa hospital.

Shivashakthi Anandan brought the matter to the attention of high ranking government authorities and urged them to at least allow the mothers to be with their children. The request was turned down by the military officials, according to the MP. The patients discharged from the hospital are also being dispatched to the Nelukku'lam internment centre, according to civil society sources.

Civilians arriving in Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) controlled areas are not being allowed to move freely or to stay with their relatives in Vavuniyaa, in gross violation of fundamental rights, NGO sources in Vavuniyaa said. The victims are held in an open prison without any communication with outside world, NGO sources added. The victims are also misused by the 'embedded media persons' of the Sri Lanka Army to disseminate false propaganda recordings to Sinhala television stations, civil society sources said. - Sri Lanka Guardian