The last chance to save our people

By V. Anandasangaree

(March 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The curse of over three hundred and thirty thousand people belonging to about 81000 families, kept by you under compulsion, will not let you live in peaces and it will follow you and your heirs for many more generations to come. Those who support you even now will not be spared. Please change your mind atleast now and release those detained, to freedom. People have started dying of starvation for which you should take the responsibly.

Out of sheer desperation only, I am writing to you this time, an open letter, since your where-abouts are not known. I want to ask you whether, atleast at this stage, you are not going to undo some of the things that you had done. As usual I am not expecting a reply from you, but I honestly believe that you will take some positive steps to save the people whom you have brought to this state. It is very unfortunate that you had not taken any of my letters seriously, all of which were written with good intentions, although most of them had been very critical of your activities and those of your cadre. I did not have any selfish intention in doing so and also did not act as anybody’s agent. I never supported your armed struggle and firmly believed only in non-violence. I still believe that we could have sorted out matters in a non-violent way, without antagonising anybody. The criticism I had been leveling against you, mainly had a duel purpose. One, I thought by systematically pointing out your mistakes I could bring you into the democratic process. You will remember how I had been even assuring our support to you for the peace process, without asking for any positions for us. The other purpose was to liberate the Tamil people who had been subjected to live under constant fear and tension and undergo untold hardship, for almost quarter of a century, under your control. In the process I am sure I would have hurt you to the maximum and earned your displeasure and the wrath of your cadre. I did not mind it. I was prepared to face any risk to my life, since I was convinced that my mission was not self-centred but very genuine and honest. I am sure you will appreciate this stand of mine as it reflects my genuine concern for the welfare of the Tamil People. The humiliations and the embarrassment I suffered for taking this stand through the print and electronic media supportive of you, all over the world, were far beyond a man’s limit of tolerance and although very de-meaning I had to face them.

I very politely ask you, to take your thoughts back to the days when you were involved in a series of assassinations of political personalities like Hon. Rajiv Gandhi, Ex-Prime Minister of India, President R. Premadasa, Presidential Candidate Gamini Dissanayake and several Ministers and Members of Parliament along with him and the attempted assassination of President Chandrika Bandaranayake Kumaratunga. What did you gain by those acts? You only earned the hatred of the whole of India including Tamil Nadu and also the wrath of the Sinhalese. The recent uprising in Tamil Nadu on the Sri Lankan issue is only a political ruse for political gains. Inspite of my repeated requests, not a single leader from Tamil Nadu ever bothered to pay a visit to Sri Lanka to study the ground situation.

A large number of prominent Tamil leaders like Mr. A. Amirthalingam, Secretary General of the TULF, Jaffna D.D.C. Chairman Mr. S. Nadarajah, the Mayor of Jaffna Mr. P. Sivapalan, a great constitutional Lawyer Dr. Neelan Thiruchelvam, the Mayoress of Jaffna Mrs. Sarojini Yogeswaran and a long list of Public Servants, Academics, Heads of Schools, Teachers, Parliamentarians, Local Politicians and many such others had been assassinated by you. Your killings created a big vacuum in the Tamil leadership. Killing of top rankers gave way for the emergence of many leaders among the Tamils. Several new leaders cropped up like mushrooms. You did not even spare the TULF, the only moderate party that functioned without confronting any other groups. You killed some of the TULF leaders and bought over some others with the offer of seats in Parliament. What harm did the Tamil leaders do to you for you to drain out the entire leadership of the Tamil people, none of whom was ever harmed by any Sinhalese or Muslim? I still weep for a Muslim Government Agent for Mannar Mr. M. Macbool a good friend of mine and an authority on Hinduisms, assassinated by you. What did you gain by his killing or by the killings of the others whom a Sinhalese or a Muslim never dared to touch? You only lost your credibility day by day.

Tamil Language is the mother tongue of the Muslims also. You did not allow them even to celebrate the National Milad-ud-Nabi festival peacefully and had 15 innocent civilians killed and over forty seriously injured. Atleast now have you quenched your thirst for blood. This is one such attempt of yours to spark off a communal riot. Please don’t have hopes that you will ever succeed in making the people of this country fall into your trap.

How many innocent Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims to whom you had given blood bath. You had massacred innocent Muslims while they were praying in mosques more than once. You had massacred Buddhist pilgrims at Anuradhapura the most sacred place for Buddhists. You tried to destroy the world famous temple of the Sacred Tooth in Kandy. You had the heart to massacre a bus load of children who had ordained themselves as Buddhist priests. You mercilessly drove away all the Muslims from the North compelling them to take only Rs. 500 each and to leave behind all their possessions. You did not spare even infants at the border villages. You had gunned down several innocent chena cultivators for no reason.

How many clay-more mine, land mine and hand-grenade attacks you were involved in to take the lives of several thousands of innocent people, mainly Sinhalese, along with Tamils and Muslims? How many widows, widowers and orphans you have created in all communities? How many had lost their limbs and eye sights? How many rich had become paupers over-night? What did you spare for them? What happened to their agriculture and industry? What had happened to their houses, house hold items and their vehicles? What happened to their education? Every thing is lost. Is this retribution? – people are asking. If so why should that happen to innocent people who had been under-going all these hardships living under your control, while the expatriates who had been encouraging you with financial assistance to do all these, are enjoying life. Can one assess the losses sustained by these innocent people and describe the agony they under went during your control. All that is now over. What is done cannot be undone but there are remedial steps if taken by you without further delay, a lot of things can be sorted out. It will be a great relief for the people who are now on the verge of losing even the little things that they left behind, to save them.

All these and many more things had happened. When even an abridged version of your activities will run into several volumes, what I have written here is just like a drop in the ocean. Your destructive activities would have cost our people hundreds of billion rupees. Did you ever realize that the people who got displaced in the past found nothing left in their homes. I found nothing in my house in Kilinochchi. Every time the people got displaced they took with them only what they could carry, leaving behind all the rest of their belongings and on return hardly found anything left. The entire Tamil population that lived in areas under your control starting from Mannar had to abandon all their belongings when displaced. It is the same with the people of Vavuniya, Kilinochchi and Mullaitheevu. This is exactly what happened in the East. Some of the displaced are brought and accommodated in a few newly constructed temporary villages in the Vavuniya and Mannar District. When they will get back to their respective homes, is not known. It may take many months or even years. When they get back they will find nothing left.

If by any chance the letters I wrote to you are available with you or if you can recollect what I wrote, you will realize your folly. How many times I pleaded with you to lay down the arms and go for negotiations. If at some stage you had taken my advice in the right perspective all the Tamil people would have had something left. Now after fighting for over quarter of a century and sacrificing thousands of lives you have made every one of us paupers. How many people in the North, having lost all their possession, have to fall in the queue to collect food parcels? To my recollection Vanni did not have any beggars.

Please don’t take things for granted. Anything can happen during the next few days. More and more people may die of thirst and hunger. Already 13 people had been reported dead due to starvation. In a situation like this out-break of an epidemic cannot be ruled out. Be warned of any unforeseen disaster falling on the inmates of Vanni.

Now what do you gain by keeping innocent people under your compulsion. There are over three hundred thousand men, women and children. Many are sick and wounded. Some are feeble and old. I do not think that you will ever regain your position even after many years of fighting. As far as we could see the war is over. What is happening today is mopping up and winding up operations in a small area where 81000 families had been squeezed into. Detaining these people indefinitely will not help you in any way. The future position of your entire group is also highly insecure. Rather than losing all of them please come to your senses and save the remaining members of your cadre. Please surrender them and all of them can be saved under a general amnesty. Also disband your organization and surrender to the forces. This is one way by which you could save them.

Except those who claim to represent you, who never gave you proper advice and some people in Tamil Nadu, thoroughly mis-led by some political leaders, the whole world has turned against you. You are being accused by the International Community of ill-treating the people. The UN and the EU have condemned your action. The UN High Commission for Human Right and Organisations like the Human Right Watch also have accused you of compulsorily detaining the innocent people. The gathering of Tamils in important cities all over the world had demanded that the Tamils should be saved and they did not speck for you. The message for you is to release our people. The responsibility of saving the Tamils is now entirely in your hands. You should feel more for them, because it is you who have brought them to this state. Hence without any more delay please allow the people to go any where they want to go. For heaven’s sake don’t hand them over to the self centred political hawks who are awaiting to take your place and prolong the agony of all Tamil people who had suffered enough and now want to be free. They don’t want to see the sight of a fire arm any more, not even a toy pistol.

If atleast at this stage you give up your arms and put an end to the war, clearing the landmines with International support won’t take much time and very soon people of Vanni can get back to their homes and salvage what is still left of their belongings. If you do not listen to my advice atlease now, you should take the blame for the loss of properties of these people, if taken together, will be worth several hundred billions in addition to what they had already lost. Long delay in these people going back to their places of residence will result in their finding nothing left in their houses. This is my desperate call to you and perhaps the last too. I humbly beg of you to concede to my request and bring back peace to all of us Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers, Malays and all the other ethnic groups, so that all of us can live in peace and tranquility as equals in a United Sri Lanka. You are one who destroyed peace and you are the only one who can bring permanent peace to all of us.

As an interim arrangement I suggest that without asking the Government to stop the war, if you agree to act reciprocally we suggest to the Government Forces to stop aerial bombing, artillery attack and shelling which will bring the casualties to the very minimum. In such a situation a request can be made to the Government to send sufficient food and drugs for the people’s survival. You also in turn should stop artillery attack and shelling. -Sri Lanka Guardian