Malini Parthasarathy: The Mirage of Eelam

What most Tamils never saw through was that Prabhakaran has never had their interests and even more, he was not supportive of a political solution. He wanted a state of his own and never compromised on it.

By Priya Ramakrishnan

(April 25, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The adage hitting the nail on the head could not have been more forcibly expressed in what Hindu’s Malini Parthsarathy has written in the quest of a mirage called Eelam. In what could have been a lengthy thesis, she has quite briefly sailed smoothly through the salient and significant issues in an easy to read manner leaving the reader in doubt how a legitimate demand soon turned into a terrorist nightmare. Along the way it became counterproductive.

When Mayor Alfred Duryappah was assassinated, the Tamil United Liberation Front became politically short-sighted and slowly but steadily gave into a political process that departed from what they professed as the Gandhian strategy to what was the exact opposite. And the carnage began and a delinquent school dropout began to develop the dream of a mafia state where he would be the sole governor.

The anger generated by the 1983 racial riots for which the culprit was entirely President Junius Jayawardene, made the Tamils blind to the beast that was developing fangs and claws under the irresponsible god-parentship of the Tamil United Liberation Front but fashioning another kind of liberation struggle.

It is also possible President Jayawardene manipulated this vicious group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to light the fuse for the genocidal onslaught to begin. Jayawardene may have planned for it to begin on Bandaranaike Day in Attanagala and an opportunity to assassinate Mrs Bandaranaike there may have been in his mind. Should that have happened, he would have blamed the Tamils and the Tigers and thus would have achieved total genocide.

One can presume such a devious and despicable deed, because goondas were readied for the racial riots and their movement from street to street and the transport of hoodlums with plans in their hands were all ready but for some strange reason the LTTE ambushed the soldiers at Tinnevely a little too early.

May be Prabhakaran wanted to have it his way and show Jayawardene that he would decide what to do, when and where. All that Jayawardene wanted was to have an excuse to cause a genocidal attack on the Tamils and the LTTE was a party to it.

One of the strange factors of Sri Lankan politics is that the Tamils prefer the UNP, the racist, capitalist elite to the SLFP and they never showed any interest in the LSSP and CP whom they felt were below their status to support.

They were considered the parties of people from the lower rungs of the rabid class and caste community. Yet it was the LSSP and CP that stood by the Tamils even when they were losing support in the south and as for the SLFP, Tamil farmers and workers benefited from it and but for it the Tamils would never have got the University of Jaffna.

What most Tamils never saw through was that Prabhakaran has never had their interests and even more, he was not supportive of a political solution. He wanted a state of his own and never compromised on it. What he would have turned out to be as head of an Eelam State is reflected on how the LTTE managed Wanni for a decade and a half.

A rich agricultural region has been devastated and proud farmers were turned into labourers. The LTTE had its own court where the judges take their seat having already decided what the verdicts would be and instant carrying out of those court orders from death to torture chambers. In the prisons, those convicted were chained to the walls and in one prison along the coast of Mullaitivu, all the inmates perished when the tsunami hit that piece of land.

Like the pigs in Orwell’s farm, the LTTE got more than the lion’s share, rather the Tiger’s share and children and young people were living in constant fear of being conscripted as Tiger cadres and suicide bombers. The LTTE administration of Wanni was tyranny of the worst kind and in this some outside forces were clearly involved.

It took only the Rajapakse Government to confront the Tiger in its den and towards these excellent plans were mooted out and the Armed Forces were trained and readied to remove this plague with surgical precision, so much so the world has now an opportunity to learn how to confront terrorism.

The Government and people of Sri Lanka need a great deal of help and every country in the world that recognizes terrorism as a horrendous plague must rush their support to Colombo and help make this Indian ocean state to become a truly stable country where people of different faiths and culture can live together in peace and harmony.

The days of the LTTE in Sri Lanka are over but there are ominous signs that it could become a horrendous international outfit. The LTTE has an established global underworld.

ENDS

-Sri Lanka Guardian