A snake without a head

By Catapult Thangavelu from the Kappang Highway

(April 06, Jaffna, Sri Lanka Guardian) The dear departed Thamilselvan alias Zoo-Pah used to be terrified with dreams of a snake that was moving around his luxury Kilinochchi dig. What was unique about this snake was that it had no head. At first he thought it was one of the snakes he had killed while he practiced to become a pistol gangster in his teen years. His ambition that time was to be Number Two to his dream hero Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Such an ambition itself had its risks because the so-called invincible hero never spared a bullet if his Number One, Two or Three or anyone raised even a very small note of dissent. But it was Zoo-Pah’s fate to have such a dream which of course was a departure from his family’s tonsorial trade.

Zoo-Pah, however, had another ambition and to achieve which he flirted with a Norwegian guy called Erik Solheim. But there is another view too and that is it was Solheim who flirted with Zoo-Pah to secure a dominant place for himself when Eelam became a reality. The sad fact of the Wanni dream was that so many people had their unique agendas in their minds and that even included the Tiger Torturess-in-Chief Adele Balasingam and the run of the mill types like David Poopalapillai in Toronto, a guy wanted in Batticaloa for embezzlement of alien smuggling funds.

But what is this Zoo-Pah’s dream about a snake without a head? It appears some civilians now trapped as human shields have had occasions to see such a snake now and then, appearing momentarily and disappearing into a hole. It looks more like a viper that becomes shorter and fatter as it ages and is the fatter version people have been seeing it seems.

Some say it is not a real viper but some kind of an imitation viper even a dummy. But whatever it is, everyone who had seen it is sure it has no head not even hidden like that of a tortoise.

Strangely, this has some significance because this so-called liberation struggle is all about a deadly civil war in which the protagonists of Eelam are fighting a campaign without a leader, rather a head. And they called the supposed to be head, the Great Leader Prabhakaran.

But where is this leader; and where the hell is he? Are the Tamils of Sri Lanka so foolish to be lead by a snake without a head?

In the meantime, there are concerns being expressed in the Catholic Church hierarchy as to the whereabouts of Father James Pathinathar. Reports from Wanni have indicated that he has been kidnapping children to be forced into be Tiger cadres. Among the last batch he rounded up were about 500 children and young people he had trapped in a church on the promise of giving them protection. In reality he had colluded with the LTTE to make the task easier.

Father Pathinathar had the conviction that anyone who took arms became a divine soldier of Christ and people believed that this was true. This was how the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka misled the people about redeemer Christ indicating that this church had not changed the tentacles of the Inquisition.

Some of the civilians who escaped from the No Fire Zone stated that this great gesture by the Government of Sri Lanka was brutally abused by the LTTE and their cadres used them as cover for their ruthless acts. It was like giving a safe territory for the LTTE to survive, perhaps longer than they would have managed in the current situation. It also became a source for cadre supply and this was executed by beating up parents and at times even killing them point blank. In this act in particular directly involved were Catholic priests often in Tiger uniforms usually by night.

The escapees further said that the reported sightings of Prabhakaran and his son were not true unless it was stage-managed using dummies. A lesson to be learnt and this was something our team had observed on Kappang Highway is that we must be careful about snakes without heads and equally Catholic priests in Tiger uniforms. And of course the Norwegians.

-Sri Lanka Guardian