Velupillai Prabhakaran hung by his own petard

By Philip Fernando in Los Angeles

(April 16, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian) Doomed beyond redemption and awaiting annihilation, Velupillai Prabhakaran provided the most persuasive testimony to the irrevocable destruction a misguided megalomaniac can bring on himself and his followers. His contemptuous disrespect for humanity cried to heavens for vengeance. Well-respected leaders like Lakshman Kadirgamar and Neil Thiruchelvam were mere firing squad targets for Prabhakaran.

They were ruthlessly massacred without any semblance of grief. Such unspeakable acts of horror doomed him before the eyes of the world. He was no Gandhi, Mandela or Mao with total command of human qualities of comradelier and decency. His anomie-like behavior brought to surface a personal state of isolation and anxiety resulting from a lack of social control.

It was, though, some harsh breed of personal cult, like voodooism that helped condition Prabhakaran’s life: his inability to permit dissent and desire for self aggrandizement. Anyone who dissented was deemed to have apostatized against his established order. His pitiless and violent hatred of those in his path was mind-boggling.

His insurance against sedition was the unloading of unspeakable punishment in a barbaric manner. He even extended his contemptuous cruelty in the guise of suicide bombers on innocent villages. He was deformed beyond recovery. His preaching peace and extolling its virtue was like a dog trying to master Verdi. He teased the very word credibility with his double dealings at peace negotiations. All except the likes of sinister Norwegians and other such double dealers were skeptical of his pronouncements.

Having squandered away every iota of goodwill coming his way, Prabhakaran behaved during the final stages of the Wanni battle as if he was fixated on doing the unthinkable, firing at his own people trapped in his human shield. Such masochistic acts demonstrated a morbid conviction of failure. The imaginary demons he played with took human form and soon he fancied himself killing for the sake of killing.

Prabhakaran is bound to search a safe haven in Tamil Nadu to continue his shenanigans by unleashing violence: his trade mark arsenal to coerce the country’s political leadership. Having massacred leading Tamil scholars, politicians and legislators with no visible sense of guilt or sympathy, raiding Tamil Nadu would be the only logical reason to exist and preserve his tenure on power.

For him all methods of propaganda like Nazi demagogue Joseph Goebbels is to stay in power.

He seems to have believed only in the self-justification of power. He remained loyal to none except himself. He did instill among his followers the concept of their leader as a veritable god and of their destiny as the inheritors of the Tamil State of Eelam. He bemoaned often “why cannot 70 million Tamils have a sovereign state of their own. His eyeing an easy landing in southern India cannot be overlooked. These landing rights are vital for Velupillai's future.

-Sri Lanka Guardian