Pursuing the paramilitaries

PEACE PROCESS: Much has been made recently of the desire of the LTTE that the Government disarm the Karuna faction. This was supposed to figure largely in the truce talks, with the LTTE claiming that they have suffered much from attacks by the Sri Lankan Army as well as paramilitary forces, both of which they treat as evidence that the Government is violating the ceasefire.

Such superb effrontery is of course typical of the LTTE, understandably so because they got away with it so often in the past.

I remember in 2004 being told in Britain that the LTTE had received the support of 95 per cent of the citizens of the North and East, a claim originally made I believe by old Sambandan, the last serious relic of the TULF of 1977.

More prominent fighters for the Tamil cause, such as Amirthalingam and Yoheswaran and Tambimuttu and Thiruchelvam have been killed in the interim by the Tigers, but Sambandan rolls on, his usefulness enhanced by his evident readiness to forget his former colleagues.

When I remonstrated with him about the falseness of his figures, given that in the East the TNA had got far less than half the vote, he claimed that this was because of colonization.

That was an outrageous claim, given too that it would open the doors to his Sinhalese counterparts to claim that the Tamils of the Central Province should not vote, since they had been brought in by the British.

But Sambandan is capable not only of believing what he wants to believe, but of ensuring that the international media picks up his errors of omission and commission and propagates them as though they were gospel.

Now, doubtless, he would be in the forefront of those who claim that Karuna is a paramilitary hireling of the Sri Lankan Army, who should be disarmed - which would facilitate his elimination, as so many Tamils suspected of supporting the Sri Lankan Government have been eliminated.

Were Karuna and his supporters slaughtered, Sambandan would doubtless be sanctimonious about it, muttering that of course all assassinations should be condemned, as he did once when I challenged him, but confining himself on the record only to criticism of the Government.

What he and the Tigers have forgotten, because we let them do it, is that it was largely because of Karuna that the TNA got as many votes in the East as it did receive in 2004.

This was obvious from the fact that it was those suspected of being his supporters who came high up in the preference votes, who were then forced to resign to make way for more amenable Members of Parliament.

Unfortunately, in this land of short memories, we have forgotten them, ignored their subsequent fate, and continue to treat as representatives of the people the nominees of the LTTE who took their place as TNA Members of Parliament.

Will there be worse to come? One can imagine the international community, who seem to equate violating the ceasefire with winning brownie points (good training doubtless for child soldiers), suggesting to the Government that helping the LTTE to get rid of Karuna will be a confidence building measure.

Recently I read, in what was supposed to be a scholarly paper on the peace process, that in February 2003 'the Sri Lankan navy sinks a "merchant vessel" belonging to LTTE, making it the most serious incident since the truce took effect, that again hampered the peace talks'.

There was no mention whatsoever of the fact that a ship full of arms which was blown up by the LTTE after, belatedly, the Norwegian truce monitors found one of the weapons.

That the Norwegians had originally given the ship a clean bill of health, that these arms were being brought in during what was supposed to be a truce period, that no real reprimand was delivered, figured not at all in the article.

But this is understandable. Ranil, who led us at the time, wanted all that swept under the carpet, as he did the killing of so many intelligence agents.

Due to the Athurugiriya escapades of his own agents, and otherwise, those the LTTE wanted to get rid of were helpless.

And having got so used to dealing with Ranil, compared to whom Mahinda can be presented as a warmonger, they seem to think they can exert pressure to ensure that Karuna too will lie at their mercy.

One hopes Mahinda is made of stronger stuff. I worried about the article which claimed ' he would meet an LTTE demand to rein in armed groups' though the later line, that he would bring any groups carrying arms under control 'whether it is the so-called Karuna group or the LTTE' seemed less indulgent. But the pressures that can be exerted on him are tremendous.

As President of all our citizens, not just those in the South, not also only those in the North, but also those in the East, he should not be forced to abandon the man who seemed, at the last election at which some free choice was at least permitted the Tamil people, the main choice of these last.