Tamil Independent voices will drown Prabhakaran outfit

Satharathilaka Banda Atugoda

ASSASSINATION: It's one year since that great Sri Lankan thinker Lakshman Kadirgamar was felled by the LTTE assassins. It was August 12, 2005. I begin to wonder whether August 12 in our calendar possesses ominous forebodings, for the Sri Lankan Nation. LTTE gunned down another peacemaker Kethesh Loganathan on August 12, 2006.

May be the LTTE is overjoyed now that they have achieved a victory for their terrorist outfit, on this sad day. Nevertheless, objective thinkers would view these two happenings as tragic scars in the annals of the Sri Lankan Tamilian history. On August 8, the assassination attempt on an EPDP leader Sivadasan devoured a small child and civilians.

These were followed by an assassination attempt on the Pakistani High Commissioner in Sri Lanka on August 14, 2006. The LTTE got exposed of their attempts at militarization of the Tamil society, when some dozens of young girl guerilla trainees died in a camp in Vallipunam in Mullaitivu by cross-fire or bombing. Their canard too got exposed, which said that they were students. Such young girl children should never be drawn for terrorism.

Is not Prabhakaran in his total lunacy slowly but gradually eliminating the Tamil Intelligentsia from this earth, like what Pol Pot did in Cambodia. Isn't he trying to vilify the Tamil civilisation; they were and are such cultured people.

It may also be "Prabhakaran's beginning of the end, as the Tamil Community of Sri Lanka will not tolerate these heinous crimes for long. I see the day he will be called upon to explain himself in the presence of the world community, if he lives, as what happened to Hitler's followers.

We see a trend growing among the free-thinking Sri Lankan Tamils to tell Prabhakaran "enough is enough". A few years ago they were afraid to talk their minds as the LTTE would bundle them into the other world through his death camps.

Even after the signing of that unfortunate piece of paper called Ceasefire Agreement of 2002, the Tamils in the North and East were afraid to speak their minds; this document was totally flawed and one of its clauses 1.8 said that the Sri Lanka Government would disarm the paramilitaries.

These paramilitaries, according to the UNF Government and LTTE, were the EPDP, EPRLF, PLOTE and other dissenting voices in those areas, and LTTE was considered the only representative of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka.

The Tamil culture which produced luminaries in the calibre of Arumugam Navalar, Ponnabalam Ramanathan and Ponnambalam Arunachalam who helped build the Sri Lankan Nation, and, more recently members of the Tamil Congress and Federal Party and the other living leaders (whose names I desist from mentioning as they could become targets of suicide bombers tomorrow) were never considered as Tamil Leaders of Sri Lanka by the LTTE.

With the CFA this headstrong attitude of supremacy of LTTE became stronger and the killing machinery accelerated the elimination of dissent from the Tamil Intelligentsia and potential dissenters of LTTE hegemony.

I observed in Vavuniya how my Tamil comrades related to me the manner in which LTTE started eliminating these dissenting voices, and Tamil members of the other parties in the name of doing political work. That would have been the only political work they did and the rest was recruitment of child combatants and collecting taxes and dues.

The Vavuniya LTTE political office was then headed by Elilan, the person who was creating human misery in the east by spearheading the Mavilaru-fiasco and not giving water to people. He and his cadres killed some of these dissenters in cold blood in the Vavuniya town. Most of those innocent Tamils detested these killings, but they could not come forward to give evidence as they were scared of their lives.

Full circle

Even at those moments I began to ask why some Tamils with high intellectual achievements and moral authority do not stand up against this murderous outfit; the wheel of destiny had to revolve a full circle and, as sensible peace-loving Sri Lankans, we believe in retribution, and the Buddhist Dharma, on Kamma - Vipaka. May be the completion of a full circle is very near as seen by some happenings.

The Karuna faction broke away and they showed their disgust on what Prabhakaran and the gangs are doing. He has entered the political mainstream by having a political office called Tamil Eela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) in Colombo. It is at present called a politico-military organization.

Among others are high ranking right thinking Tamil intellectuals, political leaders, academics and people of peace who are working behind the scenes like University teachers. These personages are well known and some are less known, but they should not be exposed for obvious reasons. They will all come together to revolt against Prabhakaran as what happened to Pol Pot.

Internationally, the LTTE has become a "Prabha" organisation. From what they tried to do to Pakistani High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, they will gather the wrath of South Asia. A time may come when they will become an outlawed organization in all countries of South and South East Asia too.

In the Gulf countries their atrocities are being watched by the leadership closely. The international community will unitedly abhor LTTE, in the near future.

Some of the Tamil diaspora are organizing themselves against this band of assassins. They too had been scared out by this outfit in the past but not for too long. The funds are gradually drying up too.

I have known such an array of cultured Tamil teachers who taught me, colleagues who worked with me, senior colleagues who trained me and helped me in very difficult times and of course close friends. I am fond of "Tamils"; but not Prabhakaran, and the murderers, who are trying to carve out an Eelam, by destroying generations of Tamils.

When maximum devolution is granted in the near future all these people will unite to build a strong Nation - Sri Lanka, once again.

So, Prabhakaran think twice before you en-gulf the whole Tamil civilisation in disaster.

The writer is Ambassador, Embassy of Sri Lanka, Doha, Qatar