LTTE targeting impoverished Lankans - British Magazine
Walter JAYAWARDHANA
UK: The widely circulated Observer magazine distributed with
the Observer newspaper in a four page in-depth article said by targeting
innocent civilians the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are fast losing
whatever sympathies they had earlier.
The magazine in an article entitled, ‘Lost in Paradise’ said the
Tigers “are going for the softest targets of all, the impoverished
working people of Sri Lanka.”
Referring to Sri Lanka’s North, the magazine said: “Here are not only
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) but their offshoot, the
Black Tigers, the suicide squads. According to Jane’s information Group,
between 1980-2000 the Tigers had carried out a total of 168 suicide
attacks on civilian and military targets, easily exceeding those in the
same period by Hezbollah and Hamas combined.
And now today, thwarted on their attacks on the government and the
military, they are going for the softest targets of all, the
impoverished working people of Sri Lanka.
“For all those decades of suicide practice, you’d think they might be
getting the hang of it by now. But in Colombo’s Fort Railway Station , a
few weeks before my visit , it all went wrong again.
A female suicide bomber coming off a train from the South was spotted
acting oddly by police-too many clothes for the cloying heat - and fled
from the turnstile back into the station. By platform three she sat down
and exploded. She took 11 others with her....The 11 dead included half a
high school baseball team, and 92 were injured,” wrote Observer staffer,
Euan Ferguson.
Founded in 1791, the Liberal Democratic leaning left of center
publication with a circulation of 455,000 also referred to an incident
where the Tigers were not that successful in blowing up the impoverished
working civilians: “One passenger, Indrani Fernando, saw a suspicious
bag left under a seat near the back. ‘When no one claimed it I told the
crew and shouted at people to get off,’ she says.
The bus halted in a middle of a junction and everyone filed off and
began walking away, rather quickly and the police were called. Twenty
seconds after the driver and conductor had climbed off, the bomb
exploded.
Ten passers-by were injured, among them children. Indrani later took
a congratulatory call from, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, thanking her
for her vigilance. I go to see the bus, towed two miles away. The
carcass is eviscerated, skeletal: no one would have survived.”
How the Tigers have increasingly started targeting unarmed civilians
Ferguson further wrote: “Just before I arrived in Sri Lanka, another bus
had been blown up a couple of kilometers outside Dambulla, an ancient
holy rest stop on the journey to the East.
The 18 killed were almost all pilgrims and included children. In the
remote Southern town of Buttala the rebels had recently failed to kill
most of the passengers on a bus with a simple bomb; so they gunned down
32 of them as they fled, in flames.”
“Desperate tactics have been adopted by the Tigers, but there are
increasing signs that by targeting innocent civilians they are fast
losing whatever sympathies they once had within the majority Sinhalese
population.”
The writer who has returned to the country after the devastating
Boxing Day tsunami calls Sri Lanka one of the most kind places on earth
despite the violence:
“This is one of the kindest countries on earth. Smiles, genuine,
empathetic, as natural as waterfall.
Even when I was here following the tsunami, I was struck repeatedly
by the welcomes from those who had nothing, both the majority Sinhalese
and Tamils. And, still you can head south from Colombo without a care in
the world, take a breezy taxi to the beaches and beauty of Galle.” |