Chronology Of Ltte Terror - Part 45

From the Daily News Archives:

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When the euphoria of victory dies down, and together with it the media hype ceases, when the guns do not rattle and boom anymore and the sky, the land and the sea become

calm and serene, when tranquillity reigns through it is natural to live in the present moment and forget the past. But one cannot live in the present without a past. Nor can one envision the future discarding the experience of the preceding events. Hence the Daily News is serialising the Chronicle of LTTE Terror taken from our own archives which would remind our readers how it all began.

An awareness of the chronology of terror would help us prevent the recurrence of such terror and frustrate any attempts by misguided elements to repeat history to suit their evil designs. It was not simple terror. Nor was terror sporadic. It was all pre-planned, pre-determined, well-calculated terror. The victims were innocent people. Though it is too many innumerate we would like to recall the major episodes in the Chronology of Terror.

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Tuesday, October 11, 1988

Tigers slaughter 45 villagers

Saddhamangala Karunaratne and S. Senaratne

A gang of separatist terrorists, believed to belong to the LTTE, yesterday brutally shot and hacked to death 45 men, women and children in a remote NCP village, north of Medawachchiya.

Anuradhapura’s GA, Mr. T.K. Disanayake, was told of the massacre yesterday by the Ven. K. Vimalagnana Thera, incumbent of the Tantirimale temple.

Suvivors estimated that the killers comprised about 25 armed men. They descended on the village, Poonewa Mahakongaskade, after dark on Sunday, and killed 13 men, 14 women and 18 children.

Police sources said they appeared to have surrounded the villagers’ homes and then opened fire. One of five survivors now warded at the Anuradhapura hospital, Chandralatha, 28-years-old, said her family had their dinner and were about to go to sleep when they heard a loud noise outside.

“I told my husband, Dhanapala, that the Tigers were attacking and to hide under the bed. He kept his body against the door and tried to hold it closed. They shot through the door, killing him,” she said.

Her year-old child, Sumudu, died in the attack; two other small children, Sriyalatha, 6 years old and Ajith, 3 are also hospitalised. A 21-year-old named Upali Subasinghe, who also survived the attack, is undergoing emergency surgery. An 11-year-old girl, Chamila Chandanie, is under intensive care.

The GA was trying to make arrangements to transport coffins toi the stricket village, to bury the dead, but was hamstrung by business places in town, including the undertakers, being closed owning to subversive threats. Medawachchiya MP, Maithripala Senanayake, flew to the scene by SLAF helicopter yesterday.

March 1, 1989

Twenty-four Indian soldiers killed

Twenty four Indian soldiers were killed in two separate attacks by LTTE terrorists in the North yesterday, a Colombo datelined AFP report said.

It said the LTTE blew up a truck carrying soldiers, killing 18 of them and wounding two in Olumadu village in the Wanni region. In the second attack LTTE activists ambushed another Indian patrol killing six soldiers. An Indian High Commission spokeswoman said she had no details about the incident as yet.

LTTE barbarity hits peak

Rodney Martinesz

As the country was preparing for a Presidential election in late 1988 the butchery of the LTTE continued unabated. The Tigers had already demonstrated its savagery by gunning down bus loads of passengers and sleeping villagers.

In yet another gruesome massacre of the innocents an armed LTTE gang shot and hacked to death 45 men women and children in the hamlet of Mahakongaskada North of Medawachchiya. The barbaric nature of the killing shocked the nation which was by now getting used almost daily doses of blood letting by the LTTE.

The incident once again brought to the fore the vulnerability of innocent civilians living in the so-called border villages who were being butchered in monotonous regularity during this time.

It was only some weeks before the LTTE raided another unprotected village and butchered some 30 people were done to death. Newspapers and television frequently carried the scenes of the carnage which indeed would have moved even the hardest of hearts. Most of the children were toddlers and some were killed while clinging on to their mothers.

These were civilians who through force of circumstances were consigned to doom. In fact for them each day was an exercise in survival. Government politicians made the usual condemnation promising to track down the killers. But nothing much changed with far flung villages becoming the happy hunting ground for the Tigers who were feeling the heat of the IPKF crackdown.

Entire villages were forced to flee deep into the jungles willing to take a chance with beasts but not confront the blood thirsty marauders who descended on them without warning.

Temporary security posts were set up in villages most at risk but these did not deter the terrorists who went on prey on the innocent villagers with blood lust. It went on to highlight the plight of these hapless folk who were sitting ducks to the terrorists and virtually offering themselves as a buffer so that the rest of the country could enjoy the good life.

Opposition MPs often made the predicament of these villages their topic to attack the Government in Parliament for the callous attitude of holding carnivals in Colombo while in another part of the country people were being massacred with impunity.

In fact the country during this period was in the throes of two rebellions, with the JVP insurrection at its bloody peak, and on the other hand Government vigilante groups engaged in tit for tat killings.

Therefore the people were virtually anaesthetized by the killing all around them which made the plight of forgotten villagers preyed on by the LTTE with monotonous regularity, even worse. For they were virtually left to fend for themselves in the climate of immunity that obtained.

Saturday, March 25, 1989

LTTE exaggeration - Indian High Commission

Sri Lanka’s leading Tamil separatist group has said that Indian troops killed more than 300 civilians in a renewed offensive against its positions in the North East of the Island.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a statement released here Thursday, also said that 20 Indian soldiers were killed and 50 wounded in the operation, in which the LTTE lost six fighters.

It said 30,000 troops, backed by artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships, were involved in the operation, which resumed Monday after a week-long lull, in the Nithikaikulam area of Mullaitivu district. A spokeswoman for the Indian High Commission described the LTTE account as highly exaggerated and coloured. She said the operations began on March 2 and were continuing but she had no details.

COLOMBO, Friday,AFP

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Tomorrow- Four hardcore tigers killed, arms seized

Saturday - Twenty children killed in massacre at H’potana village

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