Published on - 1/4/2005
LTTE propaganda machine, in what confirmed to be an orchestrated move to discredit the Government of Sri Lanka as well as the Security Forces, has lashed out a barrage of concocted and malicious stories and grapevine at the expense of suffering caused to Tamil civilians in the north and east following the tsunami disaster.
The latest LTTE strategy to this effect, evidently to hide the enormous extent of damages inflicted on LTTE Sea Tiger bases and LTTE cadres in general in Mullaitivu, Chalai, Championpattu and Alampil areas, has been launched in order to keep relief workers from entering LTTE-held areas lest such visits would enable them to be acquainted with exact circumstances and ground realities that prevail.
The LTTE move was also meant apparently to project the world that those Tamil refugees are purposely discriminated and not provided adequate state relief supplies but facts speak for themselves. A breakdown of the fleet of vehicles that carried relief items to the North, Trincomalee and Batticaloa areas across Muhamalai and Omanthai Entry/Exit points during past two days proved the contrary, for example.
Seventy (70) northbound vehicles with relief materials from the south and another fleet of one hundred and twenty one (121) from cleared northern areas through the Muhamalai Entry/Exit point made their way into un-cleared areas for distribution. Similarly, three hundred and nine (309) vehicles laden with relief items proceeded to un-cleared areas across the Omanthai Entry/Exit point during the same two-day period after the disaster struck. In addition, all state relief items sent there have been handed over to Jaffna Divisional Secretary for distribution in Jaffna peninsula and other un-cleared areas.
Despite all those measures hitherto taken by the Government and other Non-Governmental Organizations to ease immediate burdens of the tidal wave affected masses, the LTTE had e-mailed or distributed literature among the international community calling for dispatch of relief aid directly to the LTTE instead, but not through the Government of Sri Lanka. The LTTE propaganda mill was reportedly further burning midnight oil to attribute reasons for their appeal to “so-called†atrocities being committed by Members of the Security Forces when relief stocks to the north-east are transported, which was in a way self-explanatory, proved by above facts.
As late as Thursday (30) afternoon, LTTE men pounced on another lorry load of relief items in Vavuniya carried by a state agency and forcibly emptied it inside an LTTE office after taking the vehicle away. Again, Security Forces on Wednesday (29) had to reluctantly mediate to get the release of some other relief-carrying lorries of a private media institute in Trincomalee after LTTE men forcibly emptied contents and set the lorries free. Notwithstanding those moves, a Russian rescue team bound for un-cleared areas was unexpectedly refused entry by LTTE Wednesday (29) morning when they arrived at Omnathai LTTE checkpoint, regardless of their commitment to serve Tamil refugees in Wanni. Strangely enough, the incident at Velvettiturai Puloly Vidyalaya on Thursday (30) where journalists and a parish priest were beaten and chased by LTTE mobs was another endorsement of their continuing obduracy to face realities. (See separate story) Another desperate LTTE move on Thursday was a meeting in Kilinochchi summoned by them, designed to discuss the so called “ LTTE strategy for distribution of relief materials†where LTTE had insisted all aid should be chanelled only through them after ordering some officials to comply with.
LTTE men, as evident through all those ruthless measures and how they behave at this hour of grief with least regard to human suffering in the north & east, point to the fact that LTTE men are more interested in their own egoistic “liberation†rather than liberation of the Tusnami affected common masses, now sheltered in hundreds of public places in the north & east of Sri Lanka.
