PRABHAKARAN, who roared in 2005 that he would carve out Eelam militarily and plunged the country into a bloodbath again the following year, now finds himself on his knees suing for peace. The government has wisely rejected his truce offer, as it is only a ploy to get a breather. He, it may be recalled, scuttled all the ceasefires in the past after using them as launching pads for the next phases of war.The blame for the humanitarian situation in the Vanni must be apportioned to Prabhakaran who took civilians hostage, his backers overseas and the foreign governments trying to open an escape route for him on the pretext of helping civilians in his clutches. There has been an absurd proposal that Prabhakaran and his fellow criminals be allowed to surrender to a third party. The on-going war is between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state and Prabhakaran has to surrender to the national military, and no one else.
Yesterday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, all of a sudden, launched a fast demanding an end to Sri Lanka's war on terrorism. No sooner had he commenced the protest than he abandoned it! No politician, we believe, wants to starve himself to death in vain and be cursed
posthumously as a schlemiel in the pocket of terrorists. Intriguingly, Karunanidhi has never ever asked the LTTE to let go of civilians, whom he is ready to die for!
Had the US, the EU, India etc brought adequate pressure to bear on the LTTE, Prabhakaran would have had to release civilians a long time ago. Instead, they have been pandering to the whims and fancies of terror backers running riot on their soil. If they crack down on those LTTE protesters and tell them in no uncertain terms that Prabhakaran and his fellow criminals won't succeed in their endeavour, the trapped terrorists will have no alternative but to taste their cyanide phials.
The recently displaced civilians are, no doubt, undergoing untold hardships in spite of efforts being made to improve their lot. They must be resettled as soon as possible. But, they are not alone in that predicament. There are about 100,000 Muslims and thousands of Sinhalese who were chased away from the North by the LTTE as part of its ethnic cleansing programme. The displaced Muslims have been living in appalling conditions in welfare centres mostly in the North Western Province since 1990, when the LTTE ethnically cleansed the North. The Sinhala IDPs have been scattered throughout the southern parts of country. Resettling these Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala people is a task that cannot be accomplished so long as the LTTE is around. Survival of the LTTE will mean more child recruitment, more suppression of democratic rights, more killings, more extortion and more displacement. So, the US, the EU, India and all other 'democratic' countries, by opposing Sri Lanka's attempt to decapitate the LTTE, are doing a great disservice not only to the victims of LTTE terrorism but also to global democracy.
The person they are trying to throw a lifeline to on flimsy pretext is a terrorist responsible for child recruitment, for which the LTTE has been listed by the UN, political assassinations (i. e. President Ranasinghe Premadasa, former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi, Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, TULF leader A. Amirthalingam, Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, and scores of others), narcotic trade, gun running, kidnapping, extortion, murder, bombing of civilian centres, (over 200) massacres and ethnic cleansing. That's why there is an Interpol warrant on him.
How can the Tokyo Co-Chairs and other international do-gooders ask Sri Lanka to respect the rule of law in her southern parts and safeguard democratic rights of her citizenry, while they themselves are trying to place Prabhakaran, who has been sentenced to 200 years RI for the Central Bank blast, where over 50 people perished and hundreds of others were maimed for life, and wanted in India to stand trial over Rajiv killing, above the law?
The biggest roadblock to peace is the LTTE and it must be physically eliminated. There is no other way out. Any country that tries to stop Sri Lanka's war on terror and save Prabhakaran, the homicidal maniac, deserves pariah status. (Courtesy: The Island)
