Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.) Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada

May 24, 2009

Rathinam Arul
Pasumai Thaayagem Foundation
No.9 (Old No:5), Lyn Wood Lane
Mahalingapuram, Chennai – 600 034 Tamil Nadu
India

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Dear Rathinam Arul:

I have read with great interest your submission to the UN’s HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL, Sri Lanka: International inquiry into War Crimes, and expressing urgency for this inquiry.

I admit to you that I have no legal mind as I am not a trained lawyer. However, as a layman I have had a running interest in the Tamil Tigers feud with the Sri Lankan Government for the want to carve out their separate mono-ethnic, racist, Tamil state Eelam out of one-third of the territory bordered by 66 percent of the coastline, and have made some observations in your submission which I wish to share with you.

My interest goes back to July 27th, 1975, when Velupillai Prabhakaran shot and killed Alfred Duriappah, the Mayor of Jaffna, in cold blood. That was the day when Mayor Duriappah went to Varadaraja Perumal temple at Ponnalai in Jaffna where four young men were waiting for him at the temple. As soon as Duriappah got out of the car one of them opened fire from point blank range. The Mayor tried to escape but collapsed in a pool of blood. That young man who pulled that fatal trigger was none other than Velupillai Prabhakaran who too was killed by gun shot wounds to his head on May 18, 2009. As the saying goes, “when you live by the gun, you better be prepared to die by the gun.”

Since you are representing a non-governmental organization with a special consultative status established in Tamil Nadu, I well understand your sympathies with your Dravidian brethren of Sri Lankan Tamils who originally arrived in Sri Lanka from your Mother State, Tamil Nadu. Since blood is thicker than water I wouldn’t have expected any other allegiance.

Having said that, what has always puzzled me for the past 26 years is why all these Tamils who decided to get on a plane and fly out of Sri Lanka after the July 1983 riots, fanning all around the world by- passing their Motherland, Tamil Nadu, treating her like a wicked step-mother, saying that they have been discriminated and persecuted by the majority Sinhalese and claiming that they are convention refugees in foreign countries they had landed. I would have expected them to run to their Mother Tamil Nadu’s bosom. But they didn’t, why? I am equally surprised to know that they again ignored visiting their Mother Tamil Nadu on their way to Sri Lanka for their holidays after getting their permanent residence status in foreign lands and their new passports. I have noticed that no one who steps on to the tarmac at Colombo’s International Airport looks over his or her shoulders with suspicion that the Sinhalese were coming to get them who they feared for their lives when they flew out of Sri Lanka in search of greener pastures. That’s how hocus-pocus this bit of theatre has been. Perhaps you may want to explain to me that weird act of your Dravidian brethren, and also why you have decided to defend such ungrateful sons and daughters of your Mother Tamil Nadu. I would have striped them naked somewhere prominent in Fort St. George and whipped the brown butts in front of booing witnesses for vilifying your Mother Tamil Nadu.

Having established that fact, I notice your biases wanting to hang the Sri Lankan Government dry for having eliminated the Tamil Tigers on May 18, 2009. It certainly must be smarting you and the other members of your Foundation.

On SECTION VI . 1 , you complain in your submission that The Sri Lankan State has transformed existing institutional structures to become state sponsored purveyors of terror. Serious human rights violations, including genocide targeting the Tamil civilian population.

Arul, I have difficulty with that submission. If you are complaining that the Sri Lankan Armed Forces as an institutional structure is a purveyor of “genocide”, then you got that one skewed.

You dish out the word “genocide” willy-nilly as a hot, spiced up vindaloo-based word hoping that it would burn Sri Lanka’s bowels in hell. You are wrong dear Arul.

My understanding of the act/word ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”genocide’s comes from Raphael Lemkin, the Polish legal scholar who coined the word after World War II, as a crime destroying or conspiring to destroy a group of people because of their ethnic, national, racial or religious identity. How so, you applied that to Sri Lanka when the Sri Lankans have come through victorious of a liberation war, having sacrificed 6,261 of their soldiers since July 2006 when they accepted the challenge of the Tamil Tigers who started the Eelam War IV, and had 29,551 wounded on the way to save 200,000 Tamil civilians (your people) who were held hostage under deplorable conditions as a Human Shield by your Tamil heroes the Tamil Tigers? UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has just witnessed that reality, which will only prove positive that your PASUMAI THAAYAGAM FOUNDATION is a bunch of no good lairs.

Today’s The Ottawa Citizen reports, “Ban walked through the sprawling Menik Farm camp, 250 kilometers north of Colombo, which is jammed with 200,0000 civilians displaced by the fighting.” Did you note Arul, that the report did not specify that what he saw were not 200,000 dead bodies of Tamil civilians in an act of “genocide”, but they were all Tamil civilians, breathing and kicking and wanting to live another day, and being thankful to the Sri Lankan Armed Forces for saving them from the serial killer cult of the Tamil Tigers.

Arul, I know your Foundation based in Tamil Nadu is burning with displeasure over Sri Lanka for having whipped and buried the Tamil Tiger terrorist movement for good. Tamil Nadu’s past reveals why.

How in 1983, the Tamil guerrilla groups began opening offices in Tamil Nadu, mainly in Madras. The incumbent Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran helped them to set up military camps in Madras and in the districts of Chengalpattu, Tiruchi, Pudikottai, South Arcot, Salem, Thanjavur and Madurai. Tamil Nadu then hired Indian Army Officers to provide these guerillas with military and intelligence training. Now I know why your Foundation is smarting with anger having seen the demise of your cherished Tamil Nadu trained terrorists.

How when Tamil guerrilla Kuttimani a smuggler like Prabhakaran from Velvettiturai, was killed during the prison riots on July 25, 1983, the Tamil Nadu Government allotted a house costing 200,000 rupees to members of the Kuttimani family. To follow up this statement by M.G. Ramachandran, the slain guerilla’s brother, sister, sister-in-law and brother-in-law were received courteously by Tamil Nadu state officials and the Mandapam camp. Now I know why your Foundation is bleeding with anger against the Sri Lanka government and want to charge them with “genocide”.

How in late 1986 Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran ordered the return to the Tamil Tigers all weapons and communication equipment seized during the crack down by the New Delhi government because Prabhakaran embarrassed them at the Thimpu talks. I now see why you consider it is urgent to proceed with the War Crimes inquiry, Arul. Don’t you think that your Foundation’s dirty slip is showing for being so damn disingenuous?

Let me provide you with one more observation which will really blow your Sri Lanka’s Tamil humanitarian concerns asunder and will expose that your Foundation is administered by a bunch of rogues which has had difficulty to accept the military defeat of your ‘Made in Tamil Nadu’ Tamil Tiger terrorists.

How Tamil Nadu under the guidance of its Chief Minister M.G.Ramachandran made a financial contribution to the Tamil Tigers on the eve of the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in July 1987, and another during the Tamil Tiger and IPKF war. Both these payments were classified secret and were a closely guarded secretes among Ramachandran’s men.

The first instalment was paid in April 1987. The total of these payments amounted to Indian rupees 60,000,000 (Indian 6 crorers). And in fact another instalment was handed over by M.G.Ramachandran himself to the Tamil Tigers at the Bank Branch at the Tamil Nadu State Secretariat.

Arul, I hope you see that Pasumai Thaayagem Foundation as a cover for a Good Humanitarian Foundation has been uncovered and that you are a bunch of no good Humbugs. And I only hope that UN Human Rights Council will be wise enough to see right through you all and to tell you all to go fly a kite, as the Sri Lankan Armed Forces never committed “genocide”, and that the fact is that they let their armed forces men and women die to help the Sri Lanka Tamil civilians. And that 200,000 of the Tamil civilians have been rescued dodging bullets when the Tamil Tigers were shooting at them when they were fleeing from their clutches, and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces are trying hard, and genuinely to have them resettled at the earliest. For some rescued Tamil civilians these soldiers have turned out to be ‘Angels in Khaki”.

By the way Arul, let me point out to you that this war was fought with sophisticated weapons by both sides and not with catapults and stones, and such you are bound to have collateral deaths during battle. That is the nature of the beast. The Tamil Tigers were operating as a conventional army and not as high school drop out thugs using stones and baseball bats to beat up the other guys.

But permit me to share one more observation which might help your Foundation when you start scheming things to throw mud at the Sri Lanka government for downing your Tamil Tiger terrorists which every one thought were invincible, and I suppose you did too.

Michael Walzer from Princeton University, US, in his book Just and Unjust War argues that assassination of terrorist leaders is a form of extreme law-enforcement. Professor Louis Rene Beres from Perdue University, US, strongly argues that though assassination is normally illegal under International Law, limited support for assassination can be found in Aristotle’s Politics, Plutarch’s Lives and Cicero’s De Offices. Prof. Beres argues that:

1. No crime without punishment is a sacred principle of international law.

2. Where known perpetrators of crimes cannot be punished through normal judicial remedy (i.e. extradition and prosecution) the criminals have to be punished extra-judicially, and assassination may be the least injurious form of such punishment.

3. The right of self defence as codified in article 51 of the UN Charter and customary right of anticipatory and pre-emptive attack could include assassination as a distinct law enforcing measure. Justification sought in such assassinations must have the two essential invariants that they must be terrorists and their crimes cannot be remedied through normal judicial process.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Beres further states that “lacking any central institutions of global authority to interpret and enforce the rules against terrorism, the existing law of nations must continue to rely on even the most objectionable forms of self-help”.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ In case you have forgotten or conveniently forgotten, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE aka Tamil Tigers) have been banned by 32 countries as a terrorist organization which also includes your India and my Canada.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Sincerely,

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)