Shenali D Waduge

LTTE remains a banned terrorist organization both in Sri Lanka & in 32 countries. Ever since the present government came to power through a well-planned regime change bizarre events have taken place going so far as to bring a new constitution that was mooted as an agreement with sections of present Govt & LTTE/TNA leaders in 2013 (Singapore Principles). With just 16 seats in a 225 seat Parliament the LTTE created TNA is next made the Opposition Leader, its leader even storms a military base demanding access to confidential information, many of the demands TNA has made has been accommodated while the biggest yet not unexpected shock comes in the Governments silence and inaction on a TNA MP using Rs.4m of the decentralized budget to make a museum for LTTE dead. When the West is still hounding former Nazi’s in their 90s and imprisoning them would the West allow Nazi’s to be commemorated & a museum built for Nazi’s to set up? Would West allow a museum for Al Qaeda & ISIS?

Sri Lanka’s armed militancy was created overseas when India clandestinely trained LTTE & other militant groups in the mid 1970s. India trained, armed & even financially funded these groups to destabilize Sri Lanka. Biographies of Dixit, former IPKF, Indian Army heads confirm this. That India paid Rs.50m monthly to LTTE in lieu of signing the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987 is also no secret.

https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/wikileaks1988-indian-payoff-to-ltte-revealed-520-million-indian-rupees-to-tigers/

Former Indian Foreign Secretary’s Book ‘Choices’ reveal that the loss to Sri Lanka throughout the 26year conflict was $200billion – if so India owes this much to Sri Lanka for creating the menace.

With this Indian training & arms Tamil militants began attacking innocent villages – Dollar & Kent Farms becoming first victims and we can but wonder if cadres were on narcotics in the shocking manner these villagers were killed. When people want to build museums & commemorate dead LTTE it only means they are celebrating the killing of thousands of innocent villagers – men, women, children & babies. Pathetic.

When segments of Tamil polity surprising inclusive of the Jaffna University academia & students hold vigils for dead LTTE cadres & protest to release LTTE cadres in prison, it should shock everyone and raise them to ask some not so nice questions to answer.

All those who demand vigils for LTTE, museums for LTTE, burial grounds for dead LTTE, commemorations for LTTE (dead or alive) are actually clapping their hands and celebrating every man, woman, child irrespective of being Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim or even foreigner put to death by LTTE.

Not only is this news shocking but the manner they are openly advocating this and a weak and spineless government is allowing it while the humanitarian angels the West, UN & the bandwagon of NGOs are happily watching is just disgusting.

Everyone – TNA MPs, Northern Provincial Council PMs, Jaffna University, elements of the bogus ‘civil society’ of Sri Lanka, dollar-paid local stooges all demanding the commemoration of LTTE means that they are actually clapping their hands and jubilant over the pre-meditated murder, ethnic cleansing of Sinhalese & Muslims chased out of the North, stealing of their land & belongings,

Jaffna University academia & students should be ashamed of their conduct – knowing LTTE kidnapped thousands of Tamil children and turned them into LTTE cadres violating Article 26 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights (right to education) the university is siding with LTTE and not the families of these innocent children turned into killers. The silence by the elite Tamils is because these Tamil children came from low caste & poor homes and so they were just rejects of their own Tamil society – good only to serve their purpose & die.

Jaffna University academia & students should also be ashamed that it is siding with LTTE who violated Article 4 & 5 of the Geneva Convention – forced servitude treating Tamils as slaves. It is an absolute disgrace that the university was allowed to be used to hold vigils for dead LTTE!

What is shocking is that Jaffna University has not held a single vigil for any Tamil killed by LTTE including many academics, politicians, clergy, public servants, Mayors, principals/teachers but the University only wants to mourn for and engage in protests on behalf of dead LTTE. Shouldn’t the Vice Chancellor be questioned and action taken against the University?

LTTE remains banned. Even if Tamil academia did not wish to mourn non-Tamil victims of LTTE surely they should be mourning all the Tamils that the LTTE killed – including LTTE’s own cadres? Doesn’t look like it by the manner the Jaffna University is behaving & it does not display anything to be proud about. In fact, it will smear the reputation of the University for demanding vigils and mourning of a terrorist movement. Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge nor any other university in any part of the world WOULD NOT entertain such nonsense.

This is at the university level. Only a few days back the Northern Province Education Minister (a doctorate holder too!) and brother of EPRLF another armed group leader Suresh Premachandran who at a ceremony refused to hoist the National Flag. What is the message he is trying to convey by the theatrics & on behalf of whom is this drama?

http://www.hirunews.lk/176231/state-ministers-protest-to-npc-education-minister-who-said-no-for-hoisting-national-flag

To make matters worse what was the response of the Northern Chief Minister – not surprisingly since he is the ring leader of the troubles & anti-national sentiments, his response is I have the same political reservations” (Wigneswaran) and now a TNA MP has allocated Rs.4m from the decentralized budget to build a LTTE museum and the Central Government is simply watching tax payers money being stolen to erect a monument for a banned terrorist movement. Disgusting.

http://www.ceylontoday.lk/print20170401CT20170630.php?id=34634

But what can be worse when the country’s Prime Minister is happily talking away when the country’s national anthem is playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHiOj5ZHiNY

Where is the end to this – all of these separatist elements are making demands they have no moral right to given that their links to terror remains uninvestigated & that behind every demand is a larger motive with aims in keeping with the Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976 which can be deduced even by an idiot. The issue is why is the present Government giving in to these demands. After singing the national anthem in Tamil what is the peace that has come from the very groups who claimed that that would be a solution. If a government cedes everything on a futile argument of reconciliation where do these compromises stop & what is the eventual outcome?

Let us also remind those demanding to celebrate LTTE that more Tamils have died by LTTE than they can falsely accuse the Sri Lanka Army of – Tamils were killed when fleeing from LTTE, Tamils were used as human shields & hostages, these are violations of 3^rd & 4^th Geneva Conventions & Additional Protocol 1. LTTE did not have qualms about killing its own cadres – the injured cadres had been put into buses & set fire. Enough of Tamils overseas have been threatened & attacked if they did not regularly contribute to the LTTE kitty. Many a Tamil have lived in fear of the LTTE too scared to voice their fear & silenced by the fact that the West, NGOs & diplomatic community unabashedly side with the LTTE & their networks locally & overseas instead of doing justice by the victims. We are shocked with disbelief at the hypocrisy & bias that prevails with all of LTTE’s crimes well documented by them & reports their own governments & intelligence have compiled these countries are very happy to allow the entities that funded LTTE to continue & not stopping there, their events are even attended by foreign MPs.

Everyone demanding the right of the LTTE to be commemorating with museums & vigils are celebrating the agony and sorrow brought to families of every person killed by LTTE since 1980s.

No one asked LTTE to take up arms and kill people. It was their choice and it was their choice not to lay down arms & surrender too. Eventually they were defeated in May 2016 after countless failed peace talks, ceasefires & even third party negotiations. Had LTTE not hounded civilians with them to be used as hostages, human shields & temporary cadres there would be no civilian deaths! It was LTTE that put civilians in harm’s way by firing from among them and shot at fleeing civilians. No one will even provide estimates for how many civilians LTTE killed when they fled. The other question never answered is how many were actually civilians. LTTE had its own trained civilian armed force – these dead do not qualify as civilians. All of the false allegations have been legally dealt with by the team of eminent international legal experts led by Sir Desmond de Silva who have establish that the military did not commit war crimes as was being alleged and that the death figures per proportionality was not excesses. Sir Desmond is on record to say that the Sri Lankan Military has been ‘unjustifiably vilified with accusations of war crimes’.

http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/07/05/did-sri-lanka-commit-war-crimes-international-legal-luminary-sir-desmond-de-silva-says-no/

http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/07/01/did-sri-lanka-commit-war-crimes-international-legal-luminaries-prof-crane-and-sir-desmond-de-silva-say-no/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C3uYsnHIkw Anna Niesat of Human Rights Watch

Look at the situation now

TNA MP funds construction of LTTE Mausoleum reported by Daily Mirror on 24^th November 2017  

http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/TNA-MP-funds-construction-of-LTTE-Mausoleum-140975.html

Social Media posted massive cutouts in Jaffna of Prabakaran – LTTE remains banned and the Yahapalana Government is doing nothing about it. What is the message it is giving by inaction?

In September 2017 deproscribed (on flimsy ground of reconciliation) GTF leader Father Emmanuel arrives in Sri Lanka & visits Jaffna and even holds talks with US envoy Keshap. http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2017/09/24/father-emmanuel-visits-sri-lanka/

There are makeshift tents set up in front of select military bases with Tamils taking roster turns to protest 24×7 and regular visits by diplomats clicking photos for their framed reports!

October 2016 – 3 naval ratings attacked by 300 Tamils in Mannar

September 2016 – Chief Minister Norther Province heads protests demanding removal of Buddhist sites, stopping Sinhala ‘colonization’, Buddhisization & removal of military (note: citizens of a country cannot colonize its own country)

August 2016 – Buddhist temples & Head Priests regularly threatened by TNA & supporters scaring them to leave area. Chief incumbent of Sambodhi Viharaya Mullaitivu threatened by TNA Provincial MP. Several Buddhist sites and Buddhist statues vandalized. Damaging historical monuments is a war crime.

July 2016 – Jaffna University unashamedly commemorates LTTE dead

April 2016 – TNA leader & Opposition Leader Sambanthan with 50 others storms army camp in Paravipachchan, Kilinochchi (Note EU Election Observer Head John Cushnahan in his 2004 report said TNA & LTTE were one and the same – Canadian Federal Court too recently upheld a report that LTTE & TNA were one & the same)

February 2015 – Immediately after Yahapalana comes into power it gives into pressure from TNA to reduce military camps, remove high security zones, give lands without asserting whether those demanding lands had title deeds to claim so or asserting whether some IDPs were of Indian origin & thus not entitled to any lands.

January 2015 – Immediately after Yahapalana comes into power the Jaffna court complex is stoned. The first time Tamils have become unruly since May 2009.

What needs to be clearly accepted is that

• LTTE are not political prisoners.
• LTTE are not prisoners of war (as Sri Lanka’s conflict is a Non-International Armed Conflict)
• In Non-International Armed Conflict terms COMBATANT and PRISONER OF WAR does not apply.
• LTTE are Unlawful Combatant/ Illegal Combatant /belligerent

In terms of commemorating the dead. No one is denying a mother or parents of LTTE cadres do mourn their LTTE sons/daughters but they cannot make a public spectacle of the mourning. In fact they don’t need to have a public gathering to mourn their child. When non-family inclusive of foreigners & dollar-earning entities want to make a public spectacle of LTTE dead, the real objective is political and nothing more. It is against this that we are drawing everyone’s attention.

The TNA including Wigneswaran did not supply a bag of rice to any Tamil affected from LTTE nor did they ask LTTE to release any of the 300,000 Tamils that the Army saved, so what is this big talk of working for the interests of Tamils? All humbug and empty rhetoric to satisfy bigger agendas paid for and funded with bigger objectives in mind.

It is unfortunate that we are plagued with a weak & spineless government that can only watch as extremism and separatism is drummed primarily because they came to power on their support.

While you must know your friends from your enemies, you must learn to wisely choose who you partner with too.

Shenali D Waduge