8:43 AM
This will be end of LTTE terrorism - President
SRI LANKA-President Mahinda Rajapaksa told Al Jazeera television in an interview that this would be the end of the LTTE terrorists' battle for a separate State, adding that the terrorists should surrender to the military.defence.lk
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The Tigers have carried out more suicide bombings than Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda combined.
The actions of Velupillai Pirabhakaran, the leader of Tamil Tigers prove that he is real tiger. The only business he knows is killing. He killed Kalvian Kaadu Chetty, the person who named the group "Tigers" and the original leader of the Tiger group
Then Pirabhakaran tried to kill the next leader of Tigers, Uma Maheswaran in a shoot out in India . He killed the founding members of the Tigers, Michael and Pat Kunam. Pirabhakaran himself tipped off the Police about the then leaders of Tigers, Kuttimani and Thangathurai and their whereabouts. This incident led to Kuttimani and Thangathurai’s incarceration until their terrible deaths in the Welikade jail.
Pirabhakaran killed all the persons he worked with before he became the leader of the Tigers. He even killed the last surviving Tiger group founding member Sabalingam who was residing in France, because Sabalingam started writing about Pirabhakaran's power hungry killings
After Pirabhakaran became the leader of the Tigers, he started killing all Tamil political leaders, elected mayors, university professors and many innocent Tamils who had criticized Tigers. Pirabhakaran banned all Tamil political organizations for the last twenty years and finally the international community including USA, Canada, European Union, India and Australia has banned the Tigers, mainly due to Tigers' continuous use of child soldiers and their terror activities.
Pirabhakaran also killed hundreds of people who were members and supporters of Tamil political organizations. The Tamil Tigers have twice attacked Colombo's only skyscrapers, the twin-towered World Trade Center. They've also killed Sri Lankan president Premadasa who had provided helicopter loads of weapons and money to Tigers, blinded another Sri Lankan President, and assassinated a former leader of the world's largest democracy India's Rajiv Gandhi. Pirabhakaran clearly knows that under any circumstances except at gunpoint, majority of Tamils won't accept his leadership. That's why he killed all other Tamil Political leaders, to become as the so-called "Sole Leader of Tamils".
Ramachandran a.k.a MGR, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu gave Pirabhakaran more than 1.25 billion rupees in 1985. Tamils provided their support to Tigers at gunpoint only and never helped Tigers to grow to this extent. Without MGR’s massive financial support and Premadasa's supply of weapons and money, Tigers won't exist today.
Tigers are terror loving trigger-happy killers, created by MGR and Premadasa. Tigers' killings are severely affecting the future of Tamils since the killings created a huge political vacuum.
In 1990 Pirabhakaran wanted 100,000 Muslims in the North of Sri Lanka to get out within 24 hours, leaving their belongings and treasured valuables - that was a text book example of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Prabhakaran made Idi Amin look like an angel as Idi Amin had a heart to give the Asians in Uganda three months to leave the country and not 24 hours.
Most of the young people who are younger than 35 years, do not know the history of Tigers. They believe that, Tigers became so powerful, because of continuous outpouring support from majority of the Tamils,
Over the past three decades, the LTTE has been portrayed as a brutal organization, with its structure, motivations and strategies all shrouded in secrecy. Some have rejected the force as politically bankrupt and irredeemably nihilist, while others have claimed (and continue to claim) it to be the only entity that has a chance of steering the political future of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Over the last few years, however, a greater degree of sober public analysis has emerged on the LTTE. This has been due to several factors: the internationalized Norwegian-led peace process; the no-war situation, in which dissident voices from within the Tamil polity were able to bring to light some of the inner workings of the Tamil Tigers; and also the split in the organization, with its former Eastern Command being used as a paramilitary arm of the government against the LTTE. Few will disagree, however, that the Tigers have radically changed the security situation and the political landscape in Sri Lanka, mainly through its military strategies and guerrilla tactics. Indeed, the LTTE’s growth and survival over the last 30 years were solely dependent on its singular focus on militarism. In this context, the organization’s weakening, caused by defeats on the battlefield over the last two years, become significantly more difficult to explain, as it is its subordination of politics to conventional military efforts that could well be the cause for its seemingly irreversible decline.
If Tamils like Tigers, why is Greater Colombo flooded with Tamils from Tiger controlled areas? If majority of Tamils like Tigers, Tiger controlled areas should be flooded with Tamils from other areas. Why are Tamils trying to escape Tiger controlled areas, rather than migrating to Tiger controlled area?
If Tigers lift the exit pass system and allow free movement in the Tiger controlled areas, except the people on Tigers' payroll, every body else will leave Tiger controlled area. The only supporters of Tigers are that they either do not know anything about Tigers or gain benefits from Tigers.
Why are none of the Tamil business people investing in Tiger controlled areas? Why are even farmers leaving Tiger controlled areas? Why are Tamils living abroad trying to help their relatives to leave Tiger controlled areas? In Tiger controlled areas nobody can express any political opinions or different ideas.
Only things allowed to say are those that support Tigers. No way can anyone criticize Tigers and live the next day in a Tiger controlled area. Tigers that do not care about human lives will never understand even the basics of human rights. Even the hardcore Tiger supporters are not willing to relocate to Tiger controlled areas.
Majority of the Tamil refugees, who claimed asylum in western countries, told the authorities that they were running away from Tigers. If majority of Tamils who live abroad support Tigers, why do they have to be threatened to collect money for Tigers as reported by the Human Rights Watch?
If majority of the Tamils who live abroad support Tigers, those Tamils would line up in front of the Tiger branch offices to drop off money. The major serious problem Tamils are facing right now is there are hundreds of very young terror loving trigger happy Tigers who know only one thing, which is killing another human. Last thirty years, Tigers killed more Tamils than any body else. Also more Tigers were killed by Pirabhakaran than any body else.
The evolution of the LTTE has been characterised by one constant – its pyramidal structure, with the entire organisation built around its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. The organisation rests on a fragile balance around the personality cult of Prabhakaran and the demand for Tamil Eelam. While its previous political advisor, the late Anton Balasingham, described the LTTE as a politico-military organization, in practice politics was always subordinated to the military agenda. While the international community engaged extensively with Balasingham and the LTTE’s political wing during the Norwegian-led peace process, in reality the political wing has always been in existence merely to justify the military actions.
In building the organization as a military institution, there has been a complete lack of internal political debate, with the LTTE cadres reduced to mere fighters. In fact, there is little critical discussion about military matters in general, with a clear top-down command structure that even limits critical feedback on military setbacks. The LTTE’s strength as well as its limitations are centred around complete loyalty to Prabhakaran, internal fear and, most of all, the suicide cult extensively used to pursue military gains. The LTTE’s former senior commanders, such as Karuna and Mahendrarajah Mahattya, have shown little political maturity, reflecting the lack of political development of even the deputy leaders. Although they were held in very high esteem while in the organization, they were incapable of putting forward any serious alternative political vision.
Majority of Sri Lankan Tamils are patiently hoping, praying and waiting for a new young democratic political visionary as a leader. Until then, gunpoint Tiger culture and never ending killing spree by Tigers will grow and continue.
The continued extreme demand for a separate Tamil Eelam, coupled with the unwillingness to engage with any political process, has inhibited the LTTE’s military advances from transforming into political gains. Rather, the LTTE seems to believe that its own relationship with the Tamil people would be threatened if there were political progress and the state moved toward addressing grievances of the Tamil people. It is such an exclusivist politics, particularly the Tigers’ claim of ‘sole representation’, that has made it impossible to form any sustainable alliance in partnership with other Tamil organizations. Furthermore, by engaging in attacks on civilians, the LTTE has also isolated itself from the island’s Muslim and Sinhalese communities. This inability to engage politically with other actors has, furthermore, isolated it further from the international community.
Two decades after the LTTE’s decision to fight India, followed by its assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the negative attitude is beginning to prove militarily costly. Indian surveillance and support for the Colombo government are both significantly contributing to the weakening of the LTTE. Despite the legitimacy given it by the West during the Norwegian-aided peace process, including peace negotiations and tours of Europe for Tigers negotiators, the LTTE engaged arrogantly with the Western interlocutors. It refused to attend the Tokyo donor conference in June 2003 attended by some 50 governments and 20 multilateral organizations, nor did it respond to human-rights-related concerns, including on child soldiers and political killings. Ultimately, this intransigence culminated in the Canadian and EU bans on the LTTE, in April and June 2006, respectively. Such international isolation has weakened the LTTE’s political and financial base in the Tamil diaspora, and also crippled its international arms-smuggling network.
The recent military defeats suffered by the LTTE have surfaced during discussions of the possibility of the organization reverting to action as a guerrilla force. But such a change is unlikely for a number of reasons. The LTTE’s own mindset has changed as it transformed itself into a conventional force, with Prabhakaran emphasizing that his force now has a full spectrum of land, sea and air capabilities. While this illusion of an emerging state with a full fledged conventional military helped mobilize support in the Diaspora, in reality there are serious limitations to the organization’s capacity. The transformation in the LTTE hierarchy, including in terms of military status and position, has also alienated the organization from the masses – a critical relationship for any guerrilla war. Finally, the Tamil people in general are suffering from severe fatigue after a quarter-century of conflict, and few youths today join the LTTE voluntarily.
In the event that Prabhakaran is at some point killed or removed from the scene due to illness, the absence of politicization among the LTTE cadres would mean that the organization would most likely not be able to continue as a sustainable resistance movement. Instead, the apolitical LTTE cadres would undoubtedly disperse, to be appropriated by the state, function as isolated cells or be reduced to criminal activities. Ultimately, armed resistance needs to be transformed into political gains, all within a sustainable timeframe. Many Tamil moderates now argue that the LTTE has done more than any other actor to destroy the Tamil community. In counting on gains through its strength as a conventional military force, and dragging out the war in Sri Lanka for two and a half decades, the LTTE may well have missed the opportunity to even entrench its own position. The LTTE’s singular focus on its own military strength, to the detriment of political gains and support from the people on the ground, all while ensuring its emergence as the dominant Tamil armed force, could now well be the cause of its demise.
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