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MEDIA RELEASE
March 13, 2009
Tamil Tiger Terrorists Carry Out
Suicide Attack At Muslim Religious Festival
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) also known as the Tamil Tigers who are today cornered in a tiny sliver of land of less than 40 sq. km. in the northeast of the island, have activated a sleeper cadre planted in the south of Sri Lanka to blow himself up at a festival to celebrate the birthday of the Holy Prophet Mohammed on March 10, 2009 in the town of Akuressa, causing the death of 15 civilians and injuring 46 others. The LTTE which has waged a terrorist insurgency for the past three decades is acting out its desperate end game to try and embroil another minority community to provoke a backlash by targeting the Muslims participating in an important religious event, in the hope of delaying their complete rout by the surrounding Sri Lankan troops who would have to put out other fires elsewhere.
Such reprehensible and outrageous acts of terrorism have been the hallmark of the Tamil Tigers, as they have previously killed hundreds of Muslims at prayer inside mosques in Kattankudy, and Eravur in August 1990, the same year that they evicted 90,000 long resident Muslims of the Jaffna peninsula giving them just 24 hours to leave taking with them the equivalent of $10.00 under threat of death to become refugees in the Puttalam area. The Sinhala residents of the eastern province too have been subjected to numerous ethnic cleansing massacres by bands of armed Tamil Tiger cadres both men and women wielding AK47 rifles and machetes to kill, decapitate men, women and children, and even bash infants heads on rocks and trees, with the aim of chasing the Sinhalese out of this region sought for their mythical, mono-ethnic, fascist separate state called “Eelam”. Buddhist places of worship have been targeted from as early as 1985, when they machine gunned 144 pilgrims engaged in meditation and other religious observances at the sacred Bodhi Tree in Anuradhapura, attacks in Aranthalawa killing 33 novice monks and subsequent truck bomb attack on the Sacred Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. Even Catholic pilgrims to the Holy Madhu Church and Hindu Priests have been murdered by LTTE gunmen in their maniacal quest to control territory and to crush those Tamils regarded as dissidents to their dictatorial domination of the community in the capacity of the self-declared sole representative of the Tamils.
The community at large including Buddhist and Catholic clergy attended the religious function organized by their Muslim neighbours in the interest of ethnic and religious harmony at Akuressa. The Catholic Bishop of Galle, the Most Reverend Harold Anthony Perera referring to this barbaric attack stated, “these acts of terrorism severely destabilize the peace and solidarity needed to build a better civilization in Sri Lanka”.
Sri Lanka whilst liberating the entrapped civilians forced to form a protective human shield for the Tamil Tigers need to take every precaution in preventing Black Tiger Suicide Cadres from melting into the stream of Tamil civilians crossing over to government controlled territory, as even one single suicide bomber who escapes scrutiny is one too many capable of causing immense damage to both civilians and valuable property in population centres within the island. Extra care must be taken to identify these potential killers as they could move into previously established safe houses and pick up their suicide kits and deadly weapons, some of which were earlier brought to the capital city and suburbs by even unsuspecting members of an evangelical church based in the Mannar district, to unleash terror as done by other Tamil Tiger suicide bombers that infiltrated southern cities and towns.
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Yours very truly,
Mahinda
Gunasekera
Honorary
President