Box
55292, 300 Borough Drive, Toronto, Ontario M1P 4Z7 Canada
Website: www.sluna.org
E-mail: sluna@idirect.com
By E-mail November
11, 2007
The
Sri Lankan Air Force jets scored a direct hit on the LTTE’s Command and
Communications Centre at Thiruvaiyaru, near Kilinochchi around 6.00 a.m. on
November 2, 2007, killing S.P. Thamilchelvan the trusted military commander who
played the dual role of a peace negotiator, along with five other high profile
terrorist leaders including the chief of the strategic communications division
of the terror outfit. It is certain that
Thamilchelvan was not engaged in a confab with his terrorist colleagues at that
hour to launch a new peace initiative, but was scheming to carry out yet
another terror attack on civilian, economic and military targets in other parts
of Sri Lanka.
The
actual role played by Thamilchelvan is further confirmed by the writings of the
well known Canadian Tamil journalist D.B.S. Jeyaraj, which have been quoted in
the Hindustan Times of November 4, 2007, as given below:
“ Inspite of
being Political Commissar, Tamilselvan functioned as a Kattalai
Thalapathy or Commanding Officer, during the Unceasing Waves operations in
the Thenmaratchy sector. He was also seen in military fatigues in August last
year when the LTTE attempted to penetrate Muhamalai,” wrote the senior Tamil
analyst DBS Jeyaraj in the Nation paper.
“In recent times, Tamilselvan was in charge of LTTE
defences in Paranthan, Ponnagary (Pooneryn) and Pallavarayankaddu,”
Jeyaraj added. Tamilselvan flitted between LTTE Chief Velupillai Prabhakaran’s
command centre and the battle lines, carrying messages and orders, because
other means of communications might not be safe. The defence correspondent of The Nation wrote
on Sunday that as per intelligence reports, Tamilselvan was in Pooneryn (across
the Jaffna lagoon) on Wednesday “to oversee military operations there.”
The national spokesman of the Canadian Tamil Congress has
asserted at a vigil organized at the Markham Fair Ground on November 5, 2007 to
pay tribute to the dead Tiger leader Thamilselvan whom he described as the
chief peace negotiator, that the Sri Lanka Government was no longer interested
in peace. The LTTE delegation led by
Thamilselvan was a ‘No Show’ at the last round of talks arranged by the
Norwegians held in Oslo in June 2006. The head of the LTTE’s killing machine,
Velupillai Prabhakaran who is wanted by Interpol for the murder of India’s
former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan leaders, called his
erstwhile military commander who doubled up as a negotiator as his ‘Peace
Dove’. No amount of descriptions will
take away the fact that his main role was to plan terror attacks just as he was
doing in the early hours of November 2nd. when he was struck down. He like the other peace negotiators of the
LTTE were engaged in a farcical process to merely buy time by avoiding
discussion of substantive issues that could lead to a settlement, to permit the
LTTE to build up their weapons stockpile, abduct children and adults into their
fighting units and suicide brigade in order to establish their separate state of
“Eelam” by force of arms. (Contd./2)
-
2 -
In our opinion, the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) is an
organization which works hand in glove with the LTTE and is presently the main
front organization that functions as the mouthpiece of the Tamil Tigers in
Canada. Their denial that they are not
linked to the LTTE but an independent Tamil community group may perhaps be
accepted by the marines. The CTC was
floated in 2001 soon after the LTTE was designated as an international
terrorist movement by the UN Security Council in September 2001, to take over
the propaganda and fundraising previously conducted by the known front
organizations, namely the World Tamil Movement (WTM) and the Federation of
Associations of Canadian Tamils (FACT), which apparently went underground
whilst lesser known groups within the network took over the public face of the
Tigers.
Sri Lanka’s many attempts at direct negotiations and
internationally mediated talks during the past two decades have not produced
any results, as the LTTE has not been prepared to reach a settlement less than
their demand for a separate state encompassing 1/3rd of the land and 2/3rd of
the coastline and adjacent economic zone for Tamils residing in the north and
east numbering about 4.2 percent of the island’s population, as each time, the
LTTE has unilaterally scuttled the talks on the flimsiest of grounds to resume
hostilities. Reaching a peace accord
through negotiations with the LTTE has been an impossible task, and the current
thinking of the Sri Lankan authorities is to militarily weaken the terror group
and dissuade them from relying on military means of achieving their goal of a
separate state.
As expected, eight Liberal Party federal parliamentarians
in the GTA area including Jim Karygiannis, John McKay, Derek Lee, Maria Minna
and one representing the leader of the NDP were drawn like vultures to this
vigil to ingratiate themselves with the pro-LTTE gathering, as they have always
been known to shield the LTTE even though they had been designated an
international terrorist group by the USA, India, UK, UN, Canada, EU, and a host
of other countries, in order to shamelessly garner the votes of the Tamil
Diaspora to retain their seats. These
politicians claim that they attended the vigil to encourage dialogue, but their
past actions clearly indicates their true motives. The British All Party Parliamentary Group for
Tamils headed by Hon. Keith Vaz too has mistakenly called the smiling terrorist
as a ‘moderate Tamil leader’, which is a misnomer, as most of the Tamil
moderates who gave up the militant path to enter the democratic stream have
been gunned down by the armed cadres of the LTTE. One such moderate was Kethesh Loganathan the
deputy head of Sri Lanka’s Peace Secretariat, and the world renowned symbol of
democracy and pluralism, the Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar who was much loved by the
people, both of whom were snuffed out by the gun toting peace doves of the
LTTE. The National Post and the Globe
and Mail rightly commented on the conduct of these Canadian politicians in
their editorials of November 7, 2007.
Canada’s reputation and dignity was restored by the
Conservative Party by listing the LTTE as a terrorist organization in terms of
Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Laws effective April 8, 2006, thereby honouring
Canada’s international obligations in terms of the UN Conventions on terrorism
to which Canada is a signatory. Just as
Canada is in the forefront to defeat terrorism and restore democracy in other
parts of the world, Sri Lanka too is compelled to deal with a terrorist group
that seeks to break up her sovereign terrain through violent means, whilst
making her own contribution to the international effort to bring peace and
stability elsewhere.
Yours very truly,
Mahinda Gunasekera
Honorary President