Jaffna District MP Nadaraja Raviraj is reported to have said that TNA was planning a blockade on the A9 Highway, to pressurize the government over civilian settlements in High Security Zones. The Colombo press, including The Island, is blind to the plight of these displaced civilians’, he had reportedly said. (20 Sept. The Island).
On an accord arrived at the Ceasefire Agreement signed in 2002 between the government and LTTE, A9 Highway was opened for free passage of civilians and goods, intended to render relief to people living in the peninsula. But, soon afterwards, Tigers started collecting exorbitant illegal ‘taxes’, adding heavy burden on the masses. The proposed blockade would block LTTE’s source of revenue as well, used to maintain it’s suicide bomb squad and to pay up for it’s smuggled arms shipment’s, which might earn TNA the wrath of their surya thevam.
Coming back to civilian re-settlement, it has to be reminded that the security forces proposed withdrawal of LTTE’s heavy weapons to safe distances, to facilitate civilian settlement, which the LTTE refused. If this so-called ‘outspoken MP’ desires to come to the help of displaced civilians, it is obligatory that he should make Tigers accede to above arrangement.
The first step in British government’s peace deal with IRA, is to ‘decommission visibly all its weapons’. MP Raviraj who had accepted Tigers as the ‘sole representatives of the Tamil people, should request LTTE to disarm and come to political mainstream, to facilitate troop withdrawal, instead of being a proxy of Tigers in Parliament.
The US State Department Coordinator for Counter Terrorism, J. Cofer Black had called upon the LTTE to renounce terrorism by ‘word and deed’. Remarking that, being the root cause of all evil prevailing in Sri Lanka, LTTE is in America’s list of terrorist organizations. ‘LTTE is in the exalted company of the Al-Qaeda and the rest of them. It is bad place to be’, US Ambassador had warned. This calling spade a spade had irked TNA MP R. Sampanthan who had reportedly said that Mr. Black’s statement is ‘one sided and would impede the peace process’.
In reply to Mr.Sampanthan’s meek defence of Tiger terrorists, US Ambassador to Sri Lanka had reiterated America’s stand on the LTTE. ‘Real progress towards peace and end to violence in word and deed, can begin from the process of the LTTE entering the political mainstream’, he had said. (22 Sept. The Island).
EPDP supporters and anti-LTTE activists had staged a protest opposite the Norwegian Embassy over the killing of EPDP member T. Tambithurai Sivakumaran by the LTTE pistol gang, recently. It has been reported that since the signing of the CFA, more than 250 political activists had been killed by LTTE. EPDP leader Minister Douglas Devananda in a statement handed over to the Norwegian Ambassador, had stated that ‘LTTE was hoping to attain the status of ‘the sole representative of Tamils by this process of elimination’.
Even though TNA may wish to call LTTE ‘the liberators of our people’, the means by which it tries to achieve this end, has earned them the notoriety of being the top most terrorist outfit in the world on par with Al-Qaeda, as correctly analysed by the US ambassador. The Colombo press or any other press would project the public opinion and MP Raviraj’s tirade against the press would not carry any weight. TNA will distance itself from the Tamil community so long as it defends the jackboot of Prabhakaran.
