Karuna booms out for Muslims

But Hakeem says it’s a political ploy by breakaway leader

A breakaway faction of the LTTE yesterday vowed to shoot dead supporters of the mainstream rebel group unless they return thousands of homes and businesses appropriated from Muslims in the 1990s.

The group led by breakaway former commander Colonel Karuna, who is locked in a deadly feud with the Tigers that threatens to rekindle a two-decade civil war, told Reuters it would also hunt down three top rebels and hand them to Nordic truce monitors.

The LTTE gave tens of thousands of Muslims just two hours to abandon their homes and property in the northern Jaffna peninsula in 1990 in what was seen as ethnic cleansing. Only a few hundred have dared to return since.

“Our military wing will kill anyone illegally occupying the homes and businesses of Muslims who the Tigers forced to flee Jaffna if they don't vacate within a month”, a top Karuna aide said on condition of anonymity after a politburo meeting of his Tamileelam Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (TMVP) movement.

“We will hunt the Tigers responsible for the Muslim exodus. We want them to face charges of crimes against humanity at The Hague,” he added.

The Tigers had no immediate comment on Karuna's threat.

Karuna ran the LTTE’s military operations in the east until he split in 2004 and is now at the centre of a deadlock in efforts to turn a truce into lasting peace.

The Tigers accuse the military of helping Karuna's renegades to attack their fighters and say they may refuse to continue emergency talks with the government to shore up the ceasefire unless the military disarms their former comrades.

Karuna says his men will only disarm if the Tigers do so and vows to retaliate if attacked, and his new threat comes a fortnight before the April 19-21 talks are due to begin in Geneva.He is also preparing the ground to join the political mainstream, and plans to open a political office in the eastern district of Batticaloa on April 10 as a first step.

Rauf Hakeem, leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, saw the Karuna group ultimatum as a political ploy to win the backing of Muslims living in their eastern stronghold, and appealed to him to drop it.

“Muslims were driven away from Jaffna. The LTTE gave them two hours to leave”, Mr. Hakeem said. “It amounts to genocide, ethnic cleansing where they have appropriated all of their property.”

“But Muslims wouldn't want anyone to issue ultimatums of this nature”, he added. “I think this is political posturing from Karuna. He wants to win the hearts and minds of Muslims in the east”.

Many of the evicted Muslims, who were among Jaffna's most prosperous businessmen and owned large houses, have been living destitute for years in camps for internally displaced.

Dozens of Muslims were killed by the Tigers in the east during the 1990s, and they long to see the back of rebels who want to carve out a separate homeland for minority Tamils in the north and east.

(http://www.dailymirror.lk/2006/04/04/front/1.asp)