Sri Lanka’s Tamils Voice Misgivings !!!

Sri Lankans were given the day off Wednesday as the government declared a national holiday to celebrate its victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels. Men leaning out of cars, honking and waving the national flag, could be seen cruising through the capital here.

In this city’s ethnic Tamil enclaves, however, the mood was more subdued. Many Tamils, long caught between a government that distrusted them and a rebel movement that brooked no Tamil moderates, welcomed the end of the war even as they nursed doubts about the government’s promises of unity, reconciliation and equality.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa reached out to the country’s Tamil minority, about 12 percent of the population, in his victory speech before Parliament on Tuesday. But his future actions — in forging a political settlement, in rebuilding the economies of war-ravaged Tamil areas, in granting equality to marginalized individuals — will determine whether a postwar Sri Lanka will be acceptable to the Tamils and the Tamil diaspora that financed the rebels.

“If the president does everything he said he would do, there won’t be another Prabhakaran,” V. Sivakumar, a 32-year-old Tamil, said, referring to Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers chief whom the Sri Lankan military said it killed on Monday.

Mr. Sivakumar was working Wednesday morning behind the counter of a drugstore in Wellawatte, a Tamil neighborhood recognizable by the presence of the ethnic group’s Hindu temples and kiosks selling flower garlands.

Most shops were closed, and the streets were quiet in Wellawatte, which the authorities have raided in the past in their search for Tamil Tiger rebels or sympathizers. Unlike the majority Sinhalese, who are Buddhist, the Tamils here must report periodically to the police and carry identification papers stating the names of people allowed to live at a particular address.

“The police visit my place every two weeks,” said S. Krishnamoorthy, 27, another worker at the drugstore. “Now that the war is over, we hope that we will be more free to live in Colombo and to travel inside Sri Lanka.”

The country’s Sinhalese majority began discriminating against the Tamils after the country gained independence from Britain in 1949. The situation eventually led to the rise of the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that practiced conventional warfare but also pioneered the use of guerrilla tactics like suicide bombing. Between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed during the 26-year war, according to the United Nations.

The Tamil Tigers pressed Tamil civilians here and overseas to finance their efforts and silenced Tamil moderates looking for a compromise with the government through assassinations.

“That obstacle by the name of Prabhakaran is no longer there,” Douglas Devananda, a former Tamil fighter who is now a minister of social services in the government, said in an interview. “So now we will be able to achieve the Tamil-speaking people’s aspirations.”

Mr. Devananda said the government must now “fully implement” a 1987 peace accord, rejected by the Tamil Tigers, which would allow for power sharing and grant greater autonomy to historically Tamil provinces in the north and east.

Tamil leaders also said the government’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Tamil areas, as well as its accounting of the military’s conduct toward civilians, would greatly influence any reconciliation.

“This is a critical issue,” said R. Yogarajan, national organizer of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, a Tamil political party. “There are areas, especially in the east, where people have not been allowed to resettle yet. We hope the government will allow that to happen soon.”

Mr. Yogarajan said he was resigned about the Sri Lankan military’s reported shelling of Tamil areas where civilians had been trapped, actions that have drawn international criticism.

“We have to work toward the future, not look back,” he said. “It’s difficult. But what else can we do?”

At the Sinthu Cafe in the Wellawatte area, residents sitting at the small restaurant’s three tables still appeared apprehensive about speaking out loud about the Tamil Tigers, even though its leadership was apparently wiped out early this week.

“I’m happy the war is over, but I can’t say what other people feel,” said P. Sasikumar, 29.
Like many in the neighborhood, the restaurant’s owner, P. Baskaran, 34, came from Jaffna, a town in this island nation’s northernmost area. Government forces captured the Jaffna area from the Tamil Tigers in the 1990s, but Jaffna remained behind a rebel-held section of territory.
“The road to Jaffna was blocked, so the economy there stagnated,” said Mr. Baskaran, who moved here two years ago because he could not find work in Jaffna. “Now that the war is over, the government needs to develop Jaffna economically. If it does that, there won’t be any problems.”

At a bookstore nearby, the owner, N. Panchadsaram, 57, who was also from Jaffna, said he was optimistic about the future. Of course he had grievances, including the fact that the police station in his neighborhood had few, if any, Tamil officers.

“These are all political problems,” he said. “In our private lives, we Tamil and the Sinhalese live together peacefully. We just need a change in this country’s political structure.”

Prabhakaran a born survivor, recalls ex-aide !!!

Tamil Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, whose outfit conceded defeat, was very clear about his demand for a Tamil Eelam and asked his cadres to shoot him if he ever swayed away from it, his former confidante has said.

“But his commitment for Tamil Eelam could not be doubted. He even told the LTTE members that in case he (Prabhakaran) swayed away from the desire to carve out a separate Tamil Eelam, then he should not be spared and killed,” said his former aid turned foe D Siddharthan who formed the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam after falling out with the LTTE leader.

Siddharthan, who along with the former LTTE leaders Krishnan and Guhan opened the first LTTE office in London in the 1970s, split with Prabhakaran following differences. Their enmity became so acute became that Prabhakaran had ordered for Siddharthan killing.

Siddharthan, who has been provided adequate government security due to the LTTE threat, said Prabhakaran was a dangerous man. “Prabhakaran could not be trusted. He never liked a no. He is a survivalist,” Siddharthan said.

Siddharthan said he remembered of an incident in the late 1970s when the LTTE leaders during a meeting in a house in Jaffna heard of a police jeep sound. “Prabhakaran ordered the light of the house to be switched off and make it pitch dark. But when the danger was over and the lights came on. I was surprised to see that Prabhakaran who was seated next to me had vanished.”

“I could not realise where he slipped. After the lights came, I saw a smiling Prabhakaran emerging from one of the entrances of the house,” he said. “We also subsequently realised that the keep that had moved past the house was not a police convoy,” he said. Siddharthan said nobody could easily gauge his “survivalist” mentality.

“I split with Prabhakaran in the beginning of 1980 and he then considered me his enemy and was looking to finish me,” Siddharthan said. On the death of Prabhakaran’s son Charles Anthony, Siddarthan said it was possible that Prabhakaran would have tried to save him.

Prabhakaran is alive, claims pro-LTTE website !!!

A pro-LTTE website, Tamilnet.com, on Tuesday claimed that the Tamil Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran is still "alive and safe", a day after Sri Lankan army announced that it has killed the top rebel leader.

"I wish to inform the Global Tamil community distressed witnessing the final events of the war that our beloved leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive and safe," LTTE's International Relations head S Pathmanathan was quoted as saying by the website, which usually puts out the rebels' version on the battle with the Sri Lankan armed forces.

"He (Prabhakaran) will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people," he said.

The website, however, did not give the details of Prabhakaran's location.

The army had claimed Prabhakaran and his top aides came out of their last hiding place in a small convoy of van and an ambulance and tried to drive out of the war zone, but were gunned down.

Pathmanathan said the Sri Lankan army and government deliberately came up with the story detailing the demise of the leader of the LTTE.

"We categorically reject this and wish to inform the Tamil community to be vigilant and to exercise maximum restraint whilst grieving for the loss of Tamil civilian lives in the barbaric conduct of the final chapters of this battle," he said.

Prabhakaran's myth dies with him, dreams of Eelam live on !!!

Even in death, Velupillai Prabhakaran's eyes remained his most compelling feature, wide open and clear, as though focused on a goal.

For more than 30 years, Sri Lankan Tamils relied on those eyes, and the single-minded focus behind them, to achieve their goal: a separate homeland called Tamil Eelam, free from the "racist Sinhala state" that Mr. Prabhakaran had always insisted was bent on his people's destruction.

The loyalty they returned to Mr. Prabhakaran could well explain their lingering denial of his death yesterday, even as grisly footage of the Tamil Tigers' founding leader, face frozen in a death stare with a bullet wound in his forehead, made the online rounds.

"A lot of our Tamil people, and a lot means most of them, don't believe this story," a onetime associate of the rebel leader, now living in Toronto, said yesterday. "I also don't want to think that way, that he's dead."

Whether they want to or not, Tamils will eventually have to reconcile their devotion with their erstwhile leader's ultimate failure to bring about Eelam before his death on the weekend, during a brutal last drive by the Sri Lankan army to end 26 years of on-and-off civil war with the Tigers.

Once they do, that devotion will die along with him, observers say.

"My feeling is that his defeat spells an end to a good part of that grip he had over the Tamil people," a grip based mainly on his undisputed success at building the Tigers into an efficient fighting force, said Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto history professor and expert on international security.

"He didn't deliver; he brought death and destruction and he came to a kind of inglorious end," Dr. Wark said, "so right there, a good part of the mythos of Prabhakaran is going to just kind of vanish into thin air."
The remainder of the rebel supremo's grip, derived from his ability to coerce Tamils at home and abroad to follow his vision to the exclusion of all others, appears equally doomed now that he's no longer around to enforce loyalty, Dr. Wark said. "His capacity to exercise terror from beyond the grave is zero, and I think for that reason as well, he will rapidly become a kind of ghost, or has become a ghost already."
It would be a quick and ignominious fate for a man whose tactics - suicide attacks on civilians, killings of two world leaders and scores of Tamil rivals, recruitment of child soldiers - have played out in gruesome, full-colour reality for the better part of three decades, despite Mr. Prabhakaran's unlikely packaging. Slight, portly and soft-spoken, the mustachioed leader appeared anything but menacing, and was most often photographed smiling, though from behind piercing dark eyes.

"He's really human, an ordinary human," the Toronto man, who grew up in a neighbouring village to Mr. Prabhakaran and helped him during the Tigers' formative years, recently told The Globe. "But always he is very much focused [and] nothing can divert him from this focus; that's why he has been able to carry this struggle, the honest truth of the cause."

This bloody-minded consistency - reinforced by Mr. Prabhakaran's personal moral code, including strictures on his soldiers' use of alcohol and tobacco, and bans on sexual promiscuity and killing people while they're eating - earned him more loyalty than any charisma he had, the man said.

"It's not a cult," he said. "The respect came because of his focus and from his not wavering from that focus."

Some were also held in thrall by Mr. Prabhakaran's status as a highly prized fugitive, earned after his first political assassination - he shot the Tamil mayor of Jaffna for being too co-operative with the Sinhalese-led government in Colombo - in 1975, when he was just 20.

"There is an admiration, but there is also a sense of responsibility and protection towards him that they feel," said another Toronto man, who served two years with the Tigers, describing his unit's first meeting with the leader in 1984.

It happened one morning at a jungle training camp in India's Tamil Nadu province, where the man had put in six months of gruelling drills after helping to build the camp. He was milling about with other soldiers when "suddenly somebody came and told us that Prabhakaran was almost there."

The young recruits gathered at the camp entrance to watch a jeep pull up and their leader climb down from it, rifle in hand. "He was walking and he had a .22 rifle with him," the man said. "He was shooting at the birds. He has good aim, actually; very good."

Mr. Prabhakaran addressed the troops with stories of his own life as a soldier after he founded the armed movement in 1972, interviewed the recruits one-on-one and accompanied them to the firing range, where "he actually told them how to hold the rifle," the man said. When a rookie misfired a grenade short of his target, spraying the commander's thighs with shrapnel, he did not punish him or hold a grudge. Mr. Prabhakaran even taught his men how to maintain adequate blood circulation while riding a bicycle, the Tigers' earliest form of transport around northern Sri Lanka, for long distances.

"He is a very practical man. That is his strength ... and a limitation, too."

While it appealed to many a Tamil's sense of grievance over Sinhalese discrimination, Mr. Prabhakaran's eye-for-an-eye sense of justice and his failure to anticipate the worst of its consequences turned the man off. Fearing his questions might get him killed, he fled the movement in 1984 and the country soon afterward.

In the ensuing years, Mr. Prabhakaran used increasing force against the Sinhalese, but also against Tamils who failed to share his vision. The compliant remainder enjoyed the protection of a de facto Tiger government in parts of the north and east, while their kin in Canada and abroad sent money home to pay for it, often willingly, but sometimes under threat of reprisal.

The talk among some Tamils now, even as their leader lay dead among the corpses of his people, their would-be Eelam a scorched wasteland, is not of reconciliation with the Sinhalese majority, but of a renewed struggle for independence.

"It is the duty of the diaspora to take this [forward], because we totally believe that we can't live together," Mr. Prabhakaran's old associate in Toronto said.

Dr. Wark has his doubts, especially if the Sri Lankan government, spurred on by international pressure, follows its victory over the Tigers with sincere measures to address Tamil grievances.
"Their attention is going to be focused less on the hallowed legacy of their former leader and more on [the question], can this Sri Lankan government change its stripes?" he said. "I think that'll be a big test."

Prabhakaran: The Life and Death of a Tiger !!!

The portly rebel leader with the bushy mustache and trusty Browning pistol turned a small band of poorly armed guerrillas into one of the world's most sophisticated and ruthless insurgencies.

But Velupillai Prabhakaran also made a series of mistakes that led the Tamil Tigers to total defeat and his own death at age 54.
At the height of his power, Prabhakaran ruled as a virtual dictator over a shadow state of hundreds of thousands of people in northern Sri Lanka with its own flag, police and court system.

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, HO, FileAP Photo - FILE - In this Nov. 27, 2006 handout file photo provided by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels, is seen after delivering his annual speech from an undisclosed location in rebel controlled north Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan military officials say Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed Monday, May 18, 2009 by government forces.

Two officials confirmed Prabhakaran's death. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, HO, FileAP Photo - FILE - In this Nov. 27, 2008 handout file photo provided by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, delivers his annual address to Sri Lanka's Tamil minority at an undisclosed location near Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan military officials say Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed Monday, May 18, 2009 by government forces. Two officials confirmed Prabhakaran's death.

Sri Lanka said Monday that it had finished off the last of the rebels in the northern war zone and killed Prabhakaran and his top deputies.

To his followers, Velupillai Prabhakaran (pronounced ve-LU-pi-lay PRAH-bah-ka-ran) was the steadfast heart of the battle to establish a breakaway state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority. But his many detractors saw him as the brutal ruler of a suicide cult who repeatedly sabotaged peace deals in pursuit of power.

In more than a quarter-century of civil war, his Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam perfected the art of suicide bombings, assassinated top politicians including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and fought the Sri Lankan government to a near-standstill.

Prabhakaran's guerrilla force was armed with heavy artillery, a rudimentary air wing that once bombed Colombo's international airport, and a squad of suicide attackers. Its navy consisted of small attack craft, suicide boats laden with explosives, crude submarines and huge smuggling ships.

The rebels reportedly earned as much as $300 million a year from arms and drug smuggling, fake charities and donations from Tamil expatriates.

Prabhakaran rarely appeared in public, preferring to communicate via radio addresses delivered every November.

Tamil Tiger troops, some forcibly recruited when they were children, saw Prabhakaran as their unquestioned leader. He ordered them to abstain from sex, cut personal ties and carry glass vials of cyanide on a necklace so they could kill themselves upon capture.

"He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul. And the whole organization runs around him," said Indian journalist M.R. Narayan Swamy, who wrote a biography of Prabhakaran.

The rebel leader orchestrated surprise attacks on Sri Lankan bases that killed hundreds of troops and retaliated against government offensives with devastating counterattacks.

The group's penchant for suicide attacks - including the 1998 bombing of the Temple of the Tooth, Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine - led the United States, European Union and India to outlaw it as a terror organization. The group also assassinated several politicians, including former President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

Though Prabhakaran was sometimes hailed as a master strategist, he also made a series of misjudgments that eventually led to his downfall.

He alienated his strongest allies in India by sending a female suicide bomber to kill Gandhi in 1991, apparent retaliation for sending an Indian peacekeeping mission to Sri Lanka that turned sour.

During negotiations that followed a 2002 cease-fire, he rejected a deal that would have given the rebels broad autonomy over the north and east but not full independence. It was widely seen as the best deal he could ever get.

Prabhakaran said he could not accept anything less than a separate Tamil state, dubbed Eelam. "Thousands of my boys have laid down their lives for Eelam," he told Indian journalist Anita Pratap in 1990. "Their death cannot be in vain."

In 2004, a top commander known as Col. Karuna ran afoul of the Tiger leadership and split from the group with thousands of his fighters.

Prabhakaran called a Tamil boycott of the 2005 presidential election, which helped propel the hard-line Mahinda Rajapaksa to victory. After new peace talks failed, the rebels cut off the water supply to more than 60,000 people in eastern Sri Lanka, provoking an unrelenting government offensive that drove the group out of the east, captured their administrative capital of Kilinochchi, and eventually destroyed them on the battlefield.

Prabhakaran was born on Nov. 26, 1954, and grew up on the Jaffna peninsula, the Tamil minority's cultural heartland, amid the emerging independence movement. Many Tamils felt their culture and rights had been marginalized by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority and wanted a country of their own.

He rose to prominence after killing the mayor of Jaffna in 1975 and used his new militant credentials to create the Tamil Tigers. He and many of his fighters received training from sympathizers in neighboring India, according to Swamy.

The militants waged increasingly brazen attacks against the government in the north, capped by a 1983 ambush that killed 13 soldiers and sparked anti-Tamil riots in Colombo that killed an estimated 2,000 people and are generally seen as the start of the war.

Even as he fought the government, Prabhakaran waged war on rival Tamil militant organizations - and any Tamils who dared criticize him - consolidating power and making his group the unquestioned representative of the minority's political aspirations.

Prabhakaran has largely led the Tamil Tigers from fortified underground bunkers rather than the front lines.

"I am like a spider at the center of the web," he told .

On the run for decades, Prabhakaran reportedly destroyed all photos of himself, leaving police referring to an outdated school picture in their hunt for him.

But in later years, photos surfaced of him meeting with commandos before suicide missions or laying wreaths at the funerals of slain fighters. He held a rare news conference in 2002, but went underground again when a cease-fire broke down three years ago.

Prabhakaran met his wife, Madivadani, in 1984 after she and eight other Tamil students protesting the government defied his orders to end a hunger strike. The couple had three children, a daughter, Dwarka, and sons Balachandran and Charles Anthony, who was killed in fighting Monday.

Prabhakaran is No more , questions still remain !!!

Sri Lanka's army chief said Tamil Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran's body was found on Tuesday, and Sri Lankan TV stations aired video of what appeared to be his corpse, with the top of its head blown off. There was no independent confirmation available.

Private TV stations Derana and Swarnavahini showed soldiers surrounding what they said was Prabhakaran's body, with his trademark moustache and distinctive Tiger stripe camouflage fatigues.

The military said the body was found in a lagoon. A blue cloth covered the top of the head, which appeared shorn off.

The video showed a copy of a military ID tag written in Tamil, bearing the number "0:01", and what appeared to be a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) identity card with his photograph.

The army's commander, General Sarath Fonseka, moments earlier had gone on state TV and radio to announce that the body had been found on Tuesday and positively identified.

"The good news from the war front is that the body of the leader of the terrorist organisation which destroyed the country for the last 30 years, Prabhakaran, has been found this morning by the army. We have identified the body," he said.

Fonseka's announcement came after the LTTE made a statement on a pro-rebel web site saying Prabhakaran, 54, was still alive. "I wish to inform the global Tamil community distressed witnessing the final events of the war that our beloved leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive and safe," www.TamilNet.com quoted LTTE diplomatic head Selvarajah Pathmanathan as saying.

State TV on Monday reported that Prabhakaran was dead, and military sources have given differing stories about how and where he was killed.

Fonseka did not give an account of where Prabhakaran' body was found, nor how he was killed.
Sri Lankan troops finished off the last of the LTTE resistance on Monday, wrapping up a three-year offensive to destroy the separatists and win a 25-year-civil war

Prabhakran's Death not confirmed : Karunanithi !!!

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Tuesday refused to comment on LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s death, saying it is "not yet confirmed".

"The news is not yet confirmed. I have nothing to say now on this issue," Karunanidhi told reporters after meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi at her residence.

“In Tamil Nadu many leaders don't believe Prabhakaran is dead, so I will not react on this,” he said.

Karunanidhi urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gandhi to take steps for the relief and rehabilitation of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The DMK chief had come to Delhi to formally extend his party's support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in government formation. The DMK has got 18 MPs in the new Lok Sabha.

The DMK chief also presented a shawl to the Congress president to felicitate her on the mandate won by the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls. The UPA has got 263 seats in the new Lok Sabha.

Karunanidhi met Gandhi along with his party colleague T.R. Baalu. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi too participated in the meeting.

The DMK chief later also met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to whom he repeated his request to take steps for the welfare of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Stop Aid to Sri Lanka : USA

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that this is not an appropriate time to talk about International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) $2 billion loan to Sri Lanka.

After Britain, the US is the second country which appears to be opposing the massive loan from the IMF to Sri Lanka, which is currently under consideration.

“This is a very troubling humanitarian crisis, and we have been focused on it and trying to convince both sides to cease their hostilities. We have also raised questions about the IMF loan at this time,” Clinton told the State Department reporters.

“We think that it is not an appropriate time to consider that until there is a resolution of this conflict. And that’s what we’re focused on trying to help bring about,” Clinton said.

She was addressing a joint press conference with visiting Malaysian foreign minister Y.B. Datuk Anifah bin Haji Aman.

Observing that the US has been very clear in its statements — the most recent one by the President — that there needs to be a cessation of the hostilities and humanitarian relief to be provided to the people who are trapped in the fighting.

“We’ve called on both sides to cease their hostilities. And we’ve asked that both sides permit humanitarian relief to be delivered, and at the very least, a high-level humanitarian mission to make an assessment of what relief is necessary,” Clinton said.

Obama 'saddened' by Lankan humanitarian crisis !!!

It is unprecedented in the history of United States-Sri Lanka relations that a US President goes out on the South Lawn of the White House to make remarks expressing his deep concern over the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka and berates both the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan government for their actions that have led to tens of thousands of innocent civilians being caught up in the cross-fire.

But that's exactly what President Barack Obama did on Wednesday when he said, "We have a humanitarian crisis that's taking place in Sri Lanka, and I've been increasingly saddened by the desperate news in recent days."

"Tens of thousands of innocent civilians are trapped between the warring government forces and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka with no means of escape, little access to food, water, shelter and medicine. This has led to widespread suffering and the loss of hundreds if not thousands of lives," Obama added.

Obama warned, "Without urgent action, this humanitarian crisis could turn into a catastrophe," and implored that "now is the time, I believe, to put aside some of the political issues that are involved and to put the lives of the men and women and children who are innocently caught in the crossfire, to put them first."

Thus, he exhorted the "Tamil Tigers to lay down their arms and let civilians go," and condemned the LTTE's "forced recruitment of civilians and their use of civilians as human shields," describing it as "deplorable."

"These tactics will only serve to alienate all those who carry them out," he said.
Obama also called on the Sri Lankan government "to take several steps to alleviate this humanitarian crisis," and listed a laundry list of actions the government should take to assuage this grave situation.

"First, the government should stop the indiscriminate shelling that has taken hundreds of innocent lives, including several hospitals, and the government should live up to its commitment to not use heavy weapons in the conflict zone," Obama said.

"Second, the government should give United Nations humanitarian teams access to the civilians who are trapped between the warring parties so they can receive the immediate assistance necessary to save lives," Obama also said.

"Third, the Lankan government should also allow UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross access to nearly 1,90,000 displaced people within Sri Lanka so that they can receive additional support that they need," Obama added.

The US President said that "the United States stands ready to work with the international community to support the people of Sri Lanka in this time of suffering. I don't believe that we can delay. Now is the time for all of us to work together to avert further humanitarian suffering."
Obama asserted that "going forward Sri Lanka must seek a peace that is secure and lasting, and grounded in respect for all of its citizens," and reiterated that "more civilian casualties and inadequate care for those caught in resettlement camps will only make it more difficult to achieve the peace that the people of Sri Lanka deserve."

The US President remarks followed a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and visiting British Secretary David Miliband met at the State Department, where the situation in Sri Lanka was a major agenda item. In their discussions and at the end of their meeting they issued a joint statement on the humanitarian situation in the island nation expressing "their profound concern about the humanitarian crisis in northern Sri Lanka caused by the ongoing hostilities."

Much of the their joint statement was reflected in Obama remarks and sources acknowledged that Clinton had urged the President to reiterate these concerns from the bully pulpit of the White House so that both the Tigers and the Sri Lankans "would get the message loud and clear."

Obama's remarks also came two days after several hundred expatriate Tamils from all across the US held a day-long demonstration on Lafayette Park, opposite the White House and implored Obama to send US forces to stop the Sri Lankan government troops from indiscriminately killing innocent Tamil civilians.

A spokesman for the protestors, Elias Jeyarajah declared, "This is pure and simply genocide. We are asking the Obama administration to intervene to save the Tamils of Sri Lanka by sending its army there."

He said the Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapakse ,"has abdicated its responsibility to protect its Tamil citizens."

Urgent international scrutiny needed in Sri Lanka: UN rights experts !!!

A group of independent United Nations experts today called on the Human Rights Council to urgently set up an international inquiry to address the “critical” situation in Sri Lanka amid fighting between the army and Tamil rebels.

“There is an urgent need to establish an international commission of inquiry to document the events of recent months and to monitor ongoing developments,” the experts dealing with summary executions, right to health, right to food and water and sanitation said in a joint statement issued in Geneva.

Philip Alston, Anand Grover, Olivier De Schutter and Catarina de Albuquerque said the current humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka gives cause for deep concern, not only in terms of the number of civilians who have been and continue to be killed, but because of a dramatic lack of transparency and accountability.

“There is good reason to believe that thousands of civilians have been killed in the past three months alone, and yet the Sri Lankan Government has yet to account for the casualties, or to provide access to the war zone for journalists and humanitarian monitors of any type,” said Mr. Alston, the UN expert on summary executions.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says over 196,000 people have fled the conflict zone, a shrinking pocket of land on the north-east coastline, where clashes continue between Government troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), while at least 50,000 people are still trapped there.

The experts stressed that “continuing catastrophic situation of civilians” in Sri Lanka trapped in the midst of the fighting, in an area measuring less than 10 square kilometres, must be immediately addressed.

“These civilians do not have sufficient access to food, essential medical supplies or services and safe water and sanitation. Even if they do escape death or injury at the hands of the hostile parties, their continued presence in this area without access to these basic rights is an effective death sentence,” declared the experts.

They said shipments of food and medicine to the so-called 'no-fire zone' have been “grossly insufficient” over the past month and the Government has reportedly delayed or denied timely shipment of life saving medicines as well as chlorine tablets.

The experts noted that as a result of the “blackout on independent information sources,” it is impossible to verify any of the Government's claims as to the number of casualties to date or as to the steps that it says it is taking in order to minimize the further killing of innocent civilians, and ensure aid delivery.

“When people manage to escape, they reportedly continue to face scant supplies, entirely insufficient access to adequate medical treatment and severely overcrowded hospitals, providing no relief to the horrors they had been living,” said Mr. Grover, the UN expert on the right to health.

Mr. De Schutter, the UN expert on the right to food, added that access to food has also been hampered by arduous and lengthy registration procedures for the internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Meanwhile, Ms. de Albuquerque, the UN expert on water and sanitation, voiced concern about “water shortages reported at Omanthai and at most of the transit sites as well as inadequate sanitation facilities, which put the health and lives of the population at further risk.”

The group called on the Sri Lankan Government to provide “convincing evidence” to the international community that it is respecting its obligations under human rights and international humanitarian law.

They added that it is clear that the LTTE, for its part, has acted in “flagrant violation” of the applicable norms by preventing civilians from leaving the conflict area and having reportedly shot and killed those trying to flee.

Karunanidhi joins Eelam rhetoric; pitches for separate state

The ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu is trying to make up for lost ground on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue, with Chief Minister M Karunanidhi saying he has taken up the task of securing separate Eelam for the Lankan Tamils.

Not wanting to lose out on the Tamils issue, which had been highlighted as a major poll plank by the Opposition, Mr Karunanidhi said, ''We have provided some sort of solace to the Lankan Tamils and we should strive to secure them their next due -- separate Eelam.'' ''I have taken up the task of securing separate Eelam to the Tamils,'' he said, while appealing to the party cadres from his hospital bed to work for the victory of the DMK-led front in the May 13 elections.
The DMK, which had been stating that it would be happy if the Lankan Tamils get separate Eelam, was now taking an explicit stand that it would work for Tamil Eelam, not to be outdone by the AIADMK and its allies.

AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa, who had been blowing hot and cold on the Lankan Tamils issue, in a major shift in her stand, had advocated separate Tamil Eelam to find a permanent solution to the ethnic crisis.

She said if people gave her front an overwhelming victory, she would even ensure that Indian army was sent to Sri Lanka to secure a separate home land for the Tamils.

Recalling how the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had sent Indian troops to East Pakistan to carve out Bangladesh, the AIADMK supremo promised the electorate that she would follow the same international law and send Indian army to Sri Lanka to get Eelam for the Tamils.

We are against Tamil Eelam : BJP

The BJP is opposed to separate Tamil Eelam and the party, on coming to power at the Centre, would ensure equal rights and privileges to the Lankan Tamils on par with their Sinhalese counterparts, party senior leader M Venkaiah Naidu said today.

Talking to newspersons, Mr Naidu, who is here in connection with electioneering, said the BJP, if voted to power at the Centre, would hold talks with the Sri Lankan government to find a solution to the vexed ethnic crisis.

The party would strive for securing equal rights and status to the Tamils on par with Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and ensure that the Tamils lead a dignified life in the island nation, he asserted.

The BJP, which was not in favour of separate Tamil Eelam, would support a solution to the ethnic crisis, within the framework of Sri Lanka, Mr Naidu said.

He said the people in Tamil Nadu were totally unhappy with both the DMK government in Tamil Nadu and the Congress-led UPA government at the centre for failing to protect the lives of the Lankan Tamils.

Mr Naidu said the Lankan government had been launching an offensive against the Tamils for the past five months, but the UPA government remained silent, despite a series of agitations in Tamil Nadu by various parties.

At this age of modern technology and communications, the DMK government was sending telegrams and observing bandhs to prevail upon the UPA government to act on the Lankan Tamils issue, he criticised

Sonia Gandhi, Karunanidhi and Tirumavalavan !!!

Mr. M. Karunanidhi and Ms. Sonia Gandhi have a lot to answer about their alliance partner in Tamil Nadu, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panthers Party, or VCK) headed by Tirumavalavan, supported of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Is this threesome a triangle, a tango or a tangle? Even a casual look at their stance on the issue of LTTE shows to what depths the Congress has sunk, for a few crumbs in the Lok Sabha. Karunanidhi, as is his wont, has maintained in recent times that the DMK and the Congress have similar secular and social justice ideologies, and that the DMK and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi share similar ideology. Does this mean this is an equilateral triangle?

Actually, this does not reveal the equation between the Congress and the VCK. It should be uneasy, at least on the Sri Lankan issue, where the VCK is embarrassingly pro-LTTE while Congress, at least in public, condemns the LTTE. Yet it is also true that Ms. Priyanka Vadra secretly visited Nalini, convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, in Vellore, ostensibly to make a pact on behalf of her mother with the LTTE. It seems that the Roman Catholic Sonia Gandhi is not averse to mixing politics with forgiveness for her husband’s murderers.

Three partners – Two forums
This strange equation, and Karunanidhi’s claim of unity amongst his alliance partners, bears closer scrutiny.

Tirumavalavan and a handful of equally nondescript leaders started an organisation called “Forum for the Protection of Lankan Tamils.” Not to be surpassed by an upstart like Tirumavalavan, M. Karunanidhi, champion chauvinist of world-wide Tamils, announced his own Forum to protect the Tamils of Sri Lanka. However, the Tamil Nadu Congress is not Tamil enough (or independent enough) to start a similar forum; neither did it announce its subscription to any of the Forums started by its allies in the State.

India leading Lankan Genocide
“It is India that is fighting the Sri Lankan Tamils. It is India that is in the forefront of the genocide of the Tamils” – Tirumavalavan.
It this startling view shared by the Congress and the DMK? A joint statement from both parties would have cleared the air for voters to decide. So far there is silence.

CIA, not LTTE, did it!
“Rajiv Gandhi was not assassinated by the LTTE, he was murdered by the CIA” –Tirumavalavan.

Does Congress believe and endorse this claim? Is this the reason for Sonia Gandhi trying to pardon her husband’s murderers who are languishing in jails for no fault of theirs (sic)? Is this the reasons for Priyanka’s secret visit to Vellore to meet Nalini to perhaps make a secret pact on behalf of her mother, as is being suggested in various quarters?

It is interesting that till this day, the location of their meeting, admitted on both sides, remains secret; the Vellore Jail authorities have denied that the meeting took place on the jail premises, and there has been a studied silence thereafter.

Neither forgive nor forget
Congress kept chanting: “We will neither forgive nor forget the murder of Rajiv Gandhi.”
Does this mean that Congressmen do not endorse their ally, Tirumavalavan’s assertion that it was not LTTE, but the CIA, which was behind Rajiv’s gruesome assassination? In that case, where does this leave the Jain Commission Report and its needles of suspicion that point awkwardly at unwanted times?

Lay down arms and surrender - Pranab
Mr. Pranab Mukherjee stated: “the LTTE should lay down its arms and surrender.” Does Tirumavalavan endorse his views?
On the contrary, Tirumavalavan said: “asking the LTTE to surrendering arms amounts to insulting the entire Tamil race.” So Congress has insulted the Tamils!
And what is Karunanidhi’s stand? Does he support the Congress or the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi?

Cheers. Vote for DML led congress Tiruma Alliance…
Congressmen routinely demanded the arrest of Tirumavalavan. DMK maintained a discrete silence. The VCK keeps growling. What alliance partners!
“The Indian Government should be put in the dock and the Tamils should punish it” – said the oracle Tirumavalavan. What an alliance partner!

We won’t tolerate burning of Sonia’s pictures - Karunanidhi
Does Congress approve of the burning of the photos of its leaders, Rajiv and Sonia, by the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi just before the countdown to this election? Why did the Tamil Nadu Congress chief scream that the party condemns this act and yet continue to have VCK in the alliance basket?

Mr. Karunanidhi thundered that he would not tolerate the burning of Sonia’s pictures. It now transpires that he was referring to the pro-LTTE advocates (affiliated to VCK) who went on a Sonia photo-burning spree recently in the Madras High Court premises, and NOT the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Party officials who burnt every Sonia picture in the city except the one the Governor has installed at Raj Bhavan.
Confused? Welcome to Tamil Nadu.

There is neither Anbu (love) nor Azhagu (beauty) in this statement
“The DMK is neither Pro nor Anti-LTTE.” This ‘brilliant’ statement was released by DMK’snaam-ke-vaaste Number 2, Anbazhagan. Does Congress believe this to be the DMK’s official stand on the LTTE? Where does this leave Tirumavalavan?

Why didn’t Congress and the DMK participate in the VCK rally in support of separate Tamil Eelam? It is the stated policy of the Government of India that New Delhi is opposed to a separate Tamil Eelam. Yet it is the UPA Tamil allies who daily chant Tamil Eelam. Mr. Karunanidhi would by now have promised to end his life a million times in his public speeches for this cause; sadly for the Tamils of Tamil Nadu, he is known not to act on his words.

Human chain with missing links
Why didn’t Congress rally behind the DMK’s human chain programme in support of Lankan Tamils (read LTTE), that brought Chennai traffic to a halt for more than 6 hours?
When Tirumavalavan announced his fast unto death and fasted for two days, he received no support from either of his alliance partners. What’s going on?

Handover Prabhakaran to India – Moily
Did Mr. Veerappa Moily obtain prior sanction from Tirumavalavan and Karunanidhi before stating that, “The Sri Lankan Government should handover Prabhakaran to India”?

“Moily’s wishes will not be granted” - was Tirumavalavan’s repartee to the demand. Great unanimity!

Thank you Congress - We will destroy you
Mr. Karunanidhi recently thanked the Centre for the steps it has taken on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. The VCK in turn shrieked: “We will destroy the Congress.” It went on a rampage at the Congress headquarters in Chennai, smashing windows, furniture and a few Congressmen assembled there - because of economic recession!

Eelam Effect - Sonia cancels election rallies in TN

Congress President Sonia Gandhi's election rallies in Chennai and Puducherry were on Wednesday,6th May-2009 cancelled due to security reasons, police sources said.

Pro Sri Lankan Tamil organizations had announced that they would stage demonstrations against Gandhi's visit.

The UPA chairperson was originally scheduled to arrive here, go to Puducherry and fly back to Chennai to address a rally later in the afternoon in support of Congress and DMK candidates for the May 13 Lok Sabha polls.

While police sources said the rallies to be held on Wednesday have been postponed, no fresh date has been

Vaiko's Email to Obama !!!

Marumalarchi DMK (MDMK) general secretary Vaiko has sought the intervention of US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to save the lives of thousands of Lankan Tamils from starvation.

In an Email to them, he urged the two leaders to take immediate steps to send food materials to the starving Tamils only through international agencies like the International Red Cross, without involving the Sri Lankan Government.

He said to hoodwink the international community, the Lankan Government had cunningly enacted a drama of telecasting the supply of food to very few Tamil people in select safe zones.

Mr Vaiko said the ''most shocking tragedy taking place in the island of Sri Lanka is that 3,50,000 Tamils are subjected to virtual starvation. Children, elderly people and women are dying without any food.'' ''The Sri Lankan Government headed by Mahinda Rajapaksa has diabolically determined to decimate Tamil people, subjecting them to total starvation,'' the MDMK leader alleged.

Ottavio Quattrochchi and Eelam !!!

Jayalalitha drew a parallel between India's letting off Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrochchi and the continued attacks on Tamils in Sri Lanka.

"Prime Minister Singh defended Quattrochchi being let off the hook saying 'one should not torture the weak'. Naturally, our suffering Tamil brethren in Sri Lanka are not (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi's compatriots and relatives from Italy to be treated nicely thus," she said.

AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha Monday reiterated her promise to create an independent state for Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka "the same way as (late prime minister) Indira Gandhi liberated Bangladesh".

Addressing an election meeting here, the former Tamil Nadu chief minister said: "If a (party or alliance) that heeds our demands comes to power at the centre, I assure you that I shall take steps to create a Tamil Eelam in the same way as Indira Gandhi liberated Bangladesh."
She also accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of turning India into a "Banana Republic" by aligning with the US.

"Manmohan Singh has turned India into a Banana Republic aligned with the global sinister designs of the US and its military and economic exploitation of the world," she said addressing a large crowd of supporters in this town, 200 km southwest of the state capital Chennai with a sizeable number of Muslims.

She criticised the US for its attacks against Muslim allies of India like Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan and its alleged support to the Sri Lankan government for the military offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels.

E.V.K.S Elangovan is an Economic Refugee : Bharathiraja

Veteran movie director Bharathiraja Friday said that his attempt to chase all “Tamil traitors” from the state would begin May 4 from the temple town of Kanchipuram.

“All those who are Tamil traitors, supporting the intentions of the Sinhalese chauvinists against the Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka have no place in Tamil Nadu,” Raja told reporters here.
Reacting to questions on his itinerary focusing only on Congress nominees’ constituencies, Raja said: “We are focusing against all those contestants whose parties have stabbed Tamils in the back and forced them to suffer a fate worse than those of Jews earlier in the Middle-East.”

Raja described Union Minister E.V.K.S. Elangovan as an “alien residing in the state purely as an economic refugee”.

Elangovan is the grandson of late Tamil social reformer Periyar E.V. Ramaswami Naicker.
Directors Seeman (presently on bail after being detained under the National Security Act for anti-national speeches), Sunderrajan and R.K. Selvamani besides a number sympathizers of the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) also addressed the journalists.

Send Indian Army to SL to form Eelam : Jaya

With the Srilankan issue taking the centre stage in Tamil Nadu polls, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagam (AIADMK) supremo Jayalalithaa has said that if a government of her choice is formed at the centre she would send Indian army to Sri Lanka to form a separate Tamil Eelam.

Addressing an election meeting on Wednesday, Apr 29 said, "If a central government of my choice is formed, I will steps to send our troops to Sri Lanka to form separate Eelam."

Launching an assault on the Congress for criticising her of not knowing the international law, she recalled the incidents of Indira Gandhi sending the Indian Army to form Bangladesh and Rajiv Gandhi sending IPKF to Sri Lanka.

Jayalalitha’s Eelam talk ‘irresponsible’ : Congress

The Congress party Sunday termed AIADMK chief J. Jayalalitha’s demand for a separate ‘Eelam’ homeland for Sri Lankan Tamils as “anti-national and irresponsible”.

“I see this demand as anti-national and irresponsible,” union Minister Kapil Sibal told IANS reacting to the statement of the former Tamil Nadu chief minister who Saturday supported a separate Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka as the only solution to the decades-old ethnic strife in the island nation.

“We have been asking for a ceasefire. It is not enough. Sri Lankan Tamils should get justice and lead a normal life. They should get all rights that are available to the Sinhalese. For this, a separate Eelam is the only way,” Jayalalitha said.

“I will definitely do it. To form a separate Eelam, vote for the AIADMK-led alliance,” she said at an election meeting in Salem

Counter Punch - DMK would welcome separate Eelam: Mr. Karunanidhi

The DMK would welcome creation of a separate 'Eelam', a homeland for Sri lankan Tamils, if it was achieved through a democratic process, party president and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi said on Monday.

"We will be glad if a separate Eelam (state) is created (in the Island nation) by people voting for it," he told reporters here.

He said that "attempts of some opposition parties in Tamil Nadu to paint the UPA government at the Centre and the DMK government in the state as anti Sri Lankan Tamils" would not succeed.

"The opposition parties are trying to create an illusion among the public that my party is against Sri Lankan.