Dear Editor,
You are conveying the false impressions, assets worth millions of
dollars belonging to LTTE was blocked by US and Canada. If so, you must tell your readers details of LTTE ‘’ assets
blocked’’ by the executive order of President Bush? For your
information, in Canada, not a cent was blocked since there is no LTTE organization in
Canada!
Either the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been quoted wrong
or his memory is extremely short when he
says, “ The leader of the
Tamil Tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, declared a cease-fire and opened peace talks with
the Colombo government this spring because of the international climate opposing
terrorism.”
LTTE leader Prabhakaran declared a unilateral cease-fire as far back
as December 2000 long before September 11, 2001. This cease-fire lasted for 4 months and
the very day it elapsed, the Sri Lankan army
mounted a military offensive code named “Flame” (“Agni Kheela” in
Sinhalese). This offensive ended in a fiasco, the army retreating ignominiously after
losing hundreds of soldiers and weapons.
Therefore, the declaration of cease-fire in December 2001 has nothing
to do with events related to September 11.
Ranil Wickremesinghe who came to power on a peace mandate was forced
to reciprocate the ceasefire declaration by the LTTE because he inherited an empty
Treasury left by the previous government. He
has no other alternative but to seek peace.
The ban by USA, Canada, UK, Australia hardly matters to the LTTE. LTTE depends on the army for weapons, not on funds
from the Tamil Diaspora.
Your correspondent is waxing eloquence about “ the Tigers
murdered all their Tamil centrist opposition, massacred ethnic Singhalese and sowed
terror.” On the other hand, the Sri Lanka’s Sinhala army killed and
maimed more than 100,000 innocent Thamils This your enterprising correspondent
conveniently forgot to tell his readers. According to Amnesty International (AI.) 540
Thamil youths disappeared during 1995/96 after the army occupied Jaffna. They were buried
by the army in mass graves at Chemmani, a dark reminder that the Sinhala army’s
occupation of Northeast, the traditional homeland of the Thamils. The Sinhala army
presencce poses a grave threat to their freedom. Right
now more than 300 political prisoners locked up in jails under the notorious Prevention of
Terrorism Act are on a hunger strike demanding either they be charged before a court or
set free immediately! Obviously your correspondent is counting the dead and the maimed on
one side of the divide and not on both.
You should stop labeling the liberation struggle of the Thamil people
as “terrorism.” The real terrorists
are US and Israel who both bomb and kill innocent people under the guise of fighting
terrorism! President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair are bombing Iraq and killing
civilians on a weekly basis! Now both want
to oust President Saddam Hussein from power. But who gave them the divine power to topple
a government which is a member of the UNO? This type of state terror will breed more
terror, because the weak has no other means to fight dictators like Bush and Blair posing
off as democrats!
I wish a prestigious journal like the Washington Times should get its facts right before rushing to print!
Yours truly,