The LTTE attack at Muttur

The European Union Electoral Observation Mission (EUEOM), according to a front page news item in our yesterday’s issue, has expressed concern over the LTTE attack on a PA meeting at Muttur. "The EU mission," Mr. Peter Cross, a spokesman for the mission has said, "wishes to express its regret at the atrocity perpetrated at Muttur." Both the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) and PAFFREL have held the LTTE responsible for the attack, our report says.

The LTTE has already killed dozens of politicians among them leaders like President R. Premadasa and Mr. A. Amirthalingam. At all elections in the past, since its emergence as a formidable terrorist outfit in the north and the east, the LTTE has gone on killing sprees to thwart efforts to resuscitate democracy there. In the south it is usually during election time that the LTTE finds it easy to take on their targets as politicians tend to let off their guard while electioneering. The incumbent President Kumaratunga too had a narrow escape last December from an LTTE suicide bomb attack during her presidential election campaign. Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE, is wanted in India in connection with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. (But India wouldn’t extend support to Sri Lanka to defeat him!)

It is an irony that a group of EU officials is here at present to witness the atrocities being committed by the LTTE. Incidents such as the one at Muttur on Monday usually don’t merit coverage let alone headlines in the western media and therefore the LTTE has been able to masquerade as a liberation movement abroad. Since 1983, when the LTTE came of age, Sri Lanka has experienced hundreds of such incidents. Thousands have lost their dear and near ones in terrorist attacks. It is an irony because the officials who are concerned about Monday’s terrorist attack come from EU member states that harbour LTTE terrorists and allow them to raise funds for the terrorist war chest.

Yesterday we published an expose on LTTE fund raising in Britain. This special report filed by Dushy Ranetunge sheds light on how the LTTE fronts are pulling the wool over the eyes of British authorities and are raising funds for the LTTE under the pretext of giving them to charity. "In January last year", Ranetunge says, "a special Canadian Senate Committee issued a report on security and intelligence that identified charitable fund raising in Canada by international terrorist groups as a problem and recommended changes to the Income Tax Act in Canada". A consultant to this committee, Don Gracey, who was interviewed in Ottawa has stated, "The Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) was identified by the committee as one group that in fact raised money for guns and material used by the Tamil Tigers. The TRO," he goes on to point out, "has raised in 1995 as much as 2.5 million pounds sterling in Britain for the LTTE". The TRO, as the reports says, does not operate in Jaffna.

Where have all these funds gone? This explains why the LTTE has been able to spend billions of rupees for the procurement of armaments, gathering intelligence etc. in its armed uprising against the Sri Lankan state. Aren’t these countries, where the LTTE fronts operate and sustain its terrorist war here, equally responsible for the heinous crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the LTTE in Sri Lanka? If not, then how can one explain the leniency on the part of these countries, which has enabled the LTTE to raise funds on their soils for the terrorist cause and stage anti-Sri Lankan demonstrations displaying larger-than-life cutouts of Prabhakaran, who has killed one head of state and attempted to take the life of another?

These are the questions that those countries giving Sri Lanka lessons on democracy - Sri Lanka in need needs them as evident in the way elections are conducted and the battles fought between political parties - should ask themselves.

Your comments to the Editor