They took my father away (Have you funded this terrorism?)

Photo: MOD Sri Lanka

I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye
To you, to tell you that I loved you, to say
What now my one long unbroken cry
They took my Father and didn’t think of me.
Source: Sri Lanka Politics

Mass burial for LTTE terror victims

The funerals of 64 civilians, who were brutally killed in Thursday’s twin claymore attacks on a passenger transport bus plying from Kanugahawewa to Kebithigollewa took place yesterday at the Kebithigollewa cemetery, amidst State patronage.

The bodies of the victims including fifteen children and a Buddhist monk were lying at the Kebithigollewa Maha Vidyalaya where representatives of Buddhist and Christian clergy, various political parties, relatives and friends of the deceased paid their last respects.

Source – Daily News

A village annihilated for creation of an "ethnically pure " Elam

Would the truth of the LTTE’s terrorism be buried with you?

Tribute to the dead- A promise to to end terrorism

Feminists, keep your silence; her lament will be heard by those who really love their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters…

The heroic "rebels" got all his family but not the terrorists? Let the hypocrites wait until "somebody" claim the responsibility for the crime 

Our leader is with us always; Let those who betray the nation go on hiding

Their tears will not sufficient for some hypocrites to call LTTE :The Terrorists

Dear daughter, we will not let you suffer as you mother  do, today…

Dear son, you will be free to live in any where in your motherland without fear of terrorism, in future

Let us not forget this crime as the villain want us to…

Your bodies are buried today but your spirits will see the nation getting united to wipe out the terrorism forever form your; our motherland…

Ministry of Defence Sri Lanka

LTTE should be condemn in all quarters…An Australian parliamentarian says

Senator Steve Hutchins, delivering a speech at Australian Parliament yesterday (16th of June) denounced the LTTE as "cold blooded killers " and also insisted that it (LTTE) should be condemned in all quarters.

Senator Hutchins is the representative for New South Wales and a prominent member of Australian Labour Party. All peace loving Sri Lankans appreciate with the greatest gratitude, the empathy shown by the true labour activist at this sorrowful moment. Read the full text of the speech made by Senator Hutchins below: 

Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka

Senator HUTCHINS (New South Wales) (4.04 p.m.)-

I rise this afternoon to make some remarks about the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the civil conflict occurring in Sri Lanka. This separatist Tamil movement sparked a bloody civil war that has carried on for the last 23 years. It is estimated that, in those two decades of fighting, some 64,000 people have been killed, and a further one million people have been displaced. This conflict has been characterised by brutal terrorism that has targeted innocent civilians. The tragedy of the situation is highlighted even more by the fact that the combatants have mostly been ordinary people, many of them women and children caught up in this net of fanaticism.

The Tigers were formed in 1976 as a response to ethnic tensions between the minority Tamils, who make up about 18 per cent of the Sri Lankan population, and the majority Sinhalese. The Tigers led the armed civil conflict that erupted in 1983 and that has continued to this day. It has been a ruthless organisation, eliminating not only its enemies in the Sri Lankan government but also rival Tamil groups, eventually taking complete control of the Tamil areas in the country’s north and east.

During the two decades of fighting, there have been hopes for peace. In 2002, Sri Lanka and the Tigers sat down and brokered a ceasefire agreement with the assistance of Norway. This was undoubtedly the most promising development in the history of the conflict, with Sri Lanka going so far as to remove its proscription of the Tigers, and the Tamil rebels beginning to decommission their weapons. However, this ceasefire was not the first. Even as far back as 1985, two years after the first outbreak of hostilities, the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers sat down at the peace table. They again attempted to make peace in 1995.

I have received a number of representations from the Sri Lankan community in my electorate, a number of them members of the ALP, who are concerned at the fact that the Tamil Tigers are not demonstrating a clear resolve to continue in the peace talks. As I have said, so far the talks seem to be failing. Since the last ceasefire there has been a suicide bomb blast in the capital, Colombo, in 2004; the assassination of the foreign minister in 2005; and the horrible escalation of violence in the first half of this year, with bomb attacks on military targets. An April attack in Trincomalee, an area with an equal mixture of the three ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, left 16 people dead, many of them civilians. Only yesterday an LTTE claymore mine attack was conducted in Sri Lanka. At latest count 68 people were killed, 15 of them children and a number of them pregnant women who were on a bus going to a prenatal care clinic. What may have begun as an independence movement has now just debased itself into thuggery, and it should be condemned in all quarters.

The issue that is very disturbing, of course, is the use of child soldiers. The Tamil Tigers have a conscription policy where you join or die. Families must provide a child to the movement. If those families do not, they are harassed or threatened. Once the children join, they are allowed no further contact with their families. They are subjected to brutal training within the Tamil Tiger regime. One case that has been brought to my attention is that of a 12-year-old lad who refused to join the Tamil Tigers. He made it clear that he wanted to be a 12-year-old lad. He was then harassed by the Tamil Tigers. They hunted him down to where he had taken refuge in his grandmother’s house. They shot him dead at the front of her house in her presence.

This happened despite the fact that the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers have signed an agreement to put an end to using child combatants. UNICEF still receives reports of children being recruited by the Tamil Tigers. In just the first months of 2004, it received 160 reports of children being forced into armed service by the rebels. In 2004, UNICEF estimated that there were still more than 1,000 children forcibly enlisted in the LTTE army, and at least 44 per cent of these were girls.

These actions are not the actions of a group seriously attempting to consolidate peace; these are the actions of cold-blooded killers who are not interested in bringing to a conclusion the conflict that is tearing their country apart. If they were serious, there would be no child soldiers, no suicide bomb attacks on civilians and no assassinations of members of the government. It is little wonder, then, that they have attracted the condemnation of the international community. The LTTE has been listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the United States, Canada, India, Britain and Germany. Most recently, the EU agreed in May to also proscribe the LTTE. What this means is that any level of participation in, or support for, the organisation is an offence.

In 2001 in Australia, the Tamil Tigers were included on the consolidated list of terrorist organisations for the purposes of this country’s terrorist asset-freezing program. Under this regime, it is an offence to provide or even possess any asset belonging to a listed terrorist group or individual, of which there are currently 540, and this offence is punishable by up to five years imprisonment. It is one of a number of measures that are essential in stemming the flow of funds to organisations like the Tamil Tigers, who use the funds to arm their child soldiers and their suicide bombers.

There is scope, however, for Australia to go further-to follow the examples of the EU and North America and proscribe the Tamil Tigers. There are currently 19 proscribed terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiah. These are without doubt the most brutal terrorist organisations in the world and they deserve their proscriptions. So, too, I am sure you will agree, do the Tamil Tigers. This is particularly pertinent in light of the reports of the LTTE attempting to raise funds from its worldwide Tamil diaspora for its final war. Human Rights Watch reported this year that ethnic Tamil residents in countries like Canada and the United Kingdom were being routinely harassed and threatened with violence if they did not pay Tamil Tiger organisers. Just prior to the inclusion of the Tamil Tigers on Australia’s consolidated list of terrorists, similar moves had been attempted here in Australia, with a Hindu temple in Perth being used by LTTE agents as a fundraising base.

I am told there will be a rally outside this place next Monday morning by members of the Australian Sri Lankan community to lobby the government to clamp down on the Tamil Tigers. It is important to maintain the pressure on this group to show them that these terrorist activities will not be tolerated and that they should return to the peace table. -MOD Sri Lanka

LTTE has begun Eelam War IV – UTHR

The LTTE without acknowledging the fact to the international community has already started the Eelam War 4, says the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR-J) in its latest report, which is now being serialized in The Island.

The UTHR reporting a passing out parade of the auxillary forces of the LTTE said Tiger commander Colonel Balaraj, had said , June 4 , at the parade that "Eelam War 4" had already begun.

The report claimed Balaraj as having said that the guerilla attacks that were now taking place were the result of the prosecution of the war.

The UTHR(J) says in the LTTE stronghold Vanni, human rights would seem an abstraction where life was ceasing to be human.

It further pointed out: "One sees the same indifference on the part of the LTTE to families, wives and children, no concern about how they live or die. Many young couples with young families suddenly find themselves devoid of the breadwinner. These young men who had started families and had young mouths to feed had been forcibly taken away by the LTTE for 1 to 3 years of military service, promising a monthly allowance for the upkeep of the families. The money comes for about three months and ceases. A number of these young men were LTTE cadres who left during the ceasefire and got married."

"The torture of the community goes on at many levels. Even older men have been mobilized to undergo auxiliary training and have been told that that they would be posted for frontline sentry duty. In a number of villages, these men have collectively told the LTTE ‘You can force us to undergo training, you would post us where you would, but when the army advances we will throw our guns and run away.’ "

"During the early earlier years of war, among the differences faced by the farmers was tank maintenance. During the ceasefire moves were made to do repairs to Giant Tank in West Vanni. In order to mobilize men for the auxiliary forces, the LTTE banned the dry season cultivation. Many men confine themselves to their home with their children in agony fearing abduction by the LTTE press gangs in their proverbial white vans."

The report says among the Vanni masses there had been unrest due to those repressions. The report said:" The LTTE’s measures have also given rise to an undercurrent of unrest. In one area regarded as high security zone of the LTTE, a tough commander was brought back from retirement. A grenade was aimed at him, causing injury to two persons. Those in the area discount the Karuna group as being responsible.

The bulletin also points out that the LTTE has started killing the supporters of the Tamil democratic politician Ananda Sangary. The UTHR(J) report said: " While those who championed the peace process that is now in a state of collapse have been pointing out the finger at "paramilitaries" and "spoilers", they are blind to the old disease that made the peace process unworkable from the start – the LTTE’s constant targeting of political opponents. No one has called the respected the democratic politician Mr. Ananda Sangary a paramilitary. Now with the LTTE’s own party TNA in the doldrums as time ordained, the LTTE appears determined to eliminate Anandasangary’s loyalists.

About 7.00 p.m. at his Wellawatte residence in Colombo, June 10, the LTTE shot dead Mr. Ramachandran(67) brother of Mr. Sangaree’s former secretary, Sachinanandan, who too has moved out of Jaffna. Ramachandran’s daughter is married to Jeeva of the EPDP. Thangarasa Thangamuhundan, who is an Ananda Sangary loyalist and a former member of the Jaffna Municipal Council that had defied the LTTE on the opening of the public library, was summoned by two LTTE men who came on a motor cycle and shot at his home in Moolai, Jaffna. He was warded at Jaffna hospital, the report says. by Walter Jayawardhana in Los Angeles

Amidst funerals villagers flee fearing Tiger terror

The funerals of the 64 civilians who were killed in the LTTE claymore mine blast on Thursday were held yesterday (16) with thousands of mourners from the villages of Kebithigollewa, Yakawewa,Kanughawewa, Halmillawetiya and the neighbouring hamlets most in inconsolable grief of their little children and kinsfolk killed.

The police said a number of villagers in the Kebithigollewa Divisional Secretary’s area were leaving their villages for fear of more attacks by the LTTE.

The residents of Kanugahawewa, Kelenikawewa, Indigollewa, Yakawewa and Halmllawetiya who said they did not have protection against LTTE attacks were leaving their villages for other areas.

Though the armed forces and police had said these villages are provided with security and the Army spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe had requested the people not to leave the villages the panic stricken people did not want to remain in the area, according to the latest reports.

The Ministry of Resettlement has decided to give Rs.50,000 to each of the families of the victims of the LTTE claymore mine attack on Thursday (15) TIOL By Cyril Basnayake

Meanwhile, the government said it would do everything possible to provide security to the villagers.