Sri Lanka is a democracy but the press is muzzled; humanitarian concerns ignored as the war against the LTTE entered the ‘final’ phase, the fighting is limited to 50 sq-km area in Mullaitivu district. 70,000 civilians are trapped in the area. They are faced with acute shortage of water, food and medical care. The situation is fast deteriorating with every passing day as supplies are virtually non-existent.
The Tigers on Feb 23 offered ‘ceasefire’ but the government rejected the offer saying that nothing short of laying down of arms is acceptable. India and the UN have appealed to Rajapaksa government to use the ceasefire offer to allow Red Cross to evacuate the civilians. These calls have gone unheeded. Sri Lanka government has also ignored calls for a ‘humanitarian pause’ in fighting.
Britain, which has a sizeable Lanka Tamil diaspora, named Feb 12 a special envoy, former defence minister Des Browne for Sri Lanka. Colombo shut the doors on him saying the appointment was made without consultation.
On the war front, Pottu Amman, the intelligence Chief, is said to be leading the Tigers from the front. He along with Prabhakaran, the Tigers supremo is wanted in India for the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
‘His (Pottu Amman) voice has been heard for the first time in the radio communications intercepted by the 58 Division’, a report in The Sunday Observer said. He is said to have vowed not to allow troops to enter Puthukkudiyiruppu junction which is being heavily defended by the LTTE.
Army shelling of the town a few days ago had hit the 500-bed local hospital and forced ‘emergency’ evacuation of patients to a make shift hospital in a community hall at a nearby village.
The Tigers were also making attempts to break the security forces’ defences south of Puthukkudiyiruppu and enter the jungle patches in Oddusuddan and Mullaitivu.
What remains in LTTE hands now are parts of Puthukkudiyiruppu, a stretch of roadway and adjacent areas between Puthukudiyiruppu junction and Nanthikadal lagoon, along the Paranthan-Mullaitivu road and a coastal strip of land extending northwards from Vattavaagal up to the south of Ambalavan Pokkanai
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Wreckage of LTTE aircraft shot down at the Katunayake air force base |
LTTE carried out on Feb 9 a suicide bombing near Vishvamadu as civilians were being screened by military – 28 killed, 90 wounded; LTTE carried out an aerial raid with two aircraft on Colombo on Feb 20- one aircraft crashed into a tax office and another was shot down death toll 2; LTTE gunmen shot dead 21 Sinhala farmers in a eastern village.
2000 people died and 5000 were injured since the fall of Killinochchi in January, according to the Human Rights Watch.
PRABHAKARAN’S FUTURE
Tigers’ chief Prabhakaran will turn 55 this November. He is not pink of health, though he is Wanni still along with his elder son Charles Anthony. Tigers are striving to project father-son duo in a heroic light, they will make a tactical withdrawal at the right time, most probably to some uninhabited island in the Indian ocean with Selvarasah Pathmanathan alias KP a.k.a. Kumaran acting as the link between them and the Tigers’ global network. Known as the LTTE arms procurer, KP became head of the LTTE global network recently
