Fleeing Tamils hit Indian political wall By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - The treacherously choppy Indian Ocean waters of the narrow Palk
Strait, which separates India and Sri Lanka, now loom as a bridge too far for
Sri Lankan Tamils trapped between the cornered Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) and an uncertain welcome in India.
The Tamils escaping the conflict cross into the south Indian state of Tamil
Nadu join the community of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees already there, which has
shown little interest in recent demonstrations organized by local politicians
supposedly on their behalf.
Sri Lankan Tamils in Tamil Nadu instead speak of horror stories
they say are trickling out of LTTE-held territory, and demand urgent
international support for the Sri Lanka's push to liberate fellow Tamils they
say are being held hostage by the LTTE.
"For more than quarter of a century, the LTTE have been taking the Tamil people
for a ride," veteran Sri Lankan Tamil politician V Anandasangaree said in a
statement on October 13. "The Tamils need liberation only from the LTTE."
Anandasangaree, who said he grew up in the LTTE's political capital of
Killinochchi, in northern Sri Lanka, accuses the LTTE of violating the human
rights of fellow Tamils "beyond one's imagination". He talks of mass abductions
of Tamils by the LTTE, and of "torture camps".
"In one form of torture the person is put into a triangular-shaped cage smaller
than the person. The cage is wrapped round with barbed wire. Another form is
throwing snakes inside the dark room where a person is detained," he said.
"Every home in the areas under the control of the LTTE is like a funeral home.
Parents who resisted recruitment of their children [as LTTE soldiers] have been
mercilessly assaulted. The outside world does not know what is happening in the
LTTE-held areas."
Anandasangaree said in recent years he had made many futile pleas to foreign
governments asking for their help to rescue the civilian Tamil population from
the LTTE.
"The Tamil civilian population is trapped in northern Sri Lanka," said V
Suryanarayanan, a retired senior professor from the Center for South and
Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Madras. "The advancing Sri Lankan
army is capturing ghost towns, as the LTTE has forced the local Tamil
population to evacuate and into the forests. People are dying from snake bites
there."
Only 199 refugees arrived in India in October 2008, according to the
Chennai-based Organization for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation (OfERR), though
the month has seen some of the fiercest fighting in the bloody, three-decade
long war fought by the LTTE for a separate Tamil nation called Eelam.
OfERR figures estimate 100,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees live in Tamil Nadu,
with 78,500 of them sheltered in the 119 government-run camps. The number does
not include Sri Lankan Tamils who arrive as 'tourists' by regular air services
and illegally settle in Chennai and other cities in Tamil Nadu.
The LTTE is banned as a terrorist organization in 31 countries, including
India, the US, the UK and other European Union.
"As terrorist groups go, it [LTTE] has quite a resume", said a US Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) note on January 10. "[LTTE has] perfected the use
of suicide bombers; invented the suicide belt; pioneered the use of women in
suicide attacks; murdered some 4,000 people in the past two years alone; and
assassinated two world leaders - the only terrorist organization to do so."
The FBI was referring to the May 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi at a campaign rally in Tamil Nadu, a murder that ended
India's covert support of the LTTE, and the May 1993 assassination of Sri
Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa.
The FBI's note, hoped to warn US citizens against donating to spurious
charities run by LTTE, also sought to remind them of "the suffering and
bloodshed that the Tamil Tigers have caused", and its "ruthless tactics,
[which] have inspired terrorist networks worldwide, including al-Qaeda in
Iraq".
Instead of bluntly reading the riot act to covertly pro-LTTE Tamil Nadu
politicians, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government are
instead mulling over calls for a ceasefire that would help the LTTE.
The Sri Lankan government, for the first time, has in recent months stepped up
its offensive against the Tamil rebels, yet India has failed to emphatically
express that its interests, as well as the interests of Sri Lankan Tamils, lie
in the Sri Lanka army quickly destroying the LTTE and bringing its chief to
answer to the crimes he is charged with.
The end appears near for Velupillai Prabhakaran, 53, known as Pirapaharan by
the LTTE. He is reportedly holed up in an underground bunker as the Sri Lankan
army nears Killinochchi. Yet Prabhakaran's desperation is still voiced through
Indian Tamil politicians screaming for a ceasefire.
India's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, led by M Karunanidhi, 84, the Tamil
Nadu chief minister, in October threatened to have its members of parliament
resign in hopes of pressurizing the central government into calling for a
ceasefire that, as in earlier ceasefires, would give the besieged LTTE
breathing space to recoup.
Indian politicians in Tamil Nadu expressing concerns for the Tamils in Sri
Lanka have yet to express any concern about the alleged LTTE atrocities against
Tamils, such as the persistent accusations it has forcibly recruited Tamil
children as soldiers.
LTTE crimes against Tamils are rarely mentioned in the national media,
particularly the forced conscription of Tamil children, some as young as nine.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch has for over a decade said the LTTE is
the world's worst offender in forcibly recruiting children for its army.
Sri Lankan Tamils arrive in Tamil Nadu only to be met by local politicians who
hope to convince the Indian public that the Sri Lankan army assault is a
"genocide" against the Tamils, and that there is widespread public anger in
Tamil Nadu against the Sri Lankan army.
For instance, Tamil Nadu politicians hailed the success of a "human chain" held
in Chennai on October 23 in protest against the Sri Lankan army offensive, but
leading Chennai-based daily The Hindu discredited the demonstration in a recent
report.The "human chain" largely comprised neighborhood school and college
students being forced to participate under pressure from their teachers,
reported the newspaper.
When asked about the "human chain" report, Radha Krishnan, a senior editor in
the Hindu, told Asia Times Online, "There's barely any public support here in
Tamil Nadu for the Sri Lankan Tamils issue. It's more a political issue."
Krishnan claimed that the LTTE has also now begun to recruit men between aged
between 50 and 60. "These elderly men in civilian clothes form the frontline of
attack, with the LTTE uniformed cadres behind them," he said. "These elderly
men get shot in the front if they fight the Sri Lankan army and they get shot
in the back by the LTTE if they refuse to fight."
A example of Tamil Nadu politicians' support for the LTTE came recently from
chief minister Karunanidhi, who wrote a paean praising Thamilselvan, the LTTE
political wing leader, who was killed in an aerial attack by the Sri Lankan air
force on November 2, 2007.
Thamilselvan promised the United Nations in May 1998 that the LTTE would stop
conscripting children under 17 years of age and would not use people under 18
in combat. Yet when the LTTE released a funeral photo of Thamilselvan a
10-year-old girl clearly in LTTE uniform was seen standing next to his coffin.
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