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,