Chronicle of murders

T.S. SUBRAMANIAN

The LTTE has a horrible record of cold-blooded murder of individuals, mostly unarmed, who sought a peaceful resolution of the Sri Lankan ethnic strife. It has also indulged in an intense fratricidal war, killing members of other Tamil militant organisations. The devices used by the LTTE have been varied - members of its Black Tiger suicide squad who wore belt bombs or rode motorcycles or bicycles after strapping explosives to their bodies; assault rifles; pistols; landmines; grenades and so forth. It ha s also resorted to the hanging of “traitors” from lamp-posts.

The LTTE’s “diary of murders” had its first entry on July 27, 1975 with the killing of Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappa of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

In May 1986, it hunted down and shot dead Sri Sabarathnam, the charismatic leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), as the organisation’s proximity to India posed a threat to the Tigers’ hegemony. Sri Sabarathnam was killed in a betel pl antation in the Jaffna peninsula. The Tigers then executed several hundred TELO militants.

The LTTE later targeted pacifist leaders of the TULF, who pressed for a negotiated settlement to the long-drawn-out war in the northern peninsula. On July 13, 1989, TULF secretary-general A. Amirthalingam and polit bureau member V. Yogeswaran were shot d ead at the latter’s home in Colombo by two LTTE militants, Visu and Aloysius. It was a typical LTTE operation. The two militants had earned the trust of Yogeswaran by meeting him frequently as part of the parleys to sort out the differences between the t wo groups. But the gregarious Yogeswaran was led up the garden path. On that fateful day, when Visu, Aloysius and another LTTE militant Vignan came visiting, Yogeswaran, in a show of trust, told the securitymen not to frisk them. Vignan stayed at the gat e, while the other two went in. A little later, Amirthalingam and TULF president M. Sivasithamparam joined Yogeswaran. Yogeswaran’s wife Sarojini served them tea. Visu and Aloysius treacherously opened fire, killing Amirthalingam and Yogeswaran. Sivasith amparam survived the attempt with wounds. The LTTE had taken umbrage to Amirthalingam’s speech in Parliament in June 1989, pleading for the continued presence of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka.

In separate incidents, the LTTE killed George, an affable leader of the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), and R.R. Vasudeva, a top People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) leader.

These killings took place on Sri Lankan soil. But the LTTE also had the temerity to carry out its operations outside Sri Lanka. On June 19, 1990, the Tigers stormed into an apartment at Zachria Colony in Kodambakkam, Chennai, when the central committee m eeting of the EPRLF was under way, and sprayed bullets. Thirteen top EPRLF leaders, including its soft-spoken secretary-general K. Padmanabha, Finance Minister in the now defunct Northeastern Provincial Council P. Kirubakaran, and Member of Parliament Yo gasankari, were killed. While escaping in a car after the attack, they killed two local people. The killers fled to the Jaffna peninsula from the Vedaranyam coast of Tamil Nadu.

While the LTTE was fighting the IPKF in the Northeastern Province, the EPRLF backed the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement, which was a red rag to the LTTE. Moreover, the EPRLF ignored the LTTE’s call to boycott the Northeastern Provincial Council elections in 198 8. It participated in the elections and formed the Council with the Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front (ENDLF) headed by Paranthan Rajan alias Gnanasekaran. This naturally upset the LTTE and it was biding its time. When the EPRLF leaders came to Tamil Nadu after the IPKF pulled out of the island in March 1990, the LTTE struck in the most brutal manner.

Rajan Wijeratne, Minister of State for Defence, was killed in the most audacious manner. The high-profile Minister branded the LTTE a “baby brigade”, dared it to take him out and wished it “good luck”. On March 2, 1991, when the planter-turned-politician was travelling in his bullet-proof Mercedes Benz in the heart of Colombo, the LTTE detonated about 100 kg of explosives planted in a car. The explosion shattered the Minister’s body.

On May 21, 1991, the LTTE struck again in Chennai. At a Congress(I) election meeting in Sriperumbudur, 50 km from Chennai, an LTTE belt-bomb assassin, Dhanu, garlanded Rajiv Gandhi and, bending to touch his feet, triggered the device blowing up herself a nd the former Prime Minister.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1617/16171020.htm

Suicide bombing like these need to be condemned no matter who they are targeting - and the well-off leaders who compell innocent civillians to do this, disgust me. At the end of the day, what did this woman achieve?

To Michael - one comment about what you said in your posting - this is NOT a minor attack by Sri Lankan standards. This is one of the more minor suicide attacks carried out by the tigers. In fact, if not for this video this would’ve missed most news headlines.

Thanks for providing this forum.
Peace to all.

I was responding to the post which labels all terrorists as “evil” (never a helpful categorization in my mind). The double standard, in my mind, is that posts like these liberally heap condemnation on organizations like the LTTE, but never spare a sentence to condemn the violence of the much more powerful states against equally innocent and helpless civilians (as those killed by the LTTE). In fact, the Sri Lankan government has killed far, far more civilians than the LTTE.

As far as responding to terrorism, it does help to examine each organization in its context, and not tar them with the same brush.

Tamils were oppressed agreed, they killed Chandran’s grandma and uncles, agreed. But terrorism is not an answer. And I guess we ought to come out of this binary option of “Either-you-are with-us-or-with-them”
I choose to condemn LTTE, that doesnt mean I support SL government and either way.

Al Qaeda, of course, is another matter entirely. But it’s simply not helpful to just assert that all these groups are “evil.”

I suppose I hate the live ones more, since they are more cynical, but in a way find the suicide ones more frightening, since their minds have been twisted to a point where their entire reality is nothing like a normal person.

Excuse the rant, but to me terrorism today has a closer, more familiar face. ETA has killed again. To Civil Guards, just having themselves a coffee at a cafe, have been shot. One, 24 year old Raúl Centeno, is dead, while the other, Fernando Trapero, is in a deep coma, with no significant brain activity, and will likely die. The three terrorists have escaped, vía kidnapping a woman in her car and then tying her up in the woods and abandoning her (luckily she escaped her bonds and made it to a town). 24 hours have passed, and the two main parties are not yet at each others throats. I give the unity another 72 hours, tops.

To the sadness of the death of these young men is added the anger in knowing that even if the terrorists are caught, they will face ridiculously low sentences.