RANIL WICKREMESINGHE ONCE AGAIN PUTS FORWARD THE FALSE CLAIM THAT PRABHAKARAN IS FULLY COMMITTED TO PEACE
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
March 25, 11.30 AM:Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, praised the Supremo of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran as a man committed to peace in a BBC interview but even before the news was broadcast by the radio suspected LTTE gunmen shot and injured a University teacher of the Eastern University for supporting an opposing faction of the Tamil group against Prabhakaran
The obvious false statement of the Prime Minister came not only within few hours after the alleged shooting by the Tamil Tigers of the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture of the Eastern University, Dr. T. Thiruchelvam, who is now admitted in the Batticaloa General Hospital but also days after Wickremesinghe’s own UNF candidate, Sinnathamby Sunderam Pillai and an EPDP election worker were gunned down by the Tamil Tiger assassins also in the same province.
Ranil Wickremesinghe and his followers like Thilak Marapone and W.J.M. Lokubandara have been falsely praising the LTTE, for the consumption of the Sinhalese voters, despite for more than two years, ever since he signed a ceasefire agreement with Velupillai Prabhakaran, while the LTTE was openly flouting the agreement itself by killing Tamil political opponents and intelligence men of the security forces, kidnapping Tamil children for recruitment in their army and assassinating Muslims of the Eastern Province, while Minister Rauf Hakeem was attempting to keep them calm, JVP sources in Colombo charged.
Even after the nominations were handed over for the next general elections all UNP Tamil candidates in Batticaloa District announced that they were withdrawing from the elections when LTTE gunmen visited their homes and intimidated them. But the leader of the party, Ranil Wickremesinghe failed to condemn it publicly and kept mum, as he had done since the ceasefire agreement was signed same sources alleged.
When the main military leader of the LTTE , Col. Karuna Amman broke away from Prabhakaran , the chief ideologue of the terrorist group Anton Balasingham in an interview intended to attack the renegade military leader said in a London interview published in their main organ the Tamil Guardian that the army claimed to be under Karuna was in fact was a separatist army of the LTTE Supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran recruited making use of the Ceasefire agreement with Ranil Wickremesinghe. Many opponents of the LTTE including the JVP and the EPDP had earlier alleged that the LTTE was not sincerely committed to peace and was only making use of it to raise an army of separation. Sri Lanka’s security forces also had alleged that the rebel group was also smuggling in large hauls of arms not for peace but for a long war but Wickremesinghe and his political followers were trying to absolve them while a fully controlled press with the help of the media unit of the Prime ministers office attempted to create an entirely different image of the LTTE from the truth in the country.
Ranil Wickremesinghe told BBC’s Colombo correspondent Frances Harrison that he was still convinced the rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was committed to peace despite the loss of control over rebel territory in the East.
Anton Balasingham who is the chief negotiator for Velupillai Prabhakaran said few days ago, “We are not aware of the exact number of fighters he has under his command. What we know is that the vast number of his fighters are recent recruits and with no combat experience. They were recruited during the ceasefire times, for the cause of liberating the Tamil homeland constituting the northeast. All his fighters have taken an oath of allegiance to the Tamil national leader Mr Pirapaharan (Prabhakaran). In actual fact, they are Mr Pirapaharan’s (Prabhakaran’s) freedom fighters who have pledged their lives for the cause of the LTTE. It is a treacherous act of bad faith on the part of Karuna to impose his leadership on these innocent young men and women who joined the LTTE pledging their allegiance to the national leader and to the national cause.”
