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Editorial
- Uthayam Australia
The
trusting lambs have been led to the slaughter!
As
I write this, government forces are closing in on the last
bit of territory held by the LTTE in the Wanni. Everyone was
expecting the LTTE to pull a rabbit out of their hat and turn
the tide. Other than throwing a few canisters of CS gas, they
have not produced anything to prove that they can fight the
Sri Lankan forces.
There is hardly time left either, for the LTTE to inspire
confidence among the cadres to keep on fighting. The last
remaining cadres can fight but for what? The advance of the
Sri Lankan forces has driven the last nail into Prabhakaran’s
promised Eelam. It is now clear that the last battles are
fought to protect Prabhakaran and his status and not the Tamil
people trapped in a losing war. All reports indicate that
the LTTE, apart from losing territory, has lost manpower and
firepower. They have now lost even the prestige they had by
holding on to territory. The LTTE can no longer boast that
they are running a de facto state.
The LTTE, of course, has the capacity to fight. But that is
not the issue. The issue is to ask what they can achieve,
or hope to achieve by fighting. They no longer pose the threat
they did when they claimed to have parity of status with the
government. They have lost all what they gained by signing
the Ceasefire Agreement which they tore up hoping to get more.
There is no one to blame for the present plight except the
LTTE leadership, its advisors and Tamils in the diaspora who
have dumped millions into a useless cause.
In a desperate bid, the LTTE is turning to the diaspora. The
diaspora, on the other hand, was banking on the LTTE to keep
on winning militarily. Now, they are feeling useless. They
have nothing to show for the millions they poured into the
Tamil war chest. Their money is useful still but only to construct
more graveyards. The LTTE too, has nowhere to go, except into
more graveyards. The tragedy facing the Tamils is that after
fighting for 30-odd years, they have nothing to show except
graveyards. Our people have no proper food, clothing, shelter
or water. Our people are driven from place to place, they
have no rest. No security. Nor, the basic freedoms, to live
with dignity.
At last, the time has come for us to go through an agonizing
reappraisal of our condition. At last now, we must have the
courage to admit that we were wrong. We must admit that we
took the wrong path. We must apologise to our people for misleading
them into taking up arms. We must recognise now that the only
way to save our people is to abandon arms and to sue for peace,
if the leadership of the LTTE has a positive answer, they
must tell the people how they can win with arms or what can
be done. Their only answer comes out of the mouths of guns.
The Tamil people have heard that and are tired of it. Above
all, they know that guns are not going to deliver them the
goal promised by their misguided leaders. We exaggerated our
power to change the world. We were told that we had changed
the world when we killed Rajiv Gandhi, when we killed Sri
Sabaratnam and Pathmanaba; when we killed Amirthalingam, Neelan
Tiruchelvam and our entire Tamil leadership.
But what is left for the Tamils now? We have a leadership
that cannot step into the world because they are banned. We
have a leadership that cannot step out of their house, because
they are hunted by their enemies, some of whom are among our
own people. We have a leadership that cannot give a piece
of bread, a grain of rice or a drop of medicine to our people.
Our leadership depends for their basic essentials on the Sinhala
government! If we cannot win militarily, if all our strategies
have ended in losing everything we had, if we are nowhere
near our Eelam, if the money we donate goes to more deaths
and destruction of our people with no end in sight, if we
are still dependent for everything on the Sinhala – government,
which we have blamed from day one, then what are the options
available to us?
The last hope of the LTTE is the Tamil diaspora. The future
of the Tamil people is also in the hands of the diaspora.
It is no longer in the hands of the LTTE. The toothless Tigers
have lost not only power, but also lost the respect of the
world. The LTTE had never fallen to this level before. Nor
is there any sign of the LTTE rising from this level to the
previous high levels.
There is no hope for any political entity that has lost the
respect of the international community. We delude ourselves
when we get one or two parliamentarians to raise a question
or two in Western Parliaments. But, what good have these questions
done to the cause of Prabhakaran’s Eelam? The Western
powers that matter have banned us. And the more violence we
fund, the more it is going to kill and destroy our people
and bring down the image of the LTTE in the eyes of the international
community. The fact is that the LTTE has run out of solutions.
Violence is not going to be a solution any longer. In fact,
it is going to be the problem.
Prabhakaran has also ceased to be the solution. Instead, he
has become the problem. No solution can be worked out as long
as he is in command. He has become the messenger of death
and not hope. The time has come for the Tamil people to decide
whether they’ve had enough deaths or do they want more?
No sensible Tamil who has gone through these harrowing years
will want to live under the enormous pressures of uncertainty,
suffering, destruction and deaths.
Since the LTTE leadership has no viable solution to end what
they began, they must take the Tamil people into their confidence
and tell them what they can achieve realistically in the present
circumstances. If they have no positive answer, then they
must find a new leader who can lead the people in a new direction.
By all accounts, it is clear that Prabhakaran has passed his
use-by-date. He has nothing new to offer except death and
destruction. Our Tamil people have had enough of it. They
must find a new leader who will bring them back to their senses
and lead them to peace, security and prosperity.
What is at stake is not the future of Prabhakaran, but the
future of the Tamil people. He is no longer relevant to the
Tamil question. He has done his best and his worst. He has
now left the Tamils in a situation that no Tamil has experienced
ever before. They now do not have the glory of the past in
which they held their heads high, or, the hope of a new world.
The longer Prabhakaran continues in the saddle, the more will
be the despair of the Tamils. He must go and he must go NOW
for the sake of Tamils. If he doesn’t go, then it is
up to those in the hierarchy to make him go. He has humiliated
the Tamil people enough with his false promises. Our people
have a future only in a world where there are no false prophets
like Prabhakaran.
To rely on Prabhakaran is like the lamb relying on the tigers
to save their future.
Source: (September 28, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian)
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