Puthukudiruppu Civilian Attacks Reduced Prabhakaran to a paper Tiger

By Philip Fernando in Los Angeles for Sri Lanka Guardian

(February 11, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian) Velupillai Prabhakaran’s instant and damning reprisals against innocent civilians used too often as sure-fire arsenal have evaporated making him a paper tiger. Many believe that his attack on civilians at Puthukudiruppu sealed the Eelam cry for good. He is now a refugee from justice and a war criminal awaiting arrest; a bunker-hopping fugitive fighting for his life. Prabhakaran lost it all by stepping up terror attacks on civilians as a means to arrest the rapid disintegration of his ill-cherished voyeurism in the face of Rajapaksa government’s final thrust to eradicate him. Civilians defied constant LTTE fire as they crossed in larger numbers over to the government-controlled areas.

International observers came out in strong condemnation of that massacre of 19 Tamil people and injuring 69, some of them children. Such dastardly violence against civilians brought rejection of any claim Prabhakaran’s was a freedom movement. That was nothing more than a sham. As LTTE got further debilitated its leader turned more ruthlessly savage. Prabhakaran also acted in similar villainous manner in 1995, criminally evicting people from Jaffna during Operation Riviresa by way of a human shield. Later, people returned to their homes leaving the LTTE in the Vanni in spite of threatened reprisals. That is repeating itself now. This time it is caput for Prabhakaran.

Eelam cry could never survive such vile behavior by is leader. It died a natural death. The war lord’s claims of representing his people proved to be a myth. Prabhakaran is dying a hundred times before his actual demise and also trying to take the lives of innocent victims. The self-proclaimed liberator needs now to be liberated as he hides from the SL armed forces, So everybody is now talking of a band of 'liberators' who have taken civilians hostage in a bid to escape death, having started a war which proved to be doomed without even an outside chance of winning. In good old American jargon, Prabhakaran is a patsy for a Hitlerite cabal.

International observers believe that what Prabhakaran did was to eliminate the avowed Eelam cause conclusively as he is forced to let go of the civilians he now holds ransom. His scant respect for the lives of those whom he held as hapless victims under his jackboot became his notorious and self-destructive emblem. The long list of Tamil leaders who were ruthlessly massacred by the LTTE cries to heaven for vengeance. Prabhakaran made the EELAM the center piece of a devious strategy instead of striving for a grievance-driven or agitational front. He never believed in any liaisons with the political leadership and systematically decimated the Tamil community leaders starting with Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappah in 1975 ending with Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle in 2008. Over 30 Tamil leaders were ruthlessly killed. He subjugated the North to a ruthless dictatorship from which he could not escape himself.

Even the worst of the negative outcomes of war related actions as canvassed by gullible supporters of Prabhakaran with narrations of grotesque attempts at cultural super-imposition on the Tamils by the government proved to be worthless chatter. That paled into insignificance due to the acts of caring shown by the armed forces as civilians ran to the safety zones.

Even those inclined to be rigorous pacifists who argued against military ventures in the North, must now concede that the war even with its harsh intrinsic form, is the lesser of all available evils, intended to forestall a worse ruthless dictator bent on terrorizing his own people. Freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King never sacrificed their followers. Prabhakaran decimated all dissent eliminating everyone who uttered a word of moderation.

Prabhakaran personified a badly flawed messianic vision pursued not with the sincere object of giving dignity and freedom but for the purpose of creating absolute power for him. He projected a self-righteous ideology on the unsuspecting masses that were tricked into rejecting a more democratic approach to power sharing. What Prabhakaran preached was criminal auto-detonation.

-Sri Lanka Guardian