March 25, 2012By Uvindu Kurukulasuriya -
Uvindu Kurukulasuriya
“There are theories and there are facts. Theories vary… The facts however cannot be denied. Thousands of Tamils, old and young, and even little children, were assaulted, robbed, killed, bereaved, and made refugees. They saw their homes, possessions, vehicles, shops and factories plundered, burnt or destroyed. These people were humiliated, made to live in fear and rendered helpless…” A Cry From the Heart… What happened at the end of July 1983? (From Bishop Lakshman Wickremasinghe’s Final Pastoral Letter).
The Wijeweera family
The prabhakaran family
Channel 4’s “Killing Fields” director Callum Macrae wrote last week; A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five neat bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran and he is the son of the LTTE
leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.He has been shot dead. Beside him lie the bodies of five men, believed to be his bodyguards. There are strips of cloth on the ground perhaps indicating that they were tied and blindfolded before they were shot – further evidence suggesting that the Sri Lankan government forces had a systematic policy of executing many surrendering or captured LTTE fighters and leading figures, even if they were children. The problem for the Sri Lankan government is that this murder is not isolated. If it was, they could perhaps dismiss it as the act of rogue soldiers.
British forensic expert Professor Pounder believes he has identified the first of the shots to be fired at the boy: “There is a speckling from propellant tattooing, indicating that the distance of the muzzle of the weapon to this boy’s chest was two to three feet or less. He could have reached out with his hand and touched the gun that killed him.”
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