Nadesan, Pulidevan executed by Sri Lankan Army in ‘White Flag’ incident
by Karthiyayini On March 5, 2014
Mar 5 (TruthDive): Nadesan and Pulidevan, LTTE’s political wing leaders were executed by the genocidal Sri Lankan Army in Cold blood, Reveals new evidence Provided in the 253-page report titled, ‘ Island of Impunity ‘ issued by the Baptist-Based International Crimes Evidence Project (ICEP) early February this year.
The new evidence of Sri Lanka’s genocidal killings staged during the final months of its bloodied civil war against Tamil tiger rebels, LTTE in May 2009 including eye-witness accounts now surface in the run up to the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.
The ICEP report brings to light the killings of the LTTE’s political wing leaders, Balasingham Mahendran (Nadesan) and Seevaratnam Pulidevan (Pulidevan), LTTE military commander Colonel Thambirasa Thurairasingam (Ramesh), LTTE news reader Isaipriya and Balachandran, the young son of LTTE leader Prabhakaran.
In the infamous ‘White Flag’ incident in 2009, senior LTTE political leaders Balasingham Nadesan and Pulidevan had agreed to surrender to the Sri Lankan Army. Prior to surrender, they used satellite phones to send messages to diplomats, journalists and mediators to ensure top Sri Lankan officials, including the country’s President, knew of their idea to lay down their arms. Though they had been assured that their surrender would be accepted if they raised a white flag, they were brutally put down to death by the Sri Lankan Army.
Out of the two eye witnesses who wish to remain anonymous, one witness who worked as a bodyguard to the Tamil tigers was taken to the front by the Sri Lankan Army on the morning of 18 May, 2009 to confirm the identity of surrendering Tamil political leaders in a perfectly set scene of surrender amidst hundreds of soldiers, including senior officers and bodyguards.
The second witness, a government teacher who was pressed into military service in the final months of the war also surrendered in the last phase. From a dilapidated building close to the front line, this eye-witness watched groups of Tamil Tiger leaders and their relatives walk out of the war zone towards the Sri Lankan Army, carrying white flags, among whom Nadesan, his Sinhalese wife and the head of the Tiger Peace Secretariat, Pulidevan were present.
The former bodyguard, after more than an hour, was driven away when along the path he spotted soldiers taking pictures of dead bodies on their mobile phones and he also recognised Pulidevan and Nadesan’s half-naked dead bodies, with bullet wounds and burn marks on their chests.
The ICEP report documents the killing of Ramesh, who was unarmed, surrendered in a different group and in civil clothing. The report states that photograph and video proof indicates the killing of Ramesh in the interrogation site, against the Sri Lankan Army assertions that he was killed in an armed conflict.
The report also details the killing of LTTE chief’s son Balachandran Prabhakaran, whose photographs of the dead body with gunshot marks riddled in the chest were earlier published by the Britain-based Channel 4.
Though 40 other rebel tigers were believed to have negotiated a surrender with the Lankan Army in the ‘White Flag’ incident, none of them survived.
Meantime, UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has recommended an international investigation into the alleged war crimes of Sri Lanka. Obama administration has filed an anti-Lanka resolution for the third time at the UNHRC session, urging Sri Lanka to probe into human rights abuses. Twenty-four rights groups in Sri Lanka have urged the United Nations to initiate an international probe into the war crimes and rights abuses committed by Sri Lanka during its civil war. However, Sri Lanka has called the allegations as ‘baseless’ and rejected the call.
