DBS Jeyaraj And The Bogey Of The Reincarnation Of The Tiger: Part 2
Dr. Muttukrishna Saravananthan
This is the second part of the op-ed entitled “D.B.S.Jeyaraj and the bogey of the reincarnation of the Tiger: Battle of the Fourth Estate in Post Civil War Sri Lanka”. I have undertaken my own investigation about the information (or misinformation) repeatedly churned out by DBSJ in the Daily Mirror (daily newspaper of Sri Lanka) in the past six weeks.
DBS
In the case of the alleged gunshot fired at police officers in or around the house of Jeyakumari in Tharmapuram, Kilinochchi, to date the authorities have not revealed the name/s of the police personnel who were shot at or injured in the shooting and the hospital in which they had undergone treatment. There is no record of anyone receiving treatment for gunshot injury in any of the hospitals in the region during March 2014 according to my information. Only information we have is that Jeyakumari is a person who jumped in front of the motorcade carrying British Prime Minister David Cameroon in Jaffna in November 2013 to draw his attention to the plight of parents and spouses whose child/ren or spouse had gone missing during the last phase of the civil war or earlier. It is also reported that Jeyakumari had appeared in the latest Channel 4 programme on Sri Lanka telecasted in November 2013. The arrest and continued detention of Jeyakumari is suspected to be retaliation for democratic protest by an aggrieved mother. Is it a crime to engage in peaceful demonstration or talk to the international media?
There are also allegations about some persons (including some elderly) receiving unusually large amount of remittances from abroad through official banking channels to revive the LTTE. The information we have is that many individuals from abroad (including former combatants living abroad) on behalf of themselves or on behalf of certain Diaspora organisations (suspected by the Government of Sri Lanka) have been helping destitute people in the East and North, mostly ex-combatants, by way of periodic remittances for their livelihood through their contacts in the North. To allege that these remittances were meant to revive the LTTE is a concoction.
