Tamils still face repression in Sri Lanka

Saturday, September 14, 2013

By Chris Slee

Tamil people in Sri Lanka have faced genocide.

“The worst genocide of this century” was how Paul Newman, professor of human rights at the University of Bangalore, described what has happened to the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.

Newman was delivering the Eliezer memorial lecture, in memory of Professor CJ Eliezer, the founder of the Eelam Tamil Association of Victoria, at Monash University on August 25.

Newman was speaking on democracy in south Asia. He began by outlining some common features of the south Asian countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, before discussing Sri Lanka in more detail.

The south Asian region was under British colonial rule for centuries, and the colonial legacy continues to influence the region today.

Before British colonialism, the region had been divided into numerous small kingdoms out of which Britain created larger administrative entities.

For example, the island of Sri Lanka, previously divided amongst two Sinhalese kingdoms and one Tamil kingdom, was ruled by Britain as a single administrative unit.

When colonial rule ended, Britain handed over power to local elites. In the case of Sri Lanka, power was given to a Sinhalese elite, which suppressed the aspirations of Tamils for self-determination. It even denied citizenship rights to Tamil plantation workers.

Similar events happened in other south Asian countries. For example, India has violently suppressed the people of Kashmir, and Bhutan has expelled its Hindu minority.

The south Asian countries are amongst the lowest in the world on the human development index, as well as on the human rights index.

Gender inequality, corruption, child labour, and casteism remain features of these countries. In India, 48% of children in India are malnourished.

Political repression is also severe. Torture, deaths in custody and extrajudicial killings are common.

Dynastic rule is also common in south Asia. In Sri Lanka, for example, four brothers belonging to the Rajapaksa family are government ministers.

Religious and ethnic communalism are used to divide people. Politicians belonging to a majority religious or ethnic group often cultivate a feeling amongst this group that they are under threat by minorities.

Newman said that Sri Lanka is the worst for human rights violations in south Asia. Tamils are not the only ones who suffer; Sinhalese journalists critical of the government have also been murdered, or have fled into exile.

However, Tamils are the main victims of repression. Tamil areas are under military rule. All civilian activities — even family gatherings — must be reported to the military.

Newman said that in the north of the island there is one member of the security forces for every four civilians. There are 100,000 soldiers in the Jaffna peninsula. Tamil women live in fear of rape by the army.

The army occupies 40% of the land. Large areas of farmland have been designated as “high-security zones”, and the Tamil inhabitants are not allowed to return.

Tamil fishers are also restricted. They need to get 12 permits to be allowed to fish. As a result, many are now unemployed.

The government is encouraging Sinhalese settlement in traditional Tamil areas. Sinhalese settlers are given five acres of land. While displaced Tamils are being kept in temporary accommodation, Sinhalese settlers are allowed to build permanent houses.

Roads have been renamed after Sinhalese soldiers and Buddhist monks. Road signs have been changed to the Sinhalese language. While many Hindu temples and Christian churches were destroyed in the war, new Buddhist stupas and statues are being built.

On a more positive note, Newman spoke of the rise of solidarity with Sri Lankan Tamils amongst the people of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, especially the students.

They are campaigning for an international war crimes investigation, and for a referendum amongst Sri Lankan Tamils on self-determination. They have called on the Indian government to take action in support of these demands.

- See more at: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54932#sthash.yv8zZJ9d.dpuf

The Issue Of Term Limits

By Charitha Ratwatte -September 17, 2013 |

Charitha Ratwatte

Recently the world famous author and investment advisor Ruchir Sharma was in Colombo to deliver the 63rd anniversary lecture of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Sharma is the Head of the Emerging Markets Equity Team at Morgan Stanley Investment Management USA, based in New York, and acclaimed author of the best seller ‘Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracle’. He has over US$ 25 billion assets under management.

Educated at Mumbai, Delhi and Singapore, Sharma completed his undergraduate studies at Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi and first joined a securities trading company. He was a columnist for the Observer and the Economic Times in India, the column entitled ‘For Ex’. His lucid writings on the Indian economy drew the attention of top executives of Morgan Stanley who hired him for their Mumbai office in 1996. In 2002 he was moved to New York and in 2003 was appointed co-head of the emerging markets team at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. In 2006 he was appointed to head the team.

In his bestselling book ‘Breakout Nations,’ Sharma writes that he travels in emerging markets for roughly one week out of every month, in order to understand what is happening in the economy up close. He uses these travels as the basis for his monthly columns to the Economic Times. Later Sharma became a regular columnist for Newsweek International, as well as a contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Sharma’s articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Time magazine, Foreign Policy, Forbes and The Bloomberg View among others.

Rise of emerging nations a ‘myth’                       Read More

On Re-Reading “JR Jayewardene Of Sri Lanka (1977)”

By Ravi Perera -September 17, 2013 

Ravi Perera

“The more things change, the more they remain the same…” old proverb

In 1977 TDSA Dissanayake wrote a book titled “J R Jayewardene of Sri Lanka” which makes interesting reading even after thirty six tumultuous, if not disturbing years since. As the title suggests the book is   dedicated to the astounding victory of the JR Jayewardene led United National Party (UNP) at the General Elections of 1977.Evidently the elections were held in a fair manner and the verdict of the voter was unambiguous.  Developments that followed proved these elections to be a watershed event. The new government gave the economy of the country   an entirely different orientation to the heavy State controlled economy of Srima Bandaranaike, which was more or less stagnant. The 1977 electoral victory also led to the 1978 Constitution, with far reaching and troubling consequences. It is noteworthy that the new Constitution named us a “democratic and socialist” country, in case anyone had a doubt about its true character! In the flush of that victory none could anticipate the inferno that was to follow from the simmering ethnic tensions of the time.

But this was all in the distant future when TDSA Dissanayake brought his book out. In 1977 the UNP was basking in the glory of a huge public mandate which even their stoutest supporters had dared not imagine possible. Since the landslide of 1956 it was the SLFP of the Bandaranayakes, with their left allies, who had obtained such sweeping mandates, the most stinging, being the 1970 victory of the Coalition. In 1977 the pendulum swung in the opposite direction and naturally all the honour went to the UNP and its then 71 year old leader. It was the UNP’s finest hour.                     Read More

Govt. has no right to question UNP/TNA relations – UNP

TUESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2013 

The United National Party (UNP) today said, the Government had no right to question the UNP’s relationship with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) because the Government was directly interacting with former LTTE personnel without taking legal action against them.

“TNA is a political party in the Parliament and also represents the party collective of ‘Vipakshaya Virodaya’ with UNP. But the Government is interacting with personnel from a banned terrorist group without taking legal action against them. It has no ethical right to question our engagement with the TNA,” UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake told a news conference.

He accused the Government of deploying former LTTE members, in the United National Freedom Alliance (UPFA), for its political campaign.     

Mr. Attanayake said the Government pre-election surveys indicated that the UNP and other opposition parties were leading in the Provincial Council elections. Therefore the Government was attempting to sabotage the UNP’s political campaign.

“The government is afraid of losing the Provincial Council elections due to the results of a survey carried out by its officers. Therefore the Government was trying to sabotage the UNP’s political campaign by misusing Government properties and deploying security forces in UPFA political campaigns,” he said. (Lahiru Pothmulla)

Won't allow anti-India acts, says Lankan president

Padma Rao Sundarji,-Colombo, September 17, 2013

Sri Lanka will not allow any country to act against India's interest from its soil, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said, looking to address New Delhi's concerns about China's presence in the island nation. 

In an exclusive interview to HT four days before the Northern Province

goes to the polls, Rajapaksa said he was worried about the "message of separatism" still emanating from Tamil Nadu but he understood the compulsions of politicians in New Delhi and would give them a "wide margin".

He was responding to a question on deteriorating ties between the two countries due to coalition pressures on New Delhi from partners in Tamil Nadu.

Terming the India-Sri Lanka relationship as still very good, he said Indians controlled all wholesale businesses and were also at the helm of 43 international companies operating in his country.

Full text of the exclusive interview

The Northern Province was at the centre of three-decade-long civil war and is going to the polls after a gap of 25 years.

The opposition Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which is expected to emerge victorious, has raised the issue of Chinese presence.

Rajapaksa conceded that he had sought China's help in development, including in satellite technology, after the 30-year civil war that had battered the country and killed more than 120,000 people.

"But India's fears are unfounded," he said. "We will never allow any country to act against India in any way from our soil."

Padma Rao Sundarji is a veteran journalist who has covered Sri Lanka for more than two decades. She is based in Delhi.

Gwynne Dyer: Rape is an African problem

Women and girls are more likely to be the victims of sexual violence in Africa than almost anywhere else in the world.

by GWYNNE DYER on SEP 16, 2013

LAST MAY, WITH considerable trepidation, I wrote an article about what seemed to be extraordinarily high rates of rape in Africa. The original data came from a study by South Africa’s Medical Research Council in 2009 which found that more than a quarter of South African men —27.6 percent—admitted that they had committed rape.  Almost half of those men had raped two or three women or girls. One in 13 had raped at least 10 victims.

Over the next couple of years, I ran across a couple of other less detailed studies suggesting that the problem was not just South African. A report from the eastern Congo in 2012 said that over a third of the men interviewed—34 percent—had committed rape, and an older report from Tanzania found that 20 percent of the women interviewed said they had been raped (although only one-10th as many rapes were reported to the police).
So I wrote a piece called in which I said that this was a phenomenon that needed urgent investigation continent-wide—but it did occur to me to wonder if there were similar icebergs in other developing countries. The only figures that were available for developing countries elsewhere were official ones, and those normally only record the number of women who tell the police they have been raped. Most don’t.
Women are reluctant to report rape in any society, and in traditional societies much more so. The South African study was the only one that had adopted the strategy of asking men directly. Maybe if the same sort of study were done in other continents, I thought, it would return equally horrifying figures. And lo! Somebody else had the same thought, and the resources to do something about it.
The new report, conducted under the auspices of four United Nations agencies cooperating as “Partners for Prevention”, was published last week in the online version of The Lancet Global Health, a respected British medical journal. The study was undertaken quite specifically to learn if the South African figures were duplicated in developing countries outside Africa.
The researchers chose six countries in the Asia-Pacific region: China, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.  As in the South African study, the word rape was not used in the questionnaire. The 10,178 men interviewed were asked if they had ever “forced a woman who was not your wife or girlfriend at the time to have sex” or “had sex with a woman who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether she wanted it.”
There were further questions about forcing a wife or girlfriend to have sex (which is also rape), about gang rape, and about raping males, but for simplicity’s sake let us stick with the questions about what the researchers called “single perpetrator rape” of a woman who was neither wife nor girlfriend. The answers varied from country to country, but the overall picture was clear. Africa (or at least South Africa) is all alone out there.
In most of the Asian countries involved in the study, between two and four percent of the men interviewed said that they had raped a “non-partner” woman. That falls into the same range that prevails, one suspects, in most developed countries (although their reported cases of rape are much lower).
There were some local peculiarities, like the fact that in rural Bangladesh men are more likely to get raped than women. China came in surprisingly high, with six percent of the men interviewed admitting to rape, but that may be related to the growing surplus of males in a society where the gender ratio has become very skewed: there are 99 large Chinese cities where more than 125 boys are born for every 100 girls.
But Papua New Guinea was right up there with South Africa: 26.6 percent of the men interviewed had committed “single perpetrator rape” of a non-partner woman. And the other numbers were just as startling: 14 percent of PNG men had participated in a gang rape, and 7.7 percent had raped a man or boy. So Asia as a whole is quite different from Africa on this count—but PNG is practically identical.
What is so special about Papua New Guinea? It is a country with an extravagantly large number of different tribes and languages. It is an extremely violent country, where most people live in extreme poverty. It is a place where the law is enforced only sporadically, and often corruptly. And it is a place where traditional tribal values, patriarchal to the core, reign virtually unchallenged among a large part of the population. Remind you of anywhere?
Well, you already suspected that this was at the root of it, didn’t you? You just didn’t want to say so, for fear of being accused of being racist, anti-African or something of that sort.
But it does need to be said, loudly and repeatedly. Women and girls are more likely to be the victims of sexual violence in Africa than almost anywhere else, and the only way to change that is to change the behaviour of African men. By persuasion if possible, but also by enforcing the law.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Miss America Nina Davuluri: Too ‘Indian’ To Ever Be Miss India

September 17, 2013

Nina Davuluri made history hours ago as the first Indian American to be crowned Miss America. She is gorgeous, does a mean Bollywood routine, and plans to become a doctor. Move over spelling bees, #DesiPride is gonna rock beauty pageants in malls across America.

Read more 

The Justice fails as lawyer of Tamils too

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 September 2013, 07:07 GMT]-CV Wigneswaran


NPC Chief Minister candidate Mr C.V. Wigneswaran on Sunday defended him over the interview that appeared in The Hindu on Thursday, by further elaborations and by blaming The Hindu for selective projection of his answers and omission in that too. But he didn’t deny the crucial point he had made through The Hindu, aimed at discrediting and silencing the voices coming from Tamil Nadu for the independence of the genocide-affected nation of Eezham Tamils. “We are facing problems in our discourse with the government in our country, because parties in foreign countries, especially the parties in South India, keep telling that separation is the only solution,” Wigneswaran reiterated in a press meet in Jaffna, held for explaining the TNA election manifesto. 

The Justice Fails as Lawyer of Tamils Too by nelvely

Black July: Army Hathurusinghe Prevented Police From Assisting Prison Victims Under Attack

By Rajan Hoole -September 17, 2013

Rajan Hoole

Sri Lanka’s Black July – Part 26

Some Circumstances Concerning the Prison Massacres

In Chapter 8 we referred to the item in the Island of 12th June 1983 relating to proposed amendments to the PTA and the Criminal Procedure Code ‘in respect of terrorist suspects attempting to break jail or making a bid for freedom’. In the case of such a suspect being killed, a mere report to the AG’s department was to suffice. We argued that such a preoccupation, while Tamil suspects were being transferred from Panagoda army camp to Welikade prison, revealed, however tentatively, an intention regarding these prisoners. In saying that the proposals were before the Government, the report indicated that a draft had been made.

Such matters, including the 1978 constitution and the PTA, were, as we learn, entrusted to Athulathmudali, who then did little to hide his sympathy for repressive measures. In T. Sabaratnam’s book The Murder of a Moderate (p.304), he names Athulathmudali, Cabinet Secretary G.V.P. Samarasinghe and Legal Draftsman P.A.K. Rodrigo as those entrusted by Jayewardene to draft the 6th Amendment banning separatism after the cabinet meeting of 27th July 1983. We may also note that the Cabinet as a whole was geared towards approbation of extra-judicial action.                                                                                      Read More

To be continued..

Part one - Sri Lanka’s Black July: Borella, 24th Evening

Part two - Sri Lanka’s Black July: What Really Happened At Kanatte?

Part three - Black July: ‘Api Suddha Kara’ – JR’s Failure To Declare Curfew

Part four - Sri Lanka’s Black July: The Cover Up

Part five -  30th July 1983: The Second Naxalite Plot

Part six  - Black July: The Testimony Of Lionel Bopage, Then General Secretary Of The JVP

Part seven - Black July: Thondaman & Muttetuwegama

Part eight - What Was Behind Tiger Friday – 29th July? -The Significance Of The Pettah

Part nine - Tamil Merchants In The Pettah – Post July 1983

Part ten –  Sri Lanka’s Black July: A Family’s Tragedy In Colombo

Part eleven -  Sri Lanka’s Black July: The Question Of Numbers

Part twelve –  Welikade Prison Massacres: The First Massacre: 25th July 1983

Part thirteen –  Welikade Prison Massacres: Testimonies Given At The Magistrate’s Inquest

Part fourteen -  Circumstances Leading To The Magistrate’s Inquest

Part fifteen - Welikade Prison: The Second Massacre: 27th July 1983

Part sixteen - Welikade Prison Massacres: Chief Jailor Observed Army Commandos Coming In

Part seventeen - Welikade Prison Massacres: Postscript

Part eighteen - July 1983: Planned By The State Or Spontaneous Mob Action?

Part nineteen - July 1983: Ranil Wickremasinghe Followed Cyril Mathew

Part twenty - Events Of 24th July – The Eve Of The Holocaust: Who Wanted A Military Funeral?

Part twenty one –  Events Of 24th July: What Were The Army’s Orders?

Part twenty two - Black July: Further Evidence Of Advance Planning

Part twenty three - Black July: The JSS Goon Squad Regime

Part twenty four - Institutional Implications Of The JSS And Black July

Part twenty five - Black July: Ranil Wickremesinghe, Gonalwela Sunil And The Kelaniya University

*From Rajan Hoole‘s “Sri Lanka: Arrogance of Power  - Myth, Decadence and Murder”. Thanks to Rajan for giving us permission to republish. To be continued..

Nepotism leads to misuse of public property

Tuesday, 17 Sep 2013

Election observers say the main reason for the abuse of State property in the election campaigns, is due to the fact that a large number of relatives of politicians are contesting at the upcoming Provincial Council elections.

Network for Election Monitoring Intellectuals for Human Rights (NEM IHR) noted that State property is being used openly for election campaigns, drawn from ministries and departments, which are headed by those

politicians. Accordingly, human and other resources of the Ministries of EconomicDevelopment, Commerce and Industries, Corporate and Internal Trade, Sports, Land and Land Development, Prison and Prison Reforms, and Cultural Affairs, have been used for election propaganda work, the Chief Executive of NEM IHR, Dr. Udita Gunasekara, said.
“Samurdhi officers who are employed in the Ministry of Economic Development were used for election propaganda work. The Director General of the Samurdhi Authority had participated in UPFA election meetings in the Kurunegala District, and had requested the public to vote for the government,” he said.

He added that 521 election law violations were reported so far, out of which 135 violations pertain to the abuse of State property.

He also said military personnel have been influencing the public in the Northern Province, adding that the officers, in civvies, had requested the people to vote for the UPFA. NEM IHR further said they have received complaints from Opposition parties, who had stated they are unable to engage in election activities freely, due to the actions of armed groups connected to certain political parties affiliated to the government.

Election campaigning takes a violent turn

Monday, 16 September 2013

Immediate intervention needed to avert tragedy – CaFFE

 Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) fears that there will be an increase in election related violence in the coming days if immediate action is not taken to uphold election laws. There has been a spike in violence in Central and Northwestern Provinces in recent days and it has been confirmed that vehicles without number plates have been involved in most of these incidents.

 Two major instances of violence were reported last night (September 15) in Central and Northwestern Provinces. Supporters of United National Party (UNP) candidate, WMPB Warawewa were assaulted at Mahaiyawa, Kandy and a vehicle carrying his propaganda material has been damaged. Warawewa’s supporters were putting propaganda material, used during a rally in Mahaiyawa, back into the van when a group arriving in three Defender jeeps attacked them. Those who were assaulted identified one vehicle (PA 7373) and the other two vehicles were running under garage numbers. They have also stated that they will not allow anyone else to campaign in Kandy.

 Meanwhile supporters of National Unity Alliance (NUA) were assaulted when they were distributing leaflets in Kalpitiya Road, Norachcholei around 8 pm. Mohommad Firoze, NUA’s Chief Ministerial candidate for the Northwestern Provincial Council, has been admitted to Puttalam Hospital following the attack. NUA claims that those who lead the attack were United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) candidate, Riyaz and Kalpitiya Pradesheeya Sabha chairman, Minhaj. Similar to the incident in Kandy vehicles without number plates were used for the attack.

 CaFFE observers report that UPFA candidate Sanath Nishantha and several parliamentarians in Puttalam are using vehicles without number plates for election campaigning. It is worth noting that no one has been apprehended for the two attacks so far.

 CaFFE Executive Director Rajith Keerthi Tennakoon said that violence will increase if politicians continue to violate election as well as civil laws of the country. If the Department of Elections and the Police do not take immediate action to enforce election laws, the voters will have nothing to but appeal to the gods for a free and fair election on September 21, Tennakoon added.

K’negala Police pasting posters by  Kasun Ganewatte-Tuesday, 17 Sep 2013 Election monitoring group, Campaign for Free and Fair Election (CaFFE), queried at a media conference yesterday, whether the Kurunegala Police had undertaken pasting posers for a particular candidate in the Kurunegala District at the forthcoming elections in the North-Western Province. CaFFE Executive Director, Keerthi Tennakoon, told the media that, election monitors in the area had observed......and gathered evidence of police officers removing posters of UPFA candidate, Dayasiri Jayasekra. “We absolutely have no problem about removing posters, as it is the duty of the police to do so. What we are bothered about is that the individuals in police uniform were witnessed pasting posters of UPFA candidate, Johaan Fernando. They had posters in their hands and a bucket of paste which they used to plaster walls with posters,” he said. He also said that on 13 September (Friday), police officers were seen in the Wariyapola area, removing posters and pasting posters of Johaan Fernando, instead. CaFFE added that there are over 160 cut outs of Johaan Fernando, the dimensions of which are 30 feet by 6 feet, erected from Kurunegala to the boarder of Nikaweratiya. However, when contacted, Police Media Spokesman, SP Buddika Siriwardena, while refuting the charges, said, even though four labourers were attached to each Police Division to remove posters, there are times even police officers also engage in removing posters due to lack of sufficient labourers to do so. Meanwhile, Tennakoon also said they have lodged a complaint with the Elections Commissioner, who is expected to initiate an investigation in this regard, today.

NPC Elections: What Is To Be Done

By Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran -September 17, 2013

PM - TGTE - Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran

There were many different views, for and against, in terms of the NPC elections and whether Tamils should participate in it or not. We have passed that stage, and Tamil National Alliance (TNA) entered the fray having transcended all the debates about how the Tamil nation should handle the Northern Provincial elections in the event of these being held. As a political formation elected through due democratic processes to represent thediaspora Tamils, and as body committed to struggle for the creation of a free and sovereign State of Tamil Eelam through political and diplomatic means, we feel it is the responsibility of the TGTE to clarify its own position with regards to the Northern Provincial Council elections.

The TGTE is of the firm conviction that the 13th Amendment as well as the idea of Provincial Councils have expired long ago. The TNA leader, Mr R Sambanthan himself, once said in a BBC interview after May 2009 that the 13th Amendment was a “dead corpse for many years now”. Rather than recognize this fact and offer a decent burial or cremation to this corpse, some international actors with their vested interests have embarked on resurrecting the 13th Amendment. Meanwhile, the Sinhala regime, well aware that such resurrection efforts have no meaning whatsoever, is still going through the motions of pretending that it is threatened by the 13th Amendment, just in order to destabilize the freedom struggle of the Tamil people.

We believe that the TNA has launched into the NPC elections with the clear knowledge that the Provincial Councils are a meaningless void, yet they are in it only to win over the support of the International Community. It is only appropriate at this juncture that we place on record our own position with regard to engaging the international community. The term International Community invariably refers to governments in power. It is often said that States do not wear clothes and as such they are never embarrassed to behave in any manner they want in order to ensure their own interests are served. Therefore, it is our comradely appeal to the TNA that they should always work in order to align our political interests with that of the international players, rather than compromise our interests just for the sake of winning their support.    Read More

SRI LANKA FEARS REGROUPING OF FMR. LTTE CADRES DUE TO TNA - REPORT

September 16, 2013 

The Jaffna Security Forces Commander of the Sri Lankan army, Maj Gen Mahinda Hathurusinghe, has said that with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) glorifying the slain LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in its campaign for the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) elections, there was a possibility of reactivating about 4,000 former Tiger combatants, who are still at large.

“There are about 4,000 former cadre of the LTTE who have not undergone rehabilitation. These could be mustered by the TNA leadership,” Gen Hathurusinghe told Express over phone from Jaffna.

The Lankan army and the Colombo-based media are alarmed by a recent speech made by the TNA’s chief ministerial candidate C V Wigneswaran at Valvettithurai, the birthplace of Prabhakaran. Wigneswaran had said: “Prabhakaran is indeed a hero. President Mahinda Rajapaksa knows that the LTTE leader Prabhakaran was a warrior. I am not the only person who is of this opinion. The President of the country Mahinda Rajapaksa has also recognized Prabhakaran as a great hero. I speak out on the soil of the birth of Prabhakaran. He is not a terrorist.”

“When Prabhakaran was alive, the President came forward on his own to grant 13 Amendment plus (an improved devolution package). Now that Prabhakaran is no more, the President has begun to speak of 13 Amendment minus and even to the extent of saying there is no such thing as the 13th  Amendment. This is because President Rajapaksa accepted Prabhakaran as a hero. He came forward to yield concessions to the Tamils. But he is not prepared for it now. Prabhakaran is not a terrorist. He was a hero and a warrior who fought for the liberation of the Tamils.”

Wigneswaran’s speech was distributed in other parts of Jaffna and some TNA activists were arrested in this connection.

Southern politicians and media have lambasted the TNA for demanding in its manifesto, “self-determination” for the Tamils, albeit within Sri Lanka through a federal constitution.

The Sinhalese consider this to be a separatist slogan, New Indian Express reports.