Where are we heading to? - பிரபாகரனுக்கு சங்கரியின் கடிதம்

10.09.2006
Mr. Veluppillai Prabaharan
Leader- Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam
Kilinoochi.

My Dear Thamby,


Where are we heading to?


I hear from very reliable sources that your cadre in areas under your control are going round from house to house and taking away the children, ignoring the weeping and wailings of the parents, for recruitment to the fighting cadre. I very strongly condemn this move and plead with you to stop any further recruitment and to release all those recruited including those who had joined voluntarily, if any. At this rate very soon the Tamils will become an insignificant minority in Sri Lanka and gradually lose their identity.

It is obvious that you are losing your battle and in my assessment your Eelam war is coming to an abrupt end without any useful gains. The net result is that your 23 years of fighting had taken people back to the bullock cart age. Without making things worse please call off your struggle and leave it to the elders for a negotiated settlement. India had repeatedly declared that it will not allow separation in Sri Lanka and will go all out to prevent it. India takes this attitude not out of love or hatred for any ethnic group in Sri Lanka but in its own interest. India does not want the cry for separation forty years back to be revived.

Before the enthusiasm of the International Community dies and the offer of large sums of money for rebuilding and development is withdrawn, please consider declaring a ceasefire unilaterally. Even an Interim Administration with reasonable representation for the opposition can be negotiated but certainly not like the Interim Self-Governing Authority proposed earlier by a team of experts, who had no knowledge of the ground situation. At least at this stage, if you accept my advice and agree for a ceasefire to negotiate terms, thousands of lives and billions worth of property could be saved. Apart from that several billions of rupees spent on the war can be saved and diverted for development of the areas devastated due to the war.

If you trust me you can confide in me what and how things should be done. With the Indians opposed to any type of division of the country, the only option you have is not to fight them but to compromise with them for any solution based on the Indian Model. I have had discussions with various party leader religious heads and many Diplomats. In my opinion most of Sri Lankans are agreeable for a solution as suggested by me and if you will accept it I am positively sure that even the little opposition that is there will vanish. Majority of the people will agree for a solution based on the Indian Model, I guarantee you that even if you fight for 100 years a separate state is not possible, as long as India is opposed to it.

Hence without sacrificing more lives unnecessarily please stop fighting and agree for a solution. There are many including me who can be entrusted with the task of making preliminary arrangements for a negotiated settlement. Please rest assured that I am honestly and sincerely interested in bringing back peace to our people. I am not at all interested in power and personal gains I hope you are well aware of it.

I have written a number of letters to you with some good suggestions, to find an early solution for our problems. You did neither reply any of those nor did respond in any way. Whom do you think should be held responsible for this precarious situation?

Those who glorified you for all your actions without condemning any, those who wrote and spoke high of you without pointing out your mistakes then and there, those who were engaged in false propaganda favouring you and against those opposed to you, those who went about killing people without any just cause, those expatriate Tamils who support you blindly for personal gains, those so called intellectuals who volunteer from abroad to act as your spokesmen and above all, people like Mr. S. P Thamilchelvan. Dr. Anton Balasingham and the TNA Member of Parliament are responsible.

Most of the interviews of Mr. Thamilchelvan to the media had been ridiculed by the International Community. His claim that they are the sole representatives of the Tamils and that the claymore mine and hand grenade attacks were done by the infuriated civilians are good examples. The whole world knows that the TNA members were elected fraudulently to Parliament. They too like Mr. Thamilchelvan and some other political leaders of yours often threaten to go for war without knowing their strength. They do not realise that fighting a Government is like fighting the entire International Community. Please go through the speeches of Dr. Balasingham made at the Heroes’ Day Commemoration meetings. They had been unsuitable for the occasion, insult to the dead and very demeaning too, severely condemned by your own supporters.

I have heard some people claiming Mr. Amirthalingam as their leader and you as his successor. Are they genuine supporters of yours? You and your organisation lost creditability with the assassination of Honourable Rajiv Gandhi ex-Prime Minister of India. Honourable A. Amirthalingam leader of the opposition, President R. Premadasa, Presidential Candidate Honourable Gamini Dissanayake, Honourable Luxman Kadirgamer ex-Foreign minister and many others and the attempted assassination of President Chandrika Bandaranayake Kumaratunge. With the first of these assassinations you should have realised your grave mistake and refrained from such killings.

A number of Tamil youths joined various Tamil militant groups, rightly or wrongly as freedom fighters. To claim superiority over the other groups you should have won over the cadre of the other groups instead your cadre hunted them down without realising that they are also children of Tamil parents committed for the same cause. This action instead of strengthening you, only weakened you. Your cadre have not yet realised their mistake. They are still gunning down members of other groups who had given up their politics long ago and are married and settled. Do you think our people will applaud a group of raw youths with hardly any education or experience to go around killing people at random claiming to be freedom fighters belonging to your pistol group? The group that claims to be your Pistol group has not spared principals, teachers, lawyers, academics and many others of high calibre. They have deprived the Jaffna University of an excellent Vice chancellor Dr. Hool. He had been banished from the country. They killed another intellectual of whom the country and the Tamils in particular should feel proud of Mr. Ketheswaran Loganathan. This category of people are great patriots who had sacrificed a lot for the country and its people and are not those hunting for jobs.

The cease fire agreement (CFA) gave you a fine opportunity to move freely with the people in Government controlled areas, to win them over and to educate them politically. It also gave you a chance to sooth the feelings of the Muslims and to resettle them in their respective homes. You did not do either of these. Instead your cadre used all their power to cause terror and tension to our people and to establish a Dictatorship in the Government controlled areas, in addition to the areas already under your control. All the rights the Tamils enjoyed before 1983, when you started your struggle 23 years back are now lost. They are now living like slaves in both government controlled areas and yours. This situation should change.

I am convinced that things are going out of control. The Tamils had sacrificed enough youths for your mission that has failed. Why are you sacrificing more and more youths? It is now time for you to admit failure of your mission and to go for a negotiated settlement or in the alternative ask your cadre to surrender. A general amnesty can be worked out. I believe that a solution acceptable to Tamils can be found. The International Community including India will see that an acceptable solution is found. The expatriate Tamils who support you are not genuine and are only interested in personal gains. Our people in the North and the East had suffered enough and sacrificed to the maximum. They should now be allowed to live in peace and harmony. There are a lot of elders anxious to return to their country of birth and live in peace and die in their land of birth.

Thanking You,

Yours Sincerely,


V. Anandasangaree
President – T.U.L.F.