By M.R. Narayan Swamy, IANS
New Delhi : Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger guerrillas can never be vanquished militarily, a visiting Tamil MP has said, calling for an Indian role to bring peace to the island nation.
M.K. Shivaji Lingam of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) also said that the escalating violence in the war-hit country was only adding to the unending human misery, principally among the Tamil community.
“It is impossible to crush or destroy the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) militarily,” Shivaji Lingam told IANS, a day after he took part in a demonstration here urging India to stop its military backing to Sri Lanka.
The LTTE campaign for a Tamil homeland, he said, “has become a people’s struggle. Even ordinary villagers are now armed. They volunteer for duty round the clock to check the military’s deep penetration units in LTTE areas.”
Shivaji Lingam, a member of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the biggest Tamil grouping in the Sri Lankan parliament, said he expected the war now raging in the country to continue.
“The LTTE will never give up,” he said. “Even if the military takes over LTTE areas, the Tigers will fight on. But it won’t be easy for the government to do that anyway.
“The government had wanted to crush the LTTE about 10 years ago. What could not be achieved 10 years ago cannot be achieved today. Today, the LTTE is more powerful militarily,” he added.
Shivaji Lingam, however, admitted that the Tigers had suffered serious reverses in the country’s east, where the guerrillas have been driven out of their strongholds, and that Colombo was strong too – militarily.
Shivaji Lingam, who comes from the same region in Jaffna that is home to LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, was once opposed to the Tigers. Over the years, he, like many others in Sri Lanka, has come to see the Tigers as the true representative of the Tamil minority.
Shivaji Lingam spoke of the many difficulties faced in the war-hit northeast of Sri Lanka where thousands have been killed since the end of 2005.
After rejecting the 2002 Norway-brokered truce it signed with the Tigers, the government has now vowed to kill Prabhakaran. But it says that it is committed to a political solution.
Shivaji Lingam said the Tamils had no faith in the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
“How can we ever trust them?” he asked. “The government is not steady (vis-à-vis a political solution). After so many years, they are still talking about a unitary state when Tamils are for a federal system.”
The TNA MP said even as the US, China and Pakistan actively supported Sri Lanka, killings, kidnappings and bombings – blamed on the LTTE, the government and pro-Colombo Tamil groups – were steadily rising.
“The situation in (government-controlled) Jaffna is so bad that Tamils who fear they will be murdered are preferring to go to jail than live in the open,” he added. “Many are taking shelter at human rights offices.”
The Tamils, he said, could not understand why India was silent over the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka.
“India should get involved and bring about a political solution,” he argued. “If it cannot do that, it should recognise the Tamil liberation struggle.”