| Published on 20-05-2007 In World |
| Viewed 3670 times |
| LTTE is getting damned, for the second time after Rajiv assassination |
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Written by
R. Bhagwan Singh |
As we are nearing the 16th sorrowful anniversary of the gruesome assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a woman suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Thamil Eelam, perpetrated on Tamil Nadu soil during his election campaign, the Lankan Tamil militant group finds itself damned all over again. This time, it is for abducting Indian fishermen and their vessels, besides the horrific incident of March 29 when five fishermen of Kanyakumari were gunned down by the Tigers suspecting that they were spying on their sea sorties to transfer weapons from the 'mother' ship to the land base in north Lanka.
Strangely, it was pure bad luck and hostile providence that jolted the Tigers on both the occasions. The Rajiv murder got quickly cracked by the CBI's Special Investigation Team because of the photographs taken by the young Haribabu, hired by the one-eyed Sivarasan to chronicle the killing. Dhanu, the assassin had perished in that blast of May 21, 1991, so did the target and a host of others close to the blast spot but the camera and its highly inflammable film survived. Any photographer hired for a private function normally clicks several pictures showing his sponsor to please him or her and Haribabu did just that, picking up Sivarasan, Dhanu, Nalini and the standby assassin Subha in the dozen pictures on the unfinished roll of his borrowed camera.
The camera was picked up by the police and its film delivered the identity of the killers. Rest was history, a sorrowful one at that. Apart from that a former Indian PM got blown up so brutally, another sad consequence of that mad killing was the loss of public sympathy and wide support that the Tigers had enjoyed across Tamil Nadu and in Delhi too. It took a long time for their supporters on this side of the Palk Strait to drum up enough courage to raise any slogans of solidarity without getting hauled up for backing a banned terror outfit. And just when these voices were getting bolder, shriller and louder, the Tigers got their second big setback in India when a fishing boat from Kanyakumari came back with corpses.
Chief minister M. Karunanidhi must have thought a million times before making that dramatic and very bold statement in the state legislature early May confirming his director general of police D. Mukherjee's assertion that it was the LTTE, and not the Sri Lankan Navy, which shot and killed five fishermen from Kanyakumari and in another incident, abducted eleven Kanyakumari fishermen and one from Kerala for grabbing their trawler, 'Sri Krishna', for use in transporting their arms from the mother ship berthed near the Maldivian waters to the camp in north Lanka.
'I have come out with the information that the Viduthalai Puligal (Liberation Tigers) had killed five Tamil fishermen even if that posed personal danger (from the Tigers), only to prove the government's honesty on the issue', said the chief minister in the state Assembly on May 4. At that time, he had also made known that 11 fishermen from Kanyakumari and one from Kerala were in the custody of the Tigers in north Lanka and promised to move the Centre and also the Indian High Commissioner in Colombo to secure their release.
Sources said he had in fact activated the pro-Tiger political activists to get across to the LTTE leadership in Killinochchi the Tamil Nadu anguish. Under intense pressure thus created, the LTTE had no option but to let the eleven Kanyakumari fishermen go on Friday, May 18, but the previous day, they lost 'Sri Krishna' to firing from the Maldivian Coast Guard.
Krishna was transferring weapons from the mother ship berthed with her deadly cargo in the sea near Maldives when it chanced upon a Maldivian fishing boat and fired at it. The fishing boat fled and reported the attack to the Coast Guard, which went after the rogue trawler.
The Keralite fisherman, Simon Joyie, jumped into the sea to save himself from the Coast Guard fire and was picked up. And when the trawler blew up and sank, its four Sea Tiger crew too jumped in the water and were picked up by the Maldivian Coast Guard.
As stated in the beginning of this essay, this second major blow to the Tiger image in the vitally important Tamil Nadu political turf happened, again, due to sheer bad luck—just as the camera and its film survived the Rajiv blast and threw up vital evidence. A trawler called 'Maria'---the Tigers might have picked it up from one of the Tamil Nadu fishing groups either by paying an attractive compensation or by force—was transferring weapons from the mother ship when a fishing boat of nine men from Kanyakumari crossed its path. The Tamil Nadu fishermen thought 'Maria' was a fishing boat and pulling up close, demanded its catch since they got nothing from the sea.
The pleas from the crew of 'Maria' that they had no fish did not satisfy the Kanyakumari fishermen and a couple of them reportedly tried to board 'Maria' while one of them pulled the nets using a long poll. He saw the boxes hidden under the nets and promptly decided that the men of 'Maria' were hiding a big catch inside those boxes. A Sea Tiger opened fire and five fishermen died. Promptly, the pro-Tiger political and social outfits in Tamil Nadu damned the Sri Lankan Navy accusing it of killing the five Indian fishermen.
The survivors of the Kanyakumari boat did not talk much in public but they must have said enough somewhere, because for the first time in recent years, chief minister Karunanidhi seemed willing to spare the Lankan Navy the blame for the deaths on high seas. The fishermen were killed by some young unknown men who wore T-shirts and shorts—not the naval attire---and chief minister said, throwing up the question as to who these sea killers could have been. In private, however, the intelligence agencies were pointing an accusing finger at the Tigers.
A general alert was placed for locating 'Maria' and despite efforts by the Tigers to deface the name, it remained stuck on the trawler. A few days later, on April four to be specific, the Indian Coast Guard spotted 'Maria' being towed towards India by two Tamil Nadu fishing boats. The fishermen told the cops that they were helping 'Maria' reach the shore for repair as its engine had developed some problems. The failure of Maria's engine was the second bad stroke of luck for the LTTE, after the camera miracle at the Rajiv blast. If 'Maria' had not failed in such manner, its crew of Sea Tigers would not have been caught And the Vaikos and Veeramanis in Chennai would have stepped up their shrill condemnation of the Lankan Navy. The arrest of the Maria crew and their subsequent admission of the Tiger involvement in the death of the five Kanyakumari fishermen on March 29—by a different group of Sea Tigers handling Maria at that time-- must have come as a major blow to these pro-LTTE rabble rousers. There is some lull in public agitations on the Eelam issue as the Tiger supporters have gone into hiding after chief minister Karunanidhi's open proclamation that the Tigers had gunned down five Kanyakumari fishermen.
Not just that. The chief minister also went public on the information given by the Maria crew, that there were 12 Indian fishermen held captive in the Tiger camps. It is possible that to redeem their dipped spirits, some of the pro-LTTE political leaders might have intervened on his behalf to get the big Tiger in Killinochchi to order the release of the abducted men. Their arrival at Rameswaram on May 18 has brought big cheer, not only among the fishermen but also the Eelam watchers. It could take a little longer for the Tiger fans in Tamil Nadu to step out of their brief sabbatical. |
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