CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

JUST A FEW WHAT LTTE DID in 1980-1999

-Ratnajeewa Halpita

1. GONAGALA MASSACAR
The incident occurred in the early morning of September 18, 1999, at the 31 Colony in Ampara. The LTTE cadres first entered Gonagala village and hacked to death 50 Sinhalese civilians, most of them in their sleep. A middle aged man who had tried to protect himself had his hand severed and skull pulverised. After the attack, the hacked bodies of children lay in pools of blood in the cots where they had been sleeping.

The LTTE cadres then moved from the Gonagala settlement to two neighbouring ones, where they killed four more civilians, before making good their exit.

Victims-Of those 54 victims of the massacre, 27 were men, 17 were women and 10 were children. Out of the 17 women who died in the killings, two of them were pregnant.
According to forensic experts only one victim was shot dead with a revolver, while the rest were killed with knives or machetes. It was also reported that , four other civilians were also seriously wounded.

Eyewitness accounts-One survivor, Herath Mudiyansalege Premasiri, a 29-year-old farmer, gave a description of the events that happened around him.

"We finished late and went to bed. There were about 15 of us, relatives and friends who came to help us for the alms-giving. I was sleeping alone in my room. Around 2 am I heard a group of people banging on the door. They later broke into the house."
He survived by hiding under his bed, but 14 other people who stayed at his home on that day were killed by LTTE cadres.

Another resident of the village, who was a home guard, had been on duty at a checkpoint further away. When he returned home in the morning, he found his pregnant wife, two children (ages six and eight), his father, mother, sister and brother-in-law dead.

2.THE ANURADHAPURA MASSACAR
The Anuradhapura massacre is an incident on May 14, 1985 in which LTTE cadres massacred 146 Sinhalese men, women and children in Anuradhapura. The LTTE hijacked a bus and entered Anuradhapura. As the LTTE cadres entered the main bus station , they opened fire indiscriminately with automatic weapons killing and wounding many civilians who were waiting for buses[1]. LTTE cadres then drove to the Buddhist Sri Maha Bobhi shrine and gunned down nuns, monks and civilians as they prayed inside the Buddhist shrine. This incident was designed to provoke massive retaliation by the Sinhalese majority against the Tamils in order to strengthen the LTTE's position among the Tamil people.

Before they withdraw, the LTTE strike force entered the national park of Wilpattu and killed 18 Sinhalese in the forest reserve.

3. EAST 1995
During these massacres, 120 Sinhalese civilians were killed by LTTE cadres. The dead included men, women and children.Many of the victims were hacked to death with swords and axes. Some of the women were raped by LTTE cadres before they were murdered

4.THE KALLARAWA MASSACAR
The Kallarawa massacre is an incident on May 25, 1995 during which LTTE cadres massacred 42 Sinhalese men, women and children in Kallarawa. All the remaining civilian survivors fled the village after this incident leading to its depopulation.

5. THE CENTRAL BANK COLOMBO
The Central Bank bombing was one of the deadliest guerilla attacks carried out by the LTTE during the Separatist civil war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers. The attack took place on January 31, 1996, in the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo. A lorry (42-6452) containing about 440 pounds of high explosives crashed through the main gate of the Central Bank , a seaside high-rise which managed most of the financial business of the country. As gunmen traded fire with security guards, the suicide bomber in the lorry detonated the massive bomb, which tore through the bank and damaged eight other buildings nearby. The lorry was followed by a three wheeler, carrying two LTTE cadres armed with an automatic rifle and an RPG launcher.

The blast killed at least 91 people and injured 1,400 others. At least 100 people lost their eyesight. Most of these were bystanders or civilians manning small shops set up near the bank. While the bomber Raju died immediately, the back up team Subramanium Vigneswaram alias Kittu, and Sivasamy Dharmendra alias Raju, were apprehended by law enforcement with information provided by the public. Police and the security forces launched a massive manhunt for others who were involved in this terrorist incident. It was eventually determined the bombers had come from Jaffna, in the north of the country and were LTTE members.

6. DEHIWALA TRAIN
The Dehiwala train bombing resulted in 56 civilian deaths. The attack was carried out by LTTE operatives placing suitcase bombs in four carriages on a commuter train. The simultaneous explosion of these bombs resulted in a large number of casualties. The technique of simultaneously exploding multiple bombs in several carriages was used for the first time in this attack, and was later replicated at the Madrid train bombing, London train bombing and Mumbai Train Bombing.

7. PALLIYAGODELLA –EAST SRI LANKA
The Palliyagodella massacre is an incident in October 1991 in which LTTE cadres massacred 109 Muslim men, women and children in Palliyagodella. The background to this massacre was the growing tension between the LTTE and the Muslim community. The Palliyagodella villagers had asked the Sri Lankan military for protection from LTTE extortion. The Sri Lankan forces issued shotguns to the Muslim villagers but these were inadequate to beat off LTTE attacks. Female LTTE cadres and child soldiers were involved in this attack

8. KENT AND DOLLAR FARM
At Dollar farm, 33 Sinhalese were murdered and several others were injured in the shooting carried out by the cadres of LTTE. On the same day at Kent farm, another 29 Sinhalese civilians were massacred, thus increasing the total death toll to 62. Among the civilian casualties were men, women and children. The LTTE operatives used submachine guns, automatic rifles and hand grenades to kill civilians. Survivors also reported that LTTE cadres had killed children by bashing their heads against walls.

9. KOKILAI
The Kokilai village massacre is an incident on December 1, 1984 in which LTTE cadres massacred 11 Sinhalese civilians. This attack occurred on the day after the Kent and Dollar Farm massacres. Most of the victims were Sinhalese fishermen, were shot to death by LTTE cadres

10. ARANTHALAWA
The Aranthalawa Massacre took place on June 2, 1987, when a bus carrying Buddhist monks and a few unarmed civilians was ambushed by 2 armed LTTE cadres near the village of Nuwerathanne. They then ordered the driver of the bus, which was carrying the monks on a pilgrimage from their temple in Mahavapi to the Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihara, to drive into the nearby Aranthalawa jungle. After the bus stopped, the LTTE cadres went on a rampage, attacking the monks with knives and swords and also shooting some of them with machine guns.

Among the dead were 30 young novice monks and their mentor, the Chief Priest of the Vidyananda Maha Pirivena, Hegoda Sri Indrasara Thera. Four civilians who were traveling in the bus were also among the dead.

Three monks who escaped the massacre sustaining critical injuries continue to require medical assistance. Another monk was permanently disabled.

Motives-This and similar attacks against Sinhalese civilians are carried out by the LTTE to antagonize the Sinhalese majority against the Tamil populace of the country, thereby creating rivalry between the two main ethnic groups of Sri Lanka. The LTTE hopes such animosity between the two races would result in attacks by Sinhalese against Tamil civilians, which would increase support and funding towards their violent campaign

The massacre remains one of the most brutal attacks carried out during the conflict in Sri Lanka and is considered one of the darkest chapters in Sri Lankan history. However many experts have expressed sorrow that even 20 years after the incident, the LTTE continues to carry out similar massacres of unarmed civilians and religious figures. They also express concern that the international community has failed to take significant measures to help Sri Lanka prevent similar attacks.
A plaque has since been constructed close to the site of the incident to commemorate the massacre.

11. EXPULSION OF MUSLIMS FROM THE NORTH
The expulsion of the Muslims from Jaffna was an act of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Tamil militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organization starting in October 1990. In order to achieve their goal of creating an ethnically "pure" Tamil state in the North and East of Sri Lanka, the LTTE forcibly expelled the entire Muslim community - numbered at around 80,000 - from the northern Jaffna peninsular of the island. They were forced to leave within 48 hours of an LTTE warning and not permitted to take any of their belongings, which were subsequently looted by the LTTE.

Background-Tensions between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Muslim community had been building for years. Despite the fact that most are Tamil-speaking, the Muslims or Moors are regarded as a separate ethnic community by the Hindu and Christian Tamils, as they mainly trace their ancestry to a mixture between Arabs from the Middle East and Sinhala and Tamil women from the Eastern sea-board. There is also a community of Sinhalese-Speaking Muslims in the central highlands - a mixture between medieval Arab traders and high-caste Sinhalese women. However this community was not affected by the war.

In the mid-1980s there had been a few Muslim cadres in the LTTE, but the numbers were rapidly declining. With leading muslim politicians, such as MHM Ashraff parting with the TULF in 1980, Muslims had slowly began to see themselves as a separate ethnic group from the Tamils. With the creation of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress on the 21st of September 1981, the idea of the Muslim people of Sri Lanka being separate from the Tamils, was being reinforced. Due to this, they felt that if the goal of Tamil Eelam was reached, they would be a "minority, in a minority state"and the SLMC were strongly opposed to the idea of Tamil Eelam. Tensions between the Tamils and Muslims were at an all time high, with the UTHR reporting that "It became an unspoken cliché that Muslims were traitors."

Although nearly all Muslim violence had taken place in Eastern Province, it was in the Northern Province where this act of ethnic cleansing took place. Expulsion-The first expulsion was in Chavakacheri, of 1,500 people. After this, Muslims in Kilinochchi and Mannar were ethnically cleansed forcing many to leave their homeland. The turn of Jaffna came on October 30, 1987; when LTTE trucks drove through the streets ordering Muslim families to assemble at Osmania College. There, they were told to exit the city within two hours. They could take with them only the clothes they were wearing and no more than 50 rupees in cash. Their houses were subsequently looted by the LTTE. In total more than 78,000 Muslims were expelled.Most of the Muslims were resettled in Puttalam district, though the Jaffna Muslim refugees can be found in other parts of Sri Lanka as well. The expulsion still carries bitter memories amongst Sri Lanka's Muslims. In 2002, the LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran had formally apologized for the expulsion of Muslims from the North.

REF:http://www.lankalibrary.com/phpBB/viewtopic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_and_Dollar_Farm_massacres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_attacks_attributed_to_the_LTTE

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