CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

The Live Chelvan, the Dead Chelvan & the Peace Dove-A tiger begetting a rabbit

Sisira Pereira

The Sri Lankan defense forces recorded practically its highest achievement in bumping off the killer machine turned masquerading negotiator of the LTTE, Tamil Chelvan, with the first rays of the sun on the 2nd, November 2007.

Sri Lankan citizenry, who had been plagued for decades by the brutality of the LTTE, and praying endlessly for such an eventuality, sighed in relief to hear the news. No wonder that many did not try to hide their jubilation.

The LTTE is sure to have been taken by surprise that the SLAF, which they triumphantly claimed that the Black Tigers reduced to ashes at Anuradhapura, sneaked up into their backyard and buried beneath the rubble their faithful lying machine Chelvan, along with a few other terrorists, in a span of merely 12 days after the LTTE’s publicity stunt at the Anuradhapura Air Base. The gallant fighter pilots of the SLAF produced a historical achievement in the fight against the LTTE and reduced the crawling morale of the limping LTTE to smithereens with the decapitation attack on one of the leading terrorists who held the trump card within the LTTE as being the “smiling public face” of an otherwise stinking terrorist out fit.

Now Tamil Chelvan, the terrorist, is dead. But the pro-LTTE forces are very much alive and busy!

Chelvan, who walked among the alive a few days ago, was just a name-sake negotiator appointed by the LTTE terrorist organization to cover up their brutal campaign of terror to hoodwink the international community. He had been given the dual task of commanding the terrorist activities and defending and whitewashing the terrorist outfit at the same time. Dubbed as the political negotiator for the LTTE, he enjoyed meeting with foreign delegates and representatives in his official capacity as the political head of the LTTE and portraying to the world a false picture about the so-called Tamil plight and defending their terrorist tactics as a legitimate freedom fight. The foreign press and the anti-Sri Lankan diplomats and representatives of various organizations seemed to have taken a great liking to listening to his stone lies and believing him and finally posing for souvenir photographs with Chelvan, shaking hands and smiling his infamous smile.

Anybody can fake a smile and anybody can be easy-going when it suits the cause, but the bottom-line is that Chelvan was merely a ruthless a terrorist as his leader, Velupillai Prabakaran.

Now that his killing has come as a shock to Prabakaran as well as many terrorist lovers both in the country and all over the world, it seems that the sinister efforts to portray him as a larger-than-life, peace loving character of the LTTE, are being carried out by the pro-LTTE media and organizations. Prabakaran too has decided to play along, it seems.

Having read the news articles published within these few days about Chelvan’s death and having seen the degree to which the international media have become to “adore” this terrorist leader, depicting him as a smiling, congenial, peace loving character within the LTTE, it gives us the chance to ponder how effective the LTTE has been, as a terrorist organization, in whitewashing all its terrorist activities they have committed for over two decades, hiding behind a disguised smile of a very shrewd terrorist.

No matter how deadly a terrorist organization the LTTE really is, no matter how barbaric the acts they have committed are, no matter how many politicians, diplomats and civilians the LTTE has killed, Chelvan simply had to come forward with his broad smile and shake hand with the crowd and conveniently defend his organization.

The media seemed to have simply loved him.

Judging by the rapport that Chelvan seems to have systematically built with various fronts locally and internationally, the GOSL can consider that half of the LTTE have been buried six feet under with Chelvan among the killed. His masquerading charming demeanor was as damaging as his organization’s guns and bombs to the country.

Now the LTTE has been reduced to the level of the number one terrorist organization in the world, with Prabakaran, the notorious terrorist, as the leader, but sans smiling whitewasher Chelvan. And that is the fundamental victory of this targeted killing.

Having clearly understood the distance Chelvan has projected the LTTE in the eyes of the world with his masquerading smile and good-naturedness, the pro-LTTE factions are carving a statue of a “Gandhi” like character out the dead terrorist. Reading the articles written by the international and some national media, and hearing some comments made by a few politicians in Sri Lanka and abroad about Chelvan’s death, one may even begin to believe if actually he were alive, the decade long conflict would have ended in a week or two peace being made. The media reports’ dead Chelvan seems to have been as peace loving as Gandhi had been.

In fact, pathetically contradicting himself and the pro-LTTE media in his statement, Prabakaran has himself called Chelvan, their “Peace Dove”.

Yet Prabakaran has acknowledged in his statement that he personally groomed Chelvan and taught him. Within the LTTE, any move towards achieving genuine peace has to be decided by Prabakaran himself and nobody else. He had objected to all peace building efforts throughout the history of the conflict and simply focused on prolonging the war to create the Eelam. If anybody of the LTTE can be the peace dove, it has to be Prabakaran himself. Nobody else can become the peace dove without him giving up his dream of creating a mono-ethnic enclave in Sri Lanka through violence. And the world knows that he will never opt for peace unless his pond of flesh is not given.

However, now Prabakaran laments in his statement about his dead peace dove. So do most media and pro-LTTE factions. For them, the LTTE would not come for talks any more as the GOSL has killed the LTTE’s peace dove.

If Prabakaran groomed Tamil Chelvan and taught him himself, what could Chelvan learn from Prabakaran, the world’s most sophisticated and brutal terrorist leader, other than how to kill and destroy the innocent and how to hold the country at ransom for his own personal goals???

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