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TAMIL NADU AND KARUNANIDHI POSE A GRAVE THREAT TO SRI LANKA’S PEACEFUL EXISTENCE.A.A.M.NIZAM MATARA.Election of Karunanidhi as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadhu last year has given a vigorous impetus to the Sri Lankan terrorists of Tamil racism despite facing a severe beating and near annihilation in the hands of the invigorated gallant Sri Lankan soldiers. Although Karunanidhi, immediately after his election, did not come out openly in favour of the LTTE terrorists and signalled a cautious approach, subsequent incidents that took place in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadhu, following the retaliatory military operations, demonstrate that there had been a meticulous and secret agenda drawn up between the LTTE and Karunanidhi’s DMK to strengthen and popularise the LTTE in Tamil Nadu and turn out Tamil Nadu as a safe haven and the main supply route for arms and material to the embattled terrorists. Karunanidhi’s Tamil racist party DMK, tactfully avoided reference to Sri Lanka and the LTTE terrorists in its Election Manifesto as the outfit was detested by the Tamil Nadu population after it murdered the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. However, as a ploy to win over the large fishing community in the Rameswaram and adjacent areas the Manifesto claimed that steps will be taken to prevent the frequent arrests, abductions and killing of Tamil fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy. Fishing is an important export industry to the Indian State of Tamil Nadu which has a coastline of 1076 kilometres inhabited by fisher folk. This area covers 13 districts and 591 fishing villages with a population amounting to over 700,000 persons. They possess several thousand trawlers, mechanised boats, fibreglass vessels, country boats and vallams and these vessels use the sea proximate to Sri Lanka’s North, North West and North East areas for their fishing activities. Among these fisherfolk there are organised smugglers with traditional bonds with the smugglers of Velvettiturai who were involved in diverse smuggling activities between the two countries since time immemorial. LTTE’s sea tiger outfit is a modernised arm of these smugglers and it was utilising this outfit the LTTE-DMK nexus launched its long term and meticulous plan of espousing hatred against Sri Lanka and gradually build up the lost ground for the terrorist outfit. The powerful media arm of the DMK belonging to the family of Karunanidhi’s nephew Maran, consisting the highly popular SUNTV channel, daily and weekly newspapers as well as weekly magazines help tremendously in this anti-Sri Lankan and pro-LTTE propaganda drive. Signs of LTTE-DMK collaboration surfaced immediately after Prabhakaran’s last November speech, in which he claimed that only a separate Tamil Eelam could bring an end to the ethnic strife in the island. Commenting to mediamen on this speech Karunanidhi said he would be happy if the problems of Sri Lankan Tamils were solved through the formation of a separate state-Tamil Eelam (Tamil homeland),and pointed out that the ‘DMK had been saying this for a long time’. It is pertinent to remind here that when the terrorist outfit attempted to capture Jaffna in the year 2000, Karunanidhi travelled to Delhi, to prevent India providing any assistance to the Sri Lankan forces, urged India to demand and offer help to evacuate the 40,000 Sri Lankan troops from Jaffna, and claimed that the only viable solution to the Sri Lankan problem was to divide the country on the same basis as it was done for Czechoslovakia dividing the country as two separate countries, Czech and Slovakian Republics. Also in 1983, Karunanidhi and Anbazhagan (the present Education Minister in Tamil Nadhu Assembly) resigned their seats in the State Assembly and called for creation of a separate State of Tamil Eelam emphasizing that a solution cannot be found through mediation The initial step of the DMK-LTTE joint collaboration was embarked through a well orchestrated refugee landing in the Tamil Nadu coastal areas. With the terrorist outfit getting a severe onslaught from the Sri Lankan forces some families, claimed to have arrived as refugees from Sri Lanka, were interviewed by the pro-DMK media and the SUNTV gave wide publicity to them where the ladies woefully narrated that they were forced to leave Sri Lanka due to the Sinhala army torturing Tamils and raping Tamil women. Such video clips in SUN TV happened to be shown almost daily for some time. The choice of words and phrases used by the SUN TV was highly derogatory and the image pungently projected was that Tamils (not the terrorists) were being mercilessly persecuted, bombed and murdered by the Sri Lankan forces in the Tamil areas. They claim that since January 2006 about 18,600 Tamil refugees have arrived at Rameswaram. Although there could be some genuine refugees, there is ample reason to believe that most of them were stage-managed refugees sent as a part of anti-Sri Lanka propaganda stunt, as there were no such parallel or even a lesser exodus towards South.At the same time in the East, contrary to what they projected, Tamil civilians travelled long distances of rough and jungle terrain to seek refuge in government controlled areas. A pregnant woman who had travelled 48 km to seek refuge in the government controlled area, as reported in many newspapers, was one such example. Similar to misleading reports about the so-called refugee arrivals, Karunanidhi and the Tamil Nadu, pro-DMK media made a huge uproar over the air-raid on Sencholai training camp where 61of the hundreds of young captive girls undergoing military training got killed. Exploiting this incident to its utmost to raise a sympathy drive towards the terrorist outfit, Karunandhi hurriedly called for a meeting of the Tamil Nadu State Assembly and passed a condolence resolution and a resolution condemning the Sri Lankan government alleging that 61 innocent school girls, the blossoms of the Tamil race, were killed. Even today many in the Tamil Nadu erroneously believe that the victims of this incident were innocent students. The other area of collaboration was helping the terrorists to get their military supplies from various parts of India smuggled through the Tamil Nadu fishing boats and tranship them to tiger vessels. Despite Indian Navy’s discovery that material required for bomb manufacturing, sophisticated electronic equipment, medicines, guns, pistols, fuel, arms and ammunition are being smuggled from Tamil Nadu, and even after confiscating such items by the Q Branch of the Indian Police, Karunanidhi’s government has failed to prevent or deter such smuggling activities. Tamil Guardian of 10th January 2007, the international weekly of the terrorists published from London extolled Karunanidhi for making an important milestone in the Indian-LTTE relations. Referring to the meeting of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the proxy MPs of the terrorists arranged by Karunanidhi, it praised Karunanidhi for arranging this meeting breaking the 15 years of LTTE boycott maintained by the Indian government. It said that though issues of mutual concern were discussed, the symbolism of the meeting mattered more than the substance. The other challenging issue that still persists is the allegation being made by Karunanidhi and his cohorts that Sri Lankan Navy is indiscriminately murdering Indian fishermen. On 29th March there was an incident of shooting in the sea and in which 5 Indian fishermen got killed. Karunanidhi and his spin gang twisted the incident to create a huge anti Sri Lankan uproar in Tamil Nadu to coincide with President Rajapakse’s visit to attend the SAARC Summit. Although investigations by the Indian CID confirmed later that this shooting of fishermen were carried out by the Tiger terrorists, DMK State Ministers led by Karunanidhi’s son Stalin and several others staged a huge procession condemning Sri Lanka and all business establishments in the coastal districts were closed on 3rd April and the fishermen staged a two days hartal. In another incident Indian CID arrested 6 sea tigers on April 11th while their boat in an arms smuggling mission drifted to the Indian waters. DMK media including Karunanidhi’s nephew Maran’s popular daily Thinakaran deliberately claimed the arrested persons were Sinhala fishermen who violated Indian territorial waters. Indian Defence Minister too, misled by Karunanidhi, joined the chorus and blamed Sri Lankan Navy of involvement in killing Indian fishermen. At the same time there was another incident in which 12 Indian fishermen along with a 25 meter vessel were missing. This too was blamed on the Sri Lankan Navy. 11 of the missing fishermen have now returned to Tamil Nadu, and the other person is in Maldivian custody. The missing vessel while smuggling arms from a mid sea ship has been sunk by Maldivians. The 11 fishermen returned to Tamil Nadu claim that they were abducted by the tiger terrorists and they were kept in jungle hideouts in Sri Lanka. It is reported that their release by the terrorist outfit was negotiated by Karunanidhi and what Tamil Nadu has agreed to give in return remains a mystery. As revelations about their ordeal could cause damage to LTTE-DMK secret arrangements these returnees are not allowed make any comments except one authorized person. Karunanidhi gained maximum publicity out of this incident by allowing them to meet him personally and offering each of them cash rewards. |
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