News: LTTE

Earlier this year, Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, was convicted of conspiracy and securities fraud in one of the biggest insider-trading cases in the history of Wall Street. But there was another reason the federal government was interested in Rajaratnam—his alleged financial support for Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka, whose cause is spearheaded by the ferocious Tamil Tiger terrorists. Vanity Fair’ s David Rose gets the untold story from a Tamil Tiger turned F.B.I. informant.

Relatives and charity say Viswalingam Gopithas has suffered a stroke and is being held without charge under terror legislation

Indeed, the Government’s inadequate response to the problem of accountability for war atrocities does not bode well for the future of Sri Lanka. It lays the ground for suspicion, fueling calls for international action, which are then used by those in power to justify their repression of domestic critics—actions that only indicate growing authoritarianism and raise further questions. Evasions of accountability thus serve to undermine local efforts at post-war rebuilding and reconciliation, and in fact leave the back door open for those who would make an example of the state’s failures. These efforts toward truth and justice—and not the whitewash of an international propaganda battle–are the real challenges for a democratic Sri Lanka, as it strives for everyday and political reconciliation, and the prosperity of its citizens in the years to come. After watching the Channel 4 film, many of us asked: What will the Government do now? If these scattered, frenzied “responses” are the answer, don’t the people of Sri Lanka—and in particular, the war-battered people in this film – deserve better?

NOTEBOOK OF A NOBODY<br /> by Shanie A group of people who shared the vision and thinking of Thiranagama and the UTHR formed the Rajani Thiranagama Memorial Committee to remember the twentieth anniversary of Thiranagama’s assassination. The Committee continues to function and has taken the initiative in publishing, in collaboration with Vijitha Yapa Publications, the diaries of Ben Bavinck, a Dutch church worker, who was both a teacher of Thiranagama and a close friend of the founders and leaders of the UTHR. The diaries are published under the title ‘Of Tamils and Tigers - a journey through Sri Lanka’s war years’. The book was launched in London recently and the quotation at the head of this column is from the Introduction to the Diaries written by the Rajani Thiranagama Memorial Committee. Whereas the UTHR bulletins were based on investigative reporting by the authors, Bavinck’s dairies are personal reflections by the author during the period covered which is from 1988-1994. (A second volume covering the years 1994-2004 is under preparation.) The bulletins and the diaries therefore complement each other in providing the only accurate and independent recording of the events of that period in our country’s troubled past.