Tamil Tigers cannot be crushed says MP

By M.R. Narayan Swamy

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas can never be vanquished militarily, a Tamil MP has said, calling for an Indian role to bring peace to the island nation.

M.K. Shivaji Lingam of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) also said that the escalating violence in the war-hit country was only adding to the unending human misery, principally among the Tamil community.

"It is impossible to crush or destroy the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) militarily," Shivaji Lingam told IANS, a day after he took part in a demonstration urging India to stop its military backing to Sri Lanka.

The LTTE campaign for a Tamil homeland, he said, "has become a people's struggle. Even ordinary villagers are now armed. They volunteer for duty round the clock to check the military's deep penetration units in LTTE areas."

Shivaji Lingam, a member of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the biggest Tamil grouping in the Sri Lankan parliament, said he expected the war now raging in the country to continue.

"The LTTE will never give up," he said. "Even if the military takes over LTTE areas, the Tigers will fight on. But it won't be easy for the government to do that anyway.

"The government had wanted to crush the LTTE about 10 years ago. What could not be achieved 10 years ago cannot be achieved today. Today, the LTTE is more powerful militarily," he added.

Shivaji Lingam, however, admitted that the Tigers had suffered serious reverses in the country's east, where the guerrillas have been driven out of their strongholds, and that Colombo was strong too - militarily.

Shivaji Lingam, who comes from the same region in Jaffna that is home to LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, was once opposed to the Tigers. Over the years, he, like many others in Sri Lanka, has come to see the Tigers as the true representative of the Tamil minority.

Shivaji Lingam said the Tamils had no faith in the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The Tamils, he said, could not understand why India was silent over the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka.

"India should get involved and bring about a political solution," he argued. "If it cannot do that, it should recognise the Tamil liberation struggle."

Source: southasianpost.com