Chennai: The war for Eelam is not over, LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran is not dead and will emerge from hiding at the right time, MDMK chief Vaiko said at a public meeting on Wednesday observing the second anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre.
Vaiko was at his furious best through his 80-minute speech. He read excerpts from the UN report on war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan army during Eelam War IV dramatic effect. He demanded that the Centre push for the trial of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ‘bunch’ on the basis of the report.
Vaiko said the Centre had been reluctant to step up pressure to bring Rajapakse to the stand as it was complicit in the war. “I have just said all of this for our friends from the IB who have turned up at this meeting to see if I am saying anything against a party that has been dealt a deadly blow by the Tamil people in the recent election,” he added.
He explained the sequence of events leading up to the Massacre, where, he said, Lankan forces had herded 3.3 lakh Tamils into a designated ‘no fire zone’ and then attacked them.
He told the crowd about 2,500 Tamil children whose limbs had been ripped off in explosions, whose stomachs had been torn open by shrapnel from the Lankan army’s shelling. He spoke of gang rapes carried out by the Lankan army against Tamil women and of the Lankan army deliberately targeting hospitals in Tamil-dominated areas. Vaiko repeatedly said that he was only reading from the UN report.
Vaiko attacked DMK chief M Karunanidhi for trading the Tamil cause for ‘tidbits’ thrown by the ‘mafia mind’ of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. “He kept quiet after being given ministries for his family. Where is the fire with which he opposed Delhi’s authoritarianism? I must not say too much, he is already hurt from the tremendous loss in the election,” he said.
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