Category Archives: life stories

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Groundviews, where the title differs and where readers will find critical comments

 A scene showing displaced Tamils in makeshift encampments in late 2008(?) or early 2009 as they faced multiple displacements in step with LTTE demands

Summarising previous essays (see bibliography below) this article proceeds in point-form with an eye on greater impact via succinctness.

A. During the last phase of Eelam War IV in 2008/09 the LTTE attempted an international heist that is unprecedented in world history:[1] they used some 320,000 of their own people to manufacture a picture of an “impending humanitarian disaster” so that concerned international forces would intervene and impose a ceasefire or effect a rescue operation. These entrapped Tamil people were not only so many sandbags and a source of labour and/or conscripts. Their primary purpose was to constitute a spectre of impending horror. A2 – Thus, the LTTE political commissar Puleedevan told some friends in Europe “just as in Kosovo if enough civilians died … the world would be forced to step in” (quoted in Harrison 2012: 63) — a line of policy confirmed subsequently by KP, the head of the Tiger international arm, during a frank interview with the redoubtable Tamil journalist in Canada, Jeyaraj: “[we] had to magnify the humanitarian crisis,” (Jeyaraj, “KP” speaks out, 2011: 25, 30). A3 — This spectre was disseminated by (a) LTTE satellite technology at their HQ, and by TamilNet and the extensive Tiger networks abroad; and A4 — was fed by the reports of the Tamil medical men within the battle theatre acting as patriots[2]or under duress.

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