YOUNGSTERS WERE CRYING AND SCREAMING!!! BUT WE WERE HELPLESS!!!

Ranjitha Gunasekaran First Published : 03 May 2009 03:03:00 AM IST Last Updated : 03 May 2009 08:42:36 AM ISTCOLOMBO: “I told those LTTE boys that one day I would tell the world what they were doing,” Manjula (name changed) a distraught Tamil woman in her 50s told The New Indian Express. Having escaped from the No-Fire Zone last Thursday, she witnessed the LTTE’s capture of some 600 teenagers who were hiding in a Vailagnarmadam church last month.


“People had gathered there to hide from the army shelling, and also from the Tigers who were trying to recruit youngsters. But one day the Tigers arrived in 12 vehicles, firing their guns in the air, and forcibly took away around 600 girls and boys who had been hiding in the church. They were screaming and crying, but we were helpless,” she said.

“I have lived in both Jaffna and the Wanni. The Tigers have never behaved like this. But in the past few months they have beaten people and fired at them even as they were escaping,” she said. “Imagine the pain of mothers who have given their children up to the Tigers in recent times.”

However, Manjula says she saw some of the captured teenagers again. “When people moved towards army-controlled areas after April 19, I saw several of those youngsters. The Tigers weren’t able to control so many of them, so several slipped away, the boys tonsured, the girls covering their heads to hide their chopped locks. They merged with the masses escaping the NFZ,” she said.

Several Tamils still admire the LTTE. “Prabhakaran is the only man who stood up for us. Only he is willing to lay down his life for this cause,” an elderly Tamil said.

There is praise for the Tigers’ administrative and fighting skills. “They had everything when they were running the northern areas of Sri Lanka — schools, hospitals, post offices, even a Meteorological department!” one Tamil from Jaffna exclaimed.

He added that the Sri Lankan government had even taken a page from the LTTE’s book by “naming streets after soldiers, caring for the soldiers’ families, and even using the Tigers’ military tactics.”
Several Tamils also defend the LTTE’s raison d’etre. Killing rival Tamil leaders, assassinating politicians and telling Tamils to boycott the presidential elections are mistakes made by the LTTE, but “they didn’t start out this way,” is a common refrain.

Even Manjula, who witnessed the Tigers’ worst during four months in the NFZ, said there were also acts of kindness towards civilians trapped in the NFZ. “The food ship hadn’t come in for one month and people had nothing to eat. The Tigers prepared ragi kanji (porridge) for us,” she said.

“Every day you saw queues for the ‘kanji’. They also gave families passes to leave by the Red Cross ship even if only one member was injured.” “And you know what? They will never catch Prabhakaran,” she says, an element of pride peeking out from beneath her anger at the LTTE chief.
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