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Teaching dissidence to LTTE

After four agonising years, the Sri Lankan peace process has boiled down to a single issue that has nothing to do with the rights of Tamils. It is the survival of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which has centre-staged the bizarre demand that the Sri Lankan Government should guarantee its welfare by disarming Karuna, the breakaway LTTE leader. Immediately after the March 2004 rebellion, the LTTE declared it to be an "internal matter," which it would resolve on its own. Facilitator Norway, the ceasefire monitors, and the Sri Lankan Government all stood by, as the Vanni leadership launched a mini-war against the Karuna faction in eastern Sri Lanka. Unable to quell the revolt, V. Prabakaran's organisation has since changed tack — and made the "internal matter" the responsibility of the Government. This was the burden of the Tiger song at the Geneva talks in February, the first time the former combatants met after 2003. The issue could determine whether the next round of talks, scheduled for April 19, will be held at all. That Norway and the international ceasefire monitors parrot the LTTE's demand on this issue is deplorable. For a start, such a stance insinuates that the Sri Lankan Government maintains and supports the Karuna faction. The outgoing head of the ceasefire monitors, Hagrup Haukland, has conceded in a recent interview to a Sri Lankan newspaper that there is no evidence to back such an assumption. The ceasefire monitors need to be reminded that the `absence of evidence' is the ostensible reason for their reluctance to hold the LTTE responsible for outrageous ceasefire violations, notably the killings of political opponents as well as Sri Lankan soldiers and sailors.

When the ceasefire was signed in February 2002, the clause obliging the Government to disarm "paramilitaries" referred exclusively — and one-sidedly — to members of Tamil political parties opposed to the LTTE who carried weapons for their own protection against a killer organisation. The Government disarmed them by the stipulated deadline. The Karuna revolt was a later development, an outcome of the LTTE leadership's internal contradictions. The charge that the Government is in violation of the ceasefire by not disarming Karuna is completely over the top. In any case, why should the Government help a terrorist group set its house in order? The LTTE is determined to carve up Sri Lanka to form a separate Eelam; and there is no basis for its claim of being the `sole representative' of Sri Lankan Tamils. Karuna's existence and flourishing mock the LTTE case for dividing the country. It helps, however inadequately, the case of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils who do not accept either the LTTE's secessionist programme and murderous ways or its hegemonic claim. There is no reason for the Sri Lankan Government to be apologetic about Karuna. It is time the LTTE learnt that dissidence is an integral and inescapable part of democratic politics.

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