The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 8 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part8.

htm

The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon

Part 8

Sachi Sri Kantha

[27 June 2001]

Pirabhakaran as a cash-cow
To the readers, I wish to differentiate my position from that of other
Pirabhakaran commentators. I categorically state that, unlike some
of the other commentators and journalists, I have not met
Pirabhakaran in person even once. When an opportunity arrives I
will be glad to accept it. So, my analysis of his or LTTE’s actions
may be far from perfect. But, unlike other analysts who have
written about Pirabhakaran, two inter-twined links (being an Eelam
Tamil and being born merely 18 months ahead of him) give me an
inside track of comprehending what he is trying to achieve and why
he marches to his own drumbeat, rather than being an old-line
Tamil politician. Majority of the expert analysts who earn their
bread and butter by writing about Pirabhakaran, whether they be
Indian or other foreign journalists or Sri Lankan (Sinhalese)
commentators belonging to various party colors, do not possess this
sense of identity with Pirabhakaran - one may call it, an ethnic
bond of same-age cohort - like me.

There’s another difference between me and most of the other

Pirabhakaran commentators. I have not earned a penny from my
writings on Eelam politics, which began in 1974 during my
undergraduate days at the University of Colombo. I earn my living
as a professional scientist and science author.

For majority of Pirabhakaran commentators, he is a cash-cow. One

wonders how much the likes of N.Ram, Rohan Gunaratna, Dayan
Jayatilleka and even the Broken Palmyra scribes cash in per annum
by their continuous stream of anti-Pirabhakaran literature. For
instance, take a glance at the Frontline magazine edited by N.Ram.
He cannot continuously publish articles, interviews and
commentaries on other Tamil ministers (Lakshman Kadirgamar,
Douglas Devananda and Arumugam Thondaman) who are posturing
as leaders in Sri Lanka. Kadirgamar was a non-entity before 1994

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and will be again in the not-so distant future. But Pirabhakaran has
remained a good copy for Ram for the past 15 years. This aspect
should also be taken into account in the Pirabhakaran
Phenomenon. He generates good cash flow, even for his critics.

Perfecting the Jimmy Malone offense

From what I can observe, Pirabhakaran has practised what I call a
‘Jimmy Malone offense’. This deserved some degree of special
courage. Jimmy Malone was the veteran Chicago cop character
played by Sean Connery in the Al Capone bio-picture ‘The
Untouchables’. Malone, in his professional wisdom, gives an advice
to the young Eliot Ness about tackling the American icon of crime,
as follows:
“You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him. He
pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the
hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the
Chicago way.”

Delivered by Connery in his inimitable, riveting voice, that piece of

advice would be a manthra for any budding military leader like
Pirabhakaran. Some of Pirabhakaran’s successes in creating panic in
the adversary’s camp can be attributed to perfecting this Jimmy
Malone offense.

First vivid example of this Jimmy Malone offense was demonstrated

by Pirabhakaran in May 1985 at Anuradhapura. This is pertinent
because by the beginning of 1983, democratic Sri Lanka has been
turned into a personal fiefdom of an aged politician J.R.
Jayewardene, who was more or less the Colombo’s political version
of Chicago’s Al Capone in the late 1920s. Jayewardene pouted
democracy but practised all kinds of political thuggery, not only on
Tamils but also on his Sinhalese opponents, who included the
mother and husband of President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
Pirabhakaran has acknowledged his debt to the movie characters
generated by Clint Eastwood; but one cannot doubt that Sean
Connery’s movie roles, as an action-hero of the 1960s, would also
have been a strong influence on Pirabhakaran.

A re-appraisal of the Anuradhapura Massacre of May 1985

Dayan Jayatilleka, in his recent vitriolic commentary about LTTE’s
25th birth anniversary has noted,
“May 1985 is when the struggle for Tamil national liberation
lost its innocence and heralded the end of its ‘heroic’ phase
with the first large scale massacre of Sinhala civilians in the

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savage incursion into the sacred space of Anuradhapura...”

[Island, Colombo, May 6, 2001]

This is vintage Jayatilleka with his blinkers. He has described the

‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where’ components of the LTTE action, but
conveniently hidden the ‘why’ component. When it suits him, he
would cite the authors of the Broken Palmyra book. But when it
reveals something, he will ignore it outrightly. For this
Anuradhapura confrontation, Rajan Hoole et al. has provided the
background - noting briefly the ‘why’ component. According to
them,
“In reprisal for the killing by the Sri Lankan forces of 70
civilians in Valvettithurai and the damage to the homes of
Prabhakaran and several other LTTE leaders, the LTTE on 14
May 1985 conducted what came to be known as the
Anuradhapura massacre. A few LTTE men drove into
Anuradhapura and gunned down about 150 persons with
ruthless efficiency and got away.” [The Broken Palmyra,
pp.80-81]

Another vignette of truth, which was not highlighted by the authors

of the Broken Palmyra, was provided by the Time magazine, in its
analysis on the questionable deals carried out by the Indian
Intelligence-wallahs in mid-1980s. Excerpts:
“...By late 1984, hundreds of trained [Tamil] fighters were
back in Sri Lanka, where they mounted acts of sabotage
against government facilities. When attacks on military targets
failed to make Jayewardene budge, RAW encouraged killings
of Sinhalese civilians to put more pressure on Colombo. Says
Uma Maheswaran, leader of the People’s Liberation
Organization of Tamil Eelam: ‘A RAW officer asked us to
throw a grenade into a Sinhalese cinema or put a bomb in a
bus or market in a Sinhalese town. Only we and the Eelam
People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front refused.’ Agrees an
Eelam People’s leader: ‘The RAW agents offered us money to
massacre Sinhalese. But we refused.’ The Tigers [referring to
LTTE], by contrast, were cooperative. In May 1985 two
busloads of Tigers drove into the ancient Sinhalese capital of
Anuradhapura and, in the town’s main bus station, opened fire
with automatic weapons, slaughtering 143 civilians there and
elsewhere. According to one of the participants in the killing
spree, Tiger leader Vilupillai Prabhakaran was in radio contact
with RAW agents during and after the massacre....”[Time
magazine-Asian edition, April 3, 1989, pp.12-13]

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Kindly note that even the Time magazine’s analysis failed to

mention the ‘why’ component in Pirabhakaran’s decision to carry
out the 1985 attack in Anuradhapura, which happened only after
his native town was damaged with the killing of 70 Tamil civilians
by the Sri Lankan army and when his home was also damaged.
Another notable fact in this Time magazine’s report which
appeared as a box-story with the caption, “Sri Lanka: Case Study of
a Disaster”, was the open accusation of RAW by Uma Maheswaran
for ‘encouraging the killings of Sinhalese civilians to put more
pressure on Colombo.’ At that time, Rajiv Gandhi was the prime
minister of India who would have been kept regularly informed by
the tactics adopted by the RAW. That after four months of this
open accusation of RAW, Uma Maheswaran was bumped off in
Colombo by the agents of RAW is disturbing indeed [see also, The
Pirabhakaran Phenomenon - part 1].

Among the contemporaries of Pirabhakaran, who challenged him

for the Eelam leadership, I personally knew only Uma Maheswaran
in the mid-1970s, mainly because he was based in Colombo around
that time. Then he was full of ideology and brimming with vision
for Eelam. Being a surveyor by professional training, in one of the
group discussions I attended in Wellawatte (around the 1977
general election period), which I remember even now, he proposed
building a coastal railway-track from Point Pedro to Pottuvil. For
sure, I would attest that he had dreams in mid-1970s. But he
couldn’t formulate proper plans to realize his dreams. He got
confused and flouted the Edison’s formula for success - hard work,
common sense and ‘stick-to-it-iveness’ - to transform himself into a
Tamil politician in mid 1980s. That he later turned out to be failure
could be attributed to many factors - the distractions caused by the
lure of ‘fleeting’ power (being in proximity with Indian and
Sinhalese politicians and the ephemeral doodads of photo
opportunities) and vanity, being the main contributing elements.

Why I mention this is that, an in-depth comparison on the careers

of Uma Maheswaran and Pirabhakaran could illustrate why one
succeeded and the other failed miserably, though both were
partners at one time frame of the Eelam campaign. Every human
aims to achieve some power. Pirabhakaran was no exception. But
for that power to be stable [the word is stable, and not permanent!],
one has to earn it the old fashioned way. In politics, business and
military circles, those who were anointed with power by crooked
means or short-circuit routes have seen their power-base
evaporating quicker than they could scream ‘Geronimo’. Varadaraja

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Perumal is a good example in the past, and Kadirgamar will be a

good example for the future.

The Time magazine feature also reported that in 1985 “the

[Anuradhapura] killings prompted the Colombo government to
agree for the first time to negotiate with the guerillas. The talks
collapsed, but the new Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi,
seemed reluctant to allow RAW to escalate the level of fighting.
Later, when India stepped up its support of TELO, the Tigers
showed their displeasure at New Delhi’s favoritism by attacking
TELO camps and murdering some 150 of its members, thereby
neutralizing RAW’s favorite Tamil clients. RAW agents were
apoplectic, but realized that they would have to work with the
Tigers as the dominant Tamil force....”[ibid]

Simply put, Pirabhakaran’s intelligence was superior in quality to

that of the RAW’s intelligence. The Indian mandarins and
politicians found it difficult to gulp this fact. The type of retaliatory
attacks perfected by LTTE, the Jimmy Malone offense, have been a
trade mark for the no-nonsense image of Israeli armed forces led by
skilled warriors Moshe Dayan and Yitshak Rabin. Even before
Israel was born, President Roosevelt’s army avenged the 1941
Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor by eliminating Admiral Isoroku
Yamamoto, using a Jimmy Malone manoeuver.

One can argue whether what Pirabhakaran did was ethically correct
or not, but for the first time in the recent Tamil history of the
island, he stood up to the aggression against Eelam Tamils, with a
signature-act which scared the pants out of his adversaries. Until
that moment, Tamils have been passive victims of state-supported
aggression for decades. That ‘hunted goat’ image would have
pleased the racist Sinhalese politicians and the half-baked Marxists
like Dayan Jayatilleka who profess a facile love for Tamil rights.
Pirabhakaran showed to the Sri Lankan army and its
then top-handler Jayewardene, who more or less had begun to
behave like an aging Al Capone since 1983, that he had arrived and
that he is a real thing that Tamils and Sinhalese have never seen.
Rohan Gunaratna had stated in his book, Indian Intervention in
Sri Lanka (1993) that Pirabhakaran, while staying in Tamil Nadu,
chose Victor Oscar alias Marcelline Fuseless, the then LTTE
Mannar commander for leading the Anuradhapura operation.
Victor was subsequently killed in the battlefront in Adampan in
October 1986.

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Commager on State Terrorism

To place in context, I’m of the opinion that Pirabhakaran’s Jimmy
Malone offense in Anuradhapura was an answer to the state
terrorism. A month following the Anuradhapura operation, a short
essay on state terrorism appeared in the New York Times of June
27, 1985. This was authored by the reputed American historian
Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998). It is reproduced below in its
entirety since it deserves notice in relation to the issue of the
proscription of LTTE by the USA, which came into effect in 1997. I
will touch on the LTTE proscription by the USA in a later section.
First to Commager’s short essay.

Nations aren’t Innocent

‘Nothing can justify the terrorism practised by the Shiites, the
Iranians, the Palestinians and other desperate groups who
wage war on innocent victims. But then what can justify
terrorism as introduced and practised by most of the great
powers whenever it served their ends over the past century or
so?
For what is terrorism but resort to deadly violence against
random and innocent victims, and shattering the fabric of
society with dynamite and fire! What is most sobering is that
all the Old World nations practised intermittent terrorism
throughout the 19th century: the British in India, the Belgians
in Congo, the Russians and Poles against their own Jews, the
Turks against Armenians.
Americans, too, must confess their own history of terrorism
against those they feared or hated or regarded as ‘lesser
breeds’. Thus, the extermination of the Pequot Indians as early
as 1637; the Sand Creek massacre of some 500 Cheyenne
women and children in 1864 - and this after the tribe
had surrendered; the lurid atrocities against Filipinos
struggling for independence at the beginning of this century;
Lieut. William L. Calley’s massacre of 450 Vietnamese
women, children and old men at Mylai in 1969.
The formal rationalization - we might almost say legitimization
- of terrorism came with World War II when all the major
participants abandoned ‘precision’ bombing, directed against
the military, for saturation bombing directed against civilians.
It was a policy that eventually took the lives of millions of
women and children in London, Coventry, Hamburg, Berlin,
Dresden, Warsaw, Moscow, Tokyo and scores of other ’open

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cities’. The climax of all this was the Holocaust in Germany

and, in 1945, the fateful use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
By the Vietnam War, terrorism was so taken for granted that it
almost ceased to excite comment. The Vietnamese practised it
in the traditional form of jungle warfare. Americans practised
it more systematically by pouring seven million tons of bombs
on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (with none of which we were
technically at war) - three times the tonnage on Germany and
Japan during World War II.’ [New York Times, June 27, 1985]

Commager wrote this in 1985, and he was an acclaimed historian.

I’m perfectly convinced that this essay of Commager wouldn’t have
been in the study notes of Minister Ranjan Wijeratne, who bragged
about his skills as a terror-buster for a little more than two years,
from January 1989 to February 1991.

A re-appraisal of Rnjan Wijeratne’s assassination

(March 1991)
Quite a number of anti-Eelam websites maintained by the front
organizations of the Sri Lankan and Indian Intelligence agencies
(see for instance, the South Asia Terrorism Portal) include the
assassination of Minister Ranjan Wijeratne as an LTTE operation. I
feel that contradictory views to this opinion also deserve exposure
for clarifying an issue, which has not been investigated in depth.

I present four opinions on the assassination of Minister Wijeratne -

two by Sinhalese (Rohan Gunaratna and Mervyn de Silva), one by
an Indian journalist and one by the devotees of Madhu Church.

(1) View of Rohan Gunaratna (an analyst linked to the Sri

Lankan Intelligence arm)
As one would expect, Gunaratna implicated the LTTE in the
untimely death of Wijeratne. Here is his description:
“On March 2 [1991], Sri Lanka’s most powerful and most
heavily guarded Minister of State for Defence Ranjan
Wijeratne was killed by a car bomb which was detonated right
in Colombo. Commenting on LTTE transmissions monitored
by Sri Lankan security forces, a security official revealed: ‘An
apparently elated LTTE voice was clearly heard over the
intercepted broadcast as saying the LTTE had more than
acomplished its purpose by leaving the scene of the bomb
explosion without any clues’. The LTTE London office denied

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the killing of Wijeratne but said his death would be a ‘relief’

to the Tamil minority. Sathasivam Krishnaswamy alias Kittu,
who heads that office said: ‘The LTTE acknowledges that he
[Wijeratne] symbolized the Sri Lankan racist and oppressive
system and was instrumental in the murder of thousands of
innocent Tamils’. Investigations revealed that the bomb which
killed Wijeratne had been placed inside a parked car, and was
triggered off by its driver Prem, a member of the elite Black
Tigers, specializing in suicide attacks.
“Ranjan Wijeratne, speaking to the author [Gunaratna] two
days before his death, said that 5,000 men were being trained
and sent to the front every six weeks. He said that four fronts
were established - Palaly, Vavuniya, Mannar and Mulaitivu.
He was hopeful that the strength of the army will be raised to
100,000 by December 1991. He said that the LTTE war could
be won, but the political and security elements had to be
coordinated. But his vision was not to be; within 48 hours, he
had become the latest casualty figure in a steadily rising death
toll of a cruel civil war spanning almost a decade. The Sri
Lankan government was visibly shaken by the assassination of
its most powerful Minister. In his place, Premadasa appointed
Prime Minister D.B. Wijetunge as the Minister of State for
Defense.” [Book: Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, 1993,
Colombo, p.457]

I would like to focus on the phrase ‘most powerful Minister’. That

is one clue to probe the mystery of Minister Wijeratne’s
assassination. In a previous page of the same book, Gunaratna
provides hints of the power struggle which broke out in 1990
between Premadasa and Wijeratne. The relevant passage is as
follows:
“The prelude to [Eelam] War [1990] was a conflict of interests
between the two powerful men - Ranasinghe Premadasa, the
President and Commander-in-Chief of the Sri Lankan armed
forces, and his Minister of State for Defence Ranjan Wijeratne,
who on another front had just saved Sri Lanka from falling
into the hands of the JVP. Wijeratne’s intention was to crush
the LTTE in the same manner that he had dealt with the JVP.
This would have assured him honour and even the subsequent
presidency of Sri Lanka (foot note: In an interview two days
before he was killed, he confirmed his intentions to the
author). Wijeratne comprehended the contours of the conflict
and his solution was complex - it was more than asking the
IPKF to leave, or arming the LTTE to dislodge the TNA, or

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working out a peace pact with the LTTE. Wijeratne wanted

the IPKF to ‘finish off’ the LTTE. He had assessed that the
JVP threat was insignificant by mid-1989. Initially, he
vehemently opposed the arming of the LTTE and initiated a
dialogue with India on the fate of its proxy army - the TNA.
But, Premadasa’s agenda was different and was often in
conflict with his most powerful minister - Wijeratne had to
tow the line or resign...” [ibid, p.434]

Now, one can see that by late 1989 (within an year of ascendancy
as President) Premadasa had become concerned with the power and
glory which has accumulated to Minister Wijeratne. But in the
previous year, it was because of Wijeratne’s efforts, Premadasa was
able to ward off the intra-party challenge for the presidential stakes
mounted by his rivals Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini
Dissanayake. In his eulogy to Wijeratne, journalist Ajith
Samaranayake had stressed this fact as follows:
“Ranjan Wijeratne’s was a brief but a remarkable political
career. A blunt, tough-talking man, who brought the discipline
of the plantations which he revered to the business of politics,
the tall, silver-haired Minister was a quixotic personality, an
emerging legend wrapped in an enigma. A dedicated UNPer,
he reconciled all problems by invoking the party code. He was
the party man par excellence...
“Widely regarded as an excellent organizer, he is well known
as having backed Mr.Premadasa’s claim to succeed President
Jayewardene at a time when other claimants were in the field
and uncertainty prevailed. Under President Premadasa his rise
was even more rapid. He was Foreign Minister and thereafter
Minister of Plantation Industries but always the President’s
deputy as the State Minister of Defence...” [Lanka Guardian,
March 15, 1991, p.8]

Though Kittu had issued a denial, one should note that Rohan
Gunaratna’s version implicating LTTE in the assassination of
Wijeratne was written in late 1992, when Premadasa was still in
power. Now, to Mervyn de Silva’s prognosis on the involvement of
multiple actors in the demise of Wijeratne.

(2) View of Mervyn de Silva (an independent analyst of stature)

Mervyn de Silva, under the pseudonym Kautilya, wrote the
following eulogy to Wijeratne, entitled, ‘Death of a Soldier’.
Excerpts:
“Mr.Ranjan Wijeratne was made a general posthumously but

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he was in fact a soldier in civvies, always pure white trousers

and tunic. He was the party’s front-line commander, and once
installed State Minister of Defence, Commander-in-Chief de
facto in two wars - the war against the JVP in the South, and
the much longer war in the North-East...
“In his essential simplicity, he thought he could crush the
‘Tigers’ as effectively as he did the JVP. He didn’t grasp the
essential differences - the most important of which was
motivation and the discipline exemplified in the cyanide
capsule. He believed, somewhat naively, that more men, more
arms, more money could give him the victory he had scored so
triumphantly in the South...
“While local detectives are investigating whether the high-tech
explosive was brought here in a container, the Sunday Times
added that links with a local casino chain operated by a
Singaporean operator may prompt the policeto seek Interpol
help...
“In a society torn by divisive conflict, the violent and the
unseen, and by both steadfast allegiances as well as by
changing loyalties, Ranjan, unknown to him, became a point
of intersection between those contemporary forces,
competitive claims diverse and fierce issues. To name a few,
military solution/political settlement; old UNP/new
UNP; Sinhala nationalism/Thomian liberalism; ‘law-and-
order’/dissent, opposition; army/party, etc. etc.
“No wonder so many theories, from the Singaporean
connection; to LTTE/EROS, DJV/EROS; inside-job/ and any
‘mix’ of these. What interested me was how each individual
and opinion group, quite often dispassionately, almost
pre-selected as salient this or that detail which suited best
his/her version. The Rashomon Effect...” [Lanka Guardian,
March 15, 1991, pp.6-7]

I will expand on Mervyn de Silva’s thoughts on the Rashomon

Effect in the next chapter, after I present the analyses of Rajiv
Sharma and John Colmey. This ‘Rashomon Effect’ was to repeat in
the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi, R.Premadasa, Lalith
Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake which followed
Wijeratne’s.

(3) View of Rajiv Sharma (a journalist, probably with links to

the Indian Intelligence arm)
Rajiv Sharma, a journalist living in New Delhi, authored a book

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‘Beyond the Tigers: Tracking Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassination’

(1998). In this book, Minister Wijeratne’s then boss President
Premadasa has been pointed out as the main culprit. The relevant
passages are as follows:
“An ugly side of Premadasa was reported in the press during
the investigations of the assassination of his political rival and
minister of state for defence, Ranjan Wijeratne. Wijeratne was
the former chairman of the ruling United National Party, to
which Premadasa belonged. A popular figure with the military
brass, Wijeratne was entertaining hopes of replacing
Premadasa. On March 1, 1991, Wijeratne was holding an
unscheduled meeting with the Chiefs of the Army, Navy and
Air Force when Premadasa barged in unannounced. The
embarassment writ large on the faces of the assembled men
was only too vivid for Premadasa to miss. None spoke. A
much worried Premadasa retreated in silence. The following
morning, when Wijeratne was driving to his office in his
bullet-proof Mercedes, he was blown to bits.
“Murky aspects of the hidden Premadasa-Wijeratne rift came
to the fore in a crucial interview Premadasa Udugampola,
former head of Sri Lanka’s bureau of special operations, gave
to M.D.Nalapat in The Times of India. Udugampolam who
was forcibly retired at the age of 57, by his government when
he was DIG [Deputy Inspector General of Police], had
incurred the wrath of the ruling establishment for demanding
an independent inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the
murder of Wijeratne...”

(4) View of devotees (as presented by John Colmey, an American

journalist)
I cannot leave out another interpretation of Minister Wijeratne’s
assassination, since it describes the faith of the persecuted. In 1992,
John Colmey, the Asiaweek’s correspondent based in Colombo,
wrote a lengthy travelogue-essay on his trip to Jaffna, along the
lines of Julian West (see, The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon - part 7).
The relevant passage is as follows:
“...On Feb.28, 1991, Deputy Defence Minister Ranjan
Wijeratne gave a stiff warning to 9,000 refugees at Madhu
Church. If they didn’t leave and allow the armed forces to
move on nearby Tiger positions, he told the press, he would
bomb the camp. The next night, with the sound of artillery fire
in the distance, hundreds of refugees knelt before a statue of
the Virgin Mary that welcomes visitors to Madhu with open

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arms, palms turned up. Near midnight, say the people who
prayed that night, a ‘miracle’ happened. The statue’s arms
began closing and opening repeatedly. They considered it a
sign to stay.
“The morning after the ‘miracle’, Wijeratne and more than 25
others were killed in Colombo by a massive Tiger car bomb.
The army’s march through Madhu veered in another direction.
Priests at the church don’t believe the statue story. But they
admit it partly explains why the Madhu Church refugee camp
now has nearly 30,000 residents, with more on the way...”
[Asiaweek magazine, August 14, 1992, pp.66-79]

No comments from me on this ‘miracle’. But miracle or not, three

other personalities mentioned in Colmey’s feature who had some
choice words for Pirabhakaran had untimely deaths. In the first part
of his essay, Colmey described the activities of Brigadier Vijaya
Wimalaratne as follows:
“51, a legend in the Sri Lankan army. He has been cited for
bravery seven times. He has commanded or planned almost
every major army offensive in Jaffna Peninsula in the past ten
years.”

Colmey continued,
“When I leave Wimalaratne I tell him I may see Prabhakaran
in Jaffna. I ask if he has a message for him. ‘Tell him’ he says
with a broad smile, ‘there’s a devil waiting to meet him on the
other side.’ [ibid]

Colmey also reported the aerial bombing of Durga Devi

Devastanam Goddess Temple, about 1.5 km from Tellippalai town.
Excerpts:
“A helicopter pilot reported spotting people moving in the
temple area. The response from Air Force Command,
according to a monitored and recorded transmission: ‘Hit it’.
Two Siai Marchettis and a British built Avro attacked the
temple and refugee camp three times....”[ibid]

By the time Colmey’s feature appeared in the Asiaweek of August

14, 1992, Brigadier Wimalaratne along with his friend Maj-Gen.
Denzil Kobbekaduwa had been called to their Maker. Another
politician with the name Mohammad Ashraff was reported in that
1992 feature as saying he would like to ‘slit Prabhakaran’s throat’.
Ashraff, as all know, died last year in a helicopter crash. Even
reporter Colmey faced problem with President Premadasa. His

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The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 8 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part8.htm

lengthy essay in the Asiaweek would have irked the paranoid

Premadasa, since nothing was written about the President, while
Brigadier Wimalaratne’s achievements received abundant praise.
Colmey was expelled from Sri Lanka on the orders of Premadasa.
[Continued]

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