| 14.2.2008
The civilised world is horrified at the dastardly shell
attack the LTTE launched on a much venerated Catholic church
in Mannar on Tuesday. The beleaguered Tigers trained their
big guns on St. Sebastian’s Church, Thallady, where
soldiers were engaged in repairs on a request from a group
of Catholic priests, killing six of them and injuring ten.
That horrendous act of desecration is proof of the Tigers’
callous disregard for religions as well as places of worship
and the fact that they won’t baulk at anything in
trying to achieve their macabre objectives. Nothing can
the Tigers claim in extenuation of that unspeakable act.
They made no mistake. They deliberately targeted the church
to kill as many soldiers as possible. Priests were lucky
that they were not harmed.
The
Tigers are, we repeat, no respecters of religions. They
mowed down scores of Buddhist devotees in Anuradhapura in
1985 and gunned down 33 young Buddhist monks at Arantalawa
in 1987. In 1998, they bombed the Sri Dalada Maligawa, the
most venerated Buddhist shrine in this country. Among the
crimes the LTTE has committed against Muslims include the
massacres inside two mosques at Eravur and Kaththankudy
in 1990. Hundreds of Muslims were shot and hacked to death
while they were praying. Last year, the Tigers killed a
kurukkal in the Eastern Province as he had blessed President
Mahinda Rajapaksa during his visit to the East. This year
began with a crime the LTTE committed inside a kovil in
Colombo, where UNP MP T. Maheswaran was shot dead in cold
blood.
So,
the shelling by the LTTE of a Catholic shrine comes as no
surprise to a Tiger watcher. He who touches the gourd, so
goes a local saying, touches the ash pumpkin.
It
is with the greatest difficulty that priests are protecting
children in the sacred Madhu area against the LTTE hell
bent on forcibly conscripting them as cannon fodder. If
the good priests lower the guard for a moment, abductors
descend on the little ones and take them into the jungle
in a jiffy. "Let the children come to me, do not hinder
them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God," said
Jesus. The opposite of that is true of Prabhakaran’s
ghoulish thinking. Of children, he says, "Abduct and
bring them to me; for to such belongs fire and brimstone."
Only the rights of LTTE leaders’ children to education
and freedom are respected in the terrain under his jackboot.
We
are intrigued that a high priest who met Prabhakaran years
ago chose to describe him as someone humane! How can a humane
person harm children, kill so many human beings, bomb temples,
kovils, mosques and churches?
Perhaps,
Prabhakaran has no reason to respect any other god. For,
he considers himself the Sun God. Hitler was better. He
only believed in a divine providence and thought he was
the chosen one to lord it over the world. Our deified friend
has placed himself on a much higher pedestal. His faithful
cadres, as the killer of Maheswaran has revealed, recite
a gaatha and pay homage to his picture every morning. So,
the ‘Sun God’ may have thought why he should
hesitate to target a church dedicated to St. Sebastian,
considered the patron of archers, athletes, soldiers et
al, to avenge the setbacks he has been suffering for the
past so many months.
Terrorism
is Prabhakaran’s religion. Cult leaders don’t
give two hoots about established religions and humanity,
do they? They are psychopaths believing in a messianic role.
It may be recalled that Rev. Jim Jones of America drove
hundreds of his fellow cranks to suicide, having claimed
he had had a personal vision of nuclear holocaust and promised
to protect them.
It
is a mistake for anyone to think such homicidal maniacs
are a threat only to one particular ethnic or religious
community and therefore to tolerate them or try to use them
as tools. Human history is replete with such costly blunders.
The countries that sought to appease Hitler had to pay dearly
for their servility and imbecility in the end. Those who
created the LTTE terrorism and sponsored it have paid for
their action with their dear lives, both here and abroad.
The US is today fighting the very band of terrorists it
created and nurtured as a counter to Russia. Osama would
have been puffing on a hookah in some nondescript corner
of the Middle East, unknown to the world, but for his elevation
by the US to the level of a hero. The US also backed Papa
Doc of Haiti to the hilt only to regret having done so in
the end. Rajiv Gandhi would have been the present Prime
Minister of India, if he and his mother had desisted from
using the LTTE to force this country to toe India’s
line.
So,
terrorism in all its manifestations has to be condemned
and battled for the sake of humanity.
Tuesday’s
attack was a clear sign of the LTTE’s desperation.
An ignominious defeat is staring Prabhakaran in the face
and his dream empire is crumbling pillar by pillar before
his own eyes. Above all, he has taken leave of his senses.
Those
whom God wishes to destroy, they say, he first makes mad.
Courtesy - The Island
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