24.9.2008

TMVP Leader Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan (Karuna) and his deputy, Eastern Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan yesterday appealed to Tamil expatriates in Canada and elsewhere to stop funding the Tiger war machine.

In separate exclusive interviews with Stewart Bell of the National Post of Canada, the duo said the funds remitted by expatriates are used for Tiger military procurements, not humanitarian assistance.

Muralitharan said money sent from abroad to help civilians in uncleared areas was routinely used to buy arms.

He called Canada the number one source of external income for the LTTE, followed by Switzerland. He said while Canadians might believe the money they send to uncleared areas is being used for humanitarian aid, Prabhakaran uses it all to buy military hardware instead.

"They use all the money for the war," he said. "They didn't give anything to the people."

The money from overseas feeds not civilians but a procurement network that buys weapons and ships them to the island, he said.

"They have a lot of money. They bought many ships for smuggling arms," he said. "Diaspora people, they don't understand what is happening in Sri Lanka."

The Eastern Province Chief Minister Chandrakanthan echoed his leader's views. He said Tigers supporters in such countries as Canada are misguided and should stop sending money to the LTTE.

"A lot of these people who keep shouting, 'We want a separate state' are not aware of what the conditions are here," said Chandrakanthan. Muralitharan, who spent 22 years in the Tigers, said he broke with Prabhakaran in a dispute over Norwegian-brokered peace talks. He thought there was a good deal on the table but Prabhakaran wanted to restart the war, he said.

"He got angry with me, but he's a very angry person," he said. "I told him, 'I don't want to fight with you. We are brothers and sisters."

"Prabhakaran had no political vision," Chandrakanthan said in an interview. "If the Sri Lankan Army hits, he wants to hit back. He really relished hitting back, fighting, rather than thinking politically, where do we go from here?"

He believes if he can succeed in the East, the Tigers will realize there is a better way, but he holds out no hope that Prabhakaran will surrender his dream of a Tamil homeland called Tamil Eelam.

"Prabhakaran will not give up his thought of a Tamil Eelam. So long as Prabhakaran is there, he will always want people to believe that he can deliver Tamil Eelam, and Tamil Eelam in his vision includes the east as well." But he believes the Tigers are almost finished, bottled up in the north, having lost 60% of their territory and running out of fighting men and women.

"He can't go on like this because there is a limit to the manpower that he commands," Chandrakanthan said. "Just by shortage of manpower he will lose."

Courtesy - Daily News