India trained 29,000 Tigers, claims Minister

Environment Minister Champika Ranawake yesterday charged that India had given military training to some 29,000 Tamil youth and regardless of diplomatic norms had used LTTE terrorism to interfere with the 1984 government.

Addressing the media he said India helped the LTTE to take up arms and boost itself, when the Sri Lankan army with a strength of 15,000 soldiers was not able to control the LTTE then.

“The Jayasikuru and Riviresa military operations which were launched to capture the Wanni area resulted in 12,000 soldiers being killed and another 18,000 injured, mainly due to lack of proper military strategies,” he said.

The defeat ended up with the need for peace talks in 2002 and the peace deal that followed. The agreement was President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s creation which Ranil Wickremesinghe presented with a few changes after the government was toppled in 2002, he said.

“So the agreement should be called the Chandrika-Ranil agreement,” he said.

“The LTTE brought aeroplanes, missiles and other weaponry to the country during that period and the LTTE’s battle plan was to defeat our soldiers in Jaffna by blocking the supplies,” he said.

He also said the government had to react by starting the Mavil-Aru rescue operation and going on to win the Eastern province bringing down the image of the LTTE and as a result providing lessons to armies of other countries.

“The battle plan of deploying small groups to go through the jungles and attacking the heart of the LTTE has brought results. The previous battle plan of going to capture territory by following the A9 road has proved a failure in earlier operations,” he said.

“Although the government has certain problems they are courageously involved in defeating terrorism. And that is the only reason why we support this government,” he said stressing that the worlds number one US military failed to defeat terrorists in Iraq and have allegedly killed more than 650,000 civilians. He said some English newspapers had reported that the war was not that visible though the army claims that thousands of terrorists had been killed.

“Some English newspapers do not like to report about battle victories by the army. They try to honour Prabhakaran by saying he is a dedicated man and that the LTTE is the world’s best military organization.”

He said Human Rights and Media Freedom are not violated in the country as it was done in 1989 and that no journalist has been gone missing.

“A Website reported yesterday that 21 journalists were killed in the South Asian region last year and that six of them were from Sri Lanka. Two of the vicitms were from the ‘Voice of Tigers Website’. Are they journalists?. This is the picture that is shown to the world,” he said.

“The editor of the ‘Tamilnet’ website, Sivaram was killed. It is told to the world that Sivaram was a great journalist. He was the general secretary of the PLOTE (DPLF) and was killed for some money gamble which happened in Maldives but it goes down as another journalist been killed,” he said.

He said international interference with military affairs and politics should be defeated and getting people on to the streets and conducting pickets are plans of conspirators who support the LTTE.

Meanwhile JNP General Secretary Nandana Gunathilake addressing the conference said although Human Rights and Media Freedom should be protected they should not be regarded as extreme opinions.

“This war did not start because of any injustice caused to the Tamil community but because of Western imperialists who are trying to create hatred among the nations,” he said.

He said some countries were threatening the government that they would not provide any funds and trying to lay down conditions to pull back the government from winning the war.

“The federal proposal was brought forward by a team of UNP supporters inside the government and the ‘Sudu Nelum Viyaparaya’ was also one such project,” he said.

“We also have a problem regarding the government not sacrificing enough and asking the people to make sacrifices,” he said.

He also said there was not a single Human Rights organization which voiced concerns when 60,000 people were killed by the UNP government in 1989 and added that the media should be handled in the direction of the betterment of the country.