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Mahinda OK but Ranil “a dangerous fox”: Bala
LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham in a hard-line speech to mark martyrs day said the Tamil people now believe the Sinhala leaders would never give them substantial autonomy and there would be no option but to fight for their rights.

Speaking at a London ceremony, Mr. Balasingham while saying that President Mahinda Rajapakse was “alright” described UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as a dangerous fox.

Dr. Balasingham said:
“I take this opportunity to salute the great people who have sacrificed their lives for a worthy cause to fight for this soil and I sincerely thank the people who have given me the opportunity to speak on this great day -- heroes' day.
“When I entered this, hall one of my friends said Mr. Anandasangaree has come for this meeting. I warmly welcome him. But someone should introduce me to him, I would like to hug and welcome him.

“Mr. Anandasangaree mentioned in Colombo that he is able to travel all over the world but not his town -- Kilinochchi. I know why he wants to visit Kilinochchi. He is having two old ladies whom he wants to see and to enjoy eating non veg. I would like to tell him he can always visit Kilinochchi. Pottuamman has built a five-star hotel and he can enjoy that food too.
“Our Leader Prabhakaran in his speech emphasized the importance of the following issues.

• Important incidents which took place in the past years
• The cunning plans against our movement
• The shady battles against our movement
• He explained about Mr. Rajapakshe's government, his policies, our movement, our future strategy, plans and our revolutionary actions.

“He also mentioned 10-12 important facts in his speech. The Mahawamsa is a mythological story. This has been written by a Buddhist monk as history. This history divulges that Lord Buddha has given the Island of Lanka to the Sinhala community and to their decendents and it is a divinly gifted land to the Sinhala community. History says that Lord Buddha has told this holy land belongs to the Sinhala community and it should cultivate the Buddhist Philosophy and there is no place for other communities. Due to this for the past 2000 years the Sinhala community firmly believes that this country belongs to the Sinhala community. This is the Sinhala community mindset about the Mahawamsa. They have not understood the reality of Mahawamsa.

“The Sinhala community is not ready to accept the reality that there is another ancient historical Tamil Nationality in the North and East as their motherland, which has identified their own culture, tradition, language and ancient solidarity.

“The Sinhala Nation will not reject the ideas from the Mahawamsa mind set, and the old myth stories as the Buddhist philosophy strongly reveals that the Sinhalese are not ready to recognise the Tamils as a Nationality, or accept their sovereignty in their motherland and give them self governance.
“Who is Lord Buddha? Lord Buddha was a Hindu. He was a strong Hindu revolutionist who said ‘there is no God, no souls or no second world’. But you worship him as a God. The Sinhalese believe this God has gifted this island to them. As they are so ignorant, how can we talk with them?

“Our Leader has also pointed out why we should have discussions with such a community who don't recognise us. Then you will ask us why we had discussions with the Sri Lanka Government It is because of universal compulsion.

“When neighbouring India got involved in this, we were compelled to participate in the discussions in Thimpu, Bangalore and New Delhi.
“When I was with Leader Prabhakaran in India, we faced such pressure and we knew there will not be any outcome from these dialogues. But the Indians forced us to sit for discussions.

“We also got pressure from the International communities. The dialogue we had with Ranil Wickremesinghe was due to pressure from the international community.

“Talking to our enemies face to face has been more complicating than fighting the war. “The Sinhala enemies sent their intellectuals to challenge us in reasoning and finding ways and means to put us down in public.

“For example; the discussions we had with Indian mediation as a result President J.R. Jayewardene and Indian Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi signed an agreement in introducing the provincial councils saying the power would be decentralized. In implementing this, the Sri Lankan government insisted that we surrender our weapons and we did it too though we did not agree with the provincial council system.

“Instead of this the Indian Peace Keeping Force was brought in and destroyed us and this was ordered by the Indian Government. Although we were a small group at the time, we grew in strength in facing the regional super power. Now we are ready to face any one, for the freedom of our people and for our motherland. Milinda Moragoda a close friend of Ranil, participated in the past discussions. He made a statement just before the election that "we took the Tigers for talks to show the international community and later gave them nothing. We have put them into the net of troubles, and a person from that movement was ejected from their group and he has created another movement now". You can understand whom he is talking about.

“But this is what actually happened? Ranil's government took us for the discussions thinking we may easily be deceived and return to normalcy.
“I presided at the negotiations in Thailand, and especially I and Mr. Peiris were involved arguments about federalism. While the rest of the boys were with me this particular person walked away for shopping and got entangled in sexual activities. This is how he got separated from us.

“Before the election, Mr. Moragoda said "we have allured the Tigers by taking them to foreign countries and one of their Majors has departed from them". But even though we clearly understood their cunning mentalities, we got involved in peace negotiations talks. We had Indian pressure as well as International pressures on our 30-year revolutionary war. But our Leader says that the latest discussion has continued for four years.

In December 2001, our leader declared a unilateral ceasefire, which was to strengthen our position. What was our power? We have captured the entire Wanni region by destroying the main Elephant Pass military base and our leader extended friendly hands to the government.

“These negotiations were prolonged for the past four years and we had six rounds of talks with Ranil and I was also present at them. After Ranil's period, we continued the talks with Chandrika. But the decisions, finalisations, and the agreements did not materialise.

“Meanwhile we have to explain to the international community the cunningness of the Sinhala community. They invited countries like America, Britain, Japan and the European Union to these talks and asked them to apply pressure to dilute some of our demands. “Our vision is that our people should find solutions for our problems and not the foreign countries.

“The world pressurized us to abide with the decision we accepted in rounds of peace talks with the policy of a united Sri Lanka. There was international pressure to remove all our weapons too. This was also initiated by Ranil Wickremesinghe and he was the person who trapped us into such a net.
“We can't compel our people to be in darkness and our leader says he is not willing to continue such pointless talks anymore.

“When the tsunami devastated the eastern belt, nearly 20,000 human lives and 300,000 dwellings of Tamils and Muslims were destroyed and this made us to hesitate on continuing the battle.

“Our leader commanded all his regiments to be involved in tsunami relief tasks as the human disaster attracted international attention who were ready to grant four billion dollars for the recovery work. Our Madam Chandrika thought it was a good opportunity to use the LTTE's assistance to swallow up all tsunami relief assistance. The outcome was the creation of the P-TOMS.
“But after the P-TOMS agreement was signed by the LTTE and the GOSL, the Buddhist monks and the JVP who were the partners in the Chandrika-government left the Government and agitated against the P-TOMS by filing cases in courts and as a result the P-TOMS became inactive.

“This is what our leader said: ‘How can you agree to federalism or self governing as you are not in a position to give even an infrastructure mechanism to share relief assistance among our affected people, then how can we believe that you will settle the problems of our people?’
“We know that the Sinhala Government will never solve the problems of our people, so we will have to fight for our rights.

“A shadow war was declared on us this year. They have killed many of our senior members, cadres, supporters, intellectuals, journalists and a member of parliament. Sri Lankan military intelligence is behind these killings.
"Sinhala majority racists have no interest in solving our problem through negotiations, instead they believe on military solutions. They are not ready to give any concession to us through negotiation’, our leader said.

Their purpose is to destroy all our achievements by waging a shadow war in the name of peace. Sinhala forces do not directly get involved. Some Tamil militant groups are being used to wage this shadow war. These militant groups are begging the government and relying on the government for their survival.
"There is no meaningful peace, ceasefire and negotiations", our leader says. They are waging war against us, while speaking about peace. Thousands of our people are still living in refugee camps without any basic needs. But, your forces have been occupying their lands. Those who lived in permanent houses, now live in temporary shelters and huts. Is this ceasefire?

“According to the ceasefire you should have disarmed the para-military groups. Instead, you armed them and are directing them to kill us. This is the ceasefire and negotiations the Sinhala community speaks of. Sinhala government prolongs the negotiations and thereby creates a conspiracy net to trap us.

“Some say if you voted for Ranil, you could negotiate with him. One thing you have to realize is that, Ranil is a Fox. Rajapaksa is alright. But, Ranil is a dangerous Fox. I am saying this from experience, which I gained in the last peace process. I know them very well from the period of Premadasa.
“Some of us are in favour of Ranil, because he speaks about federalism. We have been talking federalism for the last 57 years. Is it a new thing? We have been discussing federalism since Selva's period. They will never give us federalism. For them, federalism is a tool for cheating us.

“We have lost confidence in the Sinhala leadership on reaching a settlement to the Tamil question through negotiations. Why do Tamils want to involve in an election, which is held to elect a president of Sinhalese? We asked our people not to participate in the presidential election. Our people understood our message and boycotted the election. This is what happened in North and East.

“But the international community blamed us and is speaking about democratic rights of the people. Thousands of our people are living in refugee camps without any basic needs as orphans, even though they have their own land and own house in their homeland. Did you the international community speak about these people's democratic rights? Are these not democratic rights?

“As far as we are concerned the election boycott is a very important matter. This is the first time our people rejected the Sinhala political leaders and categorically expressed that they have nothing to do with Sinhala politics.
“Our leader says another thing, ‘Sinhala people have elected their national leader. Mahinda Rajapakse a pure Sinhala Buddhist. He has been elected by Sinhala Buddhists Twenty seven Sinhala political parties together with red shirts and bald headed people in yellow robes have aligned with Mahinda. In short, Sinhala Buddhists hegemony has captured power in the South.
“Sinhalese don't like to understand this reality.

If the Sri Lankan Government had to campaign they always start commenting that Tigers are a terrorist movement. Believing this many countries in the world had banned us as a terrorist movement. The international community didn't request us to stop violence but to hand over all the weapons and surrender to the Sinhala government and that would mean continuing to live under the mercy of the Sinhalese.

“We fought against the Government terrorism and you name us as terrorists. Is this justice? Why do you put a false stamp on us?
“You can have your unitary state and we will have our own.
“In his statement in parliament Mahinda says there will be negotiations under a unitary state and we will not give up this unitary identity.
“What we say to him is that you can have a unitary state while we too will be having a unitary state.

“The new leader of Sri Lanka is very frank and sincere in saying he would maintain a unitary state and we too have no problem with the Sinhala nation having a unitary state.
“Our problem is with those who say that they will give a federal and con-federal solution. Mahinda is a good man and he can hold a unitary state and we would have ours.

“Another statement made by Mahinda is there is no such a thing called Tamil homeland. “We have captured 70% of our homeland and we have our Tamil eelam police.

“Do we want to believe that, he would come to a common decision with political consensus of 27 parties? Even though he has got the support of 27 parties, he does not represent Tamils and other minorities. But he has a Tamil minister. You all know very well who he is. Social service ministry has been given to him. But, one of my friends said, this is not a Ministry of Social Service, but a ministry of anti social activities. This is really a suitable job for his qualifications and attainments.

“Our leader told Mahinda, "I will give you some time. I described you as a realist, committed to pragmatic politics and negotiations with the LTTE in a new approach. When you extend your hands, we also don't want to throw aside your hands. We will give you a chance. But we will give you a short time. We have, therefore, decided to wait and observe, for sometime, your political maneuvers and actions.

We are not going to confront you now. If the new government does not do anything to our people next year and delay the peace initiatives, we will intensify our struggle for self-determination, our struggle for national liberation to establish self-government in our homeland".

“Some media have misinterpreted his speech and reported that, Mr. Prabhakaran has given a month’s ultimatum and going to resume war within a month. What he said was 'some time' and 'next year'. He didn't mention any specific date. At the same time he also has emphasized that he couldn't wait for a long time”.

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