TO BE SUCCESSFUL, SHED ETHNIC IDENTITIES

When’ll mad killings end in Sri Lanka?
by Ameen Izzadeen

IN THE aftermath of the lucky escape of the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a bomb blast at a Brighton hotel in October 1984, the Provisional Irish Republican army issued a bold statement. "You were lucky this time. But remember, we only have to be lucky once." Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, the latest victim of the Tamil Tiger terror, was lucky on January 8, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which is using acts of terror as a means to achieve its separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils, exploded a roadside bomb targeting a ministerial convoy. The minister who was killed in that blast was DM Dassanayake, who played little or no role in the fight against terrorism. Intelligence analysts said the actual target was Fernandopulle, who had been in the frontline of the government's political battle against the LTTE. It was he who had been defending the government in parliament as chief whip, since Mahinda Rajapaksa became president in 2005. A day prior to his death at a sports ground in Weliweriya in his Gampaha district constituency, Fernandopulle told a public rally at Kadawatha, also in his constituency, that even the ardent LTTE supporter from the rebel-held area could come to Colombo and chastise the government. "But leave alone the Sinhalese, could any Tamil living in the Tiger-controlled area say anything against the LTTE in public and live a day more?" he asked....

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