Vijayakala’s outrageous call for Tiger Balm

to soothe Jaffna woes

Ex STATE MINISTER UNP MP VIJAYAKALA MAHESWARAN: If our
children and women are to come home safely, an LTTE administration is
again necessary
 Sunday, July 08, 2018
Tiger lover resigns after expressing longings for the LTTE to romance the
north with the kiss of death enforced through the barrel of the gun
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Like some of their Sinhale brethren down south of the border who, within
three short years, seem to have forgotten the recent past, display an
irresistible craving to return to the era of white vans and reveal a
masochistically addictive scratching itch to have a Hitlerite figure to trample
upon and crush their fundamental freedoms under a Nazi brand jackboot, so
does it seem that some northern Tamils also suffer the same bout of amnesia
and yearn to see the return of the fascist LTTE regime with a born again
Prabhakaran at its helm to wreak upon the land a new bloodbath.

Hardly had the southern dust settled upon the

island eleven days after a leading Buddhist monk, the Anunayaka of the
Asgiriya Chapter, raised a storm of indignation when he called for a new
Hitler to rise and use the Lankan Armed Forces and usurp absolute power
from a democratically elected government, the State Minister entrusted with
Child Affairs, the forty-five-year-old UNP Tamil MP Vijayakala Maheswaran
this week on Tuesday nearly caused a smouldering racial volcanic mount to
suddenly erupt anew and spew its hot ashes of hate and spread its vitriol
across the land in a new wave of racial lava and leave it painted blood red —
if her nostalgic wishes to see the return of the Tiger to romance Jaffna again
and plant upon her lips the kiss of death enforced by the barrel of the T56
were to come true.
In a speech delivered at the 8th Presidential Public Service programme titled
‘Nila Mehewera for Northern Province’ held at the Veerasingham Hall in
Jaffna on July 3, the State Minister of Child Affairs, Vijayakala Maheswaran
boldly announced her trumpet call for the internationally and locally banned
terrorist organisation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to be revived
again and be the guardian deity of the northern and eastern Tamils.
Before an audience that comprised senior government ministers, namely
Minister of Foreign Affairs Tilak Marapana, Minister of Internal Affairs
Vajira Abeygunawardena, the Northern Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran
and other TNA Parliamentarians, she declared, without blink or blush, ‘With
our peoples’ votes only, President Maithripala Sirisena was elected to office.
What is he doing now? He is concerned about strengthening his own political
party. He had failed us enormously. Today we realise from our bottom of our
heart how we are proud to have lived under the times of LTTE prior to May
18, 2009.”

But she did not stop there. Elated perhaps by the round of applause and wolf
whistles she received from the state employees consisting of Grama Sevakas,
Pradeshiya Sabha officials, Divisional Secretariat officials and others she
batted on and on as if there was no tomorrow for the Northern and Eastern
Tamils without the LTTE to ensure their safety and peace of mind.

She said: “Our main objective is to resurrect the LTTE in the North and East
in order to ensure our survival. If we wanted to lead a peaceful life, more
importantly if our school going children are to return home safely, the hands
of the LTTE should be strengthened. ‘We have faced three decades of war in
the recent past. Other than releasing some plots of lands in Valikaamam
North, the Government did nothing for the Tamil people. We are also part of
this unity government. We are also bound by party rules and regulations but
today we have to violate those rules considering true plight of our people.”

Her speech outraged the nation, which had suffered so much in blood and
tears for over thirty years. Let’s consider her statement: “If children are to
return home safely, the hands of the LTTE should be strengthened,’ Perhaps
her privileged upbringing as the daughter of a big and wealthy landowner in
Karainagar in the north and subsequent marriage at the age of 26 to a rich
businessman who settled down in a Colombo 7 house down Gregory’s Road
somewhere around 2006 for the sole purpose of sending their two young
daughters and son to the Colombo International School down the same road
now called R.G. Senanayake Mawatha, where she still lives, kept her cocooned
from the horrors of terror the LTTE inflicted upon her less fortunate sistering
during the terrible war years on whose behalf she now professes to speak. And
sheds tears as barter for future votes.
Let’s flashback to how the Tigers that Vijayakala now garlands for being the
protectors of the Tamils’ seed and blossom and the chivalrous knights of
Tiger Supremo, Prabhakaran’s one seat Eelam table safeguarding the
maidenhead of all Tamil womankind, forcibly dragged children away from
the shelter and security of their parents dwelling to their military training
camps and turned them into killer machines. And brutalised their mental set
up forever.

Take a look at the New York-based Human Rights Watch report issued on
11th November 2004.The 80-page report titled “Living in Fear: Child Soldiers
and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka,” includes firsthand testimonies from
dozens of children from northeastern Sri Lanka who have been recruited by
the Tamil Tigers since the ceasefire came into effect. Children described
rigorous and sometimes brutal military training, including training with
heavy weapons, bombs and landmines. Children who try to escape are
typically beaten in front of their entire unit as a warning to others.

It says: “The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers) use
intimidation and threats to pressure Tamil families in the north and east of
Sri Lanka to provide sons and daughters for military service. When families
refuse, their children are sometimes abducted from their homes at night or
forcibly recruited while walking to school. Parents who resist the recruitment
of their children face retribution from the Tamil Tigers, including violence or
detention.”

“The Tamil Tigers have recruited at least 3,516 children since the start of the
February 2002 ceasefire with the government, according to cases documented
by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The agency states that this
figure represents only a portion of the total number of children recruited.”

“They took away my younger brother the other day. He was coming home
from the market and he was taken away,” said Vanji, who was recruited by
the LTTE in 1997 at age 16. “They didn’t release him, and they threatened to
shoot if I reported his abduction. They also told me at the same time that I
had to re-join.”

International law prohibits the recruitment of children under the age of 18 by

non-state armed groups, and all participation of children in active hostilities.
The recruitment of children under the age of 15 is now considered a war
crime. “Time and again, the Tamil Tigers have pledged to end their use of
child soldiers, but each time they’ve broken those promises,” said Becker.
“It’s time for the Tamil Tigers to live up to their legal responsibilities and stop
recruiting children.”
Perhaps Vijayakala should have taken a look at it. Perhaps she did, even in
translation. And the decision was taken to enroll her young children at the
Colombo International School down Gregory’s Road and move from their flat
in an apartment complex in Tamil crowded Wellawatte and buy a swank
house — the present market value per perch is approximately Rs 18 million
— in the private lane down road Gregory opposite the school for convenience
sake.

Not so, and no such luck, for the poor parents in Jaffna who had to watch
helpless, at the point of the Tiger gun, their children taken away from them;
and for whom her heart now bleeds in pain, and calls for the resurrection of
the Tigers on the basis that ‘“If our children are to return home safely, the
hands of the LTTE should be strengthened.’

She said in her speech: “The sufferings of a woman can be understood only by
another woman and not by a man. A six-year-old girl was raped and killed.
Our girls who are receiving no support from anyone have only one choice —
commit suicide.”Her justification to make this outlandish speech calling for
the LTTE’s revival to protect the Tamils of the North and East was based on
the brutal killing of a six-year-old girl two weeks ago in Jaffna.

And what was it?

Six-year-old Sivaneshwaran Regina was a Year One student of the

Kattupulam Tamil mixed school in Jaffna. She was the youngest in the family.
She had two brothers and a sister. Her parents were day labourers and they
usually returned home after 2.30 pm. On the day of the incident, the 25th of
June, the elder sister informed her mother when she came back from her
manual labour shift in the afternoon that her sister Sivaneshwaran had not
returned home from school.

The parents and the villagers notified the Police and upon searching the area,
they found the child’s school bag along with other items.

Sivaneshwaran’s body was later recovered dumped in a nearby well on the

same day in the Jaffna Chulipuram area.Within 24 hours, the police arrested
her uncle a 22-year-old youth who had lured her into the forest on the pretext
of showing her birds. The postmortem examination had ruled out rape, but
the police said that the suspect had tried to sexually abuse the child but had
strangled her in the process. Her funeral was held on the following day,
Tuesday, amongst a large gathering.

No question about it, it was a most sad and tragic incident which not only
made the Jaffna Tamils weep but all of Lanka deeply grieve and mourn the
innocent child’s death. Her death touched the nation’s heartstrings. Her
murder caused the nation to condemn it in one voice and call for the
murderers to be brought to justice and be condemned to hang.

And while on the subject, is it not true that she was accused of along with the
dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, V.T. Thamilmaran
helping a paedophile who was found guilty of gang raping and murder of a
young girl Sivaloganathan Vithya in Jaffna? Didn’t the High Court Judge N.
Illancheliyan, in his ruling, note that Vijayakala had taken steps to secure the
release of the main accused when he was captured by residents following the
rape and murder?

But would a de facto LTTE regime in charge of the North and East and
patrolling the streets have been able to prevent such unfortunate incidents?
This incident had nothing to do with the Sri Lankan Army. It had nothing to
do even with some splinter Tamil terrorist group still haunting Jaffna byways.
It was simply a matter where a small girl was lured away to the jungles by her
22-year-old uncle to be sexually molested and killed.

But was this the sort of cause célèbre that Vijayakala should have raised to
justify her perverse invite to the Tigers to resume their barbaric role again in
the north and east? Already, not even three days of her ‘Welcome Back, We
Need You’ sign held aloft by her to the Tigers, news reports say that a fund
raising campaign was launched earlier this week in Killnochchi to raise money
to celebrate Black Friday in Jaffna and Killnochchi Districts by displaying the
logo of the LTTE which fell on this Thursday on the 5th.
Did Vijayakala’s call for Tiger Balm to soothe Jaffna’s woes spell the magic
mantra ‘Open Sesame’ to open the Tiger den? Her totally unwarranted and
repulsive speech was swiftly condemned with the prime Minister summoning
her to his office to give explanation and recommending to the President her
immediate sacking from the post of State Minister of Women and Child
Affairs. To pre-empt the situation Vijayakala resigned from her portfolio.

Her own explanation as told to Ranjan Ramanayaje on national television

was: “Aiyo, who said I said that. It’s all lies, appa. I was under tension,
tension and it was a slip of the tongue. I did not say that the LTTE should be
revived. What I meant was that we lived in peace during that era.”
Lived in peace, ah? Perhaps she did in Colombo 7 with her family safe. Not
the people of the north who got shelled both by the LTTE and the Lankan
Army.

Perhaps the Jaffna peninsula still harbours a deep seated lust for the Tiger
gun to ravage her even more. And perhaps Vijayakala gave voice to it. And in
the throes of condemning her, perhaps the Government, too, should lay its ear
to the ground and pay heed to the rumblings from the North.
Tears and heartbreak of terrorism’s victims
This is the picture that tells it all. The heartbreak, the grief and the tears of
a widowed mother and a fatherless daughter upon hearing the news that the
family breadwinner had been shot dead by a terrorist gun. The day the sun
died. When the lights went out. And the earth stood still.

But even as Vijayakala hugs her daughter to comfort her in shared tragedy
on that fateful day when her husband’s body was brought home to lie lifeless
in death, it was also a scene being enacted in hundreds of homes in the
country.

In the South the Sinhala

widows wailed as their soldier husbands came coffined home. In the north,
Tamil mothers grieved to see their sons who had answered Prabhakaran’s
call to take arms come home late at night dead.
Death was the great equaliser and death knew no divide: no north, no south,
no east no west. The grief, like blood, was common to all — like the tears
that flowed down every cheek had their spring from every grieving heart
and was the moving flood that stained every epitaph — and knew no creed
or caste or race but only sorrow only the bereaved can feel and know. And
tear.

But if this was the scene at Gregory’s Road after Vijayakala’s 42-year-old
husband was shot dead by a Tamil terrorist assassin at a Hindu kovil while
at prayer on January 1st 2008, the same grief, the same heartbreak was
being experienced in countless homes throughout the country, except that no
photographer’s bulb flashed as it did in a Colombo 7 mansion to capture the
moment of utmost woe simultaneously taking place in a humble hamlet.

Vijayakala has known what it means to lose her husband due to terrorism.
What a tragedy that, despite it all, she still wants for terror and the
inevitable grief that accompanies it to visit her people again in the North.
And make more women widows and their children fatherless in the North
whilst she lives it up, living her life to the full in Colombo 7 enjoying the
proceeds of her late husband’s shipping business whilst her sistering remain
doomed to poverty and struggler to eke out a living.
How do you solve a problem like Vijayakala?The quandary that faces the
AG

The daggers are drawn for Vijayakala’s blood.

After the UNP MP’s controversial speech at the ‘Nila Mehewera’ ceremony
held in Jaffna this Tuesday when she called ‘from the bottom of my heart
for the resurrection of the Tamil Tigers” and declared that ‘our main
objective is to resurrect the LTTE in North and East in order to ensure our
survival’ it was clear that she had shut the door on her own political position
as the State Minister of Women and Child Affairs in the National
Government.

It was politically embarrassing and politically lethal for both President

Sirisena who had appointed her as State Minister and even worse for the
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe in whose party she is a member.

Whilst the Speaker of the House took grave offence and referred the matter
to the Attorney General to pursue the matter, Ranil Wickremesinghe opted
to appoint a committee to inquire into the matter.

In the meantime, the Tiger-embracing State Minister for Child Affairs,

Vijayakala Maheswaran resigned from her portfolio. But funnily enough it
was to be a sort of suspended sentence only – till the committee inquired into
the matter. The question on the public lip is does a committee have to be
appointed when all of Lanka heard Vijayakala’s call for the resurrection of
the LTTE through the electronic media?

In Catholic terms her comments would have amounted to blasphemy which,

in the days of old would have caused her to be burnt at the stake as a witch.
Thankfully we live in civilised times. Where we go by the rule book and
bring the repulsive offender to the bar of court and, if found guilty, throw
him or her behind bars to merely sweat out the sentence in jail.

In a statement published on Wednesday, the Speaker’s office said it had

asked the Attorney General what action should be taken against the State
Minister Maheswaran statement. Several MPs had raised the same question
and stated that the Deputy Minister’s statement amounted to a violation of
the Constitution.

But the question that must perplex the Attorney General’s legal brain this
Sunday morn is whether, devoid of the emotion surrounding her speech,
Vijayakala had in anyway violated the Constitution. Had she transgressed
the oath of allegiance prescribed in the Sixth Amendment she took as an MP
of Parliament?
Article 157 of the constitution states: No person shall, directly or indirectly,
in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or
advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri
Lanka.

It is reflected in the 6th Amendment which demands that every person who
is elected to parliament shall take the following oath:

“I do solemnly declare and affirm swear that I will uphold and defend ‘the
Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and that I
will not, directly or indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse,
promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate
State within the territory of Sri Lanka.”

This is applicable to every member of, or person in the service of, a local
authority, Development Council, Pradeshiya Mandalaya, Gramodaya
Mandalaya or public corporation and, every Attorney-at-Law .

The question is, did Vijayakala transgress her oath by calling for the return
of the LTTE.
On the face of it, no. She did not “support, espouse, promote, finance,
encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate State within the
territory of Sri Lanka.” To play the Devil’s Advocate, all she called for was
for the LTTE umbrella to give the Jaffna people protection. True that the
LTTE had once advocated the division of the country but the LTTE had
ceased to be since 2009. And perhaps the LTTE agenda for separatism and
Eelam had died with Prabhakaran on the banks of the Nandikadal lagoon
nine years ago.

How was Vijayakala to know the agenda of any existing remnants of the
LTTE and whether they had even give up their call for a separate state of
Eelam? After all how was she to be privy to the residue’s agenda? All she
had sought for her people was protection, never mind what the LTTE stood
for up to their destruction.

The second issue is this. The LTTE is a banned organisation. India banned
it in 1992. The United States designated it as a foreign terrorist organisation
in 1997. The United Kingdom designated it a proscribed terrorist group in
2001. The European Union consisting of 27 nations banned it in 2006 along
with Canada in the same year. Lanka banned it from 1998 January to
September 2002 and then again from January 2009.

Does the lifting of the proscription of the LTTE to enable peace talks to
continue by both Chandrika’s and Mahinda’s government during these
seven years suggest an encouragement of sorts of this evil brigand?

The question then arises: what’s the law that governs and makes criminal a
person calling for a banned organisation’s revival not for its ideology but for
the perceived protection it has to offer to the public?

What if the JVP were to be banned tonight? And what if the day after a
person called for its revival and sang hosannas in its favour? Of how it had
been an independent voice and that he yearned to hear its echo? Would the
fact that it had been responsible for two insurrections in the country in the
past place him in the dock for expressing his sentiments wishing its return to
give voice to the nation’s woes, even if it was anathema to the majority?

No criminal action can be brought without it being based on an existing law.

And it must be left to the Attorney General to identify the specific law on
which action against Vijayakala can be taken. And tonight, no doubt, the
Attorney General, will be tossing and turning in restless sleep how to bring
the transgressor to justice.

And as for Vijayakala, even if no law presently exist, public opprobrium

must serve to place her in the stocks and damn her beyond the pale of public
representation.

And as for the legal system, if there is a lacuna in the law, Parliament must
bring one at its soonest to fill its vacuum. Or a thousand Vijayakalas will
bloom to make the nation’s peace flower droop and wither.
Posted by Thavam