Editorial 'A Star has fallen' in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 15-31 May 2009 Summer Special issue

A STAR HAS FALLEN

                                                                              Praba        with                                                              

 

 

 

 

 

                                      Fallen Prabakaran                                         Dwaraka , Mathivathani & Balachandran

VELUPPILLAI PRABHAKARAN is no more. Amidst utter anguish and disbelief we are constrained to acknowledge that at last the star of Sri Lankan Tamil Eelam has fallen. Not just the leader but his entire family – including wife Mathivathani, daughter Dwaraka, sons: 24-year old Charles Anthony and the 11-year old Balachandran – has been vengefully wiped out in a gory passion of barbaric vendetta by the ‘civilized’ Sinhalese who gave a public assurance that they would hand over the bodies to an undertaker and not just throw them into the seas. But ultimately a Sri Lankan General asserts that Prabakaran was cremated and his ashes thrown into the sea. Oh how can they do that – and that to a virtual Head-of-State!? The UN, its Human Rights Council, the International Red Cross and the Norwegian peace-brokers – where have they all gone? Has the LTTE not several times, even if not regularly, handed over the bodies of the Sinhalese dead to the Red Cross? Even the worst dictators have not acted in this maniac fashion it seems – why, the dead body of Zulifqar Ali Bhutto had been flown to Larkana and a mausoleum allowed to be built there which turned to be a centre of pilgrimage and of democratic resistance to the military rule. This one incident is sufficient to show how cruelly the Sri Lankan regime has trampled upon the basic human rights of Sri Lankan Tamils and indulged in a terrible genocide. A hero of a people has been treated worse than a beggar on the street and deliberately humiliated. Not just the Tamils but no civilized community on earth can ever tolerate such enormous war crime which is but one stupendous sin amidst hundreds of such others taking a toll of nearly 20,000 civilian lives in just a few months of the final battles. While paying our reverent homage to this intrepid martyr, we demand a habeas corpus from the international community and also that it wake up at least now and try the Sri Lankan regime for war crimes in an International Court of Law §§§