Karuna begins counter-operations against Prabhakaran

Rebel LTTE leader Karuna has commenced a series of operations against Prabhakaran?s men, reports PK Balachanddran.

Following the assassination of his protégé, Rajan Sathiamoorthy, and the digging up of his body by men sent by LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, the rebel LTTE leader Col. Karuna has commenced a series of operations against Prabhakaran’s men.

Karuna began taking counter measures two days ago, an informed source in Batticaloa told Hindustan Times over the phone on Wednesday, referring to the discovery of unidentified dead bodies during this period.

The source said that Karuna had begun hunting down agents of Prabhakaran sent by his Intelligence Chief Puttu Amman to take on people identified with Karuna.

The districts of Batticaloa and Amparai in eastern Sri Lanka are claimed by  Col. Karuna as his territory, while the districts in North Sri Lanka are conceded to the mainstream LTTE led by Prabhakaran.

An unidentified bullet-ridden body was found in Palankudah and, according to some sources, the slain person could have been one of Pottu Amman’s agents. In Punnaicholai, a man suspected to have participated in the digging up of the body of Rajan Sathiamoorthy was shot and his body was taken away in a vehicle.

In Valaichenai, a house belonging to a man from the Northern districtof Jaffna was burnt.

Karuna suspects immigrant Tamils from Jaffna of clandestinely working for Prabhakaran. Many Jaffna Tamil professionals and traders have quit Batticaloa under pressure from Karuna who is leading a Batticaloa-Amparai regionalist revolt since early March.

Though Pottu Amman’s agents are active in Batticalao district, they are not able to penetrate and carry out assassinations in the areas held by Karuna, informed Tamil sources say. All the killings and shootings so far have been done in the so-called cleared areas where neither the government forces nor Karuna have full control, sources said.

In the weeks to come, the people of Batticaloa expect more killings and counter killings by both the LTTE factions.

Karuna’s MPs fail to defy Prabhakaran

Meanwhile, in Colombo, the 20 MPs of the pro-LTTE Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) met on Tuesday and Wednesday to take stock of the post poll political situation in the country and choose two people to be in the National List of the party.

On the basis of its performance, the ITAK is entitled to two seats in the 29-member National List in parliament.

Though five of the MPs elected from Batticaloa and Amparai owe allegiance to the rebel Karuna faction of the LTTE, the meeting unanimously re-affirmed the united party’s manifesto, which spoke of Tamil unity, Tamil rights and not regional rights.

The meeting also resolved that any talks with the Sri Lankan government should involve only the LTTE, and not any other Tamil party, and that the talks must center around the LTTE’s proposal for an Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) in the predominately Tamil North Eastern Province (NEP).

The proposal for an ISGA was drafted by Prabhakaran, who Karuna is now opposing.

According to one of the newly elected MPs from Jaffna, the Batticalao-Amparai MPs privately told him that they would like Prabhakaran and Karuna to patch up rather than fight. The issue may be taken up at Wednesday’s meeting, the MPs said on tuesday.

Plight of Batticaloa MPs

Informed Tamil sources told Hindustan Times that the MPs from Batticalao were in a very difficult situation. They have to walk the tight rope all the time because both Karuna and Prabhakaran are hard task masters and can kill if a promise is broken.

Ultimately, they may end up fighting for regional rights and demands within the group, while publicly supporting Prabhakaran’s all-Tamil agenda vis-a-vis the Sri Lankan state, a Tamil source said.

However, it would be interesting to see how the Batticalao-Amparai MPs are going to vote when the issue of giving a National List seat to Joseph Pararajasingham comes up on Wednesday.

The Prabhakaran group has decided to nominate Pararajasingham but theBatticaloa group will find it difficult to accept it in the light of the fact Karuna had held Pararajasingham under house arrest and got him defeated in the elections. On Tuesday, the Karuna group’s newspaper Tamil Alai had carried a story condemning the move to appoint Pararajasingham, who it described as a Betrayer of Batticaloa.

In a retaliatory measure, the Prabhakaran group had killed Karuna-loyalist Rajan Sathiamoorthy and desecrated his body by digging it up from the grave and burning it.