When almost an entire hamlet was massacred in Sri Lanka, it was not only the images of children chopped to death that shocked people but the knowledge that the butchery was led by women. |
| The worst carnage was inside the home of a farmer, M M Premasiri, who miraculously escaped as the attackers failed to break into the room he was sleeping in while elsewhere in the house 14 members of his family were cut to death. ``I heard the Tamil women laughing as if they had gone mad,'' he said. |
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| Thousands including Buddhist monks took to the road
yesterday to protest against LTTE’s massacre at Gonagala last Saturday and to call
upon the nation to unite to fight against the LTTE and peace oriented NGOs. Around 3 p.m., the pavement in front of Fort Railway Station was packed with demonstrators carrying placards saying ‘Enough is enough, bring an end to the war!’ ‘Destroy Tigers do not sacrifice people!’ ‘Enough of false talks, destroy Tigers!’ and ‘Provide security to villages threatened by Tigers!’. The protest demonstration was organised by the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT), lasted about an hour.
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| Gonagala massacre : wipe out terrorism Words cannot describe the horror of this latest cruel massacre, meticulously planned and most brutally executed by the separatist terrorists, with the sole aim of ethnically cleansing their mythical land of Eelam. Expressions of sympathies, however profound and sincere, cannot console the kith and kin of the victims. The shock and grief of all of us, whether Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim, who genuinely value human life, arises from the terrible suffering of those victims and the life long agony the survivors have to go through................................. ........................We
therefore call upon the public to reject all those businessmen, clerics, NGO
beneficiaries, politicians as well as political parties, who are sure to exploit even this
terrorist act to their own advantage and call to accede to the demands of separatists. We
also call upon the public not to be anaesthetized by shock, but to awaken and join hands
with the national movements which are committed to defeating the forces that provide moral
support and sustain the terrorists, so that with determination and unhindered, the
security forces can wipe out terrorism and end the war. This alone will ensure that our
country will once again become a safe haven for all of us to live in
peace and harmony anywhere in the country, irrespective of one’s race or religion. |
| AMPARA MASSACRE BY LTTE The Sinhala Veera Vidahana is in deep shock at the brutal massacre of innocent, unarmed, civilians including women and children by LTTE terrorists in the Ampara District on Saturday 18th September 1999. |
In the early hours on 18 September 1999, LTTE Tamil Tiger Terrorists struck at three villages of Gonagala, Borapola and Bedirekke of Ampara, about 270 km from Colombo, Sri Lanka. During the past 16 years, they have launched several attacks on the Sinhala and Muslim civilian community, and this is the 131st such attack. At least 58 Sinhalese villagers, including 17 women, 2 pregnant mothers and 14 children, were hacked to death with machetes and knives. The victims were dragged from their sleep and butchered. Those who tried to seek refuge in the nearby dense jungles were chased and killed. Some of the villagers who fled their burning homes as gunmen fired at them were chased and hacked to death in rice fields. Others were killed as they slept. "The attackers broke down the doors of the huts and entered. They hacked and chopped to death the victims, some of them still lying in bed," local MP Yasendra Bakmeewewa told Media. The LTTE is an organisation banned by the USA, India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. USA State Department in its annual listing of international terrorist organisations repeatedly includes the Tamil Tigers as one of the 30 most dangerous international terrorist organisations in the world. The Canadian Federal Court has ruled that the LTTE is an international terrorist organization. They have killed over 20,000 innocent Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala civilians deliberately. LTTE’s killing spree started with the murder of their Tamil Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappa, in 1975. Since then, they have killed over 40, Tamil leaders who are against their terrorist activities. To date, they have killed over 18 parliamentarians in Sri Lanka such as Ranasinghe Premadasa (former President of Sri Lanka) and three senior Ministers, Ranjan Wijeratna, Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake of the democratically elected Sri Lankan Government. Apart from the political leaders in Sri Lanka, LTTE killed Rajiv Gandhi (former Prime Minister of India). Recently, they attempted to assassinate Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the LTTE victim, Rajiv Gandhi. More than half of Tamil Tiger cadres are children some aged as low as 10 years. UN special representative, Olara Otunu who visited Sri Lanka and Amnesty International have condemned the Tigers for forcible recruitment of children into war. The recruitment of children as soldiers is a violation of the UN Convention on the right of the children. Further, the new International Criminal Court Statute makes child recruitment a war crime. We earnestly appeal to the international community to speak out and do whatever that is possible to condemn the perpetrators of these abominable crimes against humanity masquerading under the term 'Liberation Tigers' and behind dubious 'Tamil fronts' in countries such as the U.K, France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and Australia. Executive Committee of SPUR |
Aranthalawa Massacre
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Kattankudi Muslim Mosque Massacre
| LTTE Tamil Tiger Atrocities | Child Soldiers | Ethnic Cleansing in Sri Lanka |