| Published on 29-11-2007 In World |
| Viewed 846 times |
| Sri Lankan minister says LTTE will keep targeting him |
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Written by
M.R. Narayan Swamy |
A Sri Lankan Tamil cabinet minister who has survived yet another assassination attempt says the Tamil Tigers will keep trying to kill him as "I am a political threat" to them.
Douglas Devananda, 50, who Wednesday escaped in Colombo a fourth major bid to kill him, says the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) considers him an arch foe in the Tamil political landscape.
"They will not stop trying to kill me. They think I am a political threat (to the Tigers)," Devananda said in a telephonic interview a day after a young suicide bomber who failed to gain entry to his office detonated explosives strapped on her body, killing herself and an aide to the minister.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but Sri Lankan officials quickly put the blame on the LTTE, which Devananda passionately opposes.
"The LTTE's reading is that I can sway people away from them," said Devananda. "That is why the LTTE has told successive Sri Lankan leaders not to give me a post in the government that would let me play a key role in (the war-torn) northeast.
"They said that to Chandrika (Kumaratunga), to Ranil (Wickremesinghe) and to Mahinda (Rajapakse)," he said.
"There was a time when other Tamil groups strongly opposed me. They did not want me around. Now the LTTE is playing that role," he added.
Devananda, an MP since 1994 from Jaffna, his hometown, has been associated with Tamil militancy since the 1970s. He heads the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) and is a bitter critic of the LTTE.
Devananda is also seen as the most prominent Tamil face of the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who is overseeing a no-holds-barred military campaign against the Tigers that has led to thousands of deaths in the past two years.
The LTTE brands the EPDP a paramilitary group engaged in taking out LTTE members and sympathisers in the northeast and elsewhere in Sri Lanka on behalf of the security forces, which are dominated by the Sinhalese community.
Human rights groups have widely accused the EPDP of extra-judicial killings - a charge Devananda routinely denies.
The LTTE first tried to kill Devananda - who goes by his first name, Douglas - at his house in Colombo on Oct 9, 1995. As armed men stormed the residence, Devananda fled but four of his bodyguards were killed.
Devananda lost his sight in one eye after a group of LTTE prisoners pounced on him and beat him up at a jail in the Sri Lankan town Kalutara June 30, 1988, when he went there to visit Tamil detainees who were on hunger strike.
On July 7, 2004, a woman suicide bomber who failed to meet him at his office in Colombo exploded herself at a police station, where she had been taken, killing herself as well as four policemen. Seven people were seriously injured.
And another suicide bomber failed in the mission to kill Devananda Wednesday.
The minister, who believes there can be no military solution to the Sri Lankan conflict, advocates an interim administration for the northeast of the island and says he can play a vital role in stabilising the region, which includes areas controlled by the LTTE.
"The fact is if there were elections in the northeast in three to six months, my party will win at least 20 seats in parliament," he said. "In 2004 they (Tigers) rigged the elections in favour of TNA (Tamil National Alliance). Now they can't do it." |
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