Spark Spot

Even now some of the people believe that LTTE Chief Prabhakaran is alive. Although the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that Prabhakaran founded has been virtually destroyed, its overseas adherents refuse to believe that the legendary rebel leader was killed in Sri Lanka May 18.

While reams of obituaries have been written the world over about the man who almost broke up Sri Lanka, LTTE functionaries in the West are dubbing Colombo’s claims of killing the elusive Prabhakaran as fantasy. And many seem to genuinely believe this – or at least doubt Colombo’s version of his final hours.

Leading the propaganda of the LTTE or what remains of it in foreign countries is its international wing leader S. Pathmanathan who made his first statement May 19, a day after Prabhakaran’s death was announced.
‘I wish to inform the global Tamil community… that our beloved leader is alive and safe. He will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people,’ the pro-LTTE website Tamil Net quoted him as saying.

Apparently realising that Pathmanathan’s words are not having the desired effect, a member of the LTTE intelligence wing has now ‘categorically denied’ that Prabhakaran was dead. He accused Colombo and its military establishment of spreading ‘rumours’.

According to Sri Lanka, Prabhakaran, founder leader of the LTTE, was killed following heavy fighting with the military which trapped him close to a lagoon in Mullaitivu district in the island’s north. He was reportedly with 18 of his bodyguards when he was cut down, with a single bullet in the front of the head that blew off the upper portion of his head.

Thousands of his Tamil supporters, particularly in the West, insist that Prabhakaran had broken the army cordon at the last moment and that photos and television footage showing him dead were doctored. But diplomats and security agencies around the world firmly believe that Prabhakaran has been slain although speculation persists as to how and when he breathed his last.

A Western diplomat based in Colombo told IANS over telephone: ‘We are in no doubt about Prabhakaran’s fate. He is dead and gone.’ Tamil sources in London, where the Tigers have enjoyed wide support among the Tamils, say the LTTE is finding it difficult to come to terms with the reality that Prabhakaran is no more.

China, the asian country, has marked the first anniversary of a devastating earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people last year in Sichuan province, and planned to hold a national moment of silence. Commemorative events were scheduled to be held in Yingziu township, near the epicenter of the quake, starting at 2:20 p.m.

The May 12, 2008, quake killed 68,712 people, state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Huang Mingquan, head of Sichuan’s provincial civil affairs department, as saying at a press conference last week. It left 17,921 missing, more than 374,000 injured and at least 15 million people displaced.

The initial tremor was so strong it was felt as far away as Beijing and even Bangkok, more than 2,000 kilometers  away. The epicenter: Wenchuan County, a lush, mountainous region with a population of more than 111,000 people. The disaster served as a rallying point for the Chinese government to reach out to the outside world and to instill patriotism and humanitarianism among the Chinese.

Since then, however, the government has come under some criticism for its handling of the post-quake period — notably the quality of school construction in the affected area and the number of children who perished in the temblor. Only last week did the Chinese government reveal that the quake left 5,335 students dead or missing and disabled an additional 546 children. Video Watch China analyst Victor Gao offer reflections on the anniversary »