Tears for your eyes...:

Agony of terror

The very sight of it was sickening; very moving to a point of wanting to get lost from it all. I closed my eyes trying to repress tears. The baby girl was holding her mother’s hand and crying in pain.

Shanika SRIYANANDA reporting from Puthumathalan

The very sight of it was sickening; very moving to a point of wanting to get lost from it all.

I closed my eyes trying to repress tears.

The baby girl was holding her mother’s hand and crying in pain. The body was bathed in blood, but the little girl oblivious to the fact still held her mother’s cold hand trying to wake her up. But the pregnant woman was dead, the bullet ripping through her womb killing the baby inside. Flesh was strewn all around, and the head of the baby had come out when the bullet pierced through the woman’s belly. A travelling bag with tiny baby shirts and a milk bottle lay near the body. The small girl, covered with mud, was screaming “amma ... amma... elumbunga...” (Mother get up... get up).

Felled

The young woman, whose husband was killed by the LTTE when he was trying to flee with the family, had escaped with thousands of others when the troops of 58 Division broke through the LTTE’s last earth bund at Ampalavanpokkanei in the No Fire Zone. ‘Carrying her little daughter, she too had crossed the lagoon. But few minutes before her ‘journey to freedom’, she was felled by the LTTE’s Eelam police that started shooting indiscriminately at the fleeing civilians.

They were running for life and did not have time to bother about the little girl who was lying near her mother. Later, the soldier rescued the girl, who is now with her aunt. She still calls out for her `amma’. A soft drink by a kind soldier revived the child.

It was soon after the mass exodus of civilians who broke the iron gate of the LTTE’s hell hole. Walking through a ‘human river’ was not that easy. Interviewed one ... two... ten and more. The stories are the same. They have not enjoyed the luxury of eating a plate of rice or drinking a glass of water or a milk tea or wearing clean clothes for months and months. Overcoming the first barricade - the communication- thanks to Tamil speaking soldiers, I managed to jot down their agony with my hand shivering and tears steaming down my face. How could a human being hide tears in front of a tiny tot screaming in hunger ... an old man screaming in pain with a shot gun injury... a mother screaming in front of her son’s dead body...

It is a saga which any human being should not dream of experiencing. I was speechless when these people, who once lived like you and me and have lived somewhat of a good life, pleading for just a few drops of water or a tiny piece of biscuit. The soldiers, efforts to keep these people alive and happy is commendable.

The Iranapalei-Puthumathalan gravel bumpy road leading through the Ampalavanpokkanei earth bund to North of the No Fire Zone (NFZ) had fallen to the hands of the troops after heavy fighting at Puthumathalan Hospital last Tuesday. The mortars and artilleries were flying towards the South of NFZ targeting the last bases of the LTTE. The Army defence lines and bunkers were building in the newly captured terrain. Construction of a new road was planned to connect the terrain to move the remaining civilians - the old and the sick soon.

The young solider, Corporal Ratnayake of 8 Gajaba Regiment, was cycling on this bumpy road transporting a woman with head and leg injuries. She was shot by the Eelam Police when she was trying to flee. “Thanni” (water), requested 30-year-old Chandrakumari Balasingham whose eyes told her agony. Being a nurse of the Puthumathalan Hospital she said that she was compelled to work at the hospital and could not flee earlier due to threats.

“When I tried to come with others the LTTE cadres guarding the hospital shot at us”, related Chandrakumari to the soldiers pleading of them to bring her mother to her.

Corporal Ratnayake, ending his rescue mission, paddled the cycle fast to bring another hostage. We proceeded further, sometimes running along the trenches and taking cover to hide ourselves from the still active LTTE snipers. Personal documents, IDs issued by the LTTE, slippers and clothes were strewn along the road. We crossed the huge earth bund which the LTTE had thought would help prevent troops coming in.

Feeding

Purugei Sellathi, the 80-year-old mother was feeding her son a plate of rice with sambol, dhal curry and chicken given by the soldiers of the Alpha Group of the 8GR. Her son was differently abled.

“I had two sons. The LTTE killed their families. The LTTE left us to starve and die”. She threw some sand and cursed the LTTE.

The old and the sick were left in the Puthumathalan Hospital. Thangamani Jesudasan was pleading of Capt. Susantha Rajapaksa to take them to a hospital. She was shot by the LTTE while she was fleeing. The bullet would in her stomach had made her breathing difficult.

“We are completing the road and I ‘ll take you there in the evening”, promised Capt. Rajapaksa who witnessed how the hostages crossed the lagoon, thanking the troops for rescuing them.

Hope you know the place called hell. The Northern part of the NFZ, where the LTTE kept over 104,275 civilians is really hell. Tents were erected in every tiny space and these civilians were compelled to live virtually like slaves. Civilians were made to live in small huts along the Puthumathalan beach. Recent rain water had made small pools around the huts and people were forced to live in these huts filled with water. Some had converted vehicles into makeshift adobes. The awful smell emanating from strewn dead bodies as well as carcases of animals polluted the air.

A large number of cyanide vials too were strewn in the NFZ indicating that the LTTE cadres too had fled with the civilians.

While the LTTE was still forcefully keeping innocent civilians in the South of the NFZ, the young soldiers kept crawling into the huts to rescue people North of the NFZ.

Fifty-two-year-old Chandrakanthi from Dharmapuram cursed the LTTE for making their lives miserable. “Our lives are worse than beggars who have a cup and a plate of their own. We do not have any thing”, she broke out with tears. The mother of three children - two nurses and a graduate teacher- she recalled the happy days of a by-gone era. She resided in Dharmapuram. They all had enjoyed life’s comforts and had a good income from vehicle hiring. The LTTE had destroyed their lives totally.

“When the fighting was going on, the LTTE asked us to move to Puthumathalan”, she said. When asked why they did not think of fleeing, she replied that the LTTE shot at those who tried to and when caught they were taken to build bunkers or thrown into FDLs.

“We have only the clothes we are wearing”, wept Chandrakanthi. She said her family waited until the soldiers rescued them.

The troops of the 58 Division together with the Commandos and Special Forces opened the gates of this hell hole initiating the world’s biggest hostage rescue operation. Some of them had paid with their lives, and some with their limbs in this operation.

“We are ready to sacrifice our lives and rescue others and destroy the LTTE”, soldier Dharmabandu Ediriweera, who was on duty to control the refugees, said. From the little Tamil he knew he interpreted that according to civilians, there were instances that the LTTE had thrown little children into fire when families trying to flee by night get caught.Passupathi Rasaratnem (48) was chased to Puthumathalan from Puthukuduiriyuppu. Being a labourer, he said the families survived with one meal - kanji (porridge). The LTTE had stolen the food sent by the government and distributed a kilo of rice per family.

“No increase of ration to large families. We had to manage with the ration. No spices or vegetables. We only had kanji. They tried to take me to fight, but my wife, who was bed ridden, pleaded with the cadres and they dropped me and took the elder son of my neighbour”, Rasaratnem who appreciated the military move to rescue them added that though people were not aware of the exact day of rescue, they had prayed to see the soldiers.

He said that two days prior to the Army’s arrival, the LTTE, using loudspeakers announced to the civilians not to escape and they also pronounced the penalties for those trying to escape.

“So, we did not try to because we saw how people were punished and shot at when they got caught. But we had hopes that soldiers would come and rescue us”, he said. There were lots of dead bodies due to LTTE’s shooting.

Most of the young females were pregnant or having infants. “We had early marriages and when the LTTE was forcibly trying to enlist girls they got themselves pregnant in order to avoid the LTTE. The young men lived in bunkers to escape the LTTE.

Sixty-year-old Aiyadorei had hidden his three sons in a bunker throughout the past few months. “It was not be an easy task for Aiyadorei who had guarded them with his wife. It was not a day and a week, but months and months as three young souls lived like prisoners to save their lives. They had their meals inside the small bunker with less fresh air and came out at night only to go to the toilet. Not having a bath for months they had developed a skin rash and the youngest was suffering from high fever while the eldest found the sun unbearable. Born and bred in Nawalapitiya, Aiyadorei was the cleaner of the lorry belonging to Banda Mudalali of Kirinugawatte estate. Married to Rajalechchimee of Udayanagar the family lived in Mullaithivu, but the LTTE had chased them further and further away until they were rescued by the troops at Ampalavanpokkanei.

Lives changed

Those interviewed had only one story in common to relate. It is the saga of people living under the dictatorship of the megalomaniac LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran.

These people are not beggars. They lived decent lives. They had enough wealth. From school principals to doctors to nurses to teachers all have now become beggars. Some were misled about a separate land for Tamils but majority were detained forcibly. But the end game of this saga created by Prabhakaran, who played with human lives, would show the world that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

`The ruse about a segment of people who wanted to break this tiny country into two is no more. The terrorist group who posed as their sole representatives have shown the world by their actions that they are only murderers. The world’s biggest hostage rescue operation would come to an end soon with the liberation of the rest of the civilians South of NFZ. Then there would be a segment of people who will tell the world about the true liberators drawing the line between the democracy and terrorism.