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LOVE LAND RAZED: China demolished a planned sex theme park which aimed at improving sex education and sex lives. The park, named ‘Love Land’, featured statues and replicas of genitalia, naked bodies and an exhibition on the history of sex.
inside lanka
‘He had asked us to shoot him’
FUNNYMAN: Comedian Ricky Gervais visited the White House in pyjamas because all his best clothing were at the ‘cleaners’. Gervais was determined to make the trip, even if it meant posing for pictures in ‘loose-fit’ loungewear.
IINTERNATIONAL
Prabhakaran’s ruthless life of war ● 1,000 CADRES IN SAFETY ZONE
A determined massacre: LTTE
Celebrations in Colombo
Tiger torture chamber found Colombo: Lankan forces have found a heavily-fortified torture-chamber-cum prison complex, run by LTTE inside a three-room house in the Mullaivaikkal area near the no fire zone. “The house with a wide sitting room, plus three spacious rooms was protected closely by bunkers and all anti-LTTE men and women were imprisoned and tethered to heavy metal chains, generally used for elephants,” it said. — PTI
Warzone docs detained Colombo: Three Lankan doctors who treated hundreds of wounded civilians in understaffed, makeshift hospitals in the country’s war zone were detained on accusations they gave false information about the casualties to the media, an official said on Monday.— PTI
At his daughter’s marriage.
A handout photo shows what Lankan forces claim is the body of Charles Anthony, son of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, at an undisclosed location in Sri Lanka. — Reuters
Colombo, May 19: Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was killed by soldiers on Monday, was feted as a “Sun God” by his supporters and branded as a ruthless megalomaniac by his opponents. Few dispute he was one of the most effective guerrilla leaders in modern warfare — displaying the tactical prowess of Afghanistan’s Ahmad Shah Massoud, the ruthlessness of Osama bin Laden and the conviction of Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. In three decades of ethnic conflict aimed at carving out a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east, Prabhakaran managed to consolidate a de facto state and — until now — outsmart successive government offensives. He terrorised the island and even India, perfecting the recruitment and use of suicide bombers before AlQaeda existed. His fighters usually took no prisoners, and were notorious for assaults that left every single enemy soldier dead. He was held responsible for the 1991 assassination of former Indian pre-
killed LTTE leaders
Pottu Amman
9
DREAM VINTAGE: A 1957 Ferrari was sold for a record $12.2 million at an auction in Rome. The 250 Testa Rossa, one of 34 models manufactured at Ferrari’s factory in Maranello in the north of Italy, had completed several races in North and South America. The previous record sale at auction was held by a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spider.
Colombo: Tamil Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran had asked his cadres to shoot him if he ever swayed away from their aim of “Tamil Eelam”, his former confidante has said. “But his commitment could not be doubted. He even told the LTTE members that in case he swayed away from the desire to carve out a separate Tamil Eelam, then he should not be spared and killed,” said his former aid turned foe D. Siddharthan. — PTI
Colombo: LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s death sparked off celebrations in the island nation on Monday. People poured out into the streets, setting off firecrackers, waving the national flag and distributing milk rice to mark the military victory. In Colombo, celebrations held up traffic briefly while youth were seen shaking hands with soldiers on duty. — AFP
Bengaluru ● Tuesday ● 19 May 2009
Nadesan
mier Rajiv Gandhi, who in 1987 sent Indian troops to disarm the Tigers but ended up withdrawing his troops after years of jungle combat. Prabhakaran’s killing apparatus also claimed the lives of Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in 2005 and countless mayors, police officials and army officers. Interpol described him as a wanted terrorist with a “stout build” who was “very alert, known to use disguise and capable of handling sophisticated weaponry and explosives.” He made few public appearances, but delivered a “Heroes’ Week” speech each November commemorating dead Tamil fighters. “We will continue with our
Soosai
Puleedevan
struggle until the alien Sinhala occupation of our land is evicted,” he vowed in his final address last year. Prabhakaran’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had their own army, navy and air force, built up by an international fundraising network and the use of sanctionsbusting smugglers on ships and speedboats. “His dedication to the cause of the Tamil Eelam was unquestionable,” recalled former Tamil guerrilla Dharmalingam Sithadthan, now a politician. “He was the only man in Lanka who could decide if there should be war or peace.” Sithadthan said Prabhakaran, 54, was neither mellowed by age nor by his family of three children. Born on November 26,
Bhanu
Ilango
1954 in the Tamil heartland of Jaffna, Prabhakaran was a guerrilla fighter for most of his life and presided over a war that has left at least 70,000 dead — roughly a third of whom were his own fighters. The youngest of four children from a middleclass family, he went underground in 1972 as the head of a rag-tag band of brigands. He claimed that he decided to take up arms after seeing Sri Lankan security forces harass Tamil civilians in the Jaffna peninsula. He went on to attract thousands of young men and women to his army. Like the master himself, all LTTE cadres carried a cyanide capsule to commit suicide rather than be captured alive. He enforced a strict code of
Colombo, May 18: Without commenting on Sri Lankan claims of having killed LTTE supremo V. Prabhakaran, the Tiger rebels on Monday complained to the Red Cross that slaying of its top leaders including Prabhakaran’s son Charles Anthony was a “determined massacre”. In its first comment on the bloody developments in the Vanni jungles, the LTTE said it had informed ICRC that only 1,000 wounded cadres, civil officials of the LTTE and civilians remained in the so-called “safety zone”. Pro-LTTE website Tamilnet said before their death, the Tigers’ political head B. Nadesan and director Peace Secretariat S. Puleedevan had telephoned their contacts in Europe and told them to inform the ICRC head office that they wanted immediate evacuation for the wounded. “But hours later, Colombo defence ministry website claimed finding discipline on his fighters, and banned smoking and drinking. Prabhakaran’s fighters were conferred with military ranks only after their deaths and he built a cult of venerating the fallen. Every street corner in rebelheld territory became a monument to a Tiger “martyr.” Despite earning terrorist status in the United States and Europe and being wanted in India, he was sought out by diplomats wanting to bring an end to Asia’s longest running civil war. But when the island’s government lost patience with a Norwegian-brokered peace plan in 2007 and decided to defeat the rebels once and for all, Prabhakaran’s days were numbered. Weakened
The LTTE had announced its readiness to lay down arms but Colombo decided not to allow any opportunity for them to negotiate the dead bodies of Nadesan, Puleedevan, Ilango and Charles Anthony,” the LTTE statement was quoted by Tamilnet. The final defeat of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers has brought an end to one of the world’s most brutal ethnic conflicts and the demise of one of its most formidable and disciplined rebel outfits. An 11th-hour rebel offer to lay down their weapons went unheeded as the Sri Lankan military ordered a last assault that wiped out the entire LTTE leadership, including Prabhakaran, and 200 plus diehard fighters guarding them. — Agencies by defections, the rebels lost control over the east and then the north. In February, troops captured a two-storey A/C bunker hidden in a coconut grove in Mullaittivu district — thought to be one of his main bases. Pictures released at the time purported to show he left behind a stuffed tiger, a paintball gun and a bottle of cognac. Defence officials said the resistance encountered in the final hours showed he had chosen to fight to the last. His death was not the end he had sought. “A Prabhakaran who fights and goes down will become a legend, at least to his people,” M.R. Narayan Swamy, one of his biographers, said before Monday’s news. — AFP
Glimpses from the Tiger’s life
With wife Mathivathani, younger son Balachandran and daughter Duwaraka.
With son Charles Anthony and relatives.
With Sea Tigers before a raid.
pak nukes
Biden error reveals secret bunker
Obama to mull ‘all options’
Washington: US vicepresident Joe Biden, who is well-known for his verbal gaffes, outdid himself by divulging the location of a secret bunker used by the vice-president in the event of an emergency. A Fox News report said Mr Biden He told his friends at a Gridiron Club dinner that the bunker was under the old US Naval Observatory. He “said a naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment.” —ANI
Washington, May 18: President Barack Mr. Obama has made it clear that the US will consider “all options” to prevent extremists from seizing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. “...We have confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is safe; that the Pakistani military is equipped to prevent extremists from taking over those arsenals,” Mr. Obama told Newsweek in an interview on board Air Force One. “As commander in chief, I have to consider all options, but I think that Pakistan’s sovereignty has to be respected. We are
istan Army’s recognition that the threat from extremism is a much more immediate and serious one than the threat from India that they’ve traditionally focused on.” Mr Obama said he had decided to send an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan after recognising that the Taliban were destabilising PakIsraeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu meets US President istan in addition to Barak Obama at the White House. — AFP Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan trying to strengthen them threat than India in recent Prime Minister Yousaf as a partner,” he said. weeks. Raza Gilani on Monday He expressed satisfaction “One of the encouraging said that Taliban militants over Pakistan army’s things is, over the last sev- will not be allowed to recognition of the Taliban eral weeks we’ve seen a takeover the country’s being a more serious decided shift in the Pak- nuclear assets.— Agencies
violence timeline 1972 sads
Armed with just a revolver, Velupillai Prabhakaran forms a Tamil militant group that becomes the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
July 23, 1983 LTTE ambushes an army patrol, killing 13 soldiers in Jaffna and sparking anti-Tamil riots elsewhere that leave about 600 people dead.
July 8, 1985 Sri Lanka fails in first direct talks with Tamil guerrillas. India agrees on peace-keeping force two years later.
March 24, 1990 India loses 1,200 troops at the hands of the LTTE, and withdraws to leave the Tigers in control of large swathes of northern Sri Lanka.
May 21, 1991 Former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi killed, allegedly by an LTTE suicide bomber.
May 1, 1993 Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa killed by LTTE suicide bomber.
December 2, 1995 Sri Lankan army captures the Jaffna peninsula.
July 18, 1996 The Tigers overrun an army camp in the northeastern town of Mullaittivu, killing 1,200 troops.
September 26, 1998 Tigers overrun Kilinochchi army camp, killing more than 1,000 government soldiers.
February 23, 2002 Government and Tamil Tiger rebels sign a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement.
January 2, 2008 Sri Lanka withdraws from the ceasefire agreement and steps up attacks.
January, 2009 Lankan forces capture Kilinochchi and Mullaittivu town, confining the rebels to a stretch of jungle.
April 14, 2009 The Tigers agree to negotiate a ceasefire and restart peace talks. The government refuses, tells them to surrender.
April 20, 2009 Tens of thousands of trapped civilians flee from the shrinking area under rebel control.
May 17, 2009 Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse says the rebels have been militarily defeated Tigers later say they have "decided to silence our guns"
May 18, 2009 Prabhakaran and his two deputies are shot dead while trying to flee. Army chief Lt Gl Sarath Fonseka declares an end to military operations.
With close aides at an unknown location.
Kyi trial Cheney ordered Bhutto Suu amid killing, claims US scribe begins tight security New York, May 18: A told Al-Jazeera TV about special death squad assassinated Pakistan ‘s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the orders of former US vice-president Dick Cheney, an Arab TV channel has reported. “Mr Cheney was the chief of the Joint Special Operation Command and he cleared the way for the US by exterminating opponents through the unit and the CIA. General Stanley was the in-charge of the unit,” the Nation quoted US columnist Seymour Hersh, as saying. The US death unit killed Bhutto because she had
the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, Mr Hersh said. The US leadership did not want Osama to be declared dead. It would have raised questions about the US Army’s presence in Afghanistan, he claimed. According to Mr Hersh, the former Lebanese PM Rafique Al Hariri and the Army Chief were murdered for not safeguarding US interests and for refusing to set up US military bases in Lebanon. Mr Ariel Sharon, the then Prime Minister of Israel, was also a key man in the plot, he said. — ANI
Rangoon: Burma’s prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi went on trial on Monday in a notorious prison ringed by riot police and barbed wire as activists vowed to stage protests across the country until she is freed. She faces up to five years’ imprisonment on charges that she violated conditions of her detention by sheltering an American man who swam to her lakeside home earlier this month. More than 100 Ms Suu Kyi supporters were able to pass through the outer circle of barricades around Insein prison but not the inner one which was guarded by armed police and proregime supporters. — AP