Chief Minister and DMK supremo M Karunanidhi on Monday denied having directly held LTTE leader Velupillai Prabakaran responsible for the fall of that organisation and the present plight of the Lankan Tamils.
In a statement here, Karunanidhi, reacting to AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa and few others criticising him for ‘blaming’ Prabakaran for the defeat of LTTE in the Eelam struggle, said he had only found fault with the strategies drawn by the organisation without proper vision.
After Karunanidhi’s epistle to party cadres last week that he was crying in silence after the fall of LTTE and plights of Tamils in the island, Jayalalithaa had said Karunanidhi could not cover up his ‘betrayal’ of the Lankan Tamils by saying Prabakaran had brought upon himself his own destruction and the end of the Eelam’s armed struggle.
To this, Karunanidhi clarified that he had only lamented that the wrong strategies of the LTTE and lack of its vision had led to the fall of the organisation and never held Prabakaran or any individual directly responsible for the fall.
He shed tears for Prabakaran after he was defeated in the Eelam freedom struggle, but at the same time, could not remain indifferent when former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Tamil leaders like Amirthalingam, Yogeswaran, Mukundan, Sri Sabaratnam Padmanaba, Yotheeswaran were killed, he said.
‘Don’t I have the right to shed tears along with the widows, family members and relatives of these victims,’ he asked and accused Jayalalithaa of shedding crocodile tears for Prabakaran, after having demanded his arrest and extradition to face trial in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
On Tuesday last, Karunanidhi said no one would know his silent pain when he reflected on the outcomes of the hasty political action of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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