Deccan Chronicle
By Our Correspondent, Chennai, July 12:
The Sri Lankan author Shobasakti, who was once an LTTE child soldier, said the Sri Lankan government should dissolve all the ‘Internally Displaced Persons’ camps forthwith as 50 days was a sufficiently long time to sort out the rebels who may have mingled with the civilians. A strong critic of the Tigers, the author dismisses claims of the camps being ‘civilian-friendly’ and makes the charge that the in-human conditions prevailing in the camps amount to ‘torture’ under international law.
“It is true that Tigers mingled freely with the civilian population. But the huge Sri Lankan army could have sorted them out in a month. Detaining children and the aged in the camps with bar-bed wires fencing amounts to torture,” he said.
The author, who lives in exile in suburban Paris, shot to fame with his first novel Gorilla that dealt with his life as an LTTE child sold-ier. While his next English novel is due in September from Penguin India, he is in the city now to release his second short story collection. While being appalled at the way Mahinda Raja-paksa regime continues to hold the three lakh-odd Ta-mil civilians in the ‘detention’ camps, he is also critical of the way some of the political leaders in Tamil Nadu try to approach the post-conflict Sri Lankan Tamil situation.
“Some leaders here think that story of Prabhakaran being alive can be a political ideology. When Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar tal-ked of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose being alive, E.V. Ramasamy Periyar asked him if that could suffice as a political ideology,” he pointed out.
Like other critics of the Tigers, he also thinks the idea of a transnational governm-ent by pro-LTTE forces wo-uld only serve the purpose of safeguarding the prope-rty of the Tigers across the globe. “If there is a transnational government, there has to be a transnational opposition. Writers like me would lead such an opposition.”