'Fratricide in the Tamil Tiger movement' (SO 59) should read, 'The LTTE... as the dominant expression of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism'.
The 'Mahattaya episode' highlights the LTTE's bankruptcy and the impasse of the Tamil movement.
Three Tamil groups (EPDP; TELO; PLOTE) are now collaborating with the Sri lankan Armed Forces against the LTTE. Once sworn enemies of the state they are now its mercenaries.
The LTTE has applied fully Mao's dictum, Power grows out of the barrel of a gun, imprisoning 4,000 Tamils in prison camps. Individual terrorism, suicide attacks and occasional set piece battles are its only strategy.
LTE apologists often say, 'the end justifies the means'. They are wrong.
It is the means which determine the end.
If a struggle is elitist and exclusive, the Tamil people merely exchange a Sinhala oppressor for a Tamil oppressor.
If a struggle empowers not only the bearers of arms but the mass of the Tamil people and reflects the demands not os the rich but of the poor and landless, then comes closer to achieving genuine liberation.
Democracy, freedom of expression and respect for human rights are not luxuries that a liberation struggle cannot afford. They are guarantees the struggle does not lose its way.
Tamils cannot struggle in isolation from other events is Sri Lanka. As the NSSP exhorts, they must link the struggle for self-determination with that of the Sinhala people against austerity; in defence of democratic freedoms and justice for the families of the 'disappeared'.
Weakening the Sri lankan state from within and winning the Sinhala masses to the goals of the national liberation struggle is the way out for the Tamil people.
K Govindan (Committee for Democracy and Justice in Sri Lanka), London • SOCIALIST OUTLOOK welcomes readers' letters, which will be cut if they exceed 400 words in length. Write to PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU