By Janaka Perera
At different times Velupillai Prabhakaran’s admirers made absurd attempts to compare VP with George Washington, Mao Ze Dong and other great historical leaders. Many of his enemies however were calling this despicable gangster him another Hitler. But by doing so they gave this cowardly criminal undue recognition – even though in a negative sense.
Adolf Hitler was courageous enough to stay in his Berlin bunker when Russian tanks were rolling into the German capital in the last days (April 1945) of World War II. He never tried to escape but committed suicide instead of surrendering. He never ordered others to commit suicide on his behalf.
While no sensible person can ever justify Hitler’s crimes against humanity, we have to nevertheless recognize the fact that in contrast to VP the German Leader made several positive contributions to the country he ruled for 12 years.
Prabhakaran, in getting his followers to give the Nazi/Fascist salute at Pongu Thamil ceremonies (shown sometime back in a front page photo of the Sunday Times) may have been imagining himself in a role similar to that of the German dictator – but the most Velu achieved was to end up being a cardboard Hitler.
But VP is far more conceited than the Nazi dictator ever was. While the latter merely called himself the `Fuehrer’ (Leader), Prabhakaran has become the self-styled `Sooriyathevan’ (Sun God).
Unlike `Sooriyathevan,’ Hitler came to power through parliamentary elections. After becoming German Chancellor in 1932 and he generally governed within the checks and balances of the parliamentary system. Two years later he got 88 percent of Germans to vote in favour of the union of the German presidency and the chancellorship in the person of the Fuehrer and placed Germany under his party’s absolute rule.
Hitler unified the country and brought about a Nazi new Deal. Impressed by U.S. President Roosevelt’s socio-economic reforms, Hitler pursued similar goals, such as full employment combined with wage and price controls, public works projects (autobahns or Germany’s first expressways used to this day) social security and old benefits.
He asked Ferdinand Porsche to design a people’s car that would get 40 miles to the gallon and run without water. So Porsche came up with the Volkswagen (People’s Car), which has become a popular vehicle ever since.
Hitler was the first European Head of State to concern himself with industrial pollution. He ordered the Ruhr factories to install anti-pollution devices and was concerned about keeping rivers clean.
In fact John Toland, author of Adolf Hitler (first published 1976) argues:
"if Hitler had died in 1937 on the fourth anniversary of his coming to power… he would have undoubtedly gone down as one of the greatest figures in German history."
What has Prabhakaran achieved for Tamils in comparison? He demanded that the `Sinhala Chauvinist state’ feed his people in the Vanni – though he disrupted government food supplies to the North on and off. He depended on the `Chauvinist’ State to pay the salaries of public servants in the so-called Tamil Eelam to fund schools, hospitals, transport services and other welfare measures there. He made his children sit for the examinations conducted by the very State he was trying to bisect. The State paid the salaries of his proxies – the Tamil National Alliance – in Parliament. His hoodlums removed the railway tracks from Vavuniya to Jaffna and used the rails to build bunkers. Jaffna and Vanni faced a severe scarcity of essential consumer items and prices skyrocketed when compared to other parts of the country all because of his ``war for Tamil Eelam.’’ He built palatial mansions for him and those closest to him. The monies collected for “Tamil rehabilitation” were spent on building up his arsenal.
Only the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora will remember VP with affection for giving them the opportunity to seek greener pastures in the West after 1983. And now their one objective is to make a political business out of screaming "Tamil genocide" in Sri Lanka.
In Nazi Germany, it was mostly the Jews and some anti-Hitler Germans who fled the country. In Sri Lanka however while some Tamils left the island others chose to live with the Sinhala ‘Chauvinists.’ in the South rather than settle in LTTE-dominated areas.
If - as some argue - that Tamils had terrible grievances then what Prabhakaran and company did was to make matters far worse. They pushed the Tamils from the frying pan into the fire that roasted them for almost 30 years in the name of a so-called liberation war. Despite this the Tamil National Alliance, the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora and some Sinhala Trotskyite loonies still have the nerve to say that the Tamil people are ever ready to continue suffering even for another 50 years until an “independent Tamil homeland” is carved out of Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern Provinces. The TNA has dismissed even the Indian model of devolving power as it does not meet ``Tamil aspirations.’’ But strangely that model has met the aspirations of the majority of Tamils in Tamil Nadu – the true Tamil homeland.
So the despot who is closest to Velupillai P is not Hitler or any other dictator but Cambodia’s Polpot. The most significant feature of the policies that they both pursued is what is now known as auto-genocide. It is that they caused their own people to die by the thousands in so-called liberation struggles and misrule. Both Pol Pot and VP deliberately caused transport, education and other infrastructure to be virtually destroyed or disrupted in the lands under their control in varying degrees. Most of the well-educated and leading professionals fled Cambodia and the Vanni. Both tyrants recruited child soldiers (Hitler did so only in the final months of World War II). Both VP and Pol Pot effectively eliminated all opposition. But the latter was the weaker of the two since the Cambodian maniac had no overseas network unlike VP’s gang to extort money and do overseas propaganda.
The other difference between the two of them is that while Pol Pot tried to hide from the world his genocidal policy in Cambodia, VP and his proxies were screaming their heads off for all the world to hear ``genocide of Tamils by Sinhalas" although he himself was the very blood thirsty criminal responsible for their present plight, causing them to suffer and die in a war that he himself sparked off.
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge never turned into a global mafia. But Prabhakaran’s LTTE did and it is going to be the next headache not only to Sri Lanka but to rest of the world unless the pro-Tiger Tamil Diaspora is effectively and firmly dealt with.
- ASian Tribune -
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