(An appeal sent in response to a campaign call for clemency)
17 August, 2011
Colombo – Sri Lanka.
To,
The President of India,
The Prime Minister of India,
The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu,
Your Excellency, Madam President,
Hon. Prime Minister Sir,
Hon. Madam Chief Minister,
Appeal for clemency - prisoners Murugan, Santhan and Arivu alias Perarivalan
I, as a Sri Lankan, have a special compulsion to appeal to you, on the rejected “mercy petition” of the two (02) Sri Lankans, Murugan and Santhan and their Indian
accomplice, Arivu alias Perarivalan, who would now be served with death, for the
murder of Shri Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India on 21 May, 1991 after
their petitions for mercy were rejected by Your Excellency the President, as advised by the government of India.
There is no question, no doubt at all, that the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi,planned
and executed by the “Liberation Tigers of Thamil Eelam” (LTTE) led by Velupillai
Pribhakaran, was “terrorism” of the worst, ruthless order.
Dear Madams and Sir,
I do concede, and concede without any doubt, the fact that no government could and
should avoid legal investigations and judicial trial on offences and crimes committed
on its soil. Allowing for independent investigations on crimes committed and an
equally independent judicial process, is a necessary virtue of democratic living and
assured law and order in our societies.
Yet the peculiarity and the circumstances of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, I
believe, should not be allowed to be treated as another crime, to be dealt only
according to law. I as a Sri Lankan, feel convinced, the Indian government in New
Delhi and the Tamil Nadu State government, together have a moral and a political
responsibility to treat the whole issue of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, aside from legal interpretations and judicial determinations.
Do please consider the undisputed fact that the very creation of the LTTE to its
uncompromising brutality that led to the death of Rajiv Gandhi among thousands
more, was not purely a Sri Lankan phenomenon, but the outcome of a definite political
decision made by the New Delhi government of Late Indira Gandhi, aided and
accommodated by the Tamil Nadu State government, led by the then DMK leader M.G. Ramachandran.
IF this decision in Indian politics to train, arm and finance the LTTE and other such Sri Lankan Tamil armed groups in early 1980's was never made (Please refer to pages 15 and 29 in the book “Assignment Colombo” written by your High Commissioner in Colombo from 1985 to '89, J.N. Dixit), dear Madams and Sir, IF we Sri Lankans were allowed the sovereign right to politically engage with our own militant Tamil groups without illicit interference from your then government, we in Sri Lanka have the explicit right to assume, thousands of deaths of innocent men, women and children among whom the death of Rajiv Gandhi is also listed, could have been avoided. Displacements in thousands could have been avoided and the mass tragedy that we now have to live with, could have been avoided. Perhaps with much less damage, than there is, in your own Maoist conflicts.
Yet most unfortunately and most tragically, that was not the case with Sri Lanka. We had to live with an armed conflict that resorted to “terrorism” in many creative forms and crossed borders, leaving many tragic events that compromised subsequent
decisions. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, certainly is the most saddest and the
highest unwanted price we all had to pay, after the deaths of one thousand plus Indian soldiers of the peace keeping force (IPKF) sent to North – East of Sri Lanka, in addition to our own deaths in many thousands.
This therefore Madams and Sir,
is no criminal issue the Indian government and the Tamil Nadu State government could merely let the judicial process alone, to decide upon. The acts committed by Murugan, Santhan and Arivu alias Perarivalan, are only an emotional product of the larger baggage of terrorism the Indian government is complicit in hatching and creating on either side of the Palk Strait.
Therefore it certainly makes the judicial process a helpless outsourcing of political
indecency, when it has to judge these 03 person accused of a criminal act, ignoring the political decisions of a government that eventually led them to be part of that political criminality.
They on their part for now have paid their price of being a willing prey of this
“terrorism” that has left a tragedy to be cleared by us all. They have already served
long periods in jail, awaiting death, that by itself counts a huge price for a human
being to live with. And I for one, don't accept “death as punishment” for any crime, in this modern, civilised world and therefore wish, India respects human life at all cost.
I am one among the 19 million Sri Lankans, who for over 30 years was living through
this mass tragedy of deaths, displacements, torture, extra judicial killings, abductions, arbitrary arrests, lynching and also political mugging on both Indian and Sri Lankan soils by different governments trying to out do the other. I therefore feel, there is a moral and a political obligation to consider the lives of these 03 people sentenced to death, within the total tragedy created by governments in political power. It is therefore certainly not fair and decent for a democratic government to reject its own responsibility in serving death on 03 men, who are also victims of political decisions made by your government, 30 years ago.
It is my strong conscience that therefore appeals to your powers, to pardon these 03
persons, now in prison for over 11years, considering them also as part of the political tragedy that could have been avoided, if all of us were more concerned and serious about democracy, diplomatic and geo political responsibility and above all, human lives, in our part of the world.
Thanking you,
Yours most sincerely,
Sgd.
Kusal Perera
Journalist – Colombo, Sri Lanka
Cc.
Ms. Sonia Gandhi – Chairperson, Congress Party of India
Chairman, Human Rights Commission, India
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