I once wrote a piece in this newspaper (‘To know courage...’, IE, August 1, 1999) describing how, of the 28 names that figured in my reporter’s notebook from my first Sri Lanka story in early 1984, only eight had survived. None of the 20 had died of natural causes. Most had been killed by the LTTE. Most were also Tamils. Most of them were also men of peace, fighting and campaigning for a better deal for their fellow Tamils. That piece was inspired by the killing by a human bomb that morning of Neelan Thiruchelvam, a middle-ground MP from Jaffna and a man of peace with a heart of gold; a man who only spread warmth, affection and generosity, and fought tirelessly not only for Tamil rights, but also for peace — which is why, in the LTTE’s penal code, he deserved capital punishment. The bomber threw himself on the bonnet of his car as I waited to join him for breakfast in the lobby of the Intercontinental. Yogeswaran and his wife Sarojini, Padmanabha and Yogasankari, Sam Thambimuthu and P. Joseph, all elected MPs from Tamil territories, all as Tamil as Prabhakaran or Vaiko or Karunanidhi, were assassinated by the LTTE for the same crime: questing for peace. Joseph, a most loveable man who wouldn’t harm an insect, was shot during Christmas mass in his native Batticaloa in 2005. There was nothing Prabhakaran hated more than peacemakers. They created dissonance, disruption in a world of murder and deceit. He was, indeed, macho, arrogant, irrational, fascist. If you don’t bow to me, I will send a teenager, a child, maybe a woman, with a bomb-belt, to embrace you.

... contd.