YAPANAYA MAYORESS SHOT DEAD(98 May 20)
Two unknown members of the so called Sangilian army or the pistol group of the LTTE shot dead Mrs. Sarojini Yogeswaran the mayoress of the Yapanaya municipality council, on Sunday the seventeenth, just two days after Major General Larry Wijeratne, who was very close to the people in Yapanaya, was killed by a suicide bomber. Mrs Yogeswaran was elected to the municipality council only two months ago.
Mrs. Yogeswaran was the wife of Mr. Vertivellu Yogeswaran who was the MP for Yapanaya in the eighties. He too was shot dead by the LTTE, together with Mr. Amirthalingam after the LTTE leadership came back to Sri Lanka from their self exile in India.
It is unfortunate that both Mr. and Mrs. Yogeswaran had to die at the hands of the LTTE
whose members were the "boys" to them. Mr. Yogeswaran in particular was very close to the LTTE and trusted them very much. It was Mr. Yogeswaran who had asked the security guards not to check the terrorists who came to kill him and Mr. Amirthalingam. Mrs. Yogeswaran on her part had refused protection given to her as the mayoress.
Unlike most of the other leaders of the TULF Mrs. Yogeswaran opted to live in Yapanaya with her people. She could have lived in Kolomba or abroad like some others but she decided to remain in Yapanaya. When the other members of the LTTE were having second thoughts about contesting the local government elections she was determined to come forward as the mayoral candidate.
Even after the killing of Mrs. Yogeswaran the TULF, of which she was a member, has not issued a statement identifying the LTTE as the murderers. The TULF which was responsible for the false propaganda which aroused the feelings of the Tamil youth nurtured the LTTE. It is an irony of history that the TULF leaders are being killed by the LTTE one by one. It is also a curious fact that the LTTE is gradually wiping out the Hindu leadership. There is now only one way left for the TULF leadership. They must realise that they have been manipulated by the west for more than a century to work against the Sinhala people and that their creation, the LTTE, is now destroying them. They must at least now give up their false claims for self determination, traditional homeland and the mythical history that there has been a Tamil Kingdom in Sri Lanka for more than two thousand years and accept the fact that the Tamils in Sri Lanka are an ethnic community and not a nation, and unite with the Sinhala people to defeat the LTTE.