People displacing to safer areas -- Prabha

LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan claims in an exclusive interview with this newspaper that the LTTE is not keeping Tamil civilians trapped in the Wanni as human shields, but admitted that people were moving to safer areas to protect themselves.“We totally reject this allegation,” Pirapaharan said, when asked to respond to accusations by Amnesty International and others that the LTTE was using civilians as human shields. “We have never used our people as human shields. Concerned people must understand the truth that we are struggling for the rights of our people.”He claimed that Tamil civilians were behind the LTTE, and that they have waged their ‘struggle’ for the last thirty years with their backing. “It is the desire of the people that Kilinochchi should be defended and they are also working hard in the background to achieve this,” he maintained. He said the government was enraged by the support Tamil people have given the LTTE and is fuelled by “hatred towards the Tamil people.’’ Consequently, the government was carrying out aerial bombing and shelling on the people, while also imposing an economic blockade, he said. “Our people know the truth,” he asserted. “That is why the people are displacing to safer areas to protect themselves.” Though he says clearly that ‘pople are escaping government bombing’’ when they ‘displace themselves” it’s the closest to an admission -- if it can be seen that way at all --- by the LTTE leader that the LTTE is fighting back to the wall -- but elsewhere in the interview he categorically says the LTTE is strong.Asked whether the LTTE has reached the end of the road, Pirapaharan said the LTTE had faced “much bigger military operations and one-sided Sri Lankan Government propaganda.” “Even now, Sri Lankan Government is carrying out propaganda that we will soon lose Kilinochchi,” he scoffs. “Recent heavy losses faced by the Sri Lankan military in Kilinochchi battles, however, foretell the future LTTE victories.”Of the East, Pirapaharan says all the people of that region support the LTTE. “Members of our political wing are doing political work there even now,” he claimed. “They are protected by the people. The Sri Lankan Government is maintaining people like Karuna with the help of its military and it is conducting excessive propaganda using them through its state media. This is the ground reality.”