Colombo: LTTE's slain supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran was jealous of educated people and wanted to destroy the Tamil intellectuals for his survival, a Tamil leader has claimed.
"The LTTE was an outfit with uneducated people. The top leadership of the LTTE including Prabhakaran, Thamilselvam and many more leaders were uneducated. They did not respect the educated Tamils," Emelda Sukumar, the Government Agent (GA) of Killinochchi and Mullaittivu, has said.
"Their (LTTE leaders) intention was to destroy the Tamil intellectuals for their survival. They were jealous of the decent and educated people," Sukumar, the first Tamil woman to be appointed as a GA, told the state-run 'Sunday Observer' in an interview.
Sukumar, who has served for over eight years in the region, said the LTTE could not survive mainly because "they undermined the values of the educated people" and added the LTTE leaders were educated up to grade five or eight.
"Sukumar, who served as Mullaittiviu GA while under LTTE control and saw their 'rise and fall' and how they exploited the money sent by the Tamil Diaspora, said the Tamils who funded LTTE should compensate Wanni Tamils who are affected badly due to the LTTE terror," the paper said.
On the allegations of military excesses against LTTE, she said it was not true. "I have seen how the military reacted to LTTE firing. The security forces carried out their missions after careful surveillances of the terrains. They always took the correct targets."
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, October 25, 2009, 15:15