COLOMBO: M.K. Shivajilingam, Tamil politician and a relation of the slain Tamil Tiger chieftain Velupillai Prabhakaran, has said that he will assist Prabhakaran’s siblings, now living in India, Canada and Denmark, if they petition to the Sri Lankan Office of Missing Persons (OMP) to trace him.
But given the fact that when their mother, Parvathy Ammal, was gravely ill and was on her death bed in November 2010, they did not even visit her, it is highly unlikely that they will bother to file a petition with the OMP to trace their brother Prabhakaran.
The Sri Lankan government has said that Prabhakaran was killed in the battle at Mullivaikkal in the last stage of Eelam War IV in May 2009. His body lying mud on the banks of the Nandikadal lagoon, was identified by his former body guard and military commander Karuna Amman and the Tigers’ media spokesman Thaya Master. Later, the government of India sought and got from the Sri Lankan government, a copy of Prabhakaran’s Death Certificate in order to delete him in the list of accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
And yet, hardcore Tamil nationalists still believe that Prabhakaran is indestructible and that he escaped with a plan to emerge again to continue the fight for an independent Tamil Eelam.
After a Tamil National Alliance MP, Sivamohan asked in parliament if the government is ready to issue a Death Certificate to confirm Prabhakaran’s death, M.K.Shivajilingam a TNA member of the Northern Provincial Council told a Colombo-based radio staton Neth FM, that he will be ready to assist Prabhakaran’s brother and sisters if they want to complain to the Office of Missing Persons which the government is in the process of setting up to trace missing persons.
But Shivajilingam should know from his own experience, that Prabhakaran’s siblings will not want to rake up the issue.
When Parvathy Ammal, the ailing octogenarian mother of the slain Tamil Tiger leader, was in the Valvettithurai Government Divisional Hospital in November 2010 ,pining for her sons and daughter, no one bothered to turn up, despite Shivajilingam’s assuring them that he would get them Defense Ministry clearance and despite the fact that the Sri Lankan government had looked after Parvathy Ammal and her husband Thiruvengadam Velupillai well. They were put up, not in a prison, but in a house within the Panagoda Army Camp. Later, after Thiruvengadam’s death, Parvathy Ammal was shifted to the Valvettituhrai Government Hospital in Jaffna district and placed under the care of Shivajilingam.
Shivajilingam told this correspondent at that time that he had appealed several times to her eldest son, Manoharan (63), living in Denmark, to visit her, but he had been evasive. Parvathy Ammal had two daughters, Jegadeeswari, who is living in Chennai with husband Mathiyaparan, and Vinothini, living in Canada with spouse Rajendran.
While Jagadeeswari was toying with the idea of going to Sri Lanka to be with her ailing mother, her husband would have none of it and would bang the phone down if Shivajilingam called. Vinothini did want to take her mother to Canada at one stage ,but the Canadian government stonewalled it.
“The 82 year old lady would often ask if her sons and daughters would ever come to see her. Her face would light up when her relations living in Jaffna visited her. But she yearned to see her children,” said Dr Maylerum Perumal, the hospital’ Chief Medical Officer..
Parvathy, who was partially paralysed, would have been immensely pleased if at least her grandchildren had visited her.
“I had suggested this to their parents, but there was no response to this too,” Shivajilingam said.