An Independent and Interactive Tamil Community Web Site
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An Independent and Interactive Tamil Community Web Site |
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08-05-2006 Who says Pol Pot is dead? Newly-appointed vice-chancellor of the Jaffna University and eminent academic Prof Ratnajeevan Hoole has fled the country with his family to avoid a cruel death at the hands of the LTTE, which objected to his appointment. He represents the typical Sri Lanka Tamil community, which takes pride in academic excellence and hard work. He is a highly-qualified engineer with a double doctorate from the London University and a great deal of experience under his belt. There couldn’t have been a better person than he to head that university which needs proper direction. As DBS Jeyaraj, an authoritative commentator on Tamil politics, pointed out in The Daily News on Saturday, Prof Hoole is the ideal person for that post for three main reasons: his qualifications, his visionary plans for developing the Jaffna University and his ability to interact with and confront Colombo, if necessary, to get the best for Jaffna. But the LTTE, which is headed by a trigger-happy school dropout who is all out to deny education to Tamil children except his own and the progeny of his trusted lieutenants, and create, in areas under his control, an academic wasteland like Cambodia under Pol Pot, thought otherwise. It didn’t see in him a stooge it was looking for to further its terror project via the university. The development of the Jaffna University or giving the Tamil undergrads a better deal obviously figures nowhere on the LTTE agenda. A professionally-run university, with motivated students and teachers, is naturally anathema to the LTTE hell-bent on creating trouble at seats of learning and turning them into fertile recruiting grounds. (In the South, too, certain sinister political elements, which are averse to the smooth functioning of universities, are pursuing the same goal, as we pointed out in these columns on Saturday). The Tigers, therefore, instigated protests against him and issued threats not only to him but his family as well. One doesn’t need a brilliant engineering brain to know that the LTTE never hesitates to carry out its threats. Having blown up a large number of best brains among Tamils—Amirthalingam, Rajini, Neelan and Kadir, to name just only a few, the Tigers have now taken to blowing up even pregnant female cadres. They have introduced to the world the ‘foetal bomb’. Another first for them! So, harming Prof Hoole and those near and dear to him is child’s play for them. Hoole was without any alternative to fleeing. Silence of the worthy members of the so-called civil society who are champing at the bit to make a beeline to the Lipton Circus and stage some protest is rather intriguing. Is it that they who readily take on governments knowing well that there won’t be any reprisals are scared of confronting the LTTE? Some lily-livered human rights activists among them have found a novel way of protesting against LTTE atrocities without risking their skin. They are painting the places where the LTTE blasts their victims. True, their drawings are horrible but we don’t think they are scary enough to frighten the LTTE into stopping its killings. At the rate the LTTE is killing, if they continue with their road painting, the day may not be far off when the country will run out of paint even for some useful purpose. Never mind the ladies and gentlemen of the civil society. What about those fire-breathing types who were close to Prof Hoole in the university circles? (They include a Trotskyite who is too scared to open his otherwise busy mouth, as if he had seen Stalin!) Shame on them! Now the question is how to appoint a vice-chancellor to the Jaffna University. We are not short of independent academics suitable for that post. But the LTTE won’t let them function or even enter the university. So, a way round the problem is perhaps to delegate the power of appointing VCs to the LTTE and suggest that it appoint its political commissar Tamilselvam, who opposed the appointment of Hoole tooth and nail, new VC of the Jaffna University. If academic qualifications are a problem, a pina (hand-out) doctorate could be conferred on him. For this purpose the LTTE may approach the organisation that made Mervyn Silva a doctor. However, he will have to be prevented from introducing new undergraduate or postgraduate courses on gun running, suicide bombing, assassinations, extortion, etc.
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