Today marks the 13th anniversary of the defeat of Thirty years of inhumane LTTE activities in Sri Lanka; terrorism by war heroes in this country. That was on a day like today in 2009.
The shooting to death of the then Mayor of Jaffna Alfred Duraiappah on July 27, 1975 while on his way to the Nallur Kovil is the first dark memory of the Thirty Years War in Sri Lanka.
The dark shadows of terrorism that began with that incident spread throughout the island in 1983 with the killing of 13 LTTE soldiers.
For more than two decades since then, LTTE terrorism has killed thousands of people at all levels in the country.
The LTTE has been identified by the world as one of the most powerful terrorist organizations in the world.
Although a ceasefire agreement was reached with the Sri Lankan government in 2001, the LTTE continued to violate it.
The LTTE used the Tamil people in this country as human shields and children as child soldiers.
Accordingly, a major challenge for the war heroes in this country was to defeat the LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and his horrific attempts to assassinate and release the world’s largest amount of hostages.
Members of the Armed Forces, Police and Civil Defense forces were able to successfully overcome that challenge as well.
It was then President Mahinda Rajapaksa who led the final battle to defeat terrorism that had ravaged the country for three decades. Under the guidance of then Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the then Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda, Air Force Commander Roshan Goonetileke, Civil Defense Force Chief (Current Parliamentarian) Sarath Weerasekera and IGP Jayantha Wickramaratne and with the dedication of thousands of war heroes, Sri Lanka will go down in history as the inheritors of the victory that allowed the people of Sri Lanka to breathe freely today, against one of the most feared terrorists in the world.
