The contention that the massacre of Tamils in Sri Lanka would have been avoided had the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam left the United Progressive Alliance in 2009 was made with the sole intention of placing the blame on the party, said former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi on Thursday.
Refuting the observations made by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in her reply to a special call attention motion in the Assembly on Wednesday, Mr. Karunanidhi said in a letter to his party cadre in the DMK organ, ‘Murasoli,’ that quitting would not have made any difference then. He wondered whether the DMK’s exit now had brought about a solution to the Sri Lankan Tamils’ issue; whether India brought in amendments to the US resolution in UN Human Rights Council or Parliament pass a resolution incorporating the amendments (suggested by the DMK). He said neutral observers would realise that the same situation would have prevailed if the DMK had quit the Centre in 2009.
Contesting the Chief Minister’s allegation that he did not do anything in the interest of Sri Lankan Tamils while in power, Mr. Karunanidhi recalled that he had moved a resolution on Eelam Tamils in the general council meeting of the DMK in 1956 in Chidambaram, when coming to power was not even imagined. It was the DMK that organised a series of agitations for the Sri Lankan Tamils while in or out of power and also suffered several political losses.
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Ms. Jayalalithaa, who was accusing him of playing a “double role” in the issue, passed a resolution in the Assembly on April 16, 2002, seeking the arrest and extradition of the LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran. Would anybody forget her observation on January 17, 2009, that civilian casualties did happen in war, in a reference to the killing of Sri Lankan Tamils, he posed.