Talk:Lakshman Kadirgamar

Can we include a possible motive for this guy's assassination? What kind of trouble did he stir up? Tronno

you must be joking. the only trouble he stirred was against the subjugation of the tamil people by the LTTE terrorists.

he had terrible taste in ties too.

• It is an undeniable truth that Kadirgamar was never been elected to hold an office. It is a fact that is essential for his political career. --219.111.147.48 12:57, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

National list MP?

Hi, dunno what national list MP means - it wd be great if some more info can be provided on this (or) is it nationalist MP?

Gurubrahma 10:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• A national list MP means the following: Both parties, elected as ruling and main opposition are allowed to select a cetain number of MPs through National List MPs, even if they are not elected by a public election. It is for administrative purposes. --219.111.147.48 23:28, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

It means he was elected from a party list and not on his own in a district.

Hitlist of the Tamil Tigers

"It has been believed that he may have been on the hitlist of LTTE as early as 1994, given his successful efforts in getting that organization banned internationally."

Can someone cite a source for this hitlist. Otherwise it should be removed. Share_Bear --12:15, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

The Hindu newspaper dated 14th August, 2005 (Front page news and box) and lot of other newspapers from India have said that Lakshman Kadirgamar has been on LTTE hitlist for his efforts in getting it banned. Also, it can be quoted as common knowledge, given the increased security that he has been provided.

Gurubrahma 14:12, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, it is the Hindu newspaper dated 13th August. Error regretted. Gurubrahma 04:08, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

"The highly accomplished Mr. Kadirgamar was known to be at the top of the LTTE's hit list, just below President Chandrika Kumaratunga." - August 15, 2005. [1]

Date of Death

The main article now says he died on 12 August, but, in the text under Death, it says he died early the next morning after surgery. Any idea which is correct? Xoloz 17:43, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I think I've answered my own question -- the Sri Lankan government website consistently refers to his death on 12 August. I will change the article's text, but any more informed party is invited to change as appropriate, of course. Xoloz 18:07, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Candidate for PM ?

"Mr. Kardirgamar was mentioned as a candidate for Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, but on April 6 President Kumaratunga appointed Mahinda Rajapakse to the post." In fact JVP preffered him over Mahinda Rajapakse and it was President Kumaratunga who opposed it. Is is possible that Mahinda Rajapakse and the JVP wanted him to be the next prime minister under President Mahinda Rajapakse ? Wouldn't that have put an end to Anura and the Bandaranayaka Family's dreams ? Just think about it!

The above statement is incorrect. It was the SLFP who were against the appointment of Mr. Kardirgamar, purely he was a Tamil. President Kumaratunga trusted Mr. Kardirgamar and heavily relied on his advice too.

Mr. Kardirgamar pretty much admitted this in an interview with London based Theepam TV.

Recent Edits

1) There is no official claim by LTTE on the assaination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi, however many believed that it was their work. Changed the wordings accordingingly.

This sir, is just whitewashing: I will quote Mr Balasingham, not a "sinhala propaganda machine':

Q: Are you denying involvement in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination?

A: (Mr. Balasingham). I know this is a sensitive issue, not only for you but for us as well. You are raising an issue that happened 10 years ago. We want to have friendly relations with India.

If someone asked Mr balasingham whether LTTE was, say, helping Al Queda on 9/11 atack, what would you think his answer be? "9/11 is a thing in the past, let's forget that" or A vehement "NO" with may be an accusation that the questioner was consipring against tamil cause???

That he did not deny it when questioned point-blank, in a case like this, is more than enough reason to believe that they DID it. Greenleaf 02:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Agree. I too saw that portion of the interview. I'm ok with what you have on the web now.[MapleLeafFan] 08:57, 31 October 2005

Wait you guys do know that the LTTE has apologized for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi? and admits that they assassinated him, and that they deeply regret this? I am just making sure.

2) LTTE never directly put the blamed on JVP or JHU for Kardir's murder. They put the blame on "forces opposed to the peace process." They are fractions of Sri Lankan Army who opposes the peace process. There are para-militry groups who opposes the peace talks with LTTE. I'm sure there are elements within UNP and SLFP also opposes the peace process. Changed the wordings accordingly.

About the first point you raised: LTTE need not claim responsibility - The fact that Sivarasan committed suicide when apprehended, that he was a top LTTE operative and that he was on the assassination spot are pointers enough to talk about LTTE involvement. Also, the fact that Murugan, sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India was a member of LTTE. --Gurubrahma 17:46, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

You have some valid points. Unlike the Sri Lankan police who jump to conclusions without any evidence or suspects, Indian police do their investigations more throughly. [MapleLeafFan] 09:02, 31 October 2005.

Innocent until Proven Guilty ?

So far no one has been tried against the murder of Hon. Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar and convicted for the crime. Although LTTE may have been the "Usual Suspects", in a court of law that is not good enough to convict a person of a crime. Sri Lankan police chief, made the accusation within the hours of the incident, without doing proper investigation into the incident. Until it is proven in a court of law, we have to give the benefit of the doubts for all those accused. We can't simply assume someone guilty for their track record or based on the style of their operations. Wipedia should not to be used as a propaganda machine. It has its standards. We should assume "Innocent until proven Guilty".

Tharaka:

I read this forum long after the incident at a time GOSL and LTTE is about to start peace talk. All what I want to say is this. Your argument that "Innocent until Proven Guilty" is correct according to the laws in Books. But if you really know the history and analyse the activities of these parties, to know who assasinated Kadirgamar is extremely simple to understand. It does not need very complicated arguments and inverstigations. But the present law and the conditions would avoid such a possibility and the Killer enjoy killing peacefully. Assassination of Kadirgamar has become only one of the many killings in Sri Lanka.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshman_Kadirgamar

Hello this is a matter of urgency Please read my notes: This article is very sensitive and I strongly urge wikimedia to either delete, correct or change the page accordingly. The page is meant to be about Lakshman Kadirgamar, his works and contributions to Sri-Lankan society. Though by reading the article it seems more of a page dedicated to informing people about his assassination. Furthermore, nobody has been convicted in connection with the murder, so suffice to say would be very much illegal to accuse an organisation of committing the crime. This page discusses the tigers more than it does of Lakshman, whoever wrote this is someone who is not neutral, but biased. There are dead links on the page denoted by [1] & [2] and so forth. Also a lot of comments are copied from asiantribune.com which is not a recognised Press/News site. Anyone could have made it, there is no telephone number, no fax, no contact apart from an address in Thailand that doesn't exist. A lot of Sri-Lankan papers use the asiantribune as a reference, but it is a 'stuck-duck' site that defames those who fight for the Tamil independence. The article is also highly emotional to both members of the community. I have tried to be fair and have picked bbc news urls as links, partly due to their impartiality, although I personally believe they are biased against the Tigers. I could have easily pasted pro-Tamil news sites such as Tamilnet, Eelam, TamilCanadian, Australia's Official News (which is nothing to do with Tamils, but produces lots of interesting articles that seem to be pro tigers). I did not, there are many news articles from CNN, Reuters,WPA, APA, and BBC that contradict what was written in this article. For simplistic purposes I have used the BBC. Please understand, that when you read this article it comes across as very narrow minded. The article emphasises Lakshman as a great man, but doesn't detail all his achievements etc.. It instead seems to imply propaganda against the Tamil community, by implying without fact.

Please can you relook at this article or remove it. I will get support for this argument if need please, and I implore you to resolve this as quick as possible.

Berlin, 14 August, (Asiantribune.com): The Killing of Lakshman Kadirgamar, Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka was a senseless and cowardice act of the LTTE terrorists and those responsible has to be arrested and brought before the justice said Joschka Fisher, the Foreign Minister of Germany.

The above line taken from Asiantribune.com is not entirely true. Asiantribune is neither a recognised media outlet nor a newspaper, it is not supported by the WPA (World Press Association) it is a biased organisation that produces fabricated statements on the internet. public.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4148628.stm Again the above link will clarify that the LTTE were not accused nor proven. http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2005/8/3072.html The president in YOUR own papers said that they suspected political foes, her office implicated the JVP. This was said hours after the Police Chief claimed it was the tigers after seeing bullet casings after 2 hours post-assassination.

The ruthless assassination of the foreign minister outraged the international community who took an even harder stance on the Tigers. The above line is false, there was never any proof that the Tigers were behind the assassination, nor were the International community accusing the earlier of having an involvement. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4148628.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4152250.stm If you read this link, you will notice that nobody even accused the tigers(rebels). The link supplied are official statements from some of the important nations. Carefully note there are no references to Tamil Tigers in ANY of the representives of nation's comments. Also the majority of the Tamil population (Over 75% being in the rebel regions) clearly were not saddened by what happened, from the second url.

His response was quick and a fine lesson to all Sri Lankans.

Again this line is nonsense, not all Sri-Lankans believe it was a lesson. When you mention Sri-Lankans do you mean Sinhalese? Because there are Tamils and other races on the island who beg to differ. Please when you write such bigotry could you kindly refrain from adding YOUR personal comments in. You could have merely said 'His response was understood by some Sri-Lankans' anyway it wasn't a 'response', it was a 'statement'!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4152250.stm Again this link states that people in the northern territories of Sri-Lanka clearly despised him.

Inspector General of Police Chandra Fernando blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam & it made headlines around the world (Reuters) [1] The inspector said “From the style and weapons used we're convinced it's the work of the Tigers. It's definitely the work of the LTTE.” This was never taken seriously, as in Sri-Lanka there are over 30 different armed paramilitary groups. Nothing was found at the site itself just shell casings from shells that could have been fired from any ak47 or sniper rifle that is accessible to all arms. His blame did not make headlines all around the world, and several news organisations always used the word 'alleged' 'within hours' .

(even though there is absolutely no doubt among the majority of the Sri Lankan people that the LTTE committed the crime) and put the blame on the forces opposed to peace process in Sri Lanka. Again if your going to use this line, please rephrase using 'the majority of the Sinhalese people', or define what you mean by Sri-Lankan. As the TNA, TULF LTTE all who represents the Tamil community claim the LTTE did not commit the crime. Infact they all claimed

However the international community did not buy into these allegations, as European Union went ahead in banning the LTTE as a terrorist organization from operating in their countries.

Once again nobody banned the LTTE because of this incident, "the international community did not buy into these allegations" is a personal SINHALESE reflection. No press ever wrote any part of the above statement. I implore you to show me where?

The assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar sparked protests world wide (High level protests in Sri Lanka, Canada, Australia, U.S, U.K, E.U, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy and Middleast) asking for a full international ban on the LTTE

There were no protests in any country except for maybe Sri-Lanka's yet again Sinhalese community. There is a very decimated Sinhalese community in each of the listed nations. No country asked for a full ban on the LTTE because of the assassination. Look at all the url links above. AND there no Government protests from other Nations.

The LTTE's denial has been largely ignored by the international community. Yet again this is clearly absurd. The international community did not even make a comment about the denial. Please don't speak for the international community.

The group initially issued a denial following the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, but Indian investigations suggested otherwise. Later in 2002, LTTE spokesman Anton Balasingham, when asked whether they still deny the assassination, merely said "I know this is a sensitive issue, not only for you but for us as well. You are raising an issue that happened 10 years ago. We want to have friendly relations with India." without any denial THIS is outrageous, we are talking about Lakshman not Rajiv, your cross referencing him to try and emphasise YOUR single-minded racist point of view. You are trying to justify YOUR view that the LTTE were behind the assassination because they were accused of being behind the one in India. Again Sri-Lanka's President proclaimed on occasions that Lakshman was under threat from internal political parties as well as the tigers.

International reaction Under your International Reaction heading, it is evident that you have not mentioned the tigers at all. This proves that you cannot find any nations that can be justified as a majority on this planet to conspicuously accuse the tigers??

MEMORIAL SITE AGAINST THE LTTE ASSASSINATION OF LAKSHMAN KADIRGAMAR <--- See what I mean out of all the LINKS this is in capitals why??? You could have just wrote Memorial Site of Lakshman Kadirgamar, you keep referencing the LTTE.. Please stop this, it is illiterate behaviour, only an uneducated cave man would write such a horrendous lie. Even so, wether lie or not. What is more disconcerning that you emphasise this Link and you denote the LTTE in everything you write. My arguement thus comes to a close.

YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES

You either remove your personal view or I will make a new document and paste over this. Remove all references to the asian tribune because if you do not, I will paste all references from tamilnet and tamilcanadian and BBC phrases. I am being fair to you, your clearly a bigot, so please learn to respect the truth for once. This should be an article of Lakshman Kadirgamar and his achievments through life unto his death, you can mention the assasination, but to span blame on the LTTE is as far as I am concerned rascist against the Tamil community. If you truly want a unified Sri-Lanka then try to write the article with regards to a balance without targetting the LTTE or lest, I'll have to start mentioning the attrocities of the Sinhalese here.

Disgusting.

That first sentence is DISGUSTING. I am disgusted. Lakshman Kadirgamar was a great man. Why the hell do you have to say he was assassinated by the LTTE? That is just promoting government rhetoric. The LTTE had very little motivation to assassinate him. He had already done the damage to the LTTE in the international community. He had already depicted the LTTE as terrorists, there isn't any more harm he could have done.

Moreover a possible theory is that the GoSL assassinated him becasue they wanted to spark tensions, and have a military confrontation with the LTTE.

There was extensive evidence that linked the LTTE to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, even when the LTTE initially denied the assassination. So it was fair to point the finger at the LTTE. The motivation was to prevent the IPKF from coming back to Sri Lanka.

But for Kadirgamar, there is no evidence, just speculation. He was shot by a sniper. That sniper could have had the motivation to eliminate a Tamil that didn't fight for the struggle, but alternatively the sniper could have been motivated by government propaganda that was attempting to spark tensions, and blame the assassination on the LTTE. (An excuse to pursue war).

So there is not enough evidence to say this assassination was by the LTTE. And it is very inappropriate for this to be in the First sentence of article.

I want to just change this right now.

Humanitarian

For any seasoned Wikipedian, this section reeks of personal opionion an non encycloprdic. I have tagged it for now. If no edit is done in one or 2 weeks to wikify that section, I will edit it. Thanks RaveenS 18:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Lakshman Kadirgamar article is biased

Lakshman Kadirgamar was never elected and he inside or outside the Parliament spoke and brought into the government only to have a Tamil face .Kadirgamar too was thrust into office.Several comments are biased and contraversial and i get other links for the same.Hence tagged it The neutrality of this article is disputed. ADYARBOY