KP (Former LTTE Leader) Freed
KP at Prabhakaran’s wedding, back in the day.
KP (Selvarasa Pathmanathan) was the last leader and, briefly, chief blogger for the LTTE. Before Prabhakaran was killed he designated KP, the chief arms smuggler, the head of the LTTE, though that was hotly contested by the rump. He was then promptly caught by Sri Lanka in Malaysia and put under a comfortable enough house arrest. In time, he quite thoroughly turned.
Since 2009 he has been giving interviews to the press and is quite the changed man. Now he’s reputedly pally with Gotabaya Rajapaksa and is running an NGO in the north.
The current news story is that he’s been freed, but it’s not like it just happened. It seems that KP has been ad hoc free for a while and that Lakshman Hulugalle just mentioned that in passing in a briefing.
"Practically, there is no detention now," Hulugalle told a press conference.
He said Pathmanathan was running a non-government organisation and doing "development work" in the island's north. "There is no court case against him," he added.
"This (transformation of Pathmanathan) is a victory for us. A person who had been working against us and leading Tamil people is now working to develop the country." (AFP
Despite him supplying arms that killed thousands of civilians and soldiers and supporting division after VP died, I still think it’s OK for KP to be out. The only thing, as the Tamil political parties have said, is that other Tamil political prisoners should get the same consideration. That is, they should be given a chance to reform and receive amnesty as well.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
The comedy of it all is that the government considers the situation stable enough to release KP but not so stable as to lift the State of Emergency…
state of emergency was lifted a while back.
Was the above comment written in 2011?
Since the status quo has been the same for more than three years with regards KP. The article should been written around 2010!
The state of emergency has been lifted but all the powers that were available under that are now included in the PTA, so technically there is no change, the emergency is still on, full time.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/07/sri-lanka-bait-and-switch-emergency-law
I guess he must have finished divulging all the info of the LTTE funds, and said funds have been transfered to the rightful accounts for the economic development of the *coughCOUNTRYcough*
This shouldn’t be a surprise given how Karuna, Pillayan and other leaders have got away scot free after cutting deals with the govt. It’s a pity that the govt is holding onto the helpers and foot soldiers of the tigers (who were likely forcefully recruited anyway) but providing full amnesty to the leadership.
Sri Lanka has become a joke. A beautiful country inhabited by a majority of deaf, dumb and blind idiots.
Still better than Tamil Nadu.
Getting there quite quickly tho…
I feel quite sad to see that a so-called Tamil liberator has become an NGO man. Ane ayyaa, why did you wage a bloody war for more than thirty years to establish an NGO in the North?