COLOMBO, Oct 26: The Sri Lankan government, which is trying to regain through propaganda what it has lost in the battlefield to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), is now freely using prisoners of war to score points over the separatist group. But here too, an out and out victory is proving elusive.On Monday, the Sri Lanka army organised a press conference over tea and cakes with six men - four soldiers and two civilians working for the army - who had been released over the weekend by the LTTE after five years in captivity. But if it was aiming to chalk up a propaganda victory by getting the released men to paint the LTTE as brutes, the mission definitely backfired.The freed men thanked the LTTE for releasing them and reuniting them with their families. They said their legs had been chained till April this year, and were handcuffed and beaten for a few months in the beginning, but said that they bore no ill-feeling towards their captors.``After all, they could have killed us, but theydecided to release us. We are thankful to Prabhakaran for releasing us,'' said L P Pushpakumara, a soldier who was taken prisoner in 1993 after an attack on a camp in Weli Oya.``They did not treat me too well, but they did not treat me too badly either,'' he said. He was confident that the LTTE would soon release the other 16 men - four civilians, two sailors and 10 soldiers - with whom he and the others who were released shared the prison.``I want to tell the parents and relatives of the other soldiers still in LTTE captivity not to lose hope. They will also be released,'' Pushpakumara said.Another soldier, Lance Corporal E A Amarasinghe, spoke halting but coherent Tamil and said he had learnt the language from the prison guards during the five years in captivity. He was taken prisoner after the attack on Pooneryn camp in November 1993 during which he was badly injured. The LTTE, which was in control of Jaffna then, got him treated at Jaffna Teaching Hospital.They got enough to eat and wereallowed to communicate with their families by sending and receiving letters through the ICRC whose representatives went to visit them regularly.On Sunday, the ICRC had called a similar press conference with three sailors of two merchant ships who had been released by the LTTE along with 6 armymen. The sailors blasted the government for not doing anything - two of them had been in captivity for three years - to secure their release and thanked the LTTE for deciding to let them go.The release of the nine men, at the intervention of the ICRC, was sudden and has given the LTTE a couple of points in the propaganda war. Some of the men who were released even believed that this was a signal from the LTTE that it wanted to begin negotiations and that the government should respond to this offer.This small but significant victory for the LTTE in the war of words came days after the government was criticised by some sections of Sri Lankan opinion for parading LTTE child soldiers who had surrendered to themilitary like trophies before TV cameras, journalists and western diplomats.It was even pointed out to the Information Minister that the government had violated two international convention on child rights to which it was a signatory, to which he could only reply that the government had to use ``unconventional methods to fight an unconventional enemy''. However, many who attended that event with the child soldiers, also over tea and cakes, came away with mixed feelings, not just about the LTTE but also about the government.
