Human Security, IDPs and Refugees, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Satire

Government and LTTE differ on value of life

Banyan News Reporters

by Global Citizen for Banyan News Reporters

Colombo, Sri Lanka: Researchers at the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence and their counterparts at the LTTE Humanitarian Research Institute at Puthukkudiyirippu (formerly based in Kilinochchi and which did not at any time have a hospital) have been competing for months to produce the most accurate calculation of the value of life.

The Defence Ministry spokesman who leads the government research team revealed their preliminary findings several months ago through the Media Centre for National Security. Speaking to Journalists, he reported that eight soldiers had died in battle the previous day, when the actual body count of security forces personnel killed in battle was thirteen. He assured that according to his scientific calculator, the given numbers indicated the value of a soldier’s life was approximately 0.6153846153846. Based on these figures, he said that 36.92307692307 valiant soldiers laid down their lives for the motherland when their busses came under terrorist attack a couple of weeks ago.

When BNR contacted mathematicians at the LTTE Humanitarian Research Institute, they rejected these figures as ‘laughable’. They claimed to have adopted more accurate methods which have enabled their organisation carry out hundreds of suicide bombings and still manage to balance their accounts at the end of every humanitarian year.

Analysts believe that the LTTE uses sophisticated equations where the value of life is believed to be:

(a) directly proportional to the number of civilians they hide behind

(b) inversely proportional to the number of white hairs in their leader’s moustache

BNR learns that progress is being made at a heightened pace of late in and around Puthukkudiyirippu towards the harmonisation of the GoSL’s and LTTE’s varying value of life calculations by civilians who are killing and dismembering themselves in the name of pure mathematics.Â