Tamil Tigers work on political revival

Feizal Samath, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: July 01. 2009 9:56PM UAE / July 1. 2009 5:56PM GMT

A Sri Lankan vendor sells a video compact disc showing the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the former Tamil Tiger chief, in Colombo. Ishara Kodikara / AFP

COLOMBO // When a large door slammed shut with a bang in an upmarket Colombo hotel this week, many guests got a fright, thinking it could have been a bomb. Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war may be over and the Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran may be dead, but for many people, the fear remains.

There has been much celebration since the end of the war that claimed about 80,000 lives, but the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are trying to regroup as a political party and it is believed that militants may still be hiding in Colombo.

Last week, statements and reports surfaced on pro-rebel websites that some LTTE leaders abroad announced during the last stages of the battle with government forces the revival of the rebel group as a non-militant unit with a political agenda.

These leaders, two weeks ago, also announced plans to form a transnational government in exile backed by the powerful Tamil diaspora that has been largely responsible for the spate of protests in world capitals and attacks on some Sri Lankan missions abroad, including Norway and London just before the war ended.

On Saturday, local newspapers carried an interview on the TamilNet website with the LTTE’s new chief, Selvaraja Padmanathan, better known by his nom de guerre “KP”, saying the group was giving up “violence and adopting a non-violent agenda to secure the political rights of Tamils in Sri Lanka”.

He was quoted as saying that one of their priorities would be to get the international ban on the group revoked. The group is considered a terrorist organisation by more than 30 countries.

However, the following day, Sri Lankan military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara told reporters that the rebels would not be allowed to regroup. “The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam would not be given any room by the authorities to regroup in order to revert to their campaign for a separate state,” he said.

Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, said reviving the LTTE locally would be difficult. “They are unlikely to get local support and internationally, it depends on the support of the Tamil diaspora.”

The LTTE’s role internationally, Mr Saravanamuttu continued, depends on two things – resettlement of about 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and a political settlement to appease the Tamil community.

Analysts say the LTTE would only re-emerge if the government stalls on the resettlement of IDPs and finding a political solution, which would create discontent among the Tamil community. The government has said 80 per cent of people living in camps will be returned to their former homes by the end of the year.

Tamil residents in Colombo and the northern city of Jaffna are also wary of Tiger plans to regroup.

“I don’t know … I hope it doesn’t cause more problems for us,” said a resident who declined to be named in the Tamil-majority Colombo suburb of Wellawatte.

A Jaffna resident, who did not want to be named, agreed. “If it creates more trouble for us, then it’s better they don’t re-emerge,” he said.

Young, innocent Tamils are often picked up by the military on suspicion of being a rebel and detained for months.

Mr Padmanathan, the LTTE’s new leader who is believed to be operating from either Malaysia or Thailand, said in the interview that the decision to give up the armed struggle for a political one was actually made by Prabhakaran, a few days before he died. But the offer, which came with calls for a ceasefire, was not taken seriously by the Sri Lankan government and the international community.

“We are moving forward towards a new path. This position has attracted wider acceptance within the organisation. The LTTE’s political position is that any political solution for the Tamil national question should be based on the recognition of the fundamental principles of political aspiration of the Tamil people, ie recognition of Tamils as a nation, having the north-east as their historical homeland and that they are entitled to right to self-determination,” he was quoted as saying.

Tamils, the biggest minority community in Sri Lanka, have called for equality in education, employment in the government sector and the allocation of land for more than 50 years, claiming discrimination by majority-Sinhalese governments.

Characterised by their trademark suicide bombings, LTTE rebels fought the Sri Lankan military for decades, but after a sustained two-year campaign, government troops wiped out the group and its top commanders in May, taking control for the first time the northern and the eastern regions.

Mr Padmanathan said a committee has been formed to create a trans-national Tamil government under the leadership of the group’s legal adviser Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran.

He said the LTTE would not participate in elections “until a political settlement is reached based on the principles of Tamil nationhood, homeland and right to self-determination”.

David Buell Sabapathy Jeyaraj, a Tamil journalist living in Canada, said Mr Padmanathan was the most powerful LTTE rebel abroad.

“At various times he has been in charge of arms purchases, control of all fund raising activity for the LTTE overseas and supervising the administration of LTTE overseas branches and front organisations,” he wrote in the local Daily Mirror.

He added, however, that not all LTTE leaders supported Mr Padmanathan.

“It remains to be seen as to whether KP will eventually consolidate his grip over the well-oiled, lucrative overseas LTTE structure.”

fsamath@thenational.ae