Sri Lanka : keeping the peace in a sharply divided society

Tamil Tigers (LTTE) -

ORGANIZATION AND OPERATIONS

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), arguably the most lethal and well organised terrorist group in the world, began its armed campaign in Sri Lanka for a separate Tamil homeland in 1983. The group threatens not only the domestic stability of Sri Lanka and India but also the security of the international system as a whole. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and related Tamil insurgents are engaged in organized criminal activities. These began in Sri Lanka and have spread to Western Europe, North America and Australia - wherever Tamil refugees have landed. The LTTE is now banned in Sri Lanka, India, the United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada and Malaysia.

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LTTE: Ethnic Strife or Tamil Separatist Terrorism?
Human Bombs, Child Soldiers, Assassinations and Massacres - Hallmarks of Tamil Tigers
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), while masquerading as a liberation organisation, has murdered and massacred thousands of innocent civilians from all ethnic communities - Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims in Sri Lanka. Tamil Tigers have assassinated many moderate Tamil leaders of the country in a systematic manner from the beginning of 1980s. Vellupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the LTTE, has established a rule of terror in Jaffna, many of his own lieutenants have been murdered; Tamils who have criticised him, even mildly, have been picked up, tortured and executed; others have been held in dungeons, half starved, hauled out periodically for a battering by the guards.. Prabhakaran has shown a bloodthirstiness in dealing with opponents that has compared with some of the cruelest figures in Asian history, including Pol Pot of Cambodia. The evidence is that LTTE much prefers killing to democracy and has no wish to test the opinion of the people in whose name they commit so much murder.

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Child Soldiers

Participation in armed conflicts, even voluntarily, by children below the age of 15 is an offence, according to the Geneva Convention, 1948, and the two amendments to it, adopted in 1997, as well as Article 38 of the UN Convention on Rights of the Child. In the decade ending 1999, nearly two million child soldiers were killed in the various conflicts, worldwide. According to an April 2000 estimate, there are some 2,000 children in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) ranks. Child soldiers were originally recruited into the LTTE’s baby brigade, commandeered by Justin. But, after 1987, they were integrated with adult units. (Read More)

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Human Bombs & Terrorist attacks

The LTTE is notorious for its suicide bombings. Since the late 1980s, the group has conducted more than 200 suicide bombings—far more than any other terrorist group. Tamil Tigers have staged two thirds of all the suicide bombings in the world. LTTE suicide bombers have attacked civilians on mass transit, at Buddhist shrines, and in office buildings. In October 1997, a suicide truck bomb killed 18 people at the 39-story World Trade Centre in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital. Beyond suicide bombings, the LTTE have used conventional bombs against political, economical  and civilian targets and have gunned down both Sri Lankan officials and civilians. LTTE fighters wear cyanide capsules around their necks, so they can commit suicide if they are captured.
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PEACE  

Tackling the Tigers - The Indian Experience
India became involved in Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka in the 1980's. The involvement was been motivated by a mix of issues. At the beginning India supported both sides in different ways. The unfortunate experience of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in the island has been analysed in several accounts. During the three-year involvement, some 1,500 Indian troops were killed and more than 4,500 were wounded. Rajiv Gandhi, India's Prime Minister during their involvement, was assassinated on May 21 of 1991, by an LTTE suicide bomber. The assassination of Rajiv swung the pendulum to the other extreme. Indian support for the LTTE dropped to near zero. There is a sense of revulsion against Velupillai Prabakaran and the ideology of the LTTE throughout the country, but much more so in Tamil Nadu.

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Tackling the Tigers

India's Vietnam

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran with LTTE leader V. Prabakaran in February 1985. © Hindu

ISLAND OF DEATH

"Some prefer to call the so called "paradise on earth", this tropical island of Sri Lanka,  "The island of death". The 18 years of tragic conflict has claimed more than 60,000 souls and the war has become a way of life in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, more and more people have a vested interest in ensuring that it continues. Fortunes continue to be built on the war. While fashionably dressed teens of elite Sinhalese and Tamil families learn to drive their new Alfa Romeos in Colombo, and the smartly dressed young women are sitting around, sipping wine, giggling and watching male dance-strippers in swanky bungalows in posh parts of Colombo , the burden of war sacrifice falls on the poor, uneducated and unprivileged  villagers of Sri Lanka, who have provided most of the estimated 18,000 troops killed so far. Families of affluent and wealthy Tamils live in luxury in Colombo or in foreign countries while the poor and the neglected Tamil villagers, if lucky enough to survive the cruel war, are displaced several times and waiting in fear in refugee camps. They are harassed by the military and their children are kidnapped by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). Funds to the Tigers comes partly from the movement's worldwide chain of businesses, including shipping lines, travel agencies, shops and money changers, augmented by clandestine weapons and drugs smuggling. Over 7000,000 Tamil-speaking Sri Lankans are now living abroad and also fund the tigers. Pundits say expatriates give out of a sense of guilt over their affluence and security abroad, a tendency to romanticise a distant conflict, and fear." 

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The enigma of Prabhakaran 

Freedom fighter or megalomaniac?

He has a reputation as a fearless and ruthless guerrilla leader, and under his leadership, the LTTE, or Tamil Tigers, have become a highly-disciplined and highly- motivated guerrilla force. Prabhakaran is reputed to wear a cyanide capsule around his neck, to be swallowed in the event of his capture. To his followers, he is a freedom fighter struggling for Tamil emancipation. To his adversaries he is a megalomaniac with a brutal disregard for human life. (BBC)

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Wanted by Interpol
Tigers of Lanka

Caste, Class and Prabhakaran’s struggle

External Links:

South Asian Media Net

sangam.org

sinhaya.com

Peace in Sri Lanka

LTTE Peace Secretariat

SPUR

EPDP Web Page
Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA)

UTHR(J)

Stop Child Soldiers

SL Army

SATP

TamilNet

LankaLibrary Forum

Sri Lanka Betrayed

1983 black July riots in Sri Lanka

Riots converted Sri Lanka into one of the most notorious killing fields in the world

The riots, which began in Colombo, spread to Gampaha, Kalutara, Kandy, Matale, Nuwara Eliya and Trincomalee, areas where Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils were concentrated. The `riots', which began on the night of July 24, 1983, saw Sri Lanka go up in flames by early August. The Government maintained that the violence was a spontaneous backlash of the killing of 13 soldiers in Jaffna by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"Clearly this was not a spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred among the Sinhala people. It was a series of deliberate acts, executed in accordance with a concerted plan, conceived and organised well in advance." What, however, must not be missed is the silver lining: many Sinhalese risked their lives to save their Tamil friends from the marauding mobs.

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Kumar Ponnambalam

Kumar Ponnambalam was a man with certain tastes. He had a penchant for Mercedes Benz cars. The garage behind his house down Queen’s Road was full of them. His ancestral home was a virtual museum of antique furniture. He wore a thick gold bracelet around his right wrist and a gold chain with a talisman around his neck. On January 5, he forgot the talisman and wore a black band around the bracelet as he left the house around 9.45 am in the company of an unidentified person known only as Shantha. An hour later his body was recovered in Wellawatte. He lay dead on the wheel of one of his beloved Benzs. Two 9mm bullets had been fired from very close range, piercing his neck and the lower part of the head. Ponnambalam had died on the spot. Read Full Story

The plan to assassinate Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina Wajed
How LTTE deal was blocked, suicide bombers failed to explode

When 34-year-old Nepal-based Manoj Srivastav, an agent of the Pakistani secret service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was arrested en route Kathmandu from Mumbai at the Kolkata airport on May 18, the police did not even know what it had in its net. Only after Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers started interrogating Srivastav following a lead from the executive diary confiscated from the ISI agent suggested a security disaster in India and the plot to assassinate then Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed. At a meeting on June 6, 1999 at St. James Court Hotel in London, the group finally gave shape to the assassination plan. They decided to pay $10 million for LTTE suicide bombers rather than assign the French for half the amount.  The logic was that the LTTE was more dependable and it hardly leaves any trace. What's more, Najmul Amin argued, the LTTE would be a better option because of "the sub-continental features" of its suicide bombers. They could easily pass off as Bangladeshis and, hence, could mix with the local populace. Read Full Story