|
The
Tigers’ Soft Image
We
reproduce an article in fully contributed by Prof.
V.Suryanarayan, former Director, Centre for South and
South Asian Studies, University of Madras, to the
Frontline
magazine of 18 January 2002. It is very educative. |
"The
Tamil national question, which has assumed the
characteristic of a civil war, is essentially a political
issue. We still hold a firm belief that this issue can be
resolved by peaceful means. If there is genuine will and
determination on the part of the Sinhalese leadership,
there is a possibility for peace and settlement.”
"We
are not enemies of the Sinhalese people nor is our
struggle against them. It is because of the oppressive
policy of the racist Sinhala politicians that
contradictions arose between the Sinhala and Tamil
nations, resulting in a war... We call upon the Sinhala
people to identify and renounce the racist forces
committed to militarism and war and to offer justice to
the Tamils in order to put an end to this bloody war and
to bring about permanent peace.”
These
two quotations are from the Heroes' Day speech by V.
Prabakaran, chief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,
on November 27, 2001. The speech, an annual event, was
delivered a week before the parliamentary elections, which
saw the defeat of the People's Alliance (P.A.) government
and the victory of the United National Front (UNF) led by
the United National Party (UNP).
Prabakaran's
speech has to be analysed in the backdrop of the
increasing international isolation of the LTTE and the
objectives of the organisation: exploit the contradictions
in Sinhala society, defeat the P.A., influence
post-election politics by encouraging the formation and
victory of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA),
isolate pro-Chandrika Kumaratunga political forces such as
the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) led by Douglas
Devananda, and formulate short-term and long-term
objectives with reference to the international community
and domestic constituents.
What
are the immediate objectives of the LTTE? Foremost, it
wants to come out of the growing international isolation.
India, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada
have banned the LTTE. The European Union and Australia are
likely to follow suit. The killing of innocent civilians,
the attack on Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Sacred
Tooth, the assassination of Neelan Tiruchelvam, the savage
attack on the Katunayake Air Force base and Bandaranaike
international airport, and the use of young boys and girls
as cannon fodder in the ethnic conflict have created a
sense of revulsion among large sections of the
intelligentsia in different parts of the world.
In
his Heroes' Day speech in 1998 Prabakaran had expressed
his unhappiness over the "lukewarm international
response" to the "monumental human tragedy"
faced by the Tamils. He added that he was saddened by the
fact that the untold sufferings of the Tamil people have
not yet touched the "conscience of the world
community". Misguided by a sophisticated
"misinformation campaign", the world has
"uncritically assimilated the preposterous theories
advanced by the Sri Lankan state".
The
Tigers' inability to win friends and influence people was
explained by Anton Balasingham, political adviser of the
LTTE, as follows: "Before the LTTE could argue its
case, the world had already passed judgment on the Tigers.
Alienated and isolated from the world by lack of
communication and media access, the Tigers could not
present their side of the story. The Sri Lankan government
succeeded in winning the world on to its side by an
effective global misinformation campaign."
Prabakaran's
speeches during the last three years have been desperate
attempts to win back international support. He has shown
the "velvet glove" to project the "soft
image" of the LTTE as a liberation organisation that
is an "aggrieved party" and a "victim of
oppression", a "peace loving group" pitted
against "war mongers". He has highlighted the
cooperation the LTTE extended to the Norwegian peace
initiative. To quote Prabakaran: "We declared a
unilateral ceasefire for four months to help facilitate
the peace process." However, the inept handling of
the Norwegian initiative by Colombo enabled him to
mobilise sympathy and support from foreign governments.
The operations by the Sri Lankan security forces in
LTTE-controlled areas and the removal of Norwegian
negotiatior Eric Solheim were criticised even by countries
that by no stretch of the imagination could be considered
as being sympathetic to the LTTE cause.
The attempts of
the P.A., led by President Kumaratunga, to cling on to
power even after losing its majority in Parliament paved
the way for the politics of opportunism, which brought the
P.A. and the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) together. In
1994 Kumaratunga contested the parliamentary elections on
the slogan 'peace with justice and honour to the Tamils'.
She received the wholehearted support of Sri Lankan Tamils
and Muslims.
In the recent
elections the pendulum swung to the other extreme. She
adopted a Sinhala chauvinist line and accused the UNP of
entering into a secret agreement with Prabakaran to divide
the country. The LTTE exploited the contradictions to its
advantage. Speaking at a Tamil rally in London on December
1, Balasingham remarked that the UNP would win the
elections. "That is what we also want," he
added. The lead editorial in the London-based Tamil
Guardian made a direct call to the Tamil voters to cast
their ballots in favour of the UNP. It warned that the
consequences would be severe if the Sinhala community
returned a government with a mandate for war.
Prabakaran
appealed to the international community, especially the
Western democratic nations, to "provide a clear and
comprehensive definition of the concept of terrorism that
would distinguish between freedom struggles based on the
right to self-determination and blind terrorist acts based
on fanaticism". The international community, he said,
could not ignore the phenomenon of state terrorism "practised
internally by some repressive regimes". "We are
not terrorists. We are not mentally demented as to commit
blind acts of violence impelled by racist and religious
fanaticism," he emphasised. "We are fighting and
sacrificing our lives for the love of a noble cause, that
is human freedom. We are freedom fighters."
While the
international community has realised the necessity to
cooperate with one another to combat terrorism, there is
no unanimity on the precise definition of terrorism. The
Regional Convention of Terrorism of the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation is silent on the
issue. The United Nations has not reached a consensus.
During the Cold War years it used to be said that one
man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Prof. Paul
Wilkinson, a specialist on the subject of terrorism, has
highlighted five major characteristics of this unique form
of political violence. They are: It is premeditated and
aims to create a climate of extreme fear or terror; it is
directed at a wider audience or target than the immediate
victims of the violence; it involves attacks on random and
symbolic targets, including civilians; the acts of
violence committed are seen by the society in which they
occur as extra-normal, in the literal sense that they
breach social norms, thus causing outrage; it is generally
used to influence political behaviour, for example, to
force opponents into conceding some or all of the
perpetrators' demands, to provoke an over-reaction, to
serve as a catalyst for a more general conflict or to
publicise a political or religious cause, to inspire
followers to emulate violent attacks, to give vent to deep
hatred and the thirst for revenge, and to help undermine
governments and institutions designated as enemies by the
terrorists.
The LTTE has
employed all the five instruments with ruthless
efficiency. The fight for its political objectives is a
no-holds-barred one. During the initial phase of the
conflict Indian observers of the Sri Lankan scene
explained away the violence as a response to state
terrorism. As time passed, the Tigers got brutalised. In
November 1984, they attacked Sinhalese civilians resettled
in Mullaithivu district. The savage attack on innocent
Buddhist pilgrims in Anuradhapura on May 14, 1985,
probably marked the beginning of the fall of the Tamil
liberation struggle. As the authors of The Broken
Palmyrah have pointed out: "The seal was set on
this change by the LTTE asserting a murderous ascendancy
on the Tamil society by using the same methods perfected
in the Anuradhapura massacre, to destroy its rival
militant groups. The LTTE thus became qualitatively a
different phenomenon to what obtained earlier and by its
very violation became trapped in its history of
blood."
The Sri Lankan
Tamils complain, and rightly so, that they were
discriminated against by successive Sinhalese-dominated
governments. But how have the Tigers treated the Muslims,
who are an integral part of the Tamil-speaking peoples?
All parts of Sri Lanka are in varying degree multi-ethnic,
but the only mono-ethnic part in Sri Lanka is the Jaffna
peninsula and the LTTE-controlled area in the Wanni
jungles. Neelan Tiruchelvam described the tragedy of the
Sri Lankan situation thus: "The violence of the
victim soon consumed the victim and the victim also became
possessed by the demons of racial bigotry and intolerance,
which had characterised the oppressor. These are seen in
the fratricidal violence between Tamils and Muslims, in
the massacres at Kathankudy mosque, in Welikanda and
Medirigiya and in the forcible expulsion of Muslims from
the Mannar and Jaffna districts."
The negative image of the LTTE, which Sri Lanka
watchers throughout the world have recognised, should not
make Sri Lankans oblivious to another important facet. As
B. Raman, a former senior official in the Government of
India, pointed out recently, the LTTE is also the
"most intelligent and futuristic-thinking terrorist
organisation of the world, which manages to think of
innovative solutions to the difficulties faced by it and
has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of determined cadres
volunteering for suicide missions to carry out these
solutions".
Explaining the
significance of the LTTE attack on the Katunayake airport,
Raman said: "The Sri Lankan armed forces, blinded by
misplaced elation over the success of their air strikes
against the LTTE, failed to take the basic precaution of
pre-empting the only option available to the LTTE...
namely, penetrate the air bases and destroy the aircraft
on the ground. This shows that the Sri Lankan military and
the political leadership is none the wiser after nearly
two decades of counter-insurgency operations and continues
to fight the LTTE more with weapons than with their
mind."
What is the LTTE's
negotiating strategy? Will Prabakaran settle for a
solution within a united Sri Lanka? An understanding of
the LTTE's stance in earlier negotiations can help in
analysing the implications of Prabakaran's message on
these crucial issues. The first negotiations in which the
LTTE participated - as an integral part of the Eelam
National Liberation Front (ENLF) (comprising the EPRLF,
the LTTE, TELO and EROS) - were the two rounds in Thimphu,
Bhutan, in July and August 1985. The People's Liberation
Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and the Tamil United
Liberation Front (TULF), which were outside the ENLF,
broadly agreed with the political strategy set forth by
the ENLF. However, the Tamil militant groups were
reluctant participants; senior officials of the Research
and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence
agency, told them bluntly that if they did not go to
Thimphu "neither Indian soil nor Indian sea would be
available to them".
It was apparent
from the beginning that the talks were bound to fail. The
Tamil militants, according to Loganathan Keetheswaran (who
represented the EPRLF in the talks), "subjected the
Sri Lankan delegation to a series of lectures on what
constituted the ethnic question and why the burden lay
with Colombo to come out with a solution "worthy of
our consideration". To buttress their claims, they
put forward four cardinal principles, which came to be
known as the Thimphu principles. These included:
recognition of the Tamils as a distinct nationality;
recognition of the traditional homeland of the Tamils and
guarantee of its territorial integrity; recognition of the
inalienable right of self-determination; and conferment of
citizenship on all Tamils who looked upon the island as
their country. The first three principles were
deliberately couched in vague terms.
To the Sinhalese
leaders, who at that time viewed even federalism as the
first step towards separation, these principles were a red
rag to a bull. The Sri Lankan delegation responded within
a legal framework and rejected the principles outright.
The Thimpu talks ended in fiasco. It must be pointed out
that Prabakaran was convinced that the Thimphu talks would
not lead to a political solution. At the same time, he did
not want to cross swords with New Delhi. Lawrence Thilakar
and Sivakumaran represented the LTTE in the first round of
talks; Yogaratnam Yogi joined the second round. They were
instructed to keep a low profile; as a result, most of the
verbal acrobatics was performed by Satyendra of TELO and
the TULF leaders.
The second round
related to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987.
Prabakaran was taken aback when he was confronted with the
fait accompli of the Accord in New Delhi. His hopes
of putting forward his demands to then Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi and negotiating with Sri Lankan President J.R.
Jayewardene to finalise the agreement were shattered.
However, Prabakaran made use of the opportunity to salvage
his position as much as possible. In his view the LTTE was
the sole representative of the Tamil people and his
survival was inextricably linked to the survival of the
Tamil people. As several writers have pointed out,
Prabakaran
received "financial incentives" from New Delhi"
he received the assurance of majority representation in
the interim administration and, above all, he was going to
make only a "symbolic gesture" of surrendering
arms.
The LTTE viewed
the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord as a clever device to snatch
away the fruits of their hard-won struggle. Prabakaran
made it clear that he had no faith in the Accord. Former
Indian High Commissioner to Colombo J.N. Dixit, in his
book Assignment Colombo, with the benefit of hindsight,
has made a correct assessment of Prabakaran: "One
over-arching miscalculation of India was our
underestimating Prabakaran's passionate, even obsessive,
commitment to the cause of Tamil Eelam, his authoritarian
and single-minded nature, his tactical cleverness and his
resilience in adversity. The second miscalculation about
him and his cadres was that India and Sri Lanka together
could persuade other Tamil groups and the Tamil population
in general to join the mainstream of democratic politics,
bypassing the LTTE."
President
Ranasinghe Premadasa's negotiations with the LTTE spanned
the period May 1989 to June 1990.
The two hitherto
antagonistic forces came together because they found a
convergence of interests: get the Indian Peace-keeping
Force (IPKF) out of Sri Lanka.
Bradman Weerakoon, who
was Adviser to Premadasa on international relations, has
given rare insights into the Premadasa-LTTE negotiations.
During the negotiations, Colombo made several gestures to
the LTTE. Said Weerakoon: "These included the
permission for the LTTE delegates who came to Colombo to
have their own armed security, allocation of an entire
floor of a five-star hotel in Colombo, a secret supply of
money and weapons to the LTTE to fight the IPKF,
arrangements for Prabakaran's wife and children to be
brought from abroad and flown to the Wanni and Premadasa
conceding the demand to publicly call for the IPKF to be
withdrawn."
The honeymoon
lasted until the IPKF left the island on March 30, 1990.
The vacuum left by the IPKF was filled by the LTTE and it
gained complete control of the northeast of Sri Lanka.
Weerakoon highlights the fact that during the 14 months of
negotiations, "there is no record of any serious
political talks". After the IPKF left, Prabakaran put
forward two demands: the dissolution of the North East
Provincial Council and repeal of the Sixth Amendment to
the Constitution. The government rejected the two demands
and the Second Eelam War commenced.
The LTTE's negotiations with President Kumaratunga from
November 1994 to April 1995 reveal that the two parties
were speaking in different wavelengths. Following her
victory in the 1994 elections, Kumaratunga had pledged
that she would bring about "ethnic
reconciliation" in the island. She expressed her
readiness to start negotiations with the LTTE
"without any pre-conditions" and held out the
promise of peace with honour for the Tamils. As a first
step in this direction, the government lifted the embargo
on certain items as a gesture of goodwill. How did
Prabakaran respond? In his book, Politics of Duplicity
- Re-visiting the Jaffna Talks, Balasingham has
written: "From the outset, Mr. Prabakaran, the leader
of the LTTE, was sceptical of Chandrika's gesture. He felt
it was a political gimmick to win the support of the
Tamils and the Sinhalese for the forthcoming presidential
elections. I advised him to respond to her positively.
'She is a new leader emerging on the Sri Lankan political
horizon articulating progressive politics. It would be
politically prudent on our part to initiate a dialogue
with her government to find out whether or not she is
genuine in resolving the problems of the Tamils'."
Prabakaran
concurred with Balasingham's views. As a "positive
step" to the government's "conciliatory
gesture", the Tigers released 10 policemen who were
in their custody as "prisoners of war".
Simultaneously Prabakaran demanded the lifting of the
"economic embargo completely", which would pave
the way for the restoration of normalcy in the Tamil
areas.
As the exchange of
letters and the talks revealed, there was a basic
difference in the approach of the two parties. The peace
process, according to the LTTE, should proceed in two
stages. The early stages of negotiations should address
the restoration of normalcy and the creation of a peaceful
environment. After normalcy was restored talks could
commence to find a peaceful solution. Colombo, on the
other hand, maintained that there should be simultaneous
talks relating to the day-to-day problems of the people
and finding a political solution. Finally, the LTTE
accused the government of acting in "bad faith"
and started the Third Eelam War in April 1995.
Chandrika
Kumaratunga explained the LTTE behaviour to N. Ram, Editor
of Frontline, as follows: "The LTTE will do
what they have always done - that is, drag on and on and
on until they build themselves up again militarily and
then start attacking again" (Frontline, January 1,
1999). Is history repeating itself? Is the LTTE laying a
peace -trap? The LTTE used the interval between
negotiations to carry forward its policy of annihilation
of political opponents. Thus
A. Amirthalingam, the TULF
leader, was killed even as talks were going on with the
Premadasa government. The LTTE also killed Gamini
Dissanayake during the Kumaratunga-LTTE negotiations.
Neither Premadasa nor Kumaratunga said anything against
the LTTE, fearing that such statements would adversely
affect the ongoing talks. According to media reports then,
Balasingham had issued veiled threats to Douglas Devananda
and his followers. Balasingham had said that LTTE members
were roaming the streets "looking to embrace and kiss
Douglas Devananda". Will the new government under
Ranil Wickremasinghe provide sufficient security to all
political leaders, irrespective of their political
affiliation?
Prabakaran has
made it clear that the talks cannot be held unless the ban
on the LTTE is lifted. To quote him: "For us to
participate in political negotiations freely as equal
partners, as the authentic political force with the status
of the legitimate representative of our people, the ban
imposed on our movement should be lifted. This is the
collective aspiration of the Tamil people."
According to
Balasingham, if the ban is not lifted there will be no
peace in the Sinhalese areas. According to some reports,
Balasingham is reported to have said: "We have a plan
of our own. We will bring back Jaffna and Batticaloa under
our control. We will take Jaffna by war or by peaceful
means."
In the present
context, an atmosphere for peaceful negotiations can be
created if Colombo declares a unilateral ceasefire.
Colombo should also lift the ban on the movement of
essential goods and medicines so that the civilian
population in the LTTE-controlled areas is not put to any
hardship. At the same time, the members of the Tamil
National Alliance should be asked to persuade the LTTE to
spell out the details of the constitutional settlement
that it has in mind. Most Sri Lanka watchers in India
believe that lifting the ban on the LTTE should be
considered only when a negotiated settlement is reached
and the Tigers renounce violence.
If the Indian
experience is of any value, it should be highlighted that
negotiations have taken place and continue to take place
with militant organisations that are banned. G.
Parthasarathy, as the emissary of the Indian government,
negotiated with Laldenga of the Mizo National Front (MNF)for
a peaceful settlement of the Mizo problem. The MNF
remained a banned organisation during the period of the
negotiations. The same holds true of Nagaland. High
functionaries of the Union Home Ministry have held
negotiations with representatives of the banned National
Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isaac-Muivah) in Bangkok and
Amsterdam. These negotiations resulted in a ceasefire in
Nagaland. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee recently
held discussions with some important leaders of the NCSN(I-M)
in Japan. Although the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka has its
own unique features, it would be prudent on the part of
Colombo to learn from the experience of other countries
that have faced threats to national security.
The phenomenon of
Tamil militancy is the direct consequence of two parallel
developments in the island nation: blatant discrimination
in language, education, employment opportunities and land
colonisation, which got compounded with state terrorism,
and the growing frustration with the TULF and its
parliamentary struggles. In the late 1970s and in the
early 1980s several militant groups emerged and the most
organised among them was the LTTE. It systematically
eliminated its political opponents and gradually emerged
as the only credible fighting force in the Tamil areas.
Sri Sabaratnam and his colleagues in TELO, Padmanabha and
his comrades in the EPRLF, followers of PLOTE and EROS -
all belonging to rival militant groups - were victims of
the death squads of the LTTE. Even the trusted lieutenant
of Prabakaran for many years, Mahataya, was assassinated
when differences arose between them.
The predicament of
the TULF was far worse. In an intervention in Parliament,
explaining the consequences of the Sixth Amendment, which
effectively "disenfranchised" the northeast,
Neelan Tiruchelvam remarked: "I wish to briefly
recall the terrible personal tragedies that followed. Of
the 14 members who forfeited their parliamentary seats,
four were brutally murdered, while two others died in
exile in Canada. Two faded out of politics and had more
peaceful deaths, while a third died of heart attack on the
eve of a visit abroad." Neelan did not realise at
that time that his life would be snuffed out by an LTTE
suicide bomber. While the TULF members condemned the
assassination, they did not have the courage to blame the
LTTE for the dastardly act. Those who could have led and
guided the Tamils in a critical phase of their political
evolution were frightened into silence. What is still
worse is that most of them have become apologists for the
LTTE. As Rajan Hoole sums up in his book Sri Lanka -
The Arrogance of Power - Myths, Decadence and Murder: "
The
power of Prabakaran comes from the powerlessness of the
people."
It is well known
that the devolution proposals formulated by President
Kumaratunga had the full backing of Tiruchelvam and
Sambandan. In fact, they made their contributions in
fine-tuning some of the important provisions. The
reverse metamorphosis of the TULF - from a frog to a
tadpole - is brought out vividly in Hoole's book. The
following extract from the book sums up the decline and
fall of Tamil moderates. "To the correspondent of a
leading Indian daily, a key TULF official, a lawyer, was
giving fairly cogent reasons for their rejection of the
proposals. Their conversation was interrupted by a
telephone call from the MP noted for pro-LTTE noises. He
had just arrived from Batticaloa. After switching to Tamil
and inquiring from the MP whether he had gone to
Parliament, the official added, "Good if they can
pass the Constitution without our getting involved."
The lady, whose ears pricked up, asked the official,
"I am sorry I overheard what you said. Now tell me,
what is your real position, is it what you have been
telling me all this time, or what I just overheard?"
The official fumblingly spoke of threats to their life.
The well-informed lady cautioned the official not to have
illusions of being taken off the LTTE's hit-list in return
for disingenuous gestures.
The TULF's negative approach
to the constitutional proposals was purely thus, a
survival calculation.
Their survival game is one of
continually telling the Tamil people that there is no hope
under the Sri Lankan polity - the oxygen of LTTE
politics."
Today, the
post-election scenario does not offer much hope for peace
and stability in the island.
The hopes entertained by
the LTTE and the TNA that Ranil Wickremasinghe would have
to depend on the TNA for political survival have been
shattered. Ranil has formed the government with the
support of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). When
Parliament is convened, it is certain that the TNA would
demand the lifting of the ban on the LTTE. In other words,
for the first time, the voice of the Tigers will be heard
clear and loud. The JVP and the P.A. can be expected to
oppose stoutly the demand for the lifting of the ban. The
UNP's dependence on the SLMC has other consequences. There
is no love lost between the Muslims and the Tigers, and on
crucial issues such as an interim administration in the
northeast and the merger of the north and the east the UNP
will have to take Muslim sensitivities into consideration.
Political
stability in the island hinges on a cooperative
partnership between the Prime Minister and the President.
Kumaratunga is unlikely to forget the fact that the UNP
adopted a negative approach and denied her the requisite
two-thirds majority required for enacting the vital draft
constitutional proposals. History may repeat itself, the
P.A. is likely to pursue the same negative approach
towards the present government. Without a bipartisan
consensus, which looks a distant dream at present, days of
political turbulence are ahead in Sri Lanka. End. |
