Articles

LTTE and Its Disclaimers

Sri Lanka's high profile foreign minister, Laxman Kadirgamar, who led his country's successful bid to get the Tigers proscribed by the Western and other powers was recently assassinated by suspected Tiger guerillas at his home in Colombo. The manner in which the assassins gained access to a house in a high security zone neighbourhood, mounted surveillance and carried out the assassination points unerringly to the modus operandi of the LTTE. The Tigers have of course denied their involvement in the assassination. But then, such denials of high profile executions have always carried the unmistakable stamp of Prabhakaran's outfit.

In mid-1989, Appapillai Amirthalingam, the chief of the Tamil United Liberation Front, once considered close to the LTTE pleaded that the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) should not leave Sri Lanka until alternate arrangements were made to protect the Tamils. This occurred at a time when the LTTE was bottled up in the jungles of the northern Sri Lanka by the IPKF, heavy IPKF causalities notwithstanding. The LTTE itself had lost a large number of its cadres in its confrontation with the IPKF. Amirthalingam's support for the IPKF, and request for its continuance in Sri Lanka was therefore an act of betrayal in the eyes of Prabhakaran.

As far as Prabhakaran was concerned, Amirthalingam was a Tamil drohi, a 'traitor'. On 13 July that year, LTTE cadres met Amirthalingam at his Colombo house on the pretext of 'talks' and gunned him down. The LTTE of course denied their involvement in the killing of Amirthalingam. The LTTE was then permitted to visit Colombo by Sri Lankan President Premadasa for talks. It is a different matter that the Tigers assassinated him less than two years after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. In an interview a few weeks after the killing, Mahatiya Mahendraraja, Prabhakaran's deputy, observed that the traitor Amirthalingam was already a deadwood, why would the LTTE waste their efforts on him? Amirthalingam's guards had gunned down his three killers - Visu, Arivu and Aloysius. When the interviewer pointed out that these three young men were LTTE cadres, Mahatiya brushed it aside and said that none of them was any longer in the LTTE. Mahatiya Mahendraraja's words were blatant lies. A couple of years later, the names of Visu, Arivu and Aloysius figured prominently with decorations in the LTTE's martyr's diary!

Mahatiya himself, who had earlier led the LTTE's fight against the IPKF, was executed by the LTTE after a Kangaroo trial. The charge against him was that he was an agent of RAW, the Indian intelligence wing, and hence, a Tamil traitor. A day after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, the LTTE, under Prabhakaran's instructions, issued their trademark denial of any involvement in the killing. In fact, even senior leaders of the LTTE were told that they were not involved in this murder. It is a different matter that the Indian police were able to zero in on the Tigers based on unimpeachable evidence.

Anton Balasingham, the LTTE ideologue, in an interview to the BBC in late 1991 about Black Tigers (suicide killers, as the BBC called them), said that Black Tiger operations were highly secretive, and for security reasons, they do not claim credit for some of these operations. However, such disclaimers are not only for the success of Black Tiger operations, but primarily to avoid criticism in the media, especially in the West where the LTTE receives funding, and carries out overt and covert operations.

Kadirgamar had genuine and abiding faith in the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka mounted a massive diplomatic offensive against the Tigers for their terrorist acts and child recruitment, was indeed a Tamil traitor, if judged by the LTTE's distorted world vision. The fact that Kadirgamar, a Sri Lankan Tamil, was an alternate voice of the Tamils was just not acceptable to the Tigers, who claim that they are the sole representatives of the Tamils. In addition, the LTTE knows only one way of dealing with such Tamil 'traitors' - by eliminating them. Pottu Omman, the dreaded intelligence chief of the LTTE and a prime accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case along with Prabhakaran, assured Subha (a member of the Black Tiger Squad sent to eliminate Rajiv Gandhi) that the names of such killers would be written in golden letters in the history of LTTE's struggle for their Eelam. Considering this treacherous history of the LTTE, its disclaimers regarding its involvement with political assassinations must be taken with more than a pinch of salt.