The obsessions of Velupillai Prabakaran’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) with being the "sole representative" of the Tamils of Sri Lanka has rendered the ceasefire virtually meaningless for Tamils. Taking advantage of the concessions granted to it in the February 2002 ceasefire agreement, the LTTE immediately set out to liquidate all Tamils it perceived as its opponents. Within a few months of the ceasefire coming into force, it took out several Tamils it accused of helping the Sri Lankan armed forces during the years of war. Since March 2004, when the organisation broke into two — the Vanni faction, and the Eastern faction led by the former military commander Karuna — the killing spree has assumed war-like proportions. The recent killing in eastern Sri Lanka of Reggie, the brother of the breakaway group’s leader, the subsequent retaliatory murders by Karuna loyalists, and the death of a civilian in the crossfire make a complete mockery of the ceasefire.
In all this, the LTTE is encouraged and emboldened by the silence of Norway, the facilitator of the peace process, and of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the Nordic committee tasked with monitoring the ceasefire. The Government too has offered little protest. This is understandable considering that all its energies are taken up with keeping alive the engagement with the LTTE, keeping the Sri Lankan military in check, and ensuring that on its
side there are no ceasefire violations. Less understandable is the reticence of Oslo and the SLMM in confronting the LTTE over the relentless killings. Instead of bringing moral pressure on the Pol Potist outfit to stop the killings, democratise its functioning, accept dissidence as a natural by-product of pluralism and democratic politics, they have, in effect, given it a licence to kill.
This they have done by taking the view that the settling of scores by the Vanni faction with the Karuna group is an "internal matter." Under the circumstances, it is not at all surprising that Mr. Prabakaran made bold to dispatch a suicide bomber to take out his other arch enemy, Douglas Devananda, the leader of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP). Only chance ensured Mr. Devananda’s escape but other members of his party have not been that fortunate. The Tamil human rights group, the University Teachers’ Human Rights (Jaffna), reported recently that the LTTE has killed 140 members of the EPDP in the last two years. Members of other Tamil political parties that do not subscribe to the LTTE’s views have always been on its hit-list. But the impunity with which the group now ticks off names from that list owes much to the softly-softly approach that Norway and the ceasefire monitors have taken towards it.
It is time for all concerned to acknowledge that the LTTE has done nothing less than unleash a terrorist campaign amounting to a sub-guerrilla war against the very people it claims to represent. From the recruitment of children, which continues unabated despite international outrage, to the harassment of Muslims, the discrimination against eastern Tamils, and the killings of opponents, the LTTE demonstrates on a daily basis that its rule is by fear and terror. The present efforts at reviving the peace process — stalled since April 2003 when the Tigers refused to participate in further talks until their demand for an interim administration in the North-East was met — are focussed on getting them back to the negotiating table.
This is perceived to be the most effective way of averting a war that nobody other than the LTTE arguably seems to have the stomach for. But for the peace process to hold meaning, the limits of tolerance have to be benchmarked by the Sri Lankan Government with the backing of the international community, including India that is increasingly regarded in the island as a bulwark of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
