“Tamilchelvan killed by Prabhakaran”, Indian Congressman Confirms

"TN Congress functionary SR Balasubramanian says it was LTTE chief Prabhakaran who was responsible for the elimination of Tamilchelvan. Tamilchelvan had led bilateral and multilateral peace talks that successive Sri Lanka governments have held with LTTE."

Tamil Nadu Congress functionary SR Balasubramanian says, “According to the information I have, it was LTTE chief Prabhakaran who was responsible for the elimination of Tamilchelvan.” Tamilchelvan had led bilateral and multilateral peace talks that successive Sri Lanka governments have held with LTTE in 1985, 1987, 1989/90, 1994, 2002 and 2006. The talks, facilitated by Thailand, Germany and Japan and coordinated by Norway, can fructify anytime.

“India should keep this in mind that it is only the Tamil-speaking people in Sri Lanka who can be truly friendly with neighbouring India,” said MK Sivajilingam on November 29, urging New Delhi to play an active role in solving the ongoing ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka.

Going by the fact that India’s ‘buffer’ countries to the North, West and East (and South) are none too friendly with New Delhi, this is a perspective worth looking into. But tragically, there are indications that the IFS (Indian Foreign Service) babus are not yet ready to come out a time warp.

This call was not from one of the small-time Tamil Nadu politicians, shedding tears for the Tamil-speaking population in Sri Lanka, only to cajole New Delhi into currying out favours to a business associate.

(The practice – negotiating quid pro quo in return for keeping quiet after once creating a din – is a common occurrence is even used by rival TN politicians to settle scores with each other.)
MK Sivajilingam is a member of Sri Lankan Parliament belonging to TNA (Tamil National Alliance), who is considered pro-LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).

Around the same time that the MP was appealing for good senses, a member of a political non-entity of Tamil Nadu, came out with a startling discovery, “According to the information I have, it was Prabhakaran who was responsible for the elimination of Tamilchelvan.” TN Congress functionary SR Balasubramanian did not clarify if he had established reliable communication channels to have such information.

Apparently keen to gain some personal publicity to get his faction one up on the numerous factions of the party in the state, he told the media, “It was the LTTE chief who let the (Sri Lankan) army know about the whereabouts of Tamilchelvan.” He reasoned that there was no other way the Sri Lankan Air Force could have known where he was!

Thamilchelvan lost his life in an SLAF (Sri Lankan Air Force) raid on November 2. He was considered the right hand of LTTE’s chief commander Vellupillai Prabhakaran, who conferred him the rank of Brigadier even as he was the head of its political wing. He led bilateral and multilateral peace talks that successive Sri Lanka governments have held with it in 1985, 1987, 1989/90, 1994, 2002 and 2006. The talks, facilitated by Thailand, Germany and Japan and coordinated by Norway, can fructify anytime. They aim at ending the longest civil war in Asia between displaced Tamil-speaking rebels and the rampaging armed forces of the government at Colombo.

The dispute has its origins to a pact in 1964 between former Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, a Congress leader from the Hindi heartland, and Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranayke.

Inhuman oppression was let loose on Tamil-speaking people, with 700,000 having to flee after the army massacring over 1000 Tamils in 1983, abusing the pact. LTTE took up the cause of the people robbed of home and hearth, its cadres, sporting cyanide capsules as pendants and ready to commit suicide if caught alive, could not be silenced till date.

Upon failure to work out a political settlement, the outfit is pursuing the goal of Tamil Eelam, an independent homeland. It is branded as a terrorist organisation in many countries, including India. But, LTTE already commands de-facto recognition. The massive international funds for Tsunami relief are being administered by the organisation in areas it holds.

This is not the first time that the Congress party, with little following in the state ever since CN Annadorai-led DMK wiped it out of the state legislature in 1966, is pouring out vitriol against the organisation. Historically, politicians from North India’s cow-belt region, dominating ‘national’ parties, have been apprehensive of any advancement by Tamil people anywhere.

The erroneous notion that assertive, economically strong, regional ethnic identities may undermine pan-India identity still prevails at New Delhi and Balasubramanian is an appointee with a brief to blunt ‘Provincial’ sentiments. There are any number of selfish elements within TN, who have been exploiting this folly to their own benefit.

His death was grieved over by most people and political parties of Tamil Nadu. Union Health minister Anbumani’s father and the chief of PMK (Pattali Makkal Katchi) S Ramdoss said that Tamilchelvan’s killing exposed the hollow nature of Sri Lankan enthusiasm to end the civil war going on there.

He described the government’s handling of LTTE’s struggle as “ongoing genocide” of Tamils on the island. MDMK’s Vaiko said that the air attack showed that the Sri Lanka government had no faith in resolving the ethnic issue through negotiations. Actor Vijaykant, who has recently established yet another very popular Dravidian party, also condemned the attack and condoled the death of Thamilchelvan.

D Pandian, state secretary of the Communist Party of India, said in an official message that the party categorically condemned the Sri Lanka government, claiming that it was trying to annihilate the Tamil race. He wanted the Indian Government to help find a solution to the ethnic issue through negotiations with the Sri Lankan government.

Chief minister Karunanidhi, a talented Tamil scholar, wrote an ode by way of an obituary in honour of the departed leader. His poem describes Tamilchelvan’s sterling qualities as “A man with an ever-smiling face, but also with a fearless heart that could annihilate the opposition. His supreme sacrifice has etched his name in the hearts of all Tamils, living anywhere in the world.”

The only discordant note on the solemn mood of tragedy was struck by former TN CM, Jayalalithaa, controlling AIDMK. Hers is the only TN regional party to have any truck with the BJP, which advocates a barbaric brand of Hindutva and wants to establish an Akhand Bharat Hindu Rashtra (Greater Hindustan) lording over the region as a nuke-armed superpower. She criticised Karunanidhi for penning the poem of tribute, saying that the act went against Indian constitution.

Writing in praise of a person belonging to a banned organisation was condemnable, and the LTTE is a banned organisation in India, she said. As TN’s CM in the past, she had charged the most vociferous advocate of LTTE in Tamil Nadu, Vaiko of inciting India’s Tamils against the New Delhi.

She made him cool his heels in jail for sedition despite being a Union minister. Vaiko has somehow been converted into becoming her strange bedfellow at the moment. Local leaders of the Congress party at that time preferred to keep a stoic silence over the obituary politics. The “national” party hardly has any followers in TN and everyone joining it is a leader. These leaders, including Union Finance minister Chidambaram, know only too well that they have ride piggyback, after shelling out a fortune, on one of the Dravidian parties to retain their deposit in elections.

Balasubramanian has only now found it appropriate to criticise DMK and said Karunanidhi’s ode to the slain leader was “wrong and unacceptable.” He told mediapersons, “We (Congress Party) have our own ideology, just as the DMK has its own. Though we work with them, we will oppose ideologically unacceptable things!”

The TN Congress chief’s disapproval of Tamil peoples’ eulogy for the LTTE stalwart and his ‘revelation’ about Prabhakaran eliminating his deputy have come two days after his Hero’s’ Day speech on Nov 27. The day is observed to remember slain victims in the civil war and happens to be Prabhakaran’s birthday. According to LTTE sources, over the past 24 years till August 31, 2007, 19,538 young men and women were killed in the conflict or had to bite their cyanide capsules.

Prabhakaran declared in his annual Hero’s Day speech on his 53rd birthday, “Thousands of our fighters are standing ready to fight with determination for our just goal of freedom and we will overcome the hurdles before us and liberate our motherland.” It cannot however be denied that the outfit has been experiencing its worst setbacks lately.

SLAF has been incessantly bombing LTTE-held areas leading to huge civilian casualties. In August 2006, SLAF even raided an orphanage Sencholai Children’s Home in Mullaitivu in the Northern Province and killed over 100 schoolgirls. Following the morale-shattering attack, it has lost several bases to advancing Sri Lankan forces supported by ruthless bombing of civilian areas. Just before the Hero’s Day, the Army’s Deep Penetration Unit mounted a Claymore attack to kill 13, including 11 school children, in Wanni. Voice of Tigers, a radio station in the North was bombed, killing 10 people, to coincide with the Hero’s Day.

UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura condemned the attack, saying, “Regardless of the content of the broadcasts aired by the VoT, there can be no excuse for military strikes on civilian media.” But, Colombo maintained that the radio served as a propaganda organ of the LTTE and was a legitimate target for attack.

Some 2500 Tamil-speaking people residing out of the war zone in Colombo were picked up following a bomb blast in the city on November 28 and the authorities took two days to check identity papers and release 2300. More than 200 have been held back under emergency regulations “on arbitrary or discriminatory grounds using sweeping powers” not complying with international human rights law, according to Amnesty International.

Although Sri Lanka itself has refused to ban LTTE, New Delhi has banned the outfit in India as it holds its chief Prabhakaran responsible for the death of its former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a suicide bomb attack.

A judicial commission headed by Justice Jain, in its interim report, allegedly fixed, even accused Karunanidhi of treason and the Tamils of a role in his assassination. It cannot be denied that the Rajiv Gandhi trial under the draconian TADA provisions was a hush-hush affair. It relied on extracted confessions that cannot stand judicial scrutiny according to civilised procedures. It had gaping holes and perhaps the only crime of those convicted (and hanged) was that they had come to the country illegally.

Rajiv Gandhi had many enemies among Tamil-speaking Sri Lankans, who bore the brunt of military intervention by 100,000 - strong IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force) that he had ordered. It is likely that the killers were also LTTE members and murdered him on their own accord. LTTE has only said on its part that it was “great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy which we deeply regret.”

The theory that LTTE is too punctilious and calculative an organisation to be interested in and waste resources on an assassination unlikely to bring it closer to its goal cannot be easily dismissed. Rajiv was also hated by the kin of IPKF soldiers who were pushed into the obviously suicidal operation against a determined militia whose cyanide-capsule carrying fighters had nothing to lose.

The impulsive, possibly immature, Indian politician forced the most humiliating defeat for the mighty Indian military machine, resulting in heavy casualties. Unconfirmed rumours have also linked Rajiv’s successors to the assassination, as well as his close relatives, who arguably derived immense benefit from the sympathy wave it generated. Be that as it may, the whole assassination plot is bogged down in mystery.

It is not clear why the TN Congress Chief has chosen to come out with revelation demonizing LTTE at this time. Is it a ploy to exhume the ghost of Rajiv Gandhi and settle scores with rivals who kept all the benefits to themselves?

Is it a part of larger international conspiracy that includes a vociferous PR exercise drawing Malaysia to the conflict in Sri Lanka?

India’s Hindutva zealots, as well as the government, have come to the aid of HINDRAF in Malaysia, which has issued oblique threats to turn to LTTE. This has ominous portents as the outfit may be attempting to destabilise Malaysia. It must be realised that a crowd control exercise, using tear gas and water canons, cannot be equated to the Black July massacre of more than 1000 Tamils in Sri Lanka that resulted in an exodus of 700,000 people.