The ghost of Tamil Tigers

(Feizal Samath)

Amidst the ho-ha of Sri Lanka losing a vital game against Pakistan on home turf Saturday during the ongoing World Cup cricket tournament, two significant developments escaped the attention of Sri Lankans interested in politics and human rights.

The first event was an almost casual press conference where the former revolutionary Marxist group, the People’s Liberation Front known by the acronym JVP decided to call it quits to coalition or alliance politics and go it alone.

The second — which in some ways brought some life into the virtually-dead Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil militant group that waged a war of attrition with Sri Lankan government troops to secede and finally was defeated in May 2009 — was the death and cremation of the militant leader’s aging mother in the northern town of Jaffna.

As a military movement, the LTTE – which fought bloody battles with government forces in a war that killed thousands of people – is nonexistent. However, the Tamil diaspora, keen to secure what they call the rights of minority Tamils are still beating the drums of Tamil nationalism and events like the death of the mother of slain rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran are turned into propaganda events to further this cause. The government has repeatedly warned that while the military threat is over, the LTTE is still alive politically in western capitals trying to turn the west against Sri Lanka.

In Geneva Monday, Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told the opening day of the annual sessions of the UN Human Rights Council that ‘remnants’ of the LTTE were still active in several countries involved in criminal activity and fund raising through activities like human smuggling.

Of more concern, however, for Sri Lankan authorities is the persistent pressure from pro-LTTE groups and the Tamil diaspora over Sri Lanka’s human rights situation, particularly the last few months leading up to the end of the conflict. Hundreds of civilians are believed to have perished during this period in crossfire as they struggled to reach government lines ahead of a major assault on rebel ranks. President Rajapaksa and the government have repeatedly rejected and denied the unproven claims and frowned on a committee appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to examine some of the concerns.

But the claims continue to worry the government and its international relations and, last week, a delegation including Foreign Secretary Romesh Jayasinghe and Attorney General Mohan Peiris met the UN chief in New York to discuss some of these issues and explain the role of a presidential inquiry into the causes of the ethnic conflict and ways to avoid it in the future. The government is parading the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) before the international community as the forum of peace and reconciliation and an effort to reconcile differences between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil community, which are essentially demands by the latter that they are not getting a fair share of the resources of the land in terms of education, jobs, social status and land rights.

It is in this context that the death and public funeral of Prabhakaran’s 81-year old mother, Velupillai Parvati Pillai, drew about 2,000 to 3,000 mourners in the coastal village of Valvettiturai and was a source of concern and anxiety to the government. Former Tamil Parliamentarian M.K. Sivalingam, also a relative who was partly responsible for organizing the funeral ceremonies, told reporters that despite people being obstructed from attending the ceremony, it was well attended.

“Those who attended the funeral were photographed and subjected to security checks and the university students who came in buses were not allowed,” he was quoted as saying to the BBC.
An Indian Parliamentarian Thol Thirumawalavan, seeking to attend the funeral, was refused entry on arrival at the Colombo airport and had to return to India. Immigration authorities said this was because the politician was unable to give a valid reason for his visit.

Journalists in Jaffna said that although the crowd would have reflected some thinking that remnants of the LTTE were behind the ceremony and that the group is vibrant again, there is no opportunity now to resume any form of armed revolt against the government. “People are tired of the war and won’t – as of now – support any return to violence. That option is not there and the path to the rights of the Tamils lies in the political mainstream,” one reporter said by telephone from Jaffna.

The other significant event was the JVP’s announcement of moving away from alliance or coalition politics, a move described by political analyst Kusal Perera as merely a ‘temporary measure.’“There is no way the JVP can grab power on its own. There has been criticism of the group in recent months from its members after it struck a failed alliance with the party of former army commander Sarath Fonseka, and the latest move is to satisfy the rank and file,” Perera, a weekly political columnist for the Sunday Leader newspaper, said.

The JVP was involved in two bloody insurgencies against the government in 1971 and 1988, subsequently giving up arms after government forces crushed the group (similar to what happened to the LTTE in 2009) and has embraced a non-violent political path since then. Owing to its organizational skills and drawing disgruntled youth like a magnet, the group was once seen as a formidable third force in politics after the two main political parties, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) which heads the ruling UPFA coalition and the main opposition United National Party .

The JVP’s biggest showing was at the 2004 parliamentary polls when it joined up with President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s UPFA and won some 30 seats in the 225-seat parliament. Pulling out of that coalition, it joined up with Fonseka’s party but secured only seven seats at the last parliamentary poll in early 2010.

Now pressure from the ranks has led to the move to contest next month’s local council elections as a stand-alone party, a move analyst Perera feels is not going to increase the JVP’s vote base. “History has shown that there is space for only two main political parties who will govern Sri Lanka. Previous attempts by a third force apart from the SLFP or the UNP to capture power have failed,” he said.(The author is a senior political analyst based in Colombo)