Amirthalingam- A Victim Of Terrorism

S Murari

Appapillai Amirthalingam, who became the torch-bearer of the Sri Lankan Tamils’ struggle for equal rights with Sinahalese and later separation after the passing of Eelam Gandhi S J V Chelvanayagam, was unlike his mentor, a victim of a Frankenstein’s monster he himself fostered like Mrs Indira Gandhi.

 If Binderanwale proved to be her nemesis, Velupillai Prabhakaran of the LTTE sealed the fate of Amirthalingam. Amirthalingam (Augu 26, 1927 – July 13, 1989) was assassinated by a three-member LTTE killer squad in his apartment in the heavily guarded MPs’ quarters in the heart of Colombo along with fellow MP from Jaffna V Yogeswaran. The TULF president, Mr Sivasithambaram survived despite receiving serious injuries, but his political life was never the same again. They used the same ruse which they were to repeat later with success to kill Rajiv Gandhi.

 They went to Amirthalingam to talk peace, through a meeting arranged by Yogeswaran. In the case of Rajiv Gandhi, even as the killer squad landed in Kodiakarai in Vedaranyam in March 1991, a Tamil delegation led by Kasi Anandan met Rajiv Gandhi with a plea to mend fences. The idea was to lull the quarry into a false sense of security.

 The then Premadasa administration was also to blame for the assassinations which effectively silenced moderate, democratic Tamil leadership to the detriment of the Sri Lankan state.

Ironically, when President R Premadasa made the famous statement in April that year that he was ready to go to the lion’s den blindfolded to talk peace, he had in mind the Janata Vimukti Peramuna which had wrecked the south with an armed struggle against the IPKF presence, a struggle that lasted over two years and claimed 60,000 Sinhala lives, the cream of youth. The JVP made the historical blunder of spurning the talks offer. The LTTE, pushed into the jungles and fighting with its back to the wall after it took on the Indian army inducted to enforce the 1987 peace accord between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J R Jayawardene, saw a window of opportunity in Premadasa’s offer and seized it.

A startled Premadasa, realised that by making it up with the Tamil Tigers, he could kill two stones, make the IPKF’s presence irrelevant and take the wind out of the sail of the JVP. On July 1, he asked the IPKF to leave the country, much to the shock of India. At the first available opportunity in Parliament, Mr Amirthalingam spoke against withdrawal of the IPKF until an alternative security arrangement for the Tamils was in place. He was branded a traitor and promptly liquidated with ruthless precision the Tamil Tigers were known for.

 The LTTE cleverly exploited the marriage of convenience with Pramadasa by getting huge cache of arms from the Sri Lankan Government during the phased withdrawal of the Indian army. He trusted them so much that he believed their version that India was arming the rival groups to the teeth to sabotage peace after the IPKF’s exit. A senior Sri Lankan military officer has now disclosed that he warned President Premadasa against arming a terrorist group, but he wouldn’t listen.

Once the purpose was achieved with the IPKF out of the scene, the LTTE quickly ended its honeymoon with Premadasa and started Eelam War II in May 1990.

Eventually, Premadasa too paid the price for riding the Tiger. He was killed on on May 1, 1993 by a killer who came in a bi-cycle to the May Day parade.

 Though Amirthalingam was assassinated for speaking up against the withdrawal of the IPKF, the LTTE had him on its hit list long before his eventual, brutal end.

Born to Appapillai, a railway station master and Valliammai in Suzhipuram in Jaffna, he rose to become a leader respected by everyone. Nicknamed Dharma because of his intelligence, patience and soft nature, the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) became a legend in the Tamils’ struggle.

After taking his law degree from the Colombo University, Amirthalingam gave up lucrative practice and entered politics, heeding the call of Thanthai Selva. In 1956, he became a member of the Sri Lankan Parliament.

Amirthalingam conducted a sathyagraha in Galle Face Green in front of Parliament against the Sinhala Only Act and was beaten up. Instead of going to hospital, he went to Parliament and made a speech condemning the Government’s action. Amirthalingam’s wife Mangaiyarkarasi too was actively involved in politics and the two were arrested in April 1961 during another anti-Government protest. They spent 170 days in prison. At that time, Baheeradhan, their son. was just a toddler.

 Amirthalingam became leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front which came into being in 1976 through merger of the Federal Party and a few others to carry forward the struggle on the basis of the Vaddukottai resolution that an independent Eelam was the only solution to the ethnic strife.

The 1977 elections, held on the first-past-the-post basis, saw the UNP led by J R Jayawardene scoring a landslide win with a three-fourths majority and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party routed with just under 10 seats and its leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike stripped of her civic rights. The TULF with just 17 seats, all from the Tamil majority north and east, emerged as the main opposition and Amirthalingam became the Leader of the Opposition with the rank of a Cabinet Minister.

Not only the LTTE, but other militant groups as well felt he had forfeited the mandate by betraying the cause for the privileges of being the Leader of the Opposition.

It was another irony that Amirthalingam was killed in July. For it was in July 1983, named Black July, that Sri Lanka saw an island-wide anti-Tamil pogrom. It followed the killing of 13 Sri Lankan soldiers by the LTTE in an ambush in Tinneveli in Jaffna on July 23. The very next day, the army killed 41 Tamils in Jaffna. As the body bags reached Colombo, it was rocked by riots.

If the July 1983 pogrom saw the Tamil leaders, militants and moderates, seek asylum in India, leading to its intervention in the Sri Lankan affair, the July 1987 agreement between Mr Rajiv Gandhi and Mr Jayawardene proved to be the undoing of Amirthalingam for he had done the spadework for it through a series of negotiations with the Sri Lankan government.

 After the Tamil leadership moved to Madras, as Chennai was known then, the JRJ administration enacted the sixth amendment, requiring MPs to swear allegiance to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and integrity. All Tamil MPs, including Amirthalingam, forfeited their seats by refusing to take the oath under the amendment.

Amirthalingam was assassinated a few months after he re-entered the Sri Lankan parliament as TULF national list MP following the February 1989 elections. In a way, India was also responsible for the LTTE eliminating moderate Tamil leadership. Mrs Gandhi was in power when the Tamils in lakhs poured into Tamil Nadu after the 1983 riots.

There was a call for Bangaldesh-type military intervention in Sri Lanka by leaders like DMK’s Mr Karunanidhi. But unlike in Bangladesh, where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the sole, unquestioned leader to whom Pakistan refused to hand over power, Amirthalingam had already lost credibility, at least among the militant groups.

Here again, he was to blame. While pursuing parliamentary path in Colombo, he silently encouraged Tamil militant movement which started much before the flashpoint of 1983, to be precise after the 1972 standardisation act which shut out the Tamils from colleges. In fact, one of his sons also ran a militant movement for a while with Indian arms and training.

Mrs Gandhi trained the militants to tame JRJ regime. Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded her, used them as cat’s paw and gave primacy to the TULF, more so after the militant groups made a mockery of Rajiv’s first, amateur attempt at diplomacy, by aborting the Thimpu talks. They were not to blame, for there was no meeting point between the two sides and no advance preparations. The militants, unused to parliamentary ways, were pushed to the negotiating table. They were elated as they felt it was a tacit recognition for them.

But after the collapse of Thimpu, Rajiv kept the militants out of the picture and continued the dialogue with Colombo at two levels, government-to-government and between the Sri Lankan government and the TULF. The primacy given to the TULF in 1986-87 caused a lot of resentment among the groups.

In the final stages of negotiations, all Tamil parties, including the LTTE, were thoroughly briefed by India, despite Prabhakaran’s claim to the contrary. Initially, India wanted the Tamil groups to sign the accord with Colombo, limiting its role to that of an under-writer. It was Amirthalingam who prevailed upon Rajiv to sign the accord with JRJ, citing several broken pacts of the past. This again further angered the militants, particularly the LTTE. While other groups chose to go along with India, LTTE revolted after initial acquisance, leading to confrontation with the Indin army.

I was in Colombo the day Amirthalingam was assassinated. In fact, before leaving Taj Samudra to catch the evening flight back to Madras, I caught up with Col(Retd) R Hariharan, then a major in the IPKF and attached to military intelligence and learnt from him that the Indian mission was hosting a dinner for Amirthalingam and other leaders at the hotel. I was at the airport when the killer squad moved into Amirthalingam’s flat, and got the news the moment I reached home.

I was among a group of journalists from Madras taken in an IPKF plane directly to Jaffna to attend the funeral of Amirthalingam and Yogeswaran. The entire town was in mourning, showing a defiance to the LTTE till then believed to be unimaginable. I could understand the feelings of Jaffna Tamils who felt that their cause would be best served if the TULF’s parliamentary experience and mature leadership and the LTTE’s military prowess were harnessed.

But that was not to be, as Prabhakaran made no secret of the fact that he was a fascist. The most stirring funeral oration was delivered by Mavai Senathiraja. It is an irony that he along with other Tamil leaders barring Anandasangaree, joined the pro-LTTE TNA later, more so after another Tamil intellectual and parliamentarian Neelan Thiruchelvam was gunned down in Colombo by the LTTE.

 When Tamil MP Sivanesan was assassinated in Mallavi in rebel-controlled area in March 2008, the LTTE blamed it on the army’s deep penetration unit. In a tribute to Sivanesan, Prabhakaran said:” He yearned for a free and honourable life for the Tamil people in their land. He represented the people of Jaffna and roamed the world, seeking justice for the Tamils. He raised awareness among our people and gathered their support. He exposed the atrocities of the Sinhala state and its occupying military to the world. He was courageous even in the midst of repeated harassments and threats of the Sinhala military. His service for the liberation of Tamil Eelam through his hard work and exemplary skills are immeasurable”.

He could well have been speaking about Amirthalingam, his mentor at one time whom he eliminated without any compunction.

- Asian Tribune -