LTTE’s Australian subversion
Ajit Kumar Singh
FUNDING: With an estimated Tamil population of 30,000,
Australia is one of the largest sources of funding for the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In confirmation, the Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary
Palitha Kohona disclosed on May 1, 2007, that the LTTE internationally
raises approximately USD 10 million to USD 30 million a month, of which
almost 20 to 30 per cent comes from Australia.
However, acknowledging the fact that funds were being raised in his
country to finance LTTE operations on May 2, 2007, Australian Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer stressed that the amounts raised were not
huge: “Some of it comes from Australia, probably nothing like 30 per
cent, but small amounts do come from Australia.
I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. It’s been very hard to
collect evidence, though, about money in Australia and paid directly to
the Tamil Tigers, which is, an offense.’’ While many of the Tamils in
Australia identify with the LTTE’s cause, only some are known to be
engaged in raising funds.
But Australia is emerging as a “central front of a distant war - a
rich source of millions of dollars in funds and equipment for the Tamil
Tiger terrorist group to help wage their separatist war in Sri Lanka,”.
The Weekend Australian /reported on May 5, 2007. Extracts of the
report titled ‘How tsunami cash bankrolled Tigers’ stated: “Sources say
LTTE had been raising modest amounts of money here since the 1980s but
its operations were transformed by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which
gave the group its first chance to milk large amounts of cash from
Australians.”
Australia, in pursuance of UN Security Council Resolution No. 1373 on
suppressing the financing of terrorism, on December 21, 2001, proscribed
25 terrorist organisations, including the LTTE.
The purpose was to bring the LTTE under an asset-freezing programme
and stem the flow of funds to the group from Australia. Under this
programme, it is an offence to provide or even possess any asset
belonging to a listed terrorist group or individual, and this offence is
punishable by up to five years imprisonment.
The LTTE, for which procuring adequate finances lies at the heart of
its terrorist campaign, reportedly raises funds in Australia through a
range of front organisations working among the Sri Lankan Tamil
Diaspora.
The rebel cover organisations have gradually secured a considerable
degree of visibility in Australia, with networks of offices and cells to
carry out propaganda, organise the procurement and movement of weapons
and raise funds from the Diaspora.
There are at least 300 LTTE activists spread across Australia. Some
of them use “intimidatory” or “emotional tactics” to attract funds from
other Tamils and those “who refuse to give money are labeled traitors
and subsequently isolated by the community.” LTTE donors in Australia
are “spread across the economic spectrum, ranging from grocery store
owners to medical specialists, lawyers and media players.”
According to the Victoria-based Society for Peace and Human Rights, a
54-year-old Tamil Australian, identified as Thillainadarajah Jeyakumar,
a lecturer at Swinburne Technical College in Victoria, was the chief
agent of the LTTE in Australia and the person behind the LTTE network
operating in the country to finance, lobby and direct the operations of
pro-LTTE Tamils.
Jeyakumar, who died on March 29, 2007, was posthumously conferred the
title of Maamaniathar (Great human being) by the LTTE chief Velupillai
Prabhakaran, an award conferred only to its hardcore cadres.
He was the force behind uniting the Australian Tamils to provide
moral support and help to the people in his homeland. He was the second
to receive this award in Australia, the first recipient being C. J.
Eliezer of La Trobe University, the founder of the Australian Federation
of Tamils, the first LTTE front established in Australia.
Tamil Week in its March 31, 2007, edition reported that Jeyakumar
hatched the plan to send the light aircraft that dropped the bombs on
the Katunayakae Air Base on March 26, 2007, with the international arms
procurement agent of the LTTE, K. Pathmanathan alias ‘KP’.
Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna reiterated that the
LTTE had been procuring aircraft, arms, explosives and other
technological devices from Australia for more than a decade and that the
LTTE were buying light aircraft from local manufacturers in the
mid-1990s and, as recently as 2006, bought remote control devices to
detonate bombs in Sri Lanka.
Gunaratna records: “It started in the mid-1990s but the procurement
activities continued as far as last year in Australia. The last items
they purchased were remote control devices which have now been uncovered
in Sri Lanka with Australian markings.”
Gunaratna believes Governments had been slow to react because they
had been so focused on stopping Islamist extremists: “Within the
intelligence community now it’s very well established that because
Governments turned a blind eye to this today there are light aircraft
the Tigers are using to mount attacks in Sri Lanka.”
The pro-LTTE Website Tamil Net summarises Jeyakumar’s contribution to
LTTE activity in Australia: “Praised as the leading force behind the
Australian Tamils Co-ordinating Committee for the last two decades,
Jeyakumar is credited with uniting Australian Tamils towards supporting
Tamil Eelam struggle and for his unwavering commitment to help the Tamil
people.”
Such assertions clearly suggest that the Australian Tamils Co-ordinating
Committee (ATCC) is a one of the LTTE’s leading frontal organizations,
among many others that coordinate the outfit’s operations in Australia.
Though a number of LTTE front organisations have been raising funds
in Australia, a pivotal role has been played by the Tamil Rehabilitation
Organisation (TRO), which was established in 1985, with an extensive
network of branches operating in at least 28 countries.
The TRO works under the guise of a charity organisation and is
reported to have collected close to AUD 1.1 million in donations from
Australia following the tsunami in December 2004. The pro-LTTE lobby
managed to raise funds from the State of Victoria for a promised blood
bank which never came into existence.
The Victorian Government also granted AUD 850,000 to a fishnet
project in Jaffna; once again, the money was not used for the project.
According to a November 1, 2006, report, a family of three - Sivarajah
Yathavan, his wife Abirami Yathavan and P. Senthuran, his father-in-law
- has taken full control of the LTTE operations in Victoria.
Speaking in the Federal Parliament in January 2005, the Australian
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had stated that the Government had
identified TRO as an entity associated with the LTTE and that the
Government had not funded TRO’s development programme because of this
association.
Frontal organisations of the LTTE not only raise funds by getting
donations from the Tamil people willing to fund the ‘final war’, but
also resort to extortion and intimidation of the Tamil Diaspora.
Corroborating this, Sri Lanka’s Honorary Consul in Melbourne, Rodney
Arambewela, disclosed that there had been a large number of complaints
from the Sri Lankan community relating to intimidation for donations by
the LTTE.
The Tamil community in Australia is under a lot of pressure to help
the LTTE, he stated, adding, “unfortunately some of the people who have
been contributing these funds are being intimidated, that’s what we
hear, been pressured to contribute.” The LTTE also takes recourse to
narcotics and human trafficking to augment its revenues.
LTTE fronts in Australia “use a variety of tactics to attract
donations, including music festivals, dance concerts and radiothons.
Typically, money raised is put into bank accounts in Southeast Asia
before it ends up in the pockets of arms dealers and other LTTE
intermediaries in the region.
To conceal the tracks, funds are often transferred into legitimate
bank accounts in Malaysia and Thailand.” Following the funding trail in
one case, documents obtained by ‘The Weekend Australian’ showed one
Tamil group transferring USD 400,000 out of Australia between 2000 and
2003 for alleged weapons procurement.
Couriers, usually LTTE sympathisers from Melbourne or Sydney, are
sometimes used to carry the money to Kuala Lumpur. Sources indicate that
the money is then moved by intermediaries to either Indonesia or
Cambodia where the LTTE “gets a lot of its military weapons”.
The Australian Government in January 2005 launched a two-year joint
investigation by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Victoria Police
into claims that charity groups were raising funds for the LTTE. The
joint investigation led to many arrests and disclosures.
On November 23, 2005, the AFP raided premises of LTTE operatives in
Melbourne and arrested more than 15 persons, including Jeyakumar and
‘Economic Advisor’ Jeyarajan Maheswaran. The AFP also seized computer
hardware, passports, cash, diaries, bank receipts, and cheque books from
the operatives.
Two prominent LTTE leaders in Australia - Sivaraj Yathevan, in charge
of Eela Murasu, a Tamil community paper, and his aide Arooran
Vignanamoorthy - who had access to AUD 526,000 in two bank accounts
between August 2001 and December 2005, were arrested on May 1, 2007,
during raids conducted on 10 premises in Melbourne’s east - at Vermont,
Glen Waverley, Mount Waverley, Dandenong, East Burwood - and in the
Sydney suburbs of Toongabbie and Parramatta.
Vinayagamoorthy reportedly spent USD 97,000 on transmitters and
receivers from Tasmania and Queensland used by the LTTE in explosive
devices. The duo was charged of using tsunami relief charity money,
collected for the victims of the devastated Tamil areas, for terrorist
activities in Sri Lanka.
The offences are alleged to have occurred between July 6, 2002, and
May 1, 2007. Federal police counter terrorism spokesman Frank
Prendergast disclosed: “It will be alleged in court that these men are
members of an organisation engaging in terror activities overseas, and
they have been providing active material support to that group.
They had duped Australians who thought they were donating money to
tsunami victims in Sri Lanka, as well as other charities.” He, however,
stressed, “There was no evidence that the men planned to carry out any
terrorist attacks in Australia.”
With growing LTTE activities in Australia, the Federal Government is
considering a ban on LTTE under domestic law. Australian Foreign
Minister, Alexander Downer, addressing a gathering at the International
Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London on December 18, 2006,
stated, “We are seriously considering banning the LTTE.
In the past two weeks Australian authorities have had discussions
concerning the LTTE and a decision was expected to be taken shortly.” He
added further that Australian intelligence services had monitored the
activities of some Tamil charities that had used the cover to illegally
raise funds for the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
The large numbers of Tamils present in the country, and the political
and electoral influence they wield in certain constituencies has,
however, precluded effective action against the LTTE, and the group is
yet to be outlawed in Australia.
There is, nevertheless, a growing realisation that, even though
Australia’s interests have not, thus far, been directly challenged by
the LTTE, the group’s activities are no longer confined to Sri Lanka
alone, and it has, according to the IISS ‘The Military Balance 2007’,
established commercial links with the ‘al Qaeda’ as well.”
There is, consequently, a danger that the Tamil rebels can, in the
event of their failure to achieve their goals in Sri Lanka, engage in
activities that could seriously threaten security in other countries
where they currently find safe haven and patronage.
The writer is Research Assistant,
Institute for Conflict Management
Courtesy: South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism
Portal. |