Declining Prabhakaran and the rising Tamil diaspora

H.L.D. MAHINDAPALA

By and large, the Tamils of Sri Lanka have three major choices: (1) escape into the Tamil diaspora - the comfort zone sought by all Tamils, including Velupillai Prabhakaran’s children; (2) be in the tight grip of the one-man regime in the Vanni or (3) join the mainstream politics as in the East, following the example Pilleyan, the ex-Tiger who has transformed into a Chief Minister heading a multi-ethnic Provincial Council.

The fourth option of Eelam promised by Prabhakaran is as attainable as a monkey landing on the moon on his own steam.

Prabhakaran is in the identical state of the monkey because there is no one to power him to reach his elusive moon.

There is a deluded section of the Tamil diaspora who still believe that they can create a Kosovo type of enclave by pursuing endless violence which they are prepared to finance with their dollars. They feel vindicated and compensated when Prabhakaran goes on the rampage killing the Sinhalese and the Tamils opposed to his Pol Potist regime.

But frustrated by the declining power and territory of the Tigers the hard-core Tiger agents in the diaspora argue that what is required is more violence to force the Sinhala government (no mention of Muslims and Tamils in the government) to surrender to their demands.

Violence

They depend on Prabhakaranist violence to get excited like some sadists who fork out money to get a kick out of torture, killings and mayhem. Take the latest example of the bomb blast at the Dehiwela railway station. This is the second occasion the Tigers timed a bomb to explode at this station.

On both occasions it was the crowded evening train carrying mothers and fathers home after a grinding day in work places to earn a crust. These trains are crowded by all ethnic groups. But the majority of the Tamils get off at Wellawatta the prosperous enclave of the Tamils living down south with the Sinhalese.

Not surprisingly the bomb is timed to go off at the next station Dehiwela, after the Tamils had left the train at Wellawatta. It is this racist violence that spurs the Tamil diaspora to fork out money to kill more Sinhalese.

There are reports coming from London that some Tiger agents are toying with the idea of killing Sinhala children en masse to provoke the Sinhala community backlash against the Tamils which, hopefully, would gain some political mileage in the international community to create a Kosovo for Tamils.

Fatal flaw

Both Prabhakaran and his agents rely exclusively on racist violence as the one and only tool to carve out their racist enclave of Eelam. Herein lies their fatal flaw. They refuse to accept that violence, which paid some dividends initially, has run out of its use-by-date.

At the same time, Prabhakaran is in a bind because he has no other tool with which to achieve his elusive goal. The best opportunity to gain the territory and the power on which he could have built an alternative future to the one he aspires was given to him by Ranil Wickremesinghe, with international guarantees, in his ill-fated Ceasefire Agreement. But Prabhakaran, who does not know his limits, shot it to pieces. The nation was saved thanks to Prabhakaran and not by any means to Wickremesinghe.

Today Prabhakaran stands alone as the enfant terrible that came out of the violence endorsed in the Vaddukoddai Resolution passed in 1976 by the Jaffna political class led by S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, the father of Tamil separatism. Prof. A.J. Wilson testimony written in his father-in-law’s biography confirms that he went through every word of it before it was put to the TULF for voting in his electorate, Vaddukoddai.

Of the Tamil youth who took up arms endorsed in the Vaddukoddai Resolution Prabhakaran emerged on top because he was the most ruthless in eliminating his Tamil rivals. His first victim was the mild-mannered Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiyappah. He gunned him down in 1975. But the Vaddukoddai, Resolution adopted the year after gave him the licence he needed to go on the rampage.

He has never stopped killing Tamils since the passing of the Vaddukoddai Resolution. Of course his intention was to use the legitimacy of killing endorsed in the Resolution to clear the field for him to claim the bogus title of being “the sole representative of the Tamils” even though Douglas Devananda, Anandasangaree and Pilleyan give the lie to this claim.

Isolation

The violence endorsed by the founding fathers of the separatist ideology were horribly wrong in the hands of Prabhakaran. With the rise of Prabhakaran power slipped from the vellahla elite into the hands of Pol Pots who began their careers by decimated the founding fathers like Amirthalingam. Chelvanayakam escaped only because he died before the Pol Pots he bred got hold of him.

The Tamils initially embraced this violence endorsed in the Vadukoddai Resolution as a liberating force and treated the likes of Prabhakaran as ‘boys’.

But after 33 years violence, starting from the murder of Durayappah in 1975, Prabhakaran has gone as far as he could go and reached the limits in 2008. Neither the international community nor the other communities in Sri Lanka are willing to accept either the Eelamist cause of Prabhakaran or his violent methodology.

It is not only counter-productive but has become repulsive and unacceptable even to the reasonable and moderate Tamils who are yearning for non-violent politics, rejecting the goals and the methodologies of the war-mongers who drafted and passed the Vaddukoddai Resolution.

Clearly, the earlier rationale has evaporated and the violence of Prabhakaran has run against an impenetrable wall for several reasons:

a) unequivocal rejection of Prabhakaran’s fascist - racist goals and violent methodologies by the international and regional communities;

b) the increasing isolation of Prabhakaran by the international and local communities, including certain sections of the Tamil community;

c) the increasing acceptance of a pluralist democracy with multi-ethnic communities coming together as demonstrated in the East;

d) loss of idealism that initially inspired violence;

e) the break-up of the Tiger monolith with the exit of Karuna;

f) dwindling power and territory;

g) inability to mount a counter-offensive to reclaim lost ground as he is increasingly driven to be on the defensive to guard his decreasing corner in the Vanni;

h) reduction each day in the supply of arms and cadres needed to perpetuate his violence as the three-pronged attacks of the Security Forces in land, air and sea weaken his bases;

i) superiority of the combined land, air and sea operations of the revitalized Sri Lankan Security Forces;

j) loss of the East which was a source revenue, cadres and political prestige;

k) decreasing income from abroad with foreign governments turning the screws on Tiger collecting agents;

l) violence fatigue;

m) failure to arrive anywhere near his goals after 33 years of violence; and

n) disillusionment and frustration turning increasing numbers in the Tamil diaspora away from Prabhakaranist violence.

These are some of the decisive factors that have debilitated Prabhakaran. Some analysts argue that on his past performances he still has a chance of staging a come back but, considering the fact that there isn’t a single plus factor going for him unlike in the previous occasion, it is pretty clear that he is doomed to live holed up in his bunker for the limited number of days left for him to be a factor in Sri Lankan politics. He has haemorrhaged too much. Most of his life supports have been cut off. He is now at a terminal stage.

He can hold on for some time but any prospect of making a dramatic come back, which means driving the Security Forces out of Vanni at least ‘let alone sending them back to Mavil Aru’ is not on the cards. Which means he has no bargaining power to come to the negotiating table. Which means he has to keep on fighting to gain some bargaining power. Which means he will continue with his usual violence leading to more deaths of the war-weary Tamils. Which means he will be more dependent on the funds of the Tamil diaspora to kill more Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Funding

But as the disillusionment sets in the collecting agents abroad notice a decrease in the flow of funding. The recent killing of Maheswari Velayuthan, a Tamil lawyer who visited her sick mother in Jaffna, sent shock waves among the Tamil diaspora. Her crime was that she was the legal advisor to Minister Douglas Devananda who has been targeted by the Tigers 13 times without any success.

So they targeted his lawyer, an unprotected civilian. The comparative silence of the NGO pundits, who rave and rant when a pro-Tiger politician is attacked or killed, was a clear indication to the Tamils that they can’t expect any solace or solution from them.

Kumar Rupesinghe, for instance, who brought down the corpse of a pro-Tiger politico and exhibited at the Town Hall in Colombo, was too busy counting his bank balance after he had deposited his monthly salary of Rs. 1.1 million to do anything for Maheswari.

By any standards, the killing of Maheswari is a senseless act. What benefit has Prabhakaran gained from killing an unarmed woman like Maheswari? These killings have lost any meaning and utility value for Prabhakaran’s intended goals.

They are not going to bring him closer to Eelam. They are not going to add to his stature. They are not going to restore his lost grounds. He is not going to get any favours from the international community. Not even the lunatic fringe of the Sinhalese is reacting to his mindless killings.

Downhill

At best he might get some headlines with media and NGO pundits crowing that he is on the way to stage a comeback. That is all that he can get. And that is what he is aiming at now.

Incredible as it may sound, Prabhakaran is killing now just to be in the headlines to impress the Tamil diaspora who fund him. It is his way of saying that he is not dead yet! In the meantime, the Tamil diaspora is funding him not to achieve a separate state (they know it is unattainable) but to keep him and his killing machine alive.

They loathe to admit that the old Prabhakaran who won victories for them is dead. They are also refusing to admit that the exhausting process of Prabhakaran’s intransigence is shortening his life span.

Prabhakaran has nowhere to go except downhill and en route to the bottom he is bent on dragging the Tamils with him. Varatharaja Perumal, the former Chief Minister, wrote recently that Prabhakaran will fight till the last Tamil man goes to his grave or to Canada.

Tragic plight

Prabhakaran is worried that the Tamils who come after him will laugh at his bogus promises and failures. His violence has not added to the glory of Tamils. If at all it has degraded the image of Tamils in the eyes of the international community.

His racist violence is not going to bring salvation to the Tamils either. As the hard realities sink in the moderate and reasonable Tamils realise that there is no light at the end of his violent tunnel.

This has been the tragic plight of the Tiger tactics.. Dr. Noel Nadesan, the Editor of the Melbourne-based Uthayam and the author of Vannathikulam, a novelette depicting the tragedy of the communities facing the brunt of Prabhakaranist violence, wrote: “They (the Tamil youth) spoke with more faith drawn from the power of weaponry than in the strength of masses in their political struggle. It was generally accepted that there should not be any opposing views. They had determined that such opposing views would only destroy unity. I was deeply worried over this state of affairs.” (Vannathikulam - pp. 39-40).

Trapped

He is not alone in despairing about the plight of the Tamils trapped in the Prabhakaranist violence. It is a voice that is echoing loudly, with each passing day, around the Tamil diaspora. Recently I met Mrs. Rajes Balasubramaniam MA (Medical Anthropology), BA (Hons - Film & Video) etc., in Melbourne.

She lives in London and is a thorn in the flesh of the Prabhakaran wing of Tamils who dominate the Tamil politics in UK. Like most Tamils in the diaspora she is after the best deal for the Tamils but she argues that it can be won only by opposing not “the Sinhala government” but by opposing the violent politics of “the mass murderer, Prabhakaran.”

She is bitterly opposed to Prabhakaran and his politics of violence. She has running battles with the Tiger supporters in the diaspora and there is no love lost between the two. When she visited Melbourne the Tamil radio stations, dominated by the pro-Tiger activists, blacked her out.

The Special Broadcasting Station which is for ethnic groups invited her only to ask irrelevant questions as to who paid for her airline ticket to Melbourne (she funded her own ticket), or whether she was an agent of the Government of Sri Lanka.

Peace

Anyone meeting Rajes will agree that she is nobody’s agent. She is fiercely independent. And she fires broadsides against a wide range of political targets, including the Sri Lankan Government.

Because she belongs to the new breed of anti-Prabhakaran Tamils who are prepared to negotiate with the Government to find a way out of the dehumanizing violence of Prabhakaran the pro-Tiger elements brand her as “a pro-Sinhala-government agent.”

This is the common label attached to Tamils who are genuinely seeking a way out of the violent morass which is dragging the Tamils into lower depths from which they have no escape. Rajes fires mainly at the Tamil diaspora who are adding fuel to the fires of the Tamils by financing the futile war.

She was in the UK delegation of Tamil expatriates led by T. Jayadevan that came down to Sri Lanka to meet Government and community leaders. They met community leaders in various parts and in Jaffna she couldn’t believe her ears when Rt. Rev. Thomas Soundranayagam, Bishop of Jaffna, tongue-lashed the Tamil expatriates for financing the Tiger war.

He had said: “The Tamil diaspora has created this monster. They are the reason for this on-going war. They must stop this war because we need peace. We all need peace. Even the soldiers need peace. They don’t want to be in this war. They want to go home and live in peace.

Saving Tamils

Apart from Western governments cracking down on Tiger fund raisers there are new voices in the Tamil diaspora rising against Prabhakaran’s ruthless regime and his mindless violence. Rajes, for instance, is repelled by the callous acceptance of violence by the Tamil expatriates who contribute funds either through fear or through mistaken beliefs promoted by Tiger agents that the “sole representative of the Tamils” is the ‘Sun God’ who can take them to the elusive Eelam that is nowhere in sight. Rajes was horrified when pro-Tiger agents were throwing around the idea of killing Sinhala children en masse to force the Sri Lankan Government to surrender. She had given them a mouthful, as they say in Sri Lanka.

Her argument is that instead of killing others they have to save the Tamils. She says: “85,000 Tamils are unemployed. One in six is an IDP. Food prices are rocketing sky high.

There is no security. Children are abducted to fight in a useless war. We want normality. We want peace. We want both sides to stop the war!” She was born in a village called Kolavil in Batticaloa District). She came to the UK in 1970 with her husband and she is now living in North London. She is thankful to S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike for opening a school in her village because her mother would not send her to a school in town. It was that school that paved her path to Jaffna and then to London.

Covering up

Rajes has no time for the educated Tamils who try to cover up the crimes committed by Prabhakaran against his own people. “Can we forget how Prabhakaran burnt 86 TELO boys alive in Ariyakulam? Can we forget how he bombed and shot 66 boys and girls of the EPRLF in Kandankarunai? At the rate that he is going the Tiger flag will be flying only in cemeteries. Tamils will have no songs, no dance, no music until they are freed from this mass murderer.

He even banned the Tamils from participating in Tamil literature festivals held in Australia. He wants to control the minds and thoughts of Tamil fearing that they would go against him,” cries Rajes.

Listening to Rajes makes it very clear that Prabhakaran will never be able to control the minds and thoughts of the Tamils, even though some may submit to him for a while. Her voice is ominous. It represents the growing disenchantment and rising opposition in the diaspora to Prabhakaran. It began as a trickle some years ago.

It has been broadening into a river of later. Rajes and the other peace-loving Tamils are sure that it won’t be long before it turns into a Niagra.