Time to Act : The LTTE, it’s Front Organisations, and the challenge to Europe - I:

Global response to LTTE

Excerpts from address by Ravinatha Aryasinha, Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the EU, Belgium and Luxembourg, at the EU-US International Seminar on the LTTE, held at the Europol Headquarters in the Hague, Netherlands, 9-10 Dec 2008.

To the best of my understanding, this is the first time such a wide-ranging international group of experts have chosen to devote an entire two days to discuss with EU member states and other third affected countries, the ramifications of the activities of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Co-sponsored by the US Government and the French Presidency, that EUROPOL chose to devote this seminar to the LTTE, underlines the seriousness with which the law enforcement and criminal justice communities in these countries are watching developments relating to the activities of the LTTE.

This is something that is heartening to note, for a country like Sri Lanka, which is bleeding, due to long years of international apathy to LTTE terrorism.

My presentation to you today will focus not only on the LTTE, but particularly the dynamics of its numerous front organisations, regarding which I respectfully posit, that the Government of Sri Lanka believes sufficient attention is not being paid at present in Europe.

global response to the LTTE

The LTTE’s ruthlessness and violence is largely unparalleled by any other terrorist organisation. Its suicide bomb technology, global network, ability to procure arms and explosives, maritime capability, rudimentary air capability, cyber terror capacity and links to other international terrorist groups, as Dr. Magnus Ranstorp, Chief Scientist at the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College has opined, makes it “probably the most sophisticated terrorist organisation in the world”.

LTTE proscriptions and their limitations

The early response of the international community to the threat posed by LTTE terrorists was abysmal. It would be fair to say that it was only following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, that note was taken of the risks posed by this group.

While India banned the LTTE in May 1992 following the assassination, it was not until the mid-1990s and a spate of international terrorist incidents, and particularly the LTTE’s attack on the Central Bank in January 1996, that other countries began to respond to the LTTE.

This is evidenced in the proscription of the LTTE, by the US (Oct,1997), the UK( Feb, 2001), UNSC (2005, for child conscription), Canada (April,2006) and the 27 member EU (May 2006).

The unfortunate delay in arriving at a consensus on the danger posed by the LTTE, is amplified by the fact that although the atrocities of the group were well known since the early 1980s, from India which first proscribed it in 1992, to Australia which is presently contemplating whether to ban the LTTE, it has taken almost two decades.

So while I often hear it being said in Brussels, “but we have banned the LTTE”, my response is that “there is no LTTE sitting around to be affected by your ban”.

front organisation phenomenon

The truth is that while the proscriptions in the West have clearly had a psychological bearing on the group, it has had little tangible effect on the actual LTTE operations.

There is also no knowledge of any funds frozen following the listing of the LTTE in Europe. Today the LTTE, albeit under cover, operates within Europe as brazenly as ever, posing a collective challenge to all of us, if we are seriously interested in combating international terrorism.

The reality we must accept is that by the time the UK, the EU and Canada had decided to take seriously the threat posed by the LTTE and proscribe the group, the LTTE’s propaganda and fund raising activities had already shifted its operations and coordination activities to various front organizations, thus effectively making the proscription of the LTTE of little relevance.

The LTTE runs a highly sophisticated and intricate international web, coordinated under the direct supervision of the LTTE leadership in Wanni.

All operational/ administrative functions of its front organizations directly come under the supervision of Veerakathy Manivannam, alias Castro, who is the Head of the LTTE’s ‘International Secretariat’, based in Wanni in Sri Lanka.

It encompasses the whole gamut of activities ranging from seemingly innocuous pursuits, such as the promotion of Tamil culture to raising funds ostensibly to support charities and humanitarian relief in Sri Lanka, and has cleverly exploited modern technology to finance its terror campaign. It is important to note that all such LTTE front organizations form an integral part of the LTTE network / overseas infrastructure, and act for or on behalf of or at the behest of the LTTE.

The mushrooming of such front organizations, in the post-proscription phase in particular, has enabled the LTTE to carry out its fund raising and propaganda, taking cover under pseudo-religious, cultural, sports, economic and humanitarian associations.

LTTE’s campaigns with other terrorist groups

Its propaganda has succeeded in popularizing these front organizations and portraying them as community associations involving the Tamil diaspora widely spread out in key western countries. These front organizations working through the diaspora also supports the LTTE’s networking and lobbying campaigns with other terrorist groups and foreign governments respectively.

It must be emphasised that front organizations are not a new phenomenon of the LTTE. The LTTE have been forming front organizations since the mid eighties in order to surreptitiously collect funds for their military agenda. Initially, monies were collected mainly from the Indian mainland.

However, the relevance of these organizations have grown in leaps and bounds following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, when the LTTE was forced out of India. Subsequently, the LTTE made their bases in western capitals.

Ironically, the Interim Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Assassination of Shri Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, headed by Justice Jain, Former Chief Justice Delhi High Court refers to a threat assessment prepared in May 1989 when the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was proposing to visit Paris, where caution was drawn to the activities of the Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC), with an estimated membership of 4000, which was identified by Indian intelligence as an LTTE front operating in Europe, and particularly France, where an increasing level of activity of the LTTE was noted.

Today there are many LTTE front organizations operating in Western countries on behalf of the LTTE, circumventing the legal provisions against terrorist financing which are at present in force against the LTTE. They include;

- Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO)

- White Pigeon

- World Tamil Movement (WTM)

- Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC)(WTCC)(CCTF)

- British Tamil Association(BTA)

- British Tamil Forum(BTF)

- Tamil Youth Organization (TYO)

- International Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (ITRO).

To be continued