The LTTE, it’s Front Organizations, and the challenge to Europe - 2:

Dimensions of LTTE front organization activity

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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.

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Jane’s Intelligence Review of 1 August 2007 notes that unlike the decentralised Jihadist movement, the LTTE is a centralised, hierarchical organisation commanded and controlled by its founding leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and that “the Tamil Tigers generate an estimated US$ 200 to 300 million per year” and that “the profit margin of its operating budget would likely be the envy of any multinational corporation”.

The LTTE has regularized its fundraising process in order to ensure the continuous inflow of funds to meet ever-increasing expenditure of the organization particularly to procure arms. The collection from expatriate Tamil Communities in European countries has been identified as one of the major sources of income of the LTTE.

Almost in every country where there are Tamil communities, particularly in Europe, front organisations or groups that are sympathetic to the “Eelam” cause are actively engaged in collecting funds through various means, ostensibly to be utilised to help the Tamils in the North and East. It is a known fact that most of the funds collected by such front organizations are being utilised to strengthen the LTTE’s military capability and also to expand its international network.

The LTTE, using mainly the TRO and other fronts, collects these funds either through voluntary contributions or through means of extortion, intimidation, threat and even violence. Those who refuse to contribute are told that their relatives in Sri Lanka “cannot be given any guarantee about their safety.”

In its March 2006 report, ‘Funding the Final War: LTTE Intimidation and Extortion in the Tamil Diaspora”, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) cites a Tamil Community activist in Toronto as saying: “Ninety percent of people, even if they don’t support the LTTE, they are scared. The killing doesn’t just happen back home in Sri Lanka. It happens in Paris, in Canada.

They burned the library (The Tamil Resource Center, burned by arson in Toronto in May 1994.). They broke the legs of DBS Jeyaraj. They tried to stop the CTBC radio from organizing. A journalist was killed in Paris. The threat is not only in Sri Lanka. It’s everywhere, all over the world. ... Many Tamils live in Canada or Europe fear for the safety of family members still living in Sri Lanka in areas under LTTE-control.”

TCC offices in Europe also operate a registration process of Tamil families by systematically registering and assigning a unique PIN number for each family and individual for illegal taxation and monitoring of their movements into Sri Lanka. The mechanism is used to extract funds - through threats and intimidation and other such coercive action - to sustain regular finances of the LTTE. The collection of personal data and use of such data for illegal purposes in itself violates European Council Directives on Personal Property.

Apart from its activities in Europe relating to human smuggling, drug trafficking, gun running and organized crime, the LTTE fronted petrol sheds help boost its revenue through credit card fraud. LTTE agents sentenced in April 2007 are known to have skimmed credit cards for over 5.3 million Norwegian Kroners. The main criminal got five and a half years in prison and the other 15-18 months.

The cards used in this case had information skimmed from petrol sheds in England and Canada. More recently, the large credit card fraud perpetrated in London cost the British public almost 30 million Sterling Pounds. Here the LTTE had lent money to asylum seekers to set up petrol sheds and then forced them to use skimming machines through intimidation.

About 200 independently owned petrol sheds are currently being investigated. They skimmed data from credit and debit cards, which are transferred into bogus cards which are then used to rob millions of Pounds. Card details cloned in Britain have been used to obtain funds in Thailand where the LTTE terrorist group is also active.

In addition, there are seemingly legitimate activities for funds generation carried out through numerous front organizations and entities like NGOs and business establishments, such as gas stations, printing presses, super markets, video parlours, jewellery shops, phone card companies, TV/radio stations. etc. There are also collections from sports & cultural events.

The continued dependency of the LTTE for funds from overseas to continue its terror campaign in Sri Lanka and the continuing appeal for such funds from the expatriate Tamil community was demonstrated once again, when in the recent annual Martyr’s Day speech on 27 November 2008, LTTE Leader Prabhakaran observed: “I would request them (Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora) from my heart to strengthen the hands of our freedom movement and continue to extend their contributions and help.”

The opportunity in EU countries for Front Organizations to engage in fund raising, serves to strengthen the LTTE - a proscribed terrorist organization in the EU.

b) Money Laundering

The LTTE often use un-traceable, document-less transactions to move monies from one country to another. It needs to be emphasized that collection of money in the EU countries are transferred and sometimes hand-carried to Switzerland, from where they are transferred to destinations such as Singapore for disbursement for procurements, as it has no legal restriction on monies leaving or entering the country.

The difficulties experienced in cooperating with some European states has been a continuing obstacle in curbing money laundering by the LTTE and its front organizations, which has been a contributory factor in the prolongation of the conflict in Sri Lanka.

c) “Thamil Cholai” Schools (Tamil Blossoming Schools/ Mother Tongue Schools)

There are more than 300 Tamil schools functioning in Europe under different names, receiving host government funding, but are directly or indirectly administered by the LTTE. As per records approximately 20,000 Tamil students between the ages of 4 and 21 years are studying Tamil language, ‘Tamil Eelam’ history, music and dancing, local languages etc, in these schools.

LTTE is making use of these schools extensively not only to inculcate Tamil extremist nationalist sentiments and hatred towards Sinhalese in the minds of 2nd and 3rd generation Tamils, but also to promote LTTE interests and raise funds for the organization in a structured manner. In addition, children of these schools are being forced to participate in protest campaigns/propaganda events organized by the LTTE and its front organizations operations in Europe.

In some European countries, the LTTE has made significant investments in such schools. In Denmark, the TCC operates 28 Mother Tongue Schools. In fact the head of TCC in Denmark Arul Thilainadarasa was elected to the Herning City Council which provided funding for several of these schools.

Approximately 6500 students and 950 teachers of 130 ‘Thamialayam’ schools in Germany have recently been instructed by the LTTE to launch a month long propaganda campaign, where children will be made to wear a colour photograph of a crying child in the Wanni on the chest pocket of the school uniform.

The aim is to draw the sympathy of the local community to the LTTE cause, whilst creating a conducive environment to raise funds for the organization. In his recent Martyrs’ Day speech, the younger generation of Tamils nurtured through such Tamil Cholai Schools, were a particular focus of the LTTE leader, when he observed; “I would also take this opportunity to express my affection and my praise to our Tamil youth living outside our homeland for the prominent and committed role they play in actively contributing towards the liberation of our nation.”

The latitude given in Europe for the continuance of such institutions, would serve the same purpose, the dreaded ‘Madrasas’ provide to the Jihadist movement.