IMHO and the LTTE connection
Indications of material support to designated
terrorist group call for scrutiny:
Hassina Leelarathna Los Angeles, California
The ceaselessly protean LTTE has appeared in numerous guises, using
various names, creating and moulding the terrain to fit their agenda.
TRO, White Pigeon, Illankai Thamil Sangam - are just some of its
avatars. If shut down in one place, they rise up brimming with energy in
another.
Along with the decline and fall of the LTTE, there’s been a flurry of
activity in the US Tamil Diaspora with their front groups and operatives
hitting on all cylinders as they hastily reinvent themselves, taking
cover under a plethora of names spun from their indefatigable acronym
maker — USTPAC (United States Tamil Political Action Council) , APSL
(Americans for Peace in Sri Lanka), and PEARL, (People for Equality And
Relief in Lanka) to name a few.
‘Peace and reconciliation’
The current momentum is being played out at several levels, by
several groups. One is pushing a political agenda, as was evident in the
meeting Assistant Secretary South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake
had with a group of representatives from known LTTE fronts. Another is
advocating a purported ‘peace and reconciliation’ plan even while
another is accusing Sri Lanka of ‘genocide’ and continuing old LTTE
propaganda. Undoubtedly, it’s a byzantine network of organizations, but
it’s the same people, the same agenda, and all roads lead to the same
Babylon: Tamil Eelam.
Comprised of an army of Tamil expatriates entrenched in a sycophantic
culture that follows orders obediently (most are ‘economic refugees’
trafficked by the LTTE), an illgotten booty estimated at nearly a
billion dollars, and a well-oiled propaganda machine, this network is
essentially the next frontier of the Eelam war. As terrorism expert
Rohan Gunaratne warns: “Although the LTTE in Sri Lanka is dead, there
will be efforts by the vast LTTE network overseas to revive violence. As
long as support for LTTE persists overseas, Sri Lanka will remain under
threat.”
Fundraising
Free from ruthless LTTE captivity. Picture by Rukmal Gamage |
Central to that support, is, of course, fundraising. When freezing
the assets of the TRO, the LTTE’s main fundraising and money laundering
department, the US Treasury noted: In the United States, TRO has raised
funds on behalf of the LTTE through a network of individual
representatives. According to sources within the organization, TRO is
the preferred conduit of funds from the United States to the LTTE in Sri
Lanka.
With the TRO banned, the mantle of ‘humanitarian’ fundraising appears
to have fallen on a group that calls itself the International Medical
Health Organization (IMHO). There’s nothing ‘international’ about this
all-Tamil group which has effectively supplanted the banned TRO in the
US and is suddenly on the radar as the beneficiary or organizer of
several fundraisers held in the name of the IDPs.
On June 13, the group held a fundraiser in Bellflower in Southern
California and raised $13000, purportedly to build toilets at Menik
farm, a very well-known IDP shelter. Another IMHO fundraiser is slated
for August 22 at the Ambassador theatre in Pasadena, CA. More are
scheduled outside of California.
The monies raised from these fundraisers no doubt amount to just
chump change for an organization allied with the LTTE — which raised an
estimated $70 million in tsunami funds alone (and used most of it to buy
weapons). But such fundraisers are an opportunity for self promotion,
anti- Sri Lanka propaganda, and establishing credibility. Just as the
2004 tsunami provided a bonanza to the TRO to raise and launder funds
for the LTTE, the IDP situation (created by the LTTE when it took
thousands upon thousands hostage in the last stages of the war) is
turning out to be a sturdy milking cow for IMHO and others.
With post-war dust settling, the emergence of an organization with
direct and indirect ties to a proscribed terrorist organization demands
scrutiny, not just for the potential threat to Sri Lanka but from an
American perspective as well.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has it exercised the due diligence required
to ensure its tax-free assets don’t fall into terrorist hands? Has it
contravened US counter-terrorism laws? Has it knowingly provided
material support to a terrorist outfit? Who are its players, who are its
allies, where has it been and where is it headed?
The genesis of the IMHO, known as the Tamils Health Organization (THO),
is in itself an indicator of its LTTE ties. It was launched on November
1, 2003 as part of the AGM of the Illankai Thamil Sangam, a virulently
anti-Sri Lankan LTTE front in the USA.
Among the four founders of the THO is physician Sujanthy Rajaram in
April 2009 added her voice to that of the frenzied LTTE diaspora that
was making a last-ditch effort to save the trapped terrorist leaders in
the Vanni by outrageous claims that the Sri Lankan military was using
chemical weapons.
In an article titled ‘Medical Crisis in the Vanni,’ Rajaram not only
endorses the falsified chemical weapons charge (made by a pro- LTTE
website called ‘War Without Witness in Sri Lanka’) she goes on to
provide advice on what the Vanni victims should do to fight the effects
of chemical warfare.
The advice, all in English, was surely not for the benefit of the
Tamil-speaking people who were at the time fleeing their homes.
Strategically placed on the ‘Tamils for Obama’ site the purpose was
clearly to create the kind of atmosphere of panic and urgency that grabs
the attention of the international community.
The relationship of IMHO members to the LTTE/TRO, however, goes
beyond the realm of propaganda antics.
Different guise
A Lancaster cardiologist whose office address and phone number have
been identified as a TRO centre by the LTTE’s official organ, Tamilnet
and in other documents, is also the IMHO’s California coordinator. The
TRO (AKA TREO - Tamil Refugee Relief Organization) office on Heaton
Avenue in Lancaster is the medical office of IMHO California coordinator
Dr. S. Sunder.
The phone number used by the TRO is still being used by Sunder for
fundraising and other activities of the IMHO, which raises the question
of the TRO, designated a terrorist front whose funds were frozen in
November 2007 by the US Treasury, continuing to raise funds under a
different guise. The advertisement for the June 13 IMHO fundraiser in
Bellflower, that appeared in several publications, points to such with
S. Sunder’s wife, Thilaka Sunder, being shown as one of three organizers
and the same TRO phone number provided as her contact number.
Another IMHO board member of interest is San Ramon, CA, resident
Jegan Thambaiyah who is also a member and one-time president of a group
called Tamils of Northern California (TNC), essentially another pro-
Tiger group. Counting just what it has declared in its tax statements,
from 1999 to 2006, the TNC’s funds to the TRO totalled about $400,000.
In addition to funding the TRO, the TNC has carried out numerous
campaigns on behalf of the LTTE. It was the TNC (along with Ilankai
Thamil Sangam; Tamils Of Northern California; Tamil Welfare And Human
Rights Committee; Federation Of Tamil Sangams Of North America; World
Tamil Coordinating Committee; Nagalingam Jeyalingam) that took the US
State Department to court challenging the Patriot Act for criminalizing
providing material support to terrorist organizations such as the LTTE.
TNC has steadily raised funds for the IMHO in the past and is
continuing to do so, with copious borrowings from the LTTE propaganda
machine.
It is also one of the groups that fought hysterically to get the
international community to intervene in Sri Lanka to stop the war in May
of this year and save the LTTE by petitioning for a “Special Session of
the UN Human Rights Council on the Human Rights Situation in Sri Lanka.”
The TNC indirectly provided other assistance to the Tigers when it
funded an organization called the International Tamil Technical
Professionals’ Organization (ITTPO), the parent of VanniTech -
supposedly a high-tech computer training facility - which was opened in
2003 by an LTTE leader Tamil Selvam and other Tigers in Kilinochchi. The
ITTPO’s first director board included the head of the TRO’s USA office,
N. A. Ranjithan, and Vimal Rajagopal, also identified by Tamilnet as a
TRO operative.
Sharing links
Ranjithan’s TRO office in Cumberland, MD, into which the TNC and
other Tamil diaspora groups poured funds, was raided in 2006 by the FBI
and eventually closed down as being an LTTE front in November 2007 by
the US Treasury. (The Tamil Foundation, another organization headed by
Ranjithan, was designated an LTTE front earlier this year and its assets
too are now frozen).
In addition to the shared links to the LTTE with the TNC, the IMHO
maintained a direct relationship with the terrorist group. It is a given
that nothing could have been done in the Vanni without the approval and
support of the Tiger leadership.
Since its inception in 2004, the IMHO has partnered directly with the
LTTE by way of a Kilinochchi-based NGO called the Centre for Health Care
(CHC) which operated almost exclusively in the LTTE-held areas. The CHC
website contains photographs of a handful of token activities in the
south, which, on closer review, turn out to be tsunami-related funding -
a dental chair donated by the foreign NGO Direct Relief International
and a mobile clinic on board the Dundee Mercy Bus funded by Australian
donors.
With funding from several expatriate organizations, including
IMHO-US, the CHC set up 11 health centres named ‘Thileepan Medical
Centres’ in LTTE-held areas.
Rudimentary treatment
The centres, identified by the CHC website as ‘primary care’ centres
were manned by rural ‘medical practitioners,’ who provided the most
rudimentary treatment. The centres were named after former LTTE
political wing head Rasiah Parthiban alias Thileepan who died in 1987.
When LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran was injured in an air attack by
Sri Lankan Forces in December 2007, he is said to have been treated at a
Thileepan medical centre at a hidden jungle location, an indication of
the centres being used to treat not just civilians but militants as
well.
At a public event held on June 3, 2004 in Pattalipuram, in
Trincomalee that was then under its sway, the Tigers made it abundantly
clear that it owned and controlled all the Thileepan medical centres,
set up by the IMHO and other groups in the Northeast.
Eelam ‘nationalism’
The event was the opening of the 11th Thileepan medical centre and at
hand for the ceremony were the local top militants: ‘Colonel Banu,’
‘Military Commander’ Sornam, S. Elilan and Iyankaran, LTTE leader and
deputy leader respectively of the Trincomalee district, Isaiarasan,
Muttur LTTE military wing head, and Kaaronja, LTTE Trincomalee district
women wing political head. The honour of lighting the lamp was given to
the mother of a slain LTTE militant.
Addressing the gathering, S. Elilan further reinforced that the
IMHO’s services were directly tied to the LTTE’s quest for a separate
state. “Our national leader’s [Tiger Supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran]
objective is not only to regain our lost traditional homeland but also
to build a Tamil nation with healthy and talented people. Our national
leader works with total dedication towards this goal.”
That strain of Eelam ‘nationalism’ is unmistakably echoed by IMHO
secretary Thavam Thambipillai in a letter to the London-based Medical
Institute of Tamils (MIoT): “Nation building is obviously a daunting
task and for this reason we, the expatriate Tamil medical community
needs to be organized to take on the task of this magnitude.”
Even after the LTTE publicly declared the Thileepan primary care
medical centres to be its property, administered by its so-called ‘Eelam
Health Ministry,’ the IMHO did not withdraw its ‘nation building’
thrust. On the contrary, just two months later, in August 2004, it
infused another $ 47,500 to build another centre, this time in
Iyankankulam.
It also continued to provide support and aid to the other LTTE-owned
primary centres by way of furnishings, motor cycles, ambulances,
computers, fax machines, and even a digital camera. The IMHO claims to
have gifted at least three such ambulances to the LTTE- controlled
facilities. It does not require much imagination to suspect what the
LTTE, engaged in deadly combat with the Sri Lankan Forces, did with
these vehicles!
Basic requirement
US tax laws governing charitable organizations, (501(c)(3)s), state
that in order to qualify for tax exemption, the domestic (US-based)
charity must legally control and operate the foreign organization to
which it channels funds. Piecing together its own narratives, provided
to donors and potential donors, there is nothing to show that the IMHO
met this basic requirement.
The CHC definitely was nothing more than a unit of the LTTE, a
convenient conduit for diaspora funding. The Norwegian Tamils Health
Organization, the London-based Medical Institute of Tamils (MIoT), and
the Canada-based Tamil Emergency Medical Services are among
organizations that claimed to be CHC’s partners.
Along with the LTTE’s moribund fortunes, the CHC has disappeared and
now the IMHO claims it is channeling aid to the IDPs through the
Colombo-based Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), headed by
Jeevan Thiagarajah.
Let it be noted that in Sri Lanka Thiagarajah’s credentials for
representing any humanitarian organization have been in question after
his own wife has filed a case against him accusing him of abuse and
‘inhumane treatment.’
The CHA presents itself as a non-partisan umbrella organization of
NGOs with rather vague objectives such as advocating for “peace, human
rights and development with specific focus on diversity, fundamental
rights and freedom” and generating knowledge and sharing skills
particularly in areas of information gathering, processing and
dissemination.
Despite this innocuous front, the CHA has partnered with NGOs with
deep ties with the LTTE, such as the Norwegian Berghoff Foundation and
FORUT whose heads were deported from Sri Lanka for activities that
undermined Sri Lankan sovereignty.
Among the events the CHA has organized with Berghoff is an
eyebrow-raising 16-month training course in “Defence and Security
Management” in South Africa. For an organization that promotes peace,
the training is suspect enough, doubly so considering that South Africa
has been a hotbed of LTTE activity which included military training
camps. CHA has also been the recipient of a $1500 grant from the TNC
(under the presidency of Mr. Jegan Thambaiyah), which establishes that
it has had ties with this LTTE front.
These questionable links notwithstanding, Thiagarajah is known to
have easy and privileged access to sensitive government information and
to security zones, as well as IDP camps.
This puts IMHO at a great advantage because the connection to such an
official at once throws sanctity on its actions and removes the baggage
it carries from its established ties to the LTTE.
The IMHO’s interconnectedness to other Tamil groups by way of a
common political agenda, funding, material support, and shared personnel
(the same board members) is comparable to the relationship TRO(USA) and
the Tamil Foundation where the commingling of funds and coordinated
financial activities took place.
Earlier this year, when it issued the order freezing the assets of
the Tamil Foundation in Maryland, the US Treasury Department pointed out
that the head of the Tamil Foundation also being the president of the
Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) in the United States, a
designated terrorist organization, had led to the commingling of funds
and coordinated financial actions. “The common leadership of the TRO and
the Tamil Foundation has facilitated these activities,” the Treasury
said in a statement adding that it will continue to: “...aggressively
target attempts by any terrorist group to hide behind charities, front
companies, or name changes to propagate terror against innocents around
the world.”
Both Sri Lanka and the US have a stake in scrutinizing the activities
of groups such as the IMHO. Let it be remembered that while the LTTE’s
defeat signifies an internal military victory for Sri Lanka, the war is
still being waged unabated in the overseas theatre. As noted earlier, it
is a byzantine network of (to quote Guneratne again) “state of the art
propaganda, fundraising, procurement, a shipping infrastructure, a
significant drug trade, a far-flung human smuggling empire, and offices
and cells in about 60 countries.”
The challenge for Sri Lanka is to stop this behemoth from getting a
foothold once again in the North and East. Just as much as it set up an
overseas network, the LTTE, now morphed into a ‘transnational,’
‘in-exile’ operation, will have to seed itself back in Sri Lanka by
recruiting front organizations, into host bodies such as the CHA. Sri
Lanka is well-versed in the devious tactics and subversive aims of
foreign NGOs and needs no reminder of the dangers of allowing them free
rein. Maintaining a tight leash on foreign groups without becoming
insular while allowing legitimate charities to do their work unimpeded
is part of the challenge of reining in the beast.
When organizations such as the IMHO come bearing gifts, Sri Lanka
will do well to remember New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s response to a
$10 million donation to the 9/11 disaster recovery fund from Saudi
Arabia in 2001. After giving the check to the mayor at a memorial
service at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Centre towers
destroyed in the attack, Saudi Prince Alwaleed made a statement
suggesting the United States “must address some of the issues that led
to such a criminal attack.” Giuliani immediately responded saying the
cheque would not be cashed. He said: “There is no moral equivalent for
this (terrorist) act. There is no justification for it. The people who
did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they
slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people.”
Similarly, the humanitarian aid that IMHO and such NGOs bring, comes
with a heavy price tag. For example, in April, the TNC held a fundraiser
and raised around $60,000 for the IMHO using the following propaganda:
Over 300,000 Tamil minorities are held in detention camps fenced with
barbed wires.
Everyday people are dying of malnutrition, starvation, and disease,
due to severe shortage of infant formulas, food, and lack of proper
sanitation.
Since December 2008, over 100,000 have been injured and are without
adequate medical care.
Donors were urged to write to the White House and Congress to
‘prevail on the Sri Lankan Government to allow, international aid
agencies, and international media, unfettered access to these camps,’
even though aid agencies were working in the conflict zone.
In other words, are the scraps of ‘humanitarian aid’ that NGOs such
as IMHO bring worth the price in terms of the ‘moral equivalency’ they
claim? |