Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil political party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Friday expressed its shock at the killing in a government airstrike of Mr S. P. Tamilselvan the LTTE’s Chief Negotiator and head of its Political Wing and five other LTTE officials.

 

The TNA said the targeted killing of the LTTE’s Chief Negotiator underlined President Mahinda Rajapakse’s insincerity towards a negotiated solution, the TNA also said.

 

Saluting Mr. Tamilselvan's "selfless sacrifice for the Tamil Eelam struggle" the TNA said it joined the rest of the Tamil community in saluting him and the other LTTE officials killed by the Sri Lanka Air Force bombing.

 

"We salute his services to the Tamil people and selfless sacrifice for the Tamil Eelam struggle," the brief media release said.

 

"Although his death is destined to create thousands of new Tamilselvans who will doubtless serve our freedom struggle with dedication, we shudder at the repercussions for peace of this act by the Sri Lanka government," the TNA said.

 

The TNA said it joined the Tamil community and activists in saluting and paying tribute to Mr. Tamilselvan and the other LTTE officials killed in Friday’s airstrike on their residence.

 

Speaking to TamilNet Friday, Mr. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, of the TNA’s Foreign Affairs Committee said that the targeted killing of Mr. Tamilselvan underlined the insincerity of the Rajapakse government’s peace claims.

 

"In our meetings with numerous representatives of the international community, the TNA repeatedly stated that the Sri Lankan state was not committed to negotiating an equitable solution,” he said. “Despite our warnings, the state was fully backed in its hard line."

 

"When President Rajapakse came to power, the shift to a military track became much more pronounced. But when we protested to many members of the international community, we were told that this was only to get the LTTE to come to the negotiating table."

 

"The targeted killing of the LTTE’s Chief Negotiator, in our view, means there can no longer be any illusion as to the State’s interest in negotiating a lasting solution.

 

"In this context, the Tamil community will be closely watching the actions of the international community vis-à-vis its repeatedly stated commitment to a negotiated peace."

 

Translated by TamilNet

 

S. P. Thamilchelvan

(1967 - 2007)

 

Always smiling face -

A mind that sets ablaze opposition!

 

Young, young, yet a heart of

Himalayan strength, strength!

 

A commander seasoned in the line

of the old lion Balasingam

 

The virtuous youth whom with determination

offered himself to the War for Rights -

his soul hasn't gone extinguished

he hasn't gone brotherless

 

A beloved son who wrote his fame

all over the earth, wherever Tamils live -

where have you gone?

Sri Lanka’s main opposition United National Party (UNP) has hailed the killing of LTTE Political Head and Chief Negotiator, S. P. Tamilchelvan, in a Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) airstrike on his official residence Friday as “a victorious moment.”

 

Praising the Air Force, UNP spokesman Lakshman Kireiella said it was not possible to talk peace with the LTTE.

 

Mr. Kireiella told the BBC Sinhala Service, Sandeshaya, on Friday that the UNP congratulates the SLAF on its airstrike.

 

He said the killing of Mr. Tamilselvan and five other LTTE officials “a victorious moment.”

 

Mr. Kireiella said the LTTE has now been politically crippled by the loss of Mr. Tamilselvan and Mr. Anton Balasingham, the movement’s late theoretician, who passed away a year ago.

 

The LTTE is thus being defeated politically, he said.

 

Mr. Kireiella said that there was no point holding peace talks with the LTTE.

 

“You can’t have peace talks if only one party is willing to talk,” he said.

 

“When the UNP was in power we tried to negotiate with them. But they were not willing,” Mr. Kireiella said.

 

Mr. Tamilselvan was a member of the negotiating team that Mr. Balasingham led in six rounds of Norwegian facilitated negotiations with the then UNP government in 2002 and 2003.

 

It was during these talks that the controversial agreement by the LTTE and UNP government to explore federalism was reached (later referred to as the ‘Oslo Declaration’).

 

Last month the UNP announced a u-turn on its support for federalism, saying it was ‘repositioning’ itself on power-sharing as a solution to the island’s protracted conflict.

 

However, Mr. Vidar Helgesen, former Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway, who was responsible for the Oslo’s facilitation in the peace process, told the NTB agency Saturday that Mr. Tamilselvan played a key role in the talks.

 

Meanwhile UNP stalwart S.B. Dissanayake told media Friday that Mr. Tamilselvan’s death was no matter for regret.

 

The bombing raid on Mr. Tamilselvan’s residence was a “morale boosting victory” for the Air Force, he told the Daily Mirror.

 

He said even during peace talks between the UNP and the LTTE, Tamilselvan remained a stumbling block in attempts to reach an amicable settlement.

 

“So, there should not be any regret about his death,” Mr. Dissanayake said.

 

He said Mr. Tamilselvan was instrumental in engineering a boycott by Tamil voters of the 2005 presidential election in the northern and eastern provinces that eventually resulted in the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe being defeated at the poll by a narrow margin.

Hailing the Air Force bombing raid Friday which killed the Tamil Tigers chief negotiator and Political Wing head, Mr. S. P. Tamilselvan and five other LTTE officials, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa said his government would kill other LTTE leaders ‘one by one’.

 

Sources said he made his comments, quoted by Reuters, at a celebratory meeting at Temple Trees, the official residence of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who is also Mr. Gotabaya’s brother.

 

Meanwhile, the Colombo stock market soared on news of the deaths.

 

Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa welcomed the news of the killings of Mr. Tamilselvan and the others, and said the Sri Lankan military would pick off the rest of the Tigers' leaders one by one.

 

"This is just a message, that we know where their leaders are. I know the locations of all the leaders, that if we want we can take them one by one, so they must change their hideouts," he told Reuters.

 

"When the time comes only, we take them one by one."

 

Mr. Tamilselvan was one of the LTTE’s internationally recognized political officials, having been a negotiator for the Tigers since 2002 and having headed the Political Wing from several years before that.

 

The LTTE has conferred its highest military rank, Brigadier, to Mr. Tamilselvan.

 

Late last year Mr. Tamilselvan was appointed Chief Negotiator by the LTTE, taking over from Mr. Anton Balasingham, whose failing health compelled his retirement.

 

The Sri Lankan government’s decision to target Mr. Mr. Tamilselvan was a body blow to lingering hopes of a resumption of peace talks.

 

"The loss of Thamilselvan in this way would be a very big setback to any hope of peace talks in the near future - which in any case were not apparent either," Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, an advocacy group, told Reuters.

 

Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil political party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has expressed its shock at the killings and praised Mr. Tamilselvan’s role in the Tamil freedom struggle.

 

"We shudder at the repercussions for peace of this act by the Sri Lanka government," the TNA said.

 

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's stock market rose on news of the death of Mr. Tamilselvan, closing a provisional 0.99 percent firmer in late trade, Reuters reported.

 

"Any sort of victory in the war will boost the market. So there was high activity after the news," said Harsha Fernando, CEO at SC securities.

 

In October 2006, when talks in Geneva between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government broke down, a journalist asked S. P. Tamilselvan whether the Tamil people had been given any hope by the discussions. The head of the Tamil delegation was to the point: "We ourselves are not hopeful, [so] how can the people be?"

 

In recent years, Tamilselvan had been the international face of the struggle by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers, as they fought for a homeland in Sri Lanka.

 

With the group's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, declining to appear in public, Tamilselvan was one of the points of contact for a conflict that has taken an estimated 70,000 lives.

 

On 2 November, he, too, became one of its victims when he was killed during a Sri Lankan air -force bombardment.

 

Tamilselvan joined the armed struggle in 1983 as fighting broke out between the LTTE and the government forces. He took part in several military operations in north Sri Lanka, including an abortive bid to storm the Elephant Base camp in 1992 and the battles in Pooneryn. But he was wounded in both the stomach and the leg and had to refrain from any further active military service.

 

Many observers saw Tamilselvan as a moderate, but earlier this summer he told reporters that the LTTE were prepared to launch major attacks on both military and economic targets to try to cripple the country's economy.

 

"Let the Tamil people live in their traditional homeland," he said in an interview in Kilinochchi, the LTTE’s de facto headquarters. "Leave the Tamil people without any military occupation or persecution. That will be the day there is no war."

 

Tamilselvan was born into a humble background and worked originally as a barber, before rising through the LTTE ranks, partly through his association with the Tamil leader, Prabhakaran, for whom he once served as a bodyguard. His wife is a member of the Tigers' women's wing.

 

In 2001 he was considered of such importance that the Sri Lankan government dispatched its army's Deep Penetration Unit after him; on that occasion he survived the attempt to kill him.

 

His profile grew during the late 1990s, especially after Norway took an interest in the struggling peace process. When the Tigers' international spokesman, Anton Balasingham, became increasingly ill from kidney problems, Tamilselvan, who was already heading the organisation’s political wing, found himself being asked to take a more prominent role as a spokesman – even though he did not speak English.

 

Following Balasingham's death in 2006, Tamilselvan was the Tigers' chief point of contact for the outside world.

 

"We received the very sad news yesterday that S. P. Tamilselvan has been killed in the suburb of Kilinochchi. Anpumani or Alex whom we knew in the facilitation of the negotiation process was also among those who were killed.

 

Tamilselvan was the leader of the Liberation Tigers Political Wing. He took part in all negotiation meetings in the peace process in 2002 and 2003, next in line of Anton Balasingam. Nearly for ten years he played a central role in the endeavours to find a political and peaceful solution to the Sri Lankan conflict.

 

He led the negotiations on the Joint Mechanism to channel support to the tsunami victims and for the reconstruction following the tragic catastrophe.

 

Last year, he took part in negotiations in Geneva in February where he was the Chief Negotiator when Anton Balasingam became ill.

 

In all my visits to Sri Lanka and in my meetings with the visiting LTTE delegation, it was Tamilselvan who received me. He received all the other envoys in the same way, although he was a busy man in his position as the political head of the LTTE.

 

Over the years, he became LTTE's smiling face to the outside world, the most important channel, not only for Norway, but also for many other countries. In fact, he was the important link we had towards the LTTE.

 

His role was important for our understanding of the politics, point of view and analysis of the Tigers. He was a patient man in explaining the rightful demands of Tamils.

 

In the many and long conversations, I had with him, I gained the impression that he was a pleasant man of intelligence, patience and moderate outlook.

 

He was extremely well formulated in his descriptive responses which were elegantly interpreted and conveyed to us by Mr. George. He impressed me as a person who was hopeful and was willing to find ways ahead, even in such situations in which things seemed impossible to others.

 

He never expressed anger or bitterness. He could only show a weak irritation on occasions when I insisted too much. We both knew that we were doing our jobs within our mandates.

 

I had the impression that whenever he was unable to meet the wishes put forward by Norway, he expressed regret and tried to find out an alternative way. As you could expect from a responsible negotiator, he was ready with the willingness to compromise.

 

He was a moderate person within the LTTE, one who sought political alternatives. When he led the delegation to Geneva last year in October, he already evolved to the level of filling the gap created by the absence of Anton Balasingam.

 

The only area I noticed which he was not capable of compromising was his commitment of sacrificing himself to the cause of Tamils.

 

Within a year, both Anton Balasingam and Tamilselvan have passed away. We have lost the two leaders of the delegation who have played crucial roles.

 

They have left behind a big vacuum at a very critical juncture of the Sri Lankan process. Tamilselvan's demise is a big loss for all of us.

 

The only way to honour him is to find a political solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka. Far too many have died; many children have lost their parents and many have lost their sisters and brothers.

 

Our deepest sympathies go to all the victims. Especially today, our sympathies go to the families of Tamilselvan and his colleagues who were killed in this terrible air attack of yesterday.

 

Peace shall shine on their memories."

 

S. P. Tamilselvan – who died in a Sri Lankan air force raid on Friday morning – is the most senior Tamil Tiger leader to have been killed in recent years.

 

The death of their media-savvy political wing leader at the age of 40 means the LTTE have lost an experienced and suave political negotiator.

 

For many years S. P. Tamilselvan was the public face of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

 

Since 1994, he had been a member of the LTTE peace negotiating team and had participated in almost every round of face-to-face talks with the Sri Lankan authorities and Norwegian mediators.

 

I met him on a number of occasions in recent years, both in Sri Lanka and during peace talks in Geneva.

 

He always came across as smiling and friendly - although his enemies say behind the warm exterior there lurked a ruthless, hardened military man.

 

Even recently, a senior LTTE source told me Tamilselvan was away in the north-west heading a fighting unit.

 

 

Unlike many of his comrades, S. P. Tamilselvan did not look like a veteran guerrilla fighter. Dressed in a suit he could have passed himself off as an executive and was very at ease at the negotiating table.

 

He was dedicated to the LTTE cause and firmly believed that one day they would realise their dream of a separate nation - Eelam - for Sri Lanka's Tamils.

 

He was always keen to tell the world what was happening to the Tamil population in north-east Sri Lanka.

 

After the devastating tsunami in December 2004, he was quick to ring the BBC Tamil service to say what was going on inside rebel-held territory.

 

He supervised relief efforts in LTTE-held areas, and was praised in many quarters for his actions.

 

While sometimes long-winded, Mr. Tamilselvan was skilled at reflecting the views of the LTTE leadership.

 

Like many other Tiger cadres, he started in the armed wing and rose in prominence due to his military exploits.

 

Soon, he entered into the inner circles of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

 

When Prabhakaran was in India in the early 1980s, Tamilselvan was his de facto aide-de-camp.

 

"He was very close to the LTTE leader. His demise may bring about a hardening of attitude in the LTTE hierarchy," according to Sri Lanka analyst DBS Jeyaraj.

 

S. P. Tamilselvan's closeness to the Tiger leader also helped him to rise in the LTTE hierarchy.

 

He was once the commander of the strategically-important Jaffna region. Many accuse him of leading a group carrying out assassinations in that area at the time.

 

 

Following a battlefield injury in 1993, S. P. Tamilselvan was asked to focus more on political matters.

 

It was to prove a crucial period for the Tigers. At the time the LTTE was considered basically a military movement and its gradual entry into politics was a big challenge for the organisation.

 

The political wing leader soon adapted himself to his new role.

 

He led the Tigers' negotiating team during the first ever direct peace talks with the Sri Lankan government in 1994-95.

 

More recently, he represented the LTTE in various rounds of peace talks, including the last, fruitless meeting in Geneva late last year.

 

S. P. Tamilselvan knew how to handle the international media and – through an interpreter – was adept at handling prickly issues such as child conscription, political killings and questions on the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

After Tiger ideologue Anton Balasingham died last year, the LTTE projected Tamilselvan as their chief negotiator.

 

The rebels may find him difficult to replace.

 

He is survived by his wife, an eight-year-old daughter and a son of four.

 

Almost always smiling, smartly dressed and carrying a polished cane, S.P. Tamilselvan was the key contact point between Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the outside world.

 

Killed on Friday in a government air strike, the leader of the Tigers' political wing was the public face and mouthpiece of the LTTE who met foreign diplomats and reporters denied access to reclusive leader Velupillai Prabhakaran when they visited the de facto capital Kilinochchi.

 

While the government says his death shows they can strike senior rebels at will, analysts and diplomats say it will make bringing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government together even harder, further locking the country into its civil war.

 

In previous decades of war, Prabhakaran used English-speaking and British passport-holding negotiator Anton Balasingham for political advice. But Balasingham's influence appeared to have waned after he returned to London for medical treatment before his death last year.

 

Diplomats and observers could never agree whether Tamilselvan exercised significant influence over LTTE policy. But he effectively replaced Balasingham as the voice of the LTTE, and led a delegation to peace talks in Geneva last year.

 

Born in 1967 on the northern Jaffna peninsula in what is now a government-held enclave, he joined the fledgling movement in the 1980s before being wounded the following decade by an Indian peacekeeping force that ended up fighting both sides.

 

ONCE A COMMANDER

 

Once a military commander, he joined the political wing – although he still occasionally appeared in public in the LTTE trademark tiger-striped camouflage carrying a sidearm.

 

Visitors would be shown into a glass-fronted peace secretariat office before his Landcruiser with blacked out windows screeched into the compound and he stepped out accompanied by bodyguards with radios and assault rifles.

 

Both before and after a 2002 ceasefire collapsed into open warfare last year, he would express the commitment of the LTTE to peace. But he was unwavering in his demands for a separate ethnic Tamil homeland.

 

He clearly understood some English but preferred to use his veteran official translator George, a former postmaster, whose flowery translations drove some correspondents to despair.

 

"If the military decides to thrust a war on the people by escalating military violence ... and thereby create a situation whereby we cannot just be onlookers that may be a very decisive moment where we have to make decisions to make sure the people are safeguarded," he told Reuters in 2006 as violence flared.

 

He would reply to questions with an unnerving smile and would shift uncomfortably when asked about thorny topics such as human rights abuses, child soldier abductions or ambushes on troops that seemed designed to restart the war.

 

"We have need of such tactics," he said regarding child soldier recruitment. "But in the case of (a) 16-year-old child who was pulled out and shot dead by the military, can we go and say to the child's brother ... you cannot resort to violence because you are below the age of 18."

 

“The thing that most people will remember about Thamilselvan is his huge smile.

 

For his enemies in this most bitter civil war the smile only masked his ruthlessness.

 

But for his friends he was a respected and popular fighter with a sense of humour.

 

Thamilselvan joined the movement in 1984 aged seventeen and was a key figure in fighting the Indian peace keeping force in the Jaffna peninsula where he was born.

 

In 1993 he was injured in an aerial attack and had to have all the muscles from one leg removed leaving him unable to walk without a stick.

 

For more than a decade Thamilselvan has been the public face of the Tigers – heading its political wing and attending almost all the peace talks with the Sri Lankan government.

 

He's probably been interviewed more than any other politician in Sri Lanka – always appearing with two armed bodyguards.

 

He leaves behind a wife, an eight year old daughter and a son born four years ago during the heady days of the peace process when many rebels hoped for a better future.”

 

 

S. P. Tamilselvan, the head of the Liberation Tigers Political Wing, was killed in Kilinochchi Friday morning.

 

P. Nadesan, the head of the Tamileelam Police Force, was appointed as the new head of the Political Wing later that same day. He will be in charge of the two departments from now on, Irasiah Ilanthirayan, the LTTE's military spokesman said.

 

The Head Quarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a press communiqué said it was conveying the loss of Brigadier Tamilselvan with profound sadness to the people of Tamil Eelam, the Tamil Diaspora and the Global Community.

 

He was killed in a Sri Lanka Air Force attack that had specifically targeted the residence of the members of the Political Division.

 

The LTTE military spokesman described the aerial attack by the Sri Lanka Air Force on Tamilselvan's residence as a cowardly assassination.

 

The LTTE conferred its highest military rank, Brigadier, to Tamilselvan.

 

Others who died in the bombardment alongside Brigadier Tamilselvan were Lt. Col. Anpumani (Alex), Major Mikuthan, Major Neathaaji, Lt. Aadchiveal and Lt. Maavaikkumaran.

 

 

 

 

 

The targeted killing last Friday of Mr. S. P. Tamilselvan, the LTTE's Chief Negotiator and the head of its Political Wing, along with five other LTTE officials, by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) shocked the Tamil community. Across Diaspora centres and in the homeland, there is palpable grief and anger. The specificities of the attack - whether the SLAF knew Mr. Tamilselvan was at the location, for example - are irrelevant: the military has been trying repeatedly to kill him for years, frequently bombing his offices, residences and convoys. The assassination is a quintessential reflection of the Sinhala mindset. President Mahinda Rakapakse, along with the vast majority of Sinhalese, see the island's ethnic problem purely as a Tamil terrorist challenge. For all the lip-service (and there's not much of that about now) about power sharing, the south is single-mindedly focused on a military victory. The abandon with which the military has for two years blasted Tamil villages, driven hundreds of thousands of Tamils from their homes and continues to abduct, torture and murder Tamils is underwritten by the confidence the international community, despite its distaste, is nonetheless solidly behind Colombo’s war.

 

Both the Sinhalese and the international community have their legitimating theories. For the Sinhalese, once the LTTE is destroyed, the Tamils will docilely accept whatever limited (and decidedly undeserved) powers they are given. The leading members of the international community in Sri Lanka agree. But they also believe that once the LTTE is destroyed, the island can be 'developed' whereupon Sinhalese, Tamils and, for that matter, the Muslims, will come to see each other as fellow Sri Lankans and live happily ever after. Despite the decades of Sinhala oppression the Tamils have faced by successive governments since independence (i.e. three decades before Tamil militancy was triggered), the international community bases its strategy today off a utopian vision of an ethnic harmony to come. It is not that such a vision is impossible that is staggering but, rather, the belief it can be realized by enabling a violent Sinhala conquest of the Tamils followed by economic development.

 

The various reactions to the Sri Lankan military's assassination of Mr. Tamilselvan should serve as food for thought for anyone out there who still believes either that peace talks might end the bloodshed or, even more naively, that the international community will act to protect the Tamils against the rampages of the state. As President Rajapakse crowed in Parliament this week, he has secured the assistance of the international community to defeat the Tigers. As we have argued before, for all the noise about human rights (and much of that has dissipated now), the state actually wants for nothing. Ironically, the more the international community is convinced the LTTE can be defeated, the freer the hand the Sinhala state will have.

 

Let there be no mistake; irrespective of the extent of the casualties or suffering the Sinhala military inflicts on Tamil civilians, the international community will not restrain the state. Not, that is, until the military is checked on the battlefield by the LTTE's counter-violence. At that point, as in 2001, international peaceniks will rush back to help Tamils and Sinhalese solve 'their' problem. The insistence by some international actors, especially those who proudly proclaim their support and assistance for the Sinhala state, that 'there is no military solution' is duplicitous. The solution must be political, we all know that. But it can be rammed down the Tamils' throats on the end of bayonet. Which is why several members of the international community advocating 'peace' in Sri Lanka have also banned the LTTE.

 

 

Last week Sinhalese reveled in Mr. Tamilselvan's assassination. Traditional drums were played in the street. Parties were organized at home. Some Buddhist temples held all night celebrations. For any Sinhalese who genuinely desires a negotiated solution, the killing of the other side's top diplomat should have been deeply worrying and regrettable. But very few in the south feel this way, something the Tamils need to bear in mind as they make their way in the time to come. For decades, when faced with violence and brutality by a Colombo government, many Tamils have rushed to the feet of the Sinhala opposition, voting it into power in a laughably futile effort to end their suffering, if only for a while. They have chased after the SLFP and UNP in turn, insisting, despite the evidence of their past suffering, that this time round it would be different.

 

In reality, for the Tamils, there is nothing to choose between the main Sinhala parties. This is because all of them are beholden to the sentiments of the majority of Sinhalese voters who, as is now starkly clear, bitterly oppose sharing of any power with the Tamils. The point was underscored this week by the reaction of the UNP - still the darlings, incidentally, of the 'peace through development' international community - to Mr. Tamilselvan's assassination. Firstly, the UNP hailed the killing as a 'great victory' for the (Sinhala) Air Force. It then went on to tacitly back Rajapakse's brutal war, saying there is 'no point' negotiating with the LTTE. Let us be clear; whenever the LTTE negotiates with the state, it is about the rights, powers and extent of self-rule that we, the Tamil people, are to have. The UNP, drunk with the same confidence in Sinhala military victory that the SLFP regime is, believes, like the government, that there is no point in negotiating with an enemy who is about to be defeated. The optimism may be misplaced, but the UNP sees no reason to hide it.

 

This week Tamils in the homeland and abroad have mourned Mr. Tamilselvan and his colleagues killed last Friday. We join them. Both Mr. Tamilselvan and Lt. Colonel Anpumani (Alex), who was also killed in Friday's airstrike, were friends of this newspaper. From the outset of the Norwegian peace process, concerned that the Tamil people be kept informed of developments, they, along with the LTTE's then Chief Negotiator, Mr. Anton Balasingham, went out of their way to ensure we were briefed on the peace process. We will miss them.

 

 

Despite its bans on the LTTE, as the international community has openly acknowledged, every time the Tigers sit across the table from the Sinhala state, the interests they are negotiating for are those of the Tamil people. Whether it is a political solution - remember the fuss about the LTTE giving up independence for federalism? (Now the movement is thought to be weak, no one wants to use that word now) - or an interim administration or international aid for the Northeast, the Tigers were accepted by the state and the international community to be negotiating on behalf of the Tamils. Yet there is thundering silence after the Sinhala state assassinated the Tamils' chief negotiator. The international community has thus made it clear that any rights the Tamils secure depend entirely on the outcome on the battlefield. We therefore have to brace ourselves for an even more brutal military onslaught in the time to come. We must therefore be united in our resolve. Despite our skepticism, Tamil efforts to argue our case abroad, to win hearts and minds, must continue. But not in naïve optimism. If the state fails to defeat the LTTE then it will be compelled to negotiate with the Tamils. If it wins, we are lost. But, then, it was ever thus.

The path is long, my friends, and we have lost another companion.

 

A companion who walked besides us as he showed us the way forward. A companion who knew the ugliness of war and sought out an alternative path. A companion who told the world of our struggle even as they turned their backs on us.

 

Even as he walked with us there was no way of knowing how dear he was to the Tamil people or how crucial he was to our struggle. And there was none of the arrogance which comes with power. None of the distance which comes with authority. None of the coldness which comes with importance. Just a smile. A warm open smile which made you comfortable enough to speak your mind, to question, to criticize. A smile that we all see today when we close our eyes.

 

Behind that almost child like smile was a razor sharp mind that understood the path to freedom was long and dangerous. Behind that smile was a man strong enough to be humble; wise enough to seek the counsel of others. A man so sure of our cause that he was willing to negotiate with an enemy who ultimately took his life.

 

The path is long and lonely, my friends.

 

Thamilchelvan Anna understood better that many that we need many companions to reach our destination. As a young diaspora Tamil who was not fully accepting of the struggle, it was refreshing to meet a man secure enough in his own beliefs to allow them to be questioned. Although he had never been to the West when I met first him in 2002, I was surprised by how well he understood that young Tamils in the diaspora would have many questions about the struggle and the movement, and was willing to answer even the most trivial questions.

 

For some time now we have had two paths in front of us: the path of peace and the path of war. Our nation sent Thamilchelvan Anna down the path of peace. A path that was opened to us by the sacrifice of many lives. We sent him ahead and waited with bated breath; waiting for him to give us the all clear; waiting for him to tell is it was okay to move forward.

 

When a warrior comes to talk peace surely that must have a special significance? He has seen the ugliness of war first hand; he has seen comrades fall in the red soil of our homeland; he has seen parents grieve for dead children; he has seen our people driven like animals into the jungles. When a man who knows the loss of war sits across the table from you and offers a way to bring peace to the island - do you talk with him or silence him forever?

 

We sent Thamilchelvan Anna and we waited.

 

We waited hoping against hope that this path would lead us to freedom. Lead us to a life of dignity and security. Lead us to lives filled with laughter and joy.

 

But this path has led us only to misery and tears of loss. This path led us to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Tamils. This path led to daily killings and disappearances of Tamils across the island. This path led us to the assassination of Kausalian, Joseph Pararajasingam, Raviraj and now Thamilchelvan Anna and the five others who died at his side.

 

The Sinhala people have shown us that they are unwilling to walk down this path.

 

Despite all this we have been patient; our leaders have shown restraint in the face of provocation. Even as death rained down upon our people our leaders have kept the path to peace open. Now they have taken our messenger of peace. A messenger that went forward with the blessing of our people and our leadership. When our messenger is taken from us, the message is clear: the road to peace is closed.

 

My friends, we walk alone to our freedom. We are all tired for the journey has been long and we have lost many companions along the way. Many of us have lost flesh and blood; many of us have lost house and home; some of us have lost identity and self.

 

It is tempting to say enough. It is tempting to say I will walk no more. I must rest. It is tempting to lose hope, to fear where this road will lead us. This is what they want from us. They want us to forsake our revolution; to give up our dream.

 

Now is not the time, my friends. As long as we have the will and means to resist those who seek to oppress us we must stay the path to freedom.

 

We must show the world they may kill the revolutionary but the revolution will come. They may kill the dreamer but our dream will be realized.

 

We have lost another companion. But in his name we walk on. In his memory and the memory of so many others we remain strong.

 

Freedom will come one day. United as a people, we will reach that goal. Thamilchelvan Anna knew this. That is why he was always smiling.

A change in policy in India has seen the south-Asian giant step up its support for the Sri Lankan military by supplying ‘offensive’ weapons.

 

In the past India had declared that it will only supply ‘defensive weapons’ to Sri Lanka. However the latest reports confirm that the island’s giant neighbour has now shifted to supplying ‘offensive weapons’ to the Sri Lankan government to fight the LTTE.

According to Indian press, New Delhi has supplied Colombo advanced automatic 40mm L70 anti-aircraft guns to guard against aerial attacks by the LTTE.

 

“The Ordnance Factory Board, for instance, has just received another $40,000 order for supply of L-70 gun barrels to Sri Lanka. Among other things, four ‘Indra’ low-flying detection radars have already been supplied to Sri Lanka,” the Times of India newspaper quoted a source as saying.

 

Playing upon India’s fears about China and Pakistan making strategic inroads into Sri Lanka, the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse has asked India to supply more air defence weapons and radars, artillery guns, Nishant UAVs and even laser designators for PGMs (precision-guided munitions).

Indian analysts believe the altering of policy by India is aimed at preventing Sri Lanka turning to Pakistan and China to meet its military need.

 

“Overall it looks like India is inching closer to the type of role Sri Lanka would like to see it play,” a Sri Lankan diplomat opined.

With Sri Lanka’s record of indiscriminate aerial and artillery bombardment, India has in the past always treaded a careful line with Sri Lanka, fearing that any weapons supplied by India being used to kill civilian Tamils would result in uproar in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

 

According to Indian press reports, an encounter between the Sri Lankan Navy and the Sea Tigers off the coast in north-eastern Talaimannar last week revealed the existence of an LTTE arms stores in India.

The LTTE ship detected by the Navy had been carrying a remote-controlled LTTE plane which military officials said was very likely to have been ferried from Tamil Nadu in India, reports further added.

 

“Pressure is on Delhi to prove that it is taking tough measures against the LTTE’s terrorist activities which has an impact not only on the sovereignty of Sri Lanka, but also on that of India,” a senior Indian military official said.

Some analysts point to these military reasons as being behind India’s decision to step up its weapons supply to Sri Lanka and take a forceful stand against LTTE activities.

 

However, others suggest that a lack of opposition from Tamil Nadu, particularly from current ruling party in the state, the Dravida Munetra Kalakham (DMK), would have encouraged India to increase its military support to Sri Lanka.

Tamils have gathered in large numbers across the eglobe to demand their collective rights, including all those due to a people

The visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour was preceded by two important events in Sri Lanka.

 

On 24 September, the LTTE issued a statement that coincided with the sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. The statement urged the international community to recognise the concept of the sovereignty of the Tamil people and to give them the opportunity to express their aspirations as in the case of the peoples of Kosovo and East Timor.

 

The Tiger statement also called the government of Sri Lanka to “accept the aspirations of the Tamil people and come forward to find a resolution that is based on the right to self-determination of the Tamil people.”

 

The second event was the UNP announcing the need to amend the CFA and that its new policy towards a political solution to the ethnic problem would be “…based on a credible power sharing proposal acceptable to all communities.”

 

This, in effect, declared the party’s repositioning on power-sharing from what it had agreed to in the Oslo Communiqué, which was “founded on the principle of internal self determination in areas of historical habitation of the Tamil speaking peoples, based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka.”

 

The visit of the UN official was in response to human rights violations taking place in Sri Lanka such as, extra-judicial killings, disappearances, abductions, atrocities on IDPs, shortcomings in the freedom of expression etc. Nearly all these violations are closely related to the armed conflict in the country.

 

Arbour made no bones about the fact that the human rights mechanisms in Sri Lanka were so ineffective that an international human rights monitoring mission was required to be present on the ground if rights were to be effectively protected.

 

While the violation of rights that brought Arbour to Sri Lanka was mainly due to the war that had led to the government suspending the usual safeguards available to the citizen, we have to go a step back to see why armed conflict emerged in this country at all.

 

The reason for militant movements to take up arms in the 1970s was because of a systematic and relentless campaign by successive Sri Lankan governments to violate the collective rights of the Tamils – the right to language, to equal opportunity in education, employment and livelihood, to culture and security (among others).

 

The war did not begin because of the LTTE or the other Tamil militant movements; it began because of the abuse of the collective rights of the Tamil people and when attempts at peaceful redress of those violations were unfruitful.

 

It is important to note that what were being violated were the rights of a ‘people.’ According to international law, a group that could be described as a ‘people,’ if they believe that their right to live as equals within the state is being challenged, have a right to self-determination.

 

Are the Tamils a ‘people’? Justice Marcus Enfield speaking at an international conference on Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict in 1996 said “There appears to be an underlying assumption that ‘peoples,’ in the sense used in international instruments, is the same as ‘the minority,’ and that they have the same rights in international law. A group which may fit within the definition of ‘peoples,’ cannot cease to be such merely because (as) a result of demographic or territorial change it becomes a minority of the population.

 

“This has been recognized to be the case for the Tamils by the widely respected International Commissions of Jurists, a representative of which is stated:

 

“The Tamils could be considered to be a ‘people.’ They have a distinct language, culture, a separate religious identity from the majority population, and to an extent, a defined territory.... The application of the principle of self determination in concrete cases is difficult. It seems nevertheless, that a credible argument can be made that the Tamil community in Sri Lanka is entitled to self determination...

 

What is essential is that the political status of the ‘people’ should be freely determined by the ‘people’ themselves.” (Proceedings of the International Conference on the Conflict in Sri Lanka: Peace with Justice 1996)

 

The right to self-determination enshrined in the UN Human Rights Charter, is a foundational document of the organisation which Arbour represents.

 

The substance of the Charter was subsequently incorporated into the ICCPR and ICESCR: “All peoples have the right of self determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”

 

The evolution of the right to self-determination becoming part of international law is too long to describe here, but suffice it to say that it was used extensively in the 1950s and 1960s by anti-imperialist movements against colonialism.

 

However, once these new nation states were born, dominant groups within such post-colonial states began pursuing policies of discrimination against vulnerable communities within the state, such as the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

 

The right to self-determination allows a people to adopt a political status so that they may “freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” This means they have the right to choose a political organisation within which they can freely express their economic, social, cultural and other aspirations.

 

The basis of the struggle of the Tamil people is the systematic discrimination they have faced, facilitated by power relations prescribed by successive constitutions from the time of independence.

 

They have all been unitary constitutions that placed effective control of political institutions at the centre – the president, parliament and judiciary – that have been traditionally Sinhala dominated.

 

What is more, the passage of these constitutions through parliament was not with the consent of the Tamil people.

 

It is very important to note, however, that the right to self-determination does not necessarily mean secession, though misinformation by vested interests has portrayed it as such.

 

Internal self-determination (which was an element in the Oslo communiqué) refers to structures of autonomy within a state. Only external self-determination signifies secession or a separate state.

 

Arbour and the international community have been absolutely forthright in condemning human rights violations that circumscribe the freedom of the individual.

 

That is because for historical and pragmatic reasons she and all her tribe from the west lay greater emphasis on individual human rights.

 

But if the international community is sincere about evolving a rights-based solution to the national question in Sri Lanka, doing patch-up work on individual human rights violations will not do.

 

Violations of the collective rights of the Tamils and Muslims are the basis of the conflict, and long-term, sustainable solutions will not be possible unless they are addressed.