By Dr. Chandre Dharma-wardana
The 26th of November is the Birthday of the dreaded leader of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who was shot dead in 2009. Prabhakaran assassinated the elected leaders of the Tamil community in the 1980s [1], massacred other rival groups, suppressed dissent, and hijacked the control of Tamil politics, to launch a brutal war against the Sri Lankan government that lasted some three decades, ending in May 2009. The whole of Sri Lanka, including the majority of Tamils who live in the South with the Sinhalese celebrated the event. It was recorded as such in film by Poongkothi Chandrahasan [2] the grand daughter of SJV Chelvanayagam, the acknowledged leaders of the Tamil Nationalist movement. Luckily for him, “SJV” passed away before the rise of Prabhakaran. Mr.
Amirthalingam, SJV’s lieutenant, was shot dead by Prabhakaran’s agents to pass mantel of Tamil leadership to Prabhakaran un-equivocally. SJV founded the separatist Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi, or “Lanka Tamil Kingdom Party” that envisioned a separate Tamil kingdom known as Eelam in 1949 [3].
SJV may have settled for a “federal solution with strong autonomy” for the 12% population of Tamils. But the forces that he unleashed demanded Arasu itself, roused Sinhala extremism, and proposed to create a Tamil kingdom by force in in the “Vaddukkoddai resolution” [4]. Nevertheless, Sri Lanka, India and the West sought a futile “peaceful solution” that led to near four-decades of Eelam wars, State Brutality and Tiger Terror extending even to Tamil diaspora who faced extortion and Tiger violence.
The first suicide offensive of the Tigers is usually ascribed to Vallipuram Vasanthan alias “Captain Miller” of the LTTE in 1987. He drove a truck of explosives into an army camp in Nelliyaddi (නනලලයයදද). However, he diabolical distinction of being the first dispoasable Tiger should go to Sivakumaran who tried to rob a bank in Kopay (Bopé, නබබබනප ) in June 1974, and committed suicide to prevent arrest. This gave Prabhakaran the idea of a cadre of suicide killers who make the “ultimate commitment” to him personally, and to the Tiger movement. The day after Prabhakaran’s birthday was selected for the annual commemoration and glorification of these human explosives as “great heroes” or “Maaveer”. These events were held in a grand ritualist format during Prabhakaran’s lifetime. a
When the North became accessible during the peace breaks, it revealed itself steeped in the notion of selfsacrifice. Tamilselvan, the late head of the political wing of the Tigers stated that it is not “killing oneself” or “thatkolai”, but “thatkodai”, which means to “give yourself” to cause maximum damage to the enemy with just one lost to the Tigers. Thamilini was the 30-year-old head of the female suicide cadre. Some 30 to 40 percent of suicide fighters, including the assassin of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 have been young women. Many of them had been trained by Adel Balasingham, an Australian now living herself, after approaching to garland Gandhi living with impunity in the United Kingdom [5].
Seconds before Tamil Tigress exploding
herself, after approaching to garland Gandhi
Pictures of suicide attackers like “Captain Miller” were every where in Tiger territory. The Tigers filmed their suicide attacks and sold CD’s with songs glorifying the Black Tigers, and videos of attacks on the airport, the central bank and other targets. The Tamil Disapora approved the violence or remained silent out of fear, and “donated money” anyway. These amounted to millions of dollars annually [6].
Today, even though the LTTE was decapitated in Sri Lanka, it is alive and well in Canada, UK, and
other Western countries where such tributes and memorials are held every year on 27th November. The
sale of videos, memorabilia and the collection of “donations” help to fatten the coffers of pro-LTTE
organizations even today.
The glorification of Black Tigers as role models for the young is accompanied by a justification of https://policy-research.ca/publications/ violence claiming that there was a “Genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka who “fought for liberating their traditional homeland”.
Pro-Tiger politicians have attempted to create an “Education Week” in Ontario to teach a re-packaged false history of the conflict and hide the nature of these diabolical human bombs and present them as Martyrs of human rights. The real facts of the alleged “Tamil genocide”, an allegation already rejected
by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2015 (Al Z. Husein, U-Tube, Rejecting the Genocide claim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7bhAkM8PaM), may be followed in more detail at the website https://dh-web.org/Canada/Background104.html . The present article deals with the
history of the Black Tigers, or Suicide killers whose techniques were closely copied by the Al Queda.
Sivakumaran’s radicalization shows that attempts to “appease” fanatically brain-washed individuals is of little use. Thus, in July 1970 the Deputy Minister of Cultural Affairs Somaweera Chandrasiri, a Sinhalese politician, claimed that Sinhalese and Tamil cultures were linked, angering Sivakumaran who tried to assassinate Chandrasri in September 1970.
Sivakumar and "Chelva"
Once Prabhakaran became the unquestioned leader of the Tigers, it was not necessary for him to carry out or lead assassinations in person. He created the dreaded Black Tigers made up of men and women whose job was to become human bombs who can get to a target and blow themselves, killing the intended victim as well as all innocent by-standers who become mere expendables. For this purpose, the LTTE fashioned a suicide vest that could be worn unobtrusively, and could be activated by the Tiger at an opportune moment. The Tigers shared their suicide technology with Arab terrorists that they had links with at the time. The concept of sacrifice and belonging to the community and caste rather than to oneself, and the belief in rebirth made the “gift of the supremesacrifice” for the cause socially acceptable to these young men and women.
An LTTE attack on a funeral in Akuressa lights up the background.
The induction process or “brain-washing” was slow, and even depended on dedicated orphanages like the Tiger Orphanage in Sencholai and Arivuchcholai, where a handler became the parent and confidante who guided the children to become suicide killers who have accepted the “higher destiny” of blowing themselves. The “songs” of the orphanage will send a chill down the spine of most people but not to many members of the Toronto Tamil diaspora! The “Sencholai Padalkal” goes as follows [9]:
The tomb shall wait for me
Flowers as offerings shall there blossom
A memorial for me who turn into a myriad atoms
The burning embers shall watch over me.
The macabre “poet” who autoured this then describes a variety of possible deaths awaiting her – such as shells and bullets. The satanic “poem” runs:
Shall also await me.
The hawk and the hound
to taste my flesh Shall
stalk the field where I do battle.
…All these will I endure for my land
To me a grateful nation shall arise.
The LTTE crashed a light plane in a suicide attack on the Revenue Dept. Sri Lanka in Jan. 2009.
The Sri Lankan army honours and remembers its dead as all other armies do, without the sacrificial mysticism of the LTTE
When this training-camp cum orphanage of Tiger Suicide Cadre was bombed in 2006, the Westernfunded NGOs in Colombo and the Tiger Diaspora in Canada raised an international campaign against Sri Lanka claiming that it “bombs orphanages”. While pro-Tiger spokesmen addressing Western audiences take care to claim that the suicide cadre only targeted soldiers, quite the opposite is true. Civilian political leaders have been blown up with heavy civilian casualties. The suicide attack on the Central bank in 1996 killed close to a 100 people, while even funerals have come under attack.
The Tigers built many war memorials and grave yards for the black tigers who blew themselves up, killings dozens of people. Theses grave yards (see figure on the right) are like christian grave yards, with much propaganda value. This is indeed contrary to Hindu cultural practices where dead
bodies are burnt (cremated), and grave yards are shunned except by the very “lowest castes”. However, many of the suicide cadre were Catholics, and the Tamil population had been Christianized to a larger extent than the Sinhalese in the south. Furthermore, the Tigers cleverly exploited the “Natu-kal” tradition of South India to justify the practice and bring it to the areas controlled by the tigers [10].
The Maaveer Thuyilim Illam or “Martyrs” sleeping house was in Kopay’s Northeastern city limits. Around 2000 epitaphs had been placed, but it has been alleged that many of the graves were empty. The Sri Lankan army removed the stonework leaving behind only a commemorative plaque, following the practice of the Allied army in WW-II in dealing with Nazi cemeteries[11]. Tiger supporters simply retaliated by destroying the commemorative plaques.
Today, the “right to remember the dead” has been abused and used as an excuse to hold politicized memorials for the suicide killers. The Northern Provincial Council which gave powers to rule the majoritarian-Tamil Northern Province, led by the controversial Mr. Wigneswaran, did very little to ameliorate the economic well being of the Tamils. It devoted most of it efforts to Eelamist propaganda, trying to build memorials to the Maaveer and obstructing more moderate Tamil politicians like Mr. Sumanthiran. The extreme fringes of Tamil politics in Sri Lanka have used the 27th of November, the “Maaveer day” as a day for mounting confrontations with the Sri Lankan police and the army, by trying to hold memorials with glorification of suicide killers and poltical speeches. This would be equivalent representatives of the extreme Right in Germany trying to commemorate fallen leaders of the SS or other killer squads of the Nazis today.
Politicized sections of the Western diaspora continue to support Prabhakaran’s violent version of Tamil Nationalism vigorously and continue to seek means of reviving the ashes of the LTTE is Sri Lanka itself. This enables them to support bogus refugee claims by asserting that Tamils are “Not safe” in Sri Lanka. They claim that thousands of tamils have disappeared and that 146,679 Tamils were killed in the last days of trhe Eelam war, using falsified statistics that should now be laid to rest in view of the investigations by the British Houseof Lords led by Lord Naseby where the number dead is estimated to be less than 7000 [12,13]. These matters, and the numbers unaccounted for, have been examined by several commissions including the Paranagama commission [14]. The General Secretary of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) pointed out how the LTTE eliminated its very own cadre and wounded civilians during its retreat to Mulliavaikkal as the LTTE regarded its wounded as a liability, adding to the “disappeared”.
In 2018, (during the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe govenment), an Eelamist motor bicycle drive-in by youths (mostly politicized Jaffna University Undergraduates) wearing black outfits, black and white flags etc. brought them to Mullivaikkal (Mul-vakkadé, මල වකකනඩ) [15]. A rally was held here as a “Remembrance Day” event where the more moderate leading Tamil politicians were excluded, in a manner reminiscent of the exclusion of the TULF by the early LTTE, and by other early youth movements of the late 1970s. It was declared a day of “Genocide Remembrance” by C. Wigneswaran, the first Chief Minister of the Northern provincial council who was the only politician allowed in. Wigneswaran, an upper class Colombo Tamil and Ex-Judge who worked closely with the Sri Lankan
government before he came to politics, has embraced political extremism, even rejecting inter-marriage between races to safeguard “Tamil” racial purity, even though his own children have rejected such racist views. He also holds a romanticized view of the history of the Island where the Tamil people are believed to have a long and glorified role extending to millennia contrary to the accepted historical narrative. The Eelamists hold that the North and East of Sri Lanka are the “Traditional Homelands of the Tamils”, a doctrine enunciated in 1949 by the Tamil political party. However, the mere fact that a majority of older place names in the North and East are based on Sinhala Place Names testifies to the fact that these areas had been under Sinhala Rulers, as also testified by stone inscriptions, and the Palichronicles.
It is well known that most Tamil expatriates belong to “Ur-Societies” linked to villages (Ur) back in Sri Lanka [15]. They visit their villages happily, safely and regularly, belying claims that Sri Lanka is unsafe to Tamils. Over 50% of the Tamils live in the south and are leaders of business, industry, export-import and banking, occupying a more influential place than even the majority community.
Unfortunately, the open and liberal society in Canada is exploited by the pro-LTTE Diaspora groups, and political organizations like the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) to paint a false picture. They have sought to hold Maaveer celebrations, glorify suicide killers and teach violence and ethnic hate to a younger generation that these political organizations hope to exploit in the future years to come. Wittingly or unwittingly, Canadian politicians who nurse electorates with sizable Tamil populations have even attended these suicide-killer memorial events that are held in the guise of mourning of lost kith and kin!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandre_Dharma-wardana
References:
[1] http://www.island.lk/2009/08/23/news15.html Chelva’s grand-daughter on the end of the Eealm war; Poongkothai Chandrahasan
[2] http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/32136 The Assassination of Amirthalingam and other elected TULF leaders by the Tigers.
[3] https://dh-web.org/hrsits/cansl0.html The separatist conflict in Sri Lanka and the souring of Canada against Sri Lanka.
[4] https://dh-web.org/hrsits/cansl0.html#notes3 The 1976 Vaddukkoddai resolution calls for a separate Tamil `Eelam’, even by force
[5] https://dh-web.org/cansl1-HRW.html#AdelB Adel Balasingham and the LTTE
[6] Ms. Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch (see, The Globe and Mail, March 16, 2005 report by Timothy Appleby) stated that “In Canada, families were typically pressed for between $2,500 and $5,000,” Ms. Becker wrote, “while some businesses were asked for up to $100,000”. These assertions have also been supported by the RCMP and other Canadian law enforcement organizations, and finally led to the banning of the WTM in 2008. The Sri Lankan government alleges that the victims of LTTEbombings and suicide attacks at the Colombo Central Bank, at the Bandaranaike Airport, and places of worship, schools, railways, public buses etc., were funded from Canada.
[7] http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2008/08/future-of-tamils-of-sri-lanka.html Sebastien Rasalingam, The Future of Tamils in Sri Lanka, Sri lanka Guardian,26-08-2008
[8] Wikipedia entry under Sivakumaran.
[9] See under Sencholai [Hengolla] in https://dh-wev.org/place.names/index.html
[10] https://thuppahis.com/2018/12/02/tamil-tigers-dead-body-politics-and-sacrificial-devotion/Michale Roberts, Tamil Tiger dead-body politics and sacrificial devotion. 2018
[11] https://dh-web.org/place.names/index.html See entry under Kopay [Bopé]
[12] https://srilankancanadian.ca/index.php/ontariobill104/ Sri Lanka Action Coalition on Bill 104;
[13] https://m.facebook.com/SriAction/photos/a.344289429561138/638723900117688/?type=3 Factcheck on Bill 104
[14] https://parliament.lk/uploads/documents/paperspresented/report-of-paranagama.pdf Report on the Paranagama Commission; complaints of Abductions and Disappearances, 2014
[15] https://www.asiantribune.com/node/91870 The commemoration ceremony on 17-May-2018 in remembrance of Tamil civilians who died in Vella-mulliwaikkal during the last days of the ethnic conflict- Asian Tribune, Rajasinghan, 19-May-2018
[16] Thanges Paramsothy, Caste within the Sri Lankan Diaspora, Anthropology Matters Journal, 18, No.1 (2018)
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