Fortnight Publications Ltd.

A Little Place like Ulster in the Heart of a Gilded SeaAuthor(s): Tom O'FarrellSource: Fortnight, No. 417 (Sep., 2003), pp. 18-19Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25560952 .

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I Fortnight SEPTEMBER 2003|

interrnational

A LITL PLACE LIKE ULSTERIN

The Martin McGuinness of Sri Lanka? S.P. Thamilchelvan, the deputy leader of the Tamil

Tigers and director of its political wing. He

limps on a cane, having been wounded by

shrapnel. He was previously known as

'Dinesh' and was an area guerilla commander.

The building had been abandoned until earlier this year. Nearly a decade and a half ago, it was the residence of Sri Lanka's Bobby Sands.

I had seen posters, plus a fair number of concrete and wooden shrines dedicated to Thileepan, across the island's Jaffna peninsula. In the towIns and villages of the peninsula, the largely Hinduist Tamils dominate.

The name of Thileepan, who starved himself to death in September- 1987 as a protest against government atrocities, is spoken of with hushed respect.

Thileepan's colleagues now maintain his offices in the Jaffna suburb of Thiruneveli. Now, thanks to the Norwegian brokered Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) a.k.a. Tamil Tigers, have been allowed to open a political office here.

The blood-red Tiger flag hangs limply on a pole amiiongst drooping coconut palms, a snarling feline atop two crossed rifles. Wheni the latest cease-fire was called last December, the death toll of the conflict had probably reached 70,000.

The LTTE have been fighting for Eelam, (Precious Land), encompassing the northern and eastern sectors of the island since 1983. Since the departure of the British in 1948, ancient animosities had been reviving between the 2.4 million Hindu Tamils and the 16 million Sinhalese Buddhists.

Inside a high metal gate, locals were seated in the shade of high teak trees,

waiting to meet LTTE officials. An elderly white-haired Tamil man seated at a desk under the verandah ticked them off. Eelamparathy met me in a room dominated by a photograph of the LTTE supreme commander, Vellupillai Prabhakaran.

SMALL The chief political cadre for Jaffna town, Eelamparathy was a small, reserved man who did not carry the trademark string necklace with a vial of cyanide.

"(The Army) has not fully accepted the cease-fire, thev have not been removed from the temples and schools so the people cannot worship," he said.

Cultivating my suntan, I strolled back past the Jaffina University's Medical Faculty, hoping to hail a three wheeled auto rickshaw.

It was somewhere here that the war ignited on July 23 1983, just before

midnight, when Army Patrol 44 Bravo was attacked and massacred by an obscure

militant group known as the Tamil Tigers. The attitude between the almost

entirely Sinhalese seculrity for ces and Tamil civilians was by then one of mutual loathing. The 1979 Prevention of Terrorisrm Act (PTA) gave the authorities

freedom to conduct random detentions without trial and torture.

Two years later, off duty police burned down the University library, destroying 90,000 irreplaceable Tamil classics.

When the Army officers bodies were flown back to the Sri Lankan capital,

Colombo, thousands converged on their funerals. Riots broke out.

Gangs of thugs, probably in the pay of opportunistic politicians, began attacking Tamil owned businesses and homes, first in Colombo, then all across Sri Lanka.

SLAUGHTERED By the end ofJuly 1983, maybe 2,000 Tamil civilians had been slaughtered. The outside

world was appalled but Sinhalese politicians, backed by right-wing Buddhist

monks, were unapologetic. Sri Lanka (Holy Ceylon) had been consecrated by Buddha himself as sacred to the religion. If Tamils wanted to live in a Hinduist state, India was one hour away by boat.

The long term effects of the 1983 riots have been two-fold. Wealthy Tamils who fled abroad have been funding the LTTE's

war through various front organisations and charities.

A clandestine network exists in such cities as London, Toronto, Melbourne and Oslo to make Noraid, look amateurish.

Secondly, the rebels gained thousands of new recruits. By mid 1990, they were in control of the Jaffna peninsula which for the next five years, they ran as a mini-state,

with Tiger banks, Tiger police and Tiger courts.

After the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) recaptured the town in December 1995, the LTTE simply regrouped in the jungles and savannah of the north, cutting off all land routes. Over the next six years, 30,000 troops struggled to hold on to Jaffna. The town was an open air prison, ringed by checkpoints, its narrow back alleys patrolled by wary commandos

When I first arrived in the bus stand, I had passed through several peninsular towns that put me in mind of a tropical

Dresden. Roofless and windowless buildings were pocked and shattered by heavy artillery fire. The flame-blackened cadavers of houses, shops and official buildings lay empty on either side of the road.

Everywhere I saw tall black poles, palmyrah trees decapitated by mortars. At the main bus stand, a UNICEF-sponsored

billboard declared: Beware Mines, Your Precaution ensures the Prevention of Your Disability and even Death.,

There are over one million un detonated landmines and anti-personnel devices scattered across the northern province. Recently foreign de-mining agencies such as the Halo Trust and the

I PAGE 18 |

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Tom O'Farrell

HEART OF A GILDED SEA Mines Advisory Group (MAG) have been allowed to enter the north.

SECOND But Jaffna, before the war Sri Lanka's second biggest city, is in a pitiful condition. Large sectors of the town, particularly around the colonial-era Fort have been pulverized. Yet on the narrow streets radiating from the central market, there is feverish commerce along with visitors from the south. Screechy Indian music blasts out of the tea shops and jewelry stores.

The automobiles of Jaffna typify how much war has acted as a time warp. Even before 1983, import duties were punitive.

Like an Anglophile Havana, antique Austins, Morris Minors and Cortinas sparkle in the tropical sun. InJaffna, a 1981 Leyland is state of the art.

On September 16, delegates from both sides met in Thailand. The head of the LTTE's team, Dr Anton Balasingham appeared to indicate that autonomy, not outright independence was the objective.

Cease-fires have collapsed before in 1987, 1990 and 1995. The Indian Army had its own Vietnam here in the late 1980s, sending 60,000 troops to enforce a cease fire, a three year debacle that culminated in the 1991 assassination of Prime Minister

Rajiv Gandhi by a Black Tiger, suicide bomber.

Once the patron of the Tamil rebels, New Delhi is these days calling for Prabhakaran's head, something doubtless in the minds of the LTTE's negotiating team in Thailand.

Washington suspects them of meeting with Al-Qaeda operatives in the 1990s. Reportedly, the technology to make the suicide jacket, now used by Hamas was sold to them by the Tigers.

But the government of Ranil Wickremesinge, elected November knows it cannot afford to fight any more. Last year, Sri Lanka applied for a $64 million standby, arrangement from the IMF, with the inevitable promises of privatisation and abolishing subsidies. At the same time, there is a national debt of $16 billion.

TIGER I journeyed from Jaffna throtugh

government and Tiger checkpoints to the Tiger capital, of Kilinochchi, travelling in a rattling black Morris Minor with a Tamil family.

Kilinochchi was stormed by the Tigers in September 1998, leaving hundreds dead onl both sides. Resemnblinig a htuge shanty tovn, the place looks eveni more wrecked thani Jaffnia. I arranmged to meet S.P.

ThamilchelVan. As director of the LTTE's political w!ing he is effectiv ely its deputy lea(ler. On April 3 this year, Johnl Hulme and the British High Comlmissionler in Colombo

met with Thamilchelvan to discuss the peace process.

I asked him if their objective was still Eelam, essentially one third of the land mass and two thirds of Sri Lanka's coastline. "This cannot be attributed to the LTTE as an invention of the LTTE, it is not," said Thamilchelvan, hands resting atop his cane. In the early 1990s, then known as 'Dinesh' he was wounded while fighting in the Jaffna peninsula.

"It is a historical fact, an ancestral homeland of the Tamils, the natural habitat of the Tamils for centuries and historically and archeologically proved to be that."

Many years ago, Prabahakran told his guerillas: "If I cannot give you Eelam, kill me.

The same respect for the hunger striker Thileepan might translate into a backlash against any sell out.

Amongst Sinhalese Buddhists, there is a right-wing lobby, fiercely hostile to even autonomy for Tamils. And the return of non-Tamil refugees to areas designated for the LTTE-controlled Eelam, is likely to be contentious.

On one afternoon, I met Fr A.I. Bernard, a Tamil Catholic priest who had spent time in Ireland, including a visit to the Peace and Reconciliation Centre in

Glencree, County Wicklow during the February visit by Prince Charles.

"When I was invited (to Glencree), there was a meeting of ex-IRA members and ex-loyalists, victims of paramilitary violence on both sides and victims of the British Army. They came together and exchanged their experience," he said.

Indeed, when the Good Friday Agreement was declared in 1998, many academics and analysts in Colombo

wondered if a similar process could bring peace to Sri Lanka.

Said Fr Bernard: "I thought a similar exercise could be put in practice here that

would help people, if not to forget their past, at least help them not to remain

hostage to

feelings of horror and revenge

ii iur: 11111 1111l| 111 1:E:* i

Orange parade: Buddhist monks protest against the UNP government's negotiations

with the Tigers. They have always regarded Sri Lanka as a sacred citadel of the

Buddhist religion.

SS vE^_. i i d X~~

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