Velupillai Prabhakaran

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Velupillai Prabhakaran
Born	Velupillai Prabhakaran 26 November 1954 Velvettithurai
Other names	Pirabaharan or as Thambi
Occupation	Leader of LTTE
Political party	Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Spouse	Mathivathani Erambu
Children	Three

Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009)

Origins

Combatants

Sri Lanka	Army (LRRP) Navy Air Force Police Special Task Force Home Guards Attacks on civilians Assassinations
LTTE	Divisions Air Tigers Sea Tigers Black Tigers Attacks in the 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Assassinations Suicide bombings
Other militants (list)	ENDLF ENLF EPRLF EROS PLOTE TELO
India	Indian Peace Keeping Force
Paramilitary groups	EPDP TMVP

Phases

Major battles

Major events

Leaders

Sri Lanka

Military

Army	Tissa Weeratunga Nalin Seneviratne Hamilton Wanasinghe Cecil Waidyaratne G. H. De Silva Rohan Daluwatte Srilal Weerasooriya L. P. Balagalle Shantha Kottegoda Sarath Fonseka
Navy	Asoka de Silva H. A. Silva Clancy Fernando D. A. M. R. Samarasekara H. C. A. C. Thisera Daya Sandagiri Wasantha Karannagoda
Air Force	Dick Perera Andibuduge Fernando Makalandage Gunawardena Oliver Ranasinghe Jayalath Weerakkody Donald Perera Roshan Goonetileke

Civilian

LTTE

Militant	Velupillai Prabhakaran Pottu Amman Soosai Karuna Amman
Political	Selvarasa Pathmanathan Anton Balasingham S. P. Thamilselvan

India

Military	Harkirat Singh Ashok K. Mehta Kulwant Singh Depinder Singh Dalvir Singh Krishnaswamy Sundarji
Civilian	R. Venkataraman Rajiv Gandhi V. P. Singh Jyotindra Nath Dixit J. Jayalalithaa M. Karunanidhi Vaiko

Aftermath

Criminal Indictments

Velupillai Prabhakaran has been wanted by Interpol and many other organizations since 1991 for "terrorism", "murder", "organized crime" and "terrorism conspiracy". He has been issued a death warrant by the Chennai high court in India for plotting the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May, 1991 and in 2002 Judge Ambepitiya issued an open warrant to arrest him in connection with the 1996 Central Bank Bombing. The judge found him guilty on 51 counts and sentenced him to 200 years in prison. The LTTE is currently branded a terrorist organisation by the USA, the EU and many Asian countries.

Biography

In 1972, at the age of 18, Velupillai Prabhakaran founded an organization named Tamil New Tigers(TNT) which was a successor to many initial organizations that protested against the post colonial political direction of the country that pitted the minority Sri Lankan Tamils against the majority Sinhalese people.

In 1975, after becoming heavily involved in the Tamil movement, he carried out his first political murder by murdering the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah, by shooting him at point blank range while he was about to enter the Hindu temple at Punnelary. The assassination was in response to the 1974 Tamil conference incident, and the Tamil radicals had blamed Alfred Duraiappah because he backed the then Sri Lanka Freedom Party(SLFP) implicated in the violence as well as for allegedly betraying the Tamil nationalist sentiments in the Jaffna peninsula.

On May 5, 1976, the TNT was renamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers.

Caste and religion

Prabhakaran is a member of relatively lower Karaiyar caste in the Caste system in Sri Lanka although his grandfather was the builder/owner of a local Hindu Siva temple.

Religion is not a major factor in his philosophy or ideology. The LTTE is also an organization that does not cite any material from religion or religious texts in any of its ideological documents and propaganda but are driven only by the idea of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism and considers it as the only single-minded approach and inspiration towards the attainment of an independent Tamil Eelam.

For instance, upper caste Hindus traditionally cremate their dead yet others dont, but LTTE fighters are buried. A few of leading LTTE officers are Christians such as late Anton Balasingham. Prabhakaran named his son Charles Anthony, after one of his most trusted associates, Charles Lucas Anthony, alias Seelan, who was killed in 1983.

But Prabhakaran is said to be belonging to one "Mottuva Vellala" caste which has presence in the Tiruchi District of Tamilnadu.

Personal life

There are not many insights onto Prabhakaran's personal life, either from his interviews or from cited media sources, although it is widely known that he is married to Mathivathani Erambu. Their marriage was held in Tirupporur, near Chennai on 1 October 1984. They have a daughter named Duwaraka, a son named Charles Anthony and another son named Balachandran. Their whereabouts are not known, but it is widely speculated that they are not in Sri Lanka.

Prabhakaran studied up to 5th grade and dropped out. He is also known to suffer from a number of stress and fatigue related syndromes such as blood pressure, diabetes, and TIAs.

Colonel Karuna, a critic of Prabhakaran, has alleged that Prabhakaran is a television addict and that Norwegian peace negotiator Eric Solheim gave him a 6 foot television set.

Though he does not give too many interviews, some of his interviews point to his ideologies and also perspectives on various issues pertaining to Eelam and the struggle for independence.

Sunday interview

In 1984, the Indian news magazine Sunday featured an interview with Prabhakaran in its March 11-17 issue. The interviewer was Anita Pratap, then a rookie journalist covering the Sri Lanka conflict. Prabhakaran would later offer her many more interviews, allowing Pratap to bring him and his motivations to life. She documented her insights into the conflict in her book Island of Blood: Frontline Reports From Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Other South Asian Flashpoints (2001).

Beyond the obvious publicity that followed, the cover photograph was the first picture of Prabhakaran that the Sri Lankan authorities had even seen. Before the publication, authorities had been using a childhood picture found in a family album.

Press conference at Killinochchi

Prabhakan's first and only major press conference was held in Killinochchi on 10 April 2002. It was reported that more than 200 journalists from the local and foreign media attended this event, and they had to go through a 10-hour security screening before the event in which Anton Balasingham introduced the LTTE leader as the "President and Prime minister of Tamil Eelam"

A number of questions were asked about LTTE's commitment towards the erstwhile peace process and Prabhakaran and Dr. Anton Balasingham jointly answered the questions.

Answering a question from one of the reporters about Prabhakaran's statement to "shoot him if he give up the demand for Tamil Eelam", he replied that "That statement stands"

Repeated questions of his involvement in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination were only answered in a sober note by both Balasingham and Prabhakaran. They called it a "tragic incident" ("Thunbiyal Chambavam", as quoted in Tamil) and they requested the press "not to dig into an incident that happened 10 years ago".

During the interview he stated that, he is not yet willing to give up their demand for a separate state, but also mentioned as quoted that "There are three fundamentals. That is Tamil homeland, Tamil nationality and Tamil right to self-determination. These are the fundamental demands of the Tamil people. Once these demands are accepted or a political solution is put forward by recognising these three fundamentals and our people are satisfied with the solutions we will consider giving up the demand for Eelam."

Prabhakaran also answered a number of questions in which he reaffirmed their commitment towards peace process, quoted "We are sincerely committed to the peace process. It is because we are sincerely committed to peace that we continued a four month cessation of hostilities" and was also firm in de-proscription of the LTTE by Sri Lanka and India, "We want the government of India to lift the ban on the LTTE. We will raise the issue at the appropriate time."

Prabhakaran also insisted firmly that only de-proscription would bring forth an amenable solution to the ongoing peace process mediated by Norway: "We have informed the government, we have told the Norwegians that de-proscription is a necessary condition for the commencements of talks".

Late JN Dixit, a prominent diplomat, who served as the Indian ambassador in Sri Lanka during 1980's, had questioned Prabhakaran's desire for peaceful negotiations, and stated in his famous book, Assignment Colombo, that "Prabhakaran would never give up his demand for eelam whatever interim tactical negotiating postures are adopted by the LTTE to cope with the pressures under which they are operating".

Philosophy and ideology of Prabhakaran

Prabhakaran has not expressed an all encompassing systematic philosophy or ideology as such, but has declared his ideology to be driven by 'Revolutionary socialism and the creation of an egalitarian society'. He joined the Tamil nationalist movement in his youth and quickly established himself as a strong willed militant leader by founding LTTE. His rare interviews, his annual Tamil Eelam Heroes Day speeches, and the policies and actions of the LTTE can be taken as indicators of Prabhakaran’s philosophy and ideology. The following are important areas when considering philosophy and ideology of Prabhakaran.

Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism

Prabhakaran’s source of inspiration and direction is Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism . His stated and ultimate ideal is to get Tamil Eelam recognised as a nation as per the U.N. Charter that guarantees the right of a people to political independence which has been given in their official web page. The LTTE also proposed the formation of an Interim Self-Governing Authority during Peace Negotiations in 2003.

Militarism of the LTTE

As per his own views, Prabhakaran has explicitly stated that an armed struggle is the only way to resist an Asymmetric warfare, in which one side - that of the Sri Lankan government is armed and the other comparatively unarmed. He argues that he chose military means only after observing that non–violent means have been ineffectual and obsolete, especially after the Thileepan incident. Thileepan, a colonel rank officer adopted Gandhian means to protest against the IPKF killings by staging a fast unto death from 15 August, 1987 and by abstaining from food or water till 27 August, he passed away in front of thousands of Tamils who had come there to fast along with him. This further strengthened Prabahakaran's resolve that peaceful protests would either be ignored or crushed but never heard .

Economic system

The LTTE has little manufacturing apart from cottage industries. However the LTTE collects taxes from the Tamils living in areas under LTTE control which has its own transport system called 'Eelam Pokkuvaratthu kazhagam' (Eelam transport organization) and also many other supplementary revenue means including fishing. The LTTE also collects money from the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Individual LTTE members and sympathisers have been noted to smuggle drugs worldwide to raise funds for the LTTE, and the LTTE is reported to have close ties with drug trafficking networks in Burma.

The LTTE has been implicated in the forced prostitution of Tamil women who are being smuggled to other countries. In the mid 1990s some Sri Lankan women were abused or raped while being smuggled towards Canada by the LTTE, and some were deliberately stranded in Thailand and forced into prostitution there.

Modus Operandi

Prabhakaran is widely reported to have operated in India, primarily in Tamil Nadu prior to 1990s. Since his return to Sri Lanka, he has not traveled abroad.

Prabhakaran is accused of the violent suppression of other Tamil groups seeking eelam and critics of the LTTE. Appapillai Amirthalingam the founder of the Tamil United Liberation Front was assassinated by the LTTE is 1989. EPDP Leader Douglas Devananda has been a regular target of LTTE assassination squads having survived nearly half a dozen assassination attempts. He is also accused of ordering the assassination of the prominent Tamil academic and former Tamil United Liberation Front member Neelan Thiruchelvam.

The LTTE was also accused of the failed assassination by bombing of the Pakistan high commissioner to Sri Lanka, Bashir Wali Mohamed, who was returning from a function to celebrate Pakistan's Independence Day, on August 14 2006. Pakistan is one of Sri lanka's main arms suppliers.

Ever since Jaffna was lost to the Sri Lankan army in 1995, following the government offensive called Operation Rivirasa, the towns of Kilinocchi and Mullaitivu have serve as makeshift capitals of the areas of Sri Lanka under LTTE control.

The LTTE's former longest-serving regional military commander Colonel Karuna who broke away from the LTTE in 2004 claimed that Prabhakaran discriminated against the lives of his eastern fighters during the wars causing them to be killed on the battlefields of the Vanni. He additionally claimed that Prabhakaran has given up the demand for Tamil Eelam, instead demanding a federal system and internal self-determination . He was also critical of Prabhakaran's failure to share power, and alleged that Prabhakaran was acting according to the influence of Pottu Amman. Furthermore, Karuna has claimed that Prabhakaran intentionally dragged out peace talks in order to give the LTTE more time to re-arm for further hostilities.

Personality cult

Velupillai Prabhakaran has been accused of building the LTTE around a personality cult. He is called "the great leader" and his picture is hung everywhere in rebel held areas. He has banned other religions, as well as alcohol and smoking. He claimed to be the sole representatives of Tamil people, and has steeped the entire culture into one of self-sacrifice and martyrdom.

Those who wish to join the LTTE Black Tiger suicide squad have to write Prabhakaran a letter of application. Before they carry out their suicide missions they are granted a personal meal with him.

Notes

Political situation: Sri Lanka’s nation-building program became intimately linked with a Sinhalisation of the state directive. One form of extremism and violence led to the other and by 1970's there were some minority radical Tamil youth who were legitimizing terrorist attacks against the state as a response to alleged state violence.
Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism is expressed in the political desire by some to form an independent nation state called Tamil Eelam for the minority Sri Lankan Tamil people. Both moderate TULF and TNA and militant groups such as LTTE, EPRLF, PLOTE, EPDP etc have expressed such political goals either in the past or now.