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Velupillai Prabhakaran, Leader of Tamil Tigers, Killed at 54 By Jay Shankar May 18 (Bloomberg) -- Velupillai Prabhakaran<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Velupillai+Prabhakaran&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, the founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam <http://www.ltteps.org/>, whose 26-year struggle for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka cost the lives of more than 100,000 people, has been killed. He was 54. The death of the Tamil rebel chief was announced by the Sri Lankan military in a statement on its Web site. Prabhakaran helped turn a virtually unknown band of fighters in the 1970s into one of the “most well-knit, most heavily armed and most feared insurgent groups in the world,” said M.R. Narayan Swamy, author of the Tamil leader’s biography “Inside an Elusive Mind.” The group, included on the U.S. government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, was founded to establish a socialist state for ethnic minority Tamils in the north and east of the country. Tamils make up almost 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 20 million, while Sinhalese account for 74 percent, according to the 2001 census. The Tamil Tigers were the first to use female suicide bombers and develop explosive belts and vests, innovations that have been copied by other terrorist groups, the U.S. Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism<http://www.state.gov/s/ct/>said in a 2006 report. The LTTE, after losing control of the Eastern Province to the army in July 2007, was driven from its northern strongholds this year into a sliver of territory on the northeastern coast. The government declared victory over the rebels on May 16. Jungle Hideouts Using his jungle hideouts in the Northern Province, Prabhakaran led the secessionist campaign since 1983. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Rajiv+Gandhi&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, killed by a female suicide bomber in southern India in 1991, Sri Lankan Army Chief Denzil Kobbekaduwa and Navy Chief Clancy Fernando are among the 95 politicians and 35 military officers the group is accused of killing, according to Sri Lanka’s Defense Ministry <http://www.defence.lk/>. “Unceasing allegiance to the cause of carving out a Tamil state and unforgiving ruthlessness can be called the two main traits of Prabhakaran,” Swamy said in New Delhi. “These traits are Prabhakaran’s and the LTTE’s biggest strengths and also its biggest weakness.” The LTTE is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and India. President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Mahinda%0ARajapaksa%3Fs&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>government vowed to eradicate terrorism in the north while seeking a political accord with Tamil groups in the region. Prabhakaran, in his 2008 annual speech, said the conflict was “gathering momentum” and the government’s expectation of a military victory over Tamil Tigers was a “dream from which it would be awoken.” Violent Struggle The youngest of four children, Prabhakaran was born in Velvettithurai on the Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka’s north on Nov. 26, 1954. As a child, he was shy, quiet and unassuming, Swamy said. Prabhakaran admired Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh, Indians who challenged British rule through violent means. Events in Sri Lanka<http://www.info.lk/srilanka/srilankamap/index.htm>, where Tamils felt they were being marginalized by the dominant Sinhalese, influenced Prabhakaran to take up arms, Swamy said. “Once he quit his home in the early 1970s there was nothing to stop him.” On July 27, 1975, he shot dead the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah, marking his first political assassination. “I wanted to achieve something through action rather than waste time in idle fancies,” Prabhakaran was cited as saying in Swamy’s biography. A year later he formed the LTTE. The Tamil Tigers’ first landmine attack on the army in July 1983 killed 13 soldiers. On May 14, 1985, the LTTE killed 146 Sinhalese civilians at a Buddhist site in Anuradhapura and two years later in April 1987, a bomb blast in Colombo killed more than 100 people. Black Tigers Political assassinations blamed on the LTTE include the killing of Sri Lankan Defense Minister Ranjan Wijeratne, President Ranasinghe Premadasa,<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Ranasinghe+Premadasa%2C&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Lakshman%0AKadirgamar&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>and Nation Building Minister D.M. Dassanayake. Under Prabhakaran’s leadership, the LTTE created the Black Tigers, from which suicide bombers are recruited; the Sea Tigers, the naval wing; and the Air Tigers, who bombed oil and gas complexes at Kolonnawa and Muthurajawela near Colombo on April 29, 2007. “He was something like a tank on the move,” Colonel R. Hariharan, former chief of military intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990, said in a telephone interview from the southern Indian city of Chennai on March 12. “It can be shot down by an anti-tank rocket or a mine. But the tank will move on. He is not bothered about the consequences to himself or to the organization and will eliminate any obstacle coming in the way.” Heartless, Cruel Young men and women were compulsorily recruited from Tamil families and “channelized to devote themselves” to his cause. “He is totally a heartless and cruel” person, Hariharan said. During 2004, Prabhakaran’s commander of the Eastern Province, Colonel Karuna, broke away in what was “the biggest internal setback the LTTE has suffered in its history,” Swamy said. “The split no doubt weakened the LTTE and ultimately led to the loss of the Eastern Province.” Anton Balasingham<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Anton+Balasingham&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, the Tamil Tigers’ ideologue and chief negotiator, died of cancer in December 2006. He led peace negotiations between the LTTE and the government that started in 1985 in Thimpu, the capital of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. He also headed the last round of talks that ended without any progress in Geneva in February 2006, four years after Norway brokered a cease-fire. Air Raid The head of the political wing, S.P. Thamilselvan<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=+S.P.+Thamilselvan&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, was killed during an air raid in November 2007 while the LTTE’s last weapons-smuggling vessel was destroyed in October and the commander of the Sea Tigers killed in September. In 2009 the LTTE suffered its worst losses in the 26-year- old conflict. Sri Lankan soldiers captured the LTTE’s political headquarters, Kilinochchi, on Jan. 2. Shanmuganathan Ravishankar, the intelligence chief, was killed along with 20 other LTTE members on Jan. 6. Three days later, the army seized a strategic causeway, the Elephant Pass, which links the northern Jaffna Peninsula with the rest of the island, taking control of the area after 23 years. The LTTE’s last garrison in northeastern Puthukkudiyirippu town fell on March 4 and Subarathnam Selvatureiy, the rebel’s finance chief, died in fighting on March 10. Daya Master<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Daya+Master&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, LTTE spokesman and another senior leader surrendered to the soldiers on April 22 after a military offensive rescued more than 100,000 civilians from the rebel-held territory. In January 1984, Prabhakaran met Mathivathani Erambu, a college student who participated in a hunger strike in Jaffna. They were married in October the same year in the southern Indian city of Chennai and had a daughter and a son. To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Shankar<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Jay+Shankar&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>in Bangalore, India, at [email protected] *Last Updated: May 18, 2009 05:04 EDT* --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
