7/27/2019 Four Years After a Tamil Defeat, The Diaspora Regroups

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Four Years after a Tamil Defeat, the Diaspora

RegroupsThis article is the first of a two-part series on the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora in the

years since the civil war ended in 2009. The second installment will examineallegations of war crimes and genocide and the legacy of the LTTE in the reconciliationprocess.

Visvanathan Rudrakumaran, an attorney and prime minister inexile of the Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam,in his New York City office. Credit: Samuel Oakford/IPS

By Samuel Oakford-Saturday, October 26, 2013NEW YORK, Oct 25 2013 (IPS) - Seated at a desk piled high with court

documents and yellowed newspapers, Visvanathan Rudrakumaran remembersleaving Sri Lanka and coming to New York for the first time, three decades ago.

“My friends and everyone else, they went to the UK,” Rudrakumaran told IPS. “But Ichose to come here because I was interested in the Bill of Rights and I wanted to goand practice constitutional law in Sri Lanka.

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“That was my goal when I left the country. But then the‘83 riots changed everything.”

Today, when he isn’t representing clients in court,Rudrakumaran is the prime minister in exile of theProvisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam

(TGTE). By his window overlooking the Garment Districtis a small plastic plaque depicting the group’s logo, awish-bone outline of what was, for a brief period in the2000s, a de-facto state – “Tamil Eelam” – at peace innorthern Sri Lanka.

Until their sudden and overwhelming defeat bygovernment forces in May 2009, Rudrakumaran servedas legal advisor to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) and the group’s supreme commander, VelupillaiPrabhakaran.

The conflict’s roots were deeply embedded in the historical treatment of Tamils by themajority Sinhalese Buddhist community.

From independence in 1948, Tamils and other minority groups were persecuted anddeprived of linguistic and political rights by successive Sinhalese governments. The1956 Sinhala Only Act came to represent Sinhalese dominance in all Sri Lankanaffairs.

For the hundreds of thousands of Tamils who fled Sri Lanka after murderous anti-Tamilpogroms in 1983 transformed simmering ethnic tensions into full-blown civil war, the

erasure of Tamil Eelam and the LTTE left an existential void.

The ground the diaspora had stood on for three decades – the promise of return, anda guarantee of political rights and self-determination – was unceremoniously pulled outfrom under it.

“People are disillusioned and don’t have a clear direction,” admits Rudrakumaran.

Tamils in Sri Lanka and their supporters abroad have had to reimagine non-violentalternatives for achieving political and economic freedom on the island.

Yet the LTTE’s legacy can have a crippling effect on post-war reconciliation amongfractious Tamil groups, let alone with the government itself.

Protesting Rajapaksa’s September speech to the General Assembly, Tamils gatheredoutside the U.N. held pictures of Prabhakaran, one telling IPS “Prabhakaran is still our leader.”

“The Tigers maintained an iron grip on diaspora politics,” said Gordon Weiss,spokesperson for the U.N. in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war.

"[The Tigers']strength was alwaysthat they were theonly ones that were

capable of standingup to thegovernment. Thismythology gavethem legitimacy." --Gordon Weiss

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“It was dangerous to be associated with anyone else. The Tigers were relentless withanyone who didn’t agree. Their strength was always that they were the only ones thatwere capable of standing up to the government,” Weiss told IPS. “This mythology gavethem legitimacy. That disappeared.”

Funding the war from abroad

Part of the current dilemma Tamils both inside and outside Sri Lanka face stems fromthe outsized influence the diaspora maintained during the war. The LTTE was fundedmostly not by sympathetic governments but instead by individuals living abroad, incountries like Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the UK.

Supporters established vast networks of clandestine and legitimate businesses andinstituted informal but in effect mandatory taxes on many Tamil refugee communities inthose countries, funneling money back into the war zone through shell companies andofficial charities.

By 2000, the LTTE could rely on wealthy members of the diaspora to donate millionsof dollars through front organisations. The most prolific of their supporters was RajRajaratnam, the wealthiest Sri Lankan in the world and founder of the Galleon Group,a New York hedge fund firm.

Before he was arrested on insider trading charges in 2009, Rajaratnam gave morethan 3.5 million dollars to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a charity whoseassets were later frozen by U.S. authorities for ties with the LTTE.

While Tamils outside Sri Lanka were willing to finance the war, it was those still insidethe country that bore its terrible physical burden.

The LTTE could uproot residents as it fit their military strategy, one that was notoriousfor the use of child soldiers and suicide bombings. The constant suffering and politicaluncertainty experienced by Tamils on the island contrasted starkly with the oftencomfortable lives of LTTE’s funders.

“Some would say that those who were able to leave Sri Lanka and go abroad andestablish themselves tended to be better off and better educated and those fromhigher casts,” said Weiss.

The Sri Lankan permanent representative to the U.N., Palitha Kohona, himself 

accused of war crimes by Tamil groups in the U.S. and Switzerland, stressed this pointin an interview with IPS.

“The word diaspora is a misnomer,” he said. “The vast majority [of Tamils] leftvoluntarily and many were economic refugees.”

Time and distance moved the diaspora in a more radical direction.

“ A lot of Tamils in Sri Lanka are less nationalist than those in the diaspora,” said Alan

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Keenan, Sri Lanka Analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

“If you look at diasporas around the world, they almost always end up being moreradical in their demands than the home communities,” Keenan told IPS.

 After 9/11, the LTTE found itself lumped into the global war on terror and Westerngovernments began cracking down on its funding network. U.S. authorities classifiedthe group as a terrorist organisation and froze their assets as various fronts wereuncovered. The financial decline of the LTTE would presage their ultimate militarydefeat.

Engagement or resistance?

Central to the current plans of all Tamil diaspora groups is focusing internationalattention on alleged war crimes committed by the forces of Sri Lankan presidentMahinda Rajapaksa in the final months of the conflict when, according to U.N.estimates, at least 40,000 civilians were killed.

The TGTE, though it recognises a military solution may be untenable, maintains that aseparate state is the only outcome that can ensure a lasting peace and guaranteerights for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) scored a significant victory when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that in light of human rights concerns, he would not attendthe November Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo.

The CTC, which represents the largest national group of diaspora Tamils, has spokenin favour of engagement in the post-war political process in Sri Lanka.

Despite reports of widespread voter intimidation, Sept. 21 Northern Council Provincialelections, the first in 25 years, saw the moderate Tamil National Alliance (TNA) win anoverwhelming majority of the vote in Tamil-dominated areas.

In a press release published just before the vote, the Global Tamil Forum, of which theCTC is a member, stated it was “important that an administration run by the electedrepresentatives from the region could play a significant role in restoring the confidenceand dignity of our people.”

Immediately following the elections, a fight broke out over how the results should be

interpreted.In a September editorial, the Tamil Guardian, an influential British publication, calledthe council election “a vote for liberation” and sought to “dispel the often propagatednotion of a dichotomy existing between the political aspirations of Tamils in thehomeland versus those in the diaspora.”

“This was not a vote for the TNA. It was a vote for resistance,” the editorial concluded.

Part Two of this series can be found here.

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