US says LTTE is the master of all terrorist groups
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http://www.fbi.gov/page2/jan08/tamil_tigers011008.html
As terrorist groups go, it has quite a résumé:
Perfected the use of suicide bombers;
Invented the suicide belt;
Pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks;
Murdered some 4,000 people in the past two years alone; and
Assassinated two world leaders—the only terrorist organization to do so.
No, it’s not al Qaeda or Hezbollah or even HAMAS. The group is called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or the Tamil Tigers for short.
Needless to say, the Tamil Tigers are among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world. For more than three decades, the group has launched a campaign of violence and bloodshed in Sri Lanka, the island republic off the southern coast of India.
Its ultimate goal: to seize control of the country from the Sinhalese ethnic majority and create an independent Tamil state. Along the way, it has launched suicide attacks, assassinated politicians (including a government minister this week and even the Sri Lankan President), taken hostages, and committed all of kinds of crimes to finance its operations. The resulting civil war has taken the lives of nearly 70,000 Sri Lankans on both sides of the conflict since 1983 alone.
Why should you care? Certainly because of the suffering and bloodshed that the Tamil Tigers have caused. And because its ruthless tactics have inspired terrorist networks worldwide, including al Qaeda in Iraq. But also because the group has placed operatives right here in our own backyard, discreetly raising money to fund its bloody terrorist campaign overseas, including purchases of weapons and explosives.
The U.S. government has designated the Tigers a foreign terrorist organization, so their activities here are illegal. And we’re determined to stop them, using the full range of our investigative and intelligence capabilities.
In April, for example, we struck an important blow when our Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York arrested the alleged U.S. director of the Tigers. The man supposedly held several fundraising events at a church and various public schools in Queens and in northern New Jersey in 2004. He is also accused of arranging high-level meetings between the group’s leaders and U.S. supporters.For More Information on Our Cases
We’ve also arrested another 11 Tamil Tiger-related suspects in the New York City region. And in Baltimore, following a multi-agency investigation, a pair of Indonesian men pled guilty and were sentenced recently for working with others to export surface to air missiles, state-of-the-art firearms, machine guns, and night vision goggles to the Tigers in Sri Lanka.
You can help by being careful with your donations. Like other terrorists, the Tigers have raised funds under a variety of cover organizations, often by posing as charities. A great deal of money, for example, was raised for the Tigers following the 2004 tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka and many other countries.
LTTE leader and Commander
Interpol Notice: WANTED
Present family name: VELUPILLAI
Forename: PRABHAKARAN
Sex: MALE
Date of birth: 26 November 1954 (54 years old)
Place of birth: INUVIL / UDUVIL / JAFFNA, Sri Lanka
Language spoken: English, SINGHALESE, Tamil
Nationality: Sri Lanka
Physical description
Distinguishing marks and characteristics: VERY ALERT, KNOWN TO USE DISGUISE AND CAPABLE OF HANDLING SOPHISTICATED WEAPONRY AND EXPLOSIVES, HAIR COMBED BACK, STOUT BUILD
Offences
Categories of Offences: CRIMES AGAINST LIFE AND HEALTH, ORGANIZED CRIME /TRANSNATIONAL CRIME, TERRORISM, TERRORISM CONSPIRACY
Arrest Warrant Issued by: COLOMBO / Sri Lanka, MADRAS / India
Head of the intelligence LTTE
Interpol Notice: WANTED
Present family name: POTTU AMMAN
Forename: SIVERSHANKAR
Sex: MALE
Date of birth: 1962 (around 47 years old)
Place of birth: ARIYALAI / SAVAHACHERRY, Sri Lanka
Language spoken: English, SINGHALESE, Tamil
Nationality: Sri Lanka
Physical description
Colour of hair: BLACK
Distinguishing marks and characteristics: VERY ALERT AND WELL ACQUAINTED WITH ARTS OF DISGUISES AND CAPABLE OF HANDLING ARMS, EXPLOSIVES
Offences
Categories of Offences: TERRORISM
Arrest Warrant Issued by: COLOMBO / Sri Lanka, MADRAS / India -
But Tamil tiger in the zoo very cute leh...its stripes is very beautiful.
We also got tiger in Singapore, Tiger Beer, one of the most popular one, it controlled not only Singapore but most of asian countries too.
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This is a serious matter, They are are the richest terrorist org in the world with a annual budget of USD200-300 USD million per year. And the only terrorist org in the world to have naval and aerial warfare capabilities. The only org in the world to have its own civil administration, law, and independent trade and economy.
These re very dangerous people. They run a complete terrorist nation in North East Sri Lanka. An real life ideal of one, an amazing fact that they represent the world's ideology of anarchism.
following acts of terror followed by Al Qaeda after the LTTE has set the examples.
Fact one: The LTTE invented the modern suicide bomber and deployed it into all their rank's against both political, military and civilian targets. You now see Islamic groups copy the LTTE with suicide attack's.
Fact two The LTTE attack shipping off the coast of Sri Lanka blowing ships or piracy. We then saw attacks on the USS Cole off Yemen and then you see piracy off the coast of Somalia a strong hold for Al-Qaeda followers.
Fact three The LTTE attack the World Trade Centre in Sri Lanka you then see attack's by Al-Qaeda on the World Trade Centre in New York, America.
Fact four The LTTE has a women's section deployed into it's rank's. You see Al-Qaeda and Chechen terrorist's who took over the Russian theatre, use black widow women suicide bombers.
Fact five : Attack's on civilians in bus and trains in Sri Lanka where innocent passengers were killed, Al-Qaeda in London bombed public civilian transport in the 7/7 attack's on London transport. -
The fact's are clear other terrorist groups copy the LTTE in all sorts of way, it's time the world woke up to the international threat from the master's of terrorism the LTTE and started not just banning them but taking notice of the 70 thousand dead in Sri Lanka and thinking could they allow others groups who are clearly copying the LTTE's terrorist methods to commit 70 thousand dead in their own country's which have a bigger population than small island nation of Sri Lanka.
The worlds masters of teaching evil act's against civilians with massive numbers of deaths and casualties is the LTTE the question is when will the west take action against Al-Qaeda’s teachers and take the LTTE text books of terror away from the rest of the worlds terrorist organizations by closing down the LTTE offices based in many country's around the globe.
Someone has to come up with the idea's for terrorist group's like al-Qaeda to inflict pain on the west, and i would say the groups that inspire the leadership of al-Qaeda with text book terror tactics that work are the LTTE. -
Originally posted by Socialist:
This is a serious matter, They are are the richest terrorist org in the world with a annual budget of USD200-300 USD million per year. And the only terrorist org in the world to have naval and aerial warfare capabilities. The only org in the world to have its own civil administration, law, and independent trade and economy.
These re very dangerous people. They run a complete terrorist nation in North East Sri Lanka. An real life ideal of one, an amazing fact that they represent the world's ideology of anarchism.
following acts of terror followed by Al Qaeda after the LTTE has set the examples.
Fact one: The LTTE invented the modern suicide bomber and deployed it into all their rank's against both political, military and civilian targets. You now see Islamic groups copy the LTTE with suicide attack's.
Fact two The LTTE attack shipping off the coast of Sri Lanka blowing ships or piracy. We then saw attacks on the USS Cole off Yemen and then you see piracy off the coast of Somalia a strong hold for Al-Qaeda followers.
Fact three The LTTE attack the World Trade Centre in Sri Lanka you then see attack's by Al-Qaeda on the World Trade Centre in New York, America.
Fact four The LTTE has a women's section deployed into it's rank's. You see Al-Qaeda and Chechen terrorist's who took over the Russian theatre, use black widow women suicide bombers.
Fact five : Attack's on civilians in bus and trains in Sri Lanka where innocent passengers were killed, Al-Qaeda in London bombed public civilian transport in the 7/7 attack's on London transport.But they only fight for a cause, give me back our piece of land and we go in peace, it is unlike those muslim who fight for a world of Islam and every other things is consider evil.
I think everyone of us hv the right to fight for our cause, let said your house it suddenly taken half away by strangers, what do you do, you call the police, the police support the stranger, you call the govt, the govt is the stranger, you ask neighbour for help, the neighbour dun give a damn, you ask your friends and relatives for help, they can only help you abit from outside. Then you call your best partners for help, they can only sell or provide you the tools to fight your way out. And all these while the strangers in your house is increasing his domination of your space and you foreseen that most likely you will be force out. So you gathered your family members and tell them one thing...TO do Or die.
UNDERSTAND, u need to understand the cause before anything
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Originally posted by angel7030:
But they only fight for a cause, give me back our piece of land and we go in peace, it is unlike those muslim who fight for a world of Islam and every other things is consider evil.
I think everyone of us hv the right to fight for our cause, let said your house it suddenly taken half away by strangers, what do you do, you call the police, the police support the stranger, you call the govt, the govt is the stranger, you ask neighbour for help, the neighbour dun give a damn, you ask your friends and relatives for help, they can only help you abit from outside. Then you call your best partners for help, they can only sell or provide you the tools to fight your way out. And all these while the strangers in your house is increasing his domination of your space and you foreseen that most likely you will be force out. So you gathered your family members and tell them one thing...TO do Or die.
UNDERSTAND, u need to understand the cause before anything
I al heard they are nice people who helps the tamils in their territory by maintaining law and order but what they doing is wrong too, they kill tamils who disagee with them too. The jekyll and hyde nature of this terrorist org is very unique. They are driven by schizopernic ideology just like AL Qaeda.
The LTTE has also set up a parallel civil administration within its territory by establishing structures such as a police force, law courts, postal services, banks, administrative offices, television and radio broadcasting station, etc. The most prominent of the LTTE ‘state structure' is the ‘Tamil Eelam Judiciary’ and the ‘Tamil Eelam Police’. The ‘Tamil Eelam Police’, with its headquarters at Kilinochchi was formed in year 1993, and reportedly has several wings, including traffic, crime prevention, crime detection, information bureau, administration and a special force. LTTE cadres collect taxes, its courts administer their version of justice and the entire law and order machinery is LTTE-controlled.
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Whatsoever, I think the Tamil Tiger is a struggling lot that fight for their right and space, they are not those religious extremists who fight just to expand their religion. And when people fight for their cause where the world dun even want to listen to their plight, they ultimately would have to seek way of attacking their more powerful enemy. Like it or not, The Tamil Tiger was once seen as nothing but a small group of rebel punks by USA and the world, but today the world look at them differently, kind of respected them and are worry of their capability. If the world or US or UN had earlier listen to them and give them the land and space, I believe Sri Lanka would had been a very exotic place to visit.
For me, if one fight for his rights, he commands a little more respect.
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Originally posted by angel7030:
Whatsoever, I think the Tamil Tiger is a struggling lot that fight for their right and space, they are not those religious extremists who fight just to expand their religion. And when people fight for their cause where the world dun even want to listen to their plight, they ultimately would have to seek way of attacking their more powerful enemy. Like it or not, The Tamil Tiger was once seen as nothing but a small group of rebel punks by USA and the world, but today the world look at them differently, kind of respected them and are worry of their capability. If the world or US or UN had earlier listen to them and give them the land and space, I believe Sri Lanka would had been a very exotic place to visit.
For me, if one fight for his rights, he commands a little more respect.
The tactics the employ reminds me of psychopaths and lunatics. Be very careful of this organisation. they have the potential to take over the world if they adopt the ideology of Al Qaeda.
Yes i agree that what was done to them by the sinahalese is unfair. But LTTE just is so stubborn to negotiate. The stubborn nature has propelled them to the world's best terrorist group that ever existed.
One Euro terrorism expert said that the war in Sri Lanka is not about rights and space. It is about people who want to gain control of the continent.
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Originally posted by Socialist:
The tactics the employ reminds me of psychopaths and lunatics. Be very careful of this organisation. they have the potential to take over the world if they adopt the ideology of Al Qaeda.
Yes i agree that what was done to them by the sinahalese is unfair. But LTTE just is so stubborn to negotiate. The stubborn nature has propelled them to the world's best terrorist group that ever existed.
One Euro terrorism expert said that the war in Sri Lanka is not about rights and space. It is about people who want to gain control of the continent.
In a situation of an egg (tiger) against the big rock (usa and the sri lankan govt), are you going to expect one by one fighting, no, sure you are going to loose. Your weapons is not as advance, your army in numbers is so much smaller than your enemy, your movement is so restricted and your technology and training is almost zero in comparing with your enemy highly trained army and weapons.
Given all the loose loose situation above, they have to resort to underground suicide fighting, hide and seek, hit and run without much to think about but just one cause...just for one cause..and that is fighting for our liberation, our freedom, our family, our people, and our decendents and future, with that strong believe, they take on the mighty Govt and the world.
Such struggling occurs in history many times, you saw it in vietnam war, the china civil war under mao vs the national govt. All kinds of tactics was used to defeat the enemy. If you ask me why I dun condemn these peoples, i would said, I rather appreciated and admired their sacrification and strong believe for their people. Who will wrap himself or herself with bomb just to kill a barrack of enemy? not simple ya.
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Originally posted by angel7030:
In a situation of an egg (tiger) against the big rock (usa and the sri lankan govt), are you going to expect one by one fighting, no, sure you are going to loose. Your weapons is not as advance, your army in numbers is so much smaller than your enemy, your movement is so restricted and your technology and training is almost zero in comparing with your enemy highly trained army and weapons.
Given all the loose loose situation above, they have to resort to underground suicide fighting, hide and seek, hit and run without much to think about but just one cause...just for one cause..and that is fighting for our liberation, our freedom, our family, our people, and our decendents and future, with that strong believe, they take on the mighty Govt and the world.
Such struggling occurs in history many times, you saw it in vietnam war, the china civil war under mao vs the national govt. All kinds of tactics was used to defeat the enemy. If you ask me why I dun condemn these peoples, i would said, I rather appreciated and admired their sacrification and strong believe for their people. Who will wrap himself or herself with bomb just to kill a barrack of enemy? not simple ya.
i think you got it all wrong - to wedge a war for a independent state?
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U must understna the even Tamils hate the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabakharan. He has killed his own LTTE members and other Tamils as well.
The actions of Velupillai Pirabaharan, the leader of Tamil Tigers prove he is real tiger. The only business he knows is killing. He killed Kalvian Kaadu Chetty, the person who named the group "Tigers" and the original leader of the Tiger group
Then Pirabaharan tried to kill the next leader of Tigers, Uma Maheswaran in a shoot out in India . He killed the founding members of the Tigers, Michael and Pat Kunam. Pirabaharan himself tipped off the Police about the then leaders of Tigers, Kuttimani and Thangathurai and their whereabouts. This incident led to Kuttimani and Thangathurai’s incarceration until their terrible deaths in the Welikade jail.
Pirabaharan killed all the persons he worked with before he became the leader of the Tigers. He even killed the last surviving Tiger group founding member Sabalingam who was residing in France , because Sabalingam started writing about Pirabaharan's power hungry killings
After Pirabaharan became the leader of the Tigers, he started killing all Tamil political leaders, elected mayors, university professors and many innocent Tamils who had criticized Tigers. Pirabaharan banned all Tamil political organizations for the last twenty years and finally the international community including USA, Canada, European Union, India and Australia has banned the Tigers, mainly due to Tigers' continuous use of child soldiers and their terror activities.
Pirabaharan also killed hundreds of people who were members and supporters of Tamil political organizations. Pirabaharan killed the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He even killed the Sri Lankan President Premadasa who had provided helicopter loads of weapons and money to Tigers.
Pirabaharan clearly knows that under any circumstances except at gunpoint, majority of Tamils won't accept his leadership. That's why he killed all other Tamil Political leaders, to become as the so-called "Sole Leader of Tamils".
Ramachandran a.k.a MGR, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu gave Pirabaharan more than 1.25 billion rupees in 1985. Tamils provided their support to Tigers at gunpoint only and never helped Tigers to grow to this extent. Without MGR massive financial support and Premadasa's supply of weapons and money, Tigers won't exist today.
Tigers are terror loving trigger-happy killers, created by MGR and Premadasa. Tigers' killings are severely affecting the future of Tamils since the killings created a huge political vacuum.
In 1990 Pirabaharan wanted 100,000 Muslims in the North of Sri Lanka to get out within 24 hours, leaving their belongings and treasured valuables - that was a text book example of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Prabhakaran made Idi Amin look like an angel as Idi Amin had a heart to give the Asians in Uganda three months to leave the country and not 24 hours.
Most of the young people who are younger than 35 years, do not know the history of Tigers. They believe that, Tigers became so powerful, because of continuous outpouring support from majority of the Tamils,
If Tamils like Tigers, why is Greater Colombo flooded with Tamils from Tiger controlled areas? If majority of Tamils like Tigers, Tiger controlled areas should be flooded with Tamils from other areas. Why are Tamils trying to escape Tiger controlled areas, rather than migrating to Tiger controlled area?
If Tigers lift the exit pass system and allow free movement in the Tiger controlled areas, except the people on Tigers' payroll, every body else will leave Tiger controlled area. The only supporters of Tigers are that they either do not know anything about Tigers or gain benefits from Tigers.
Why are none of the Tamil business people investing in Tiger controlled areas? Why are even farmers leaving Tiger controlled areas? Why are Tamils living abroad trying to help their relatives to leave Tiger controlled areas? In Tiger controlled areas nobody can express any political opinions or different ideas.
Only things allowed to say are those that support Tigers. No way can anyone criticize Tigers and live the next day in a Tiger controlled area. Tigers that do not care about human lives will never understand even the basics of human rights. Even the hardcore Tiger supporters are not willing to relocate to Tiger controlled areas.
Majority of the Tamil refugees, who claimed asylum in western countries, told the authorities that they were running away from Tigers. If majority of Tamils who live abroad support Tigers, why do they have to be threatened to collect money for Tigers as reported by the Human Rights Watch?
If majority of the Tamils who live abroad support Tigers, those Tamils would line up in front of the Tiger branch offices to drop off money. The major serious problem Tamils are facing right now is there are hundreds of very young terror loving trigger happy Tigers who know only one thing, which is killing another human. Last thirty years, Tigers killed more Tamils than any body else. Also more Tigers were killed by Pirabaharan than any body else.
Majority of Sri Lankan Tamils are patiently hoping, praying and waiting for a new young democratic political visionary as a leader. Until then, gunpoint Tiger culture and never ending killing spree by Tigers will grow and continue. -
LTTE is formed due to the poor treatment of the tamils in Sri Lanka. If in the 1948 citizenship rights the sinahalese included the tamil people citizenship, this would not have happened. This act leads to all the unrest in all they have
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well, if u see a Tamil tiger and a poisonous snake
which do you kill first?
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Ruthless, dedicated Tamil leader faces final assault
Velupillai Prabhakaran has always said he will die fighting for a Tamil homeland, and if he cannot or will not fight, then comrades have orders to shoot him, douse his body with gasoline and set it alight
Globe and Mail Update
May 1, 2009
NEW DELHI and TORONTO - He called it, with no trace of irony, thatkodai, the Tamil word for "the gift of life." Velupillai Prabhakaran has asked it of so many of his followers in the last 30 years, the hundreds of Tamils who carried out suicide missions on his orders.
Will he give thatkodai himself, today, tomorrow, this week, as the horrifically violent showdown in Sri Lanka drags on? Today Mr. Prabhakaran is pinned into a five-kilometre sandy patch, encircled and outnumbered about 10 to one, as the Sri Lankan military pounds him from air and ground and sea. Friday the government urged tens of thousands of trapped civilians to flee the zone as it prepares for a final push to wipe out the rebels.
Mr. Prabhakaran has always said he will die fighting for Eelam, the Tamil homeland, and if he cannot or will not fight longer, then comrades have orders to shoot him, douse his body with gasoline and set it alight, to deprive the Sri Lankan government of that prize.
The grisly question of whether Mr. Prabhakaran, 54, the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), is about to give his life in the fight for Tamil independence is of relevance to more than his loyal fighters and supporters.
Rebel supporters by the hundreds of thousands have turned out in cities around the world over the past weeks, including Toronto, where they closed University Avenue for days.
Velupillai Prabhakaran, rebel leader, is shown in a 2006 photo provided by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Mr. Prabhakaran leads a movement that has at times been estimated to be the largest, non-state fighting force in the world, one that has successfully destabilized Sri Lanka for 30 years, that has assassinated two heads of state and murdered countless civilians and embroiled a region in bloody conflict for decades.
And more than in any other nationalist movement, Mr. Prabhakaran's is built in his image. He is no showman; he has not courted the media to project a larger-than-life personality. He has given only one press conference in 30 years. In fact, he is so soft-spoken that several people given a rare audience have failed to realize they were in the presence of the infamous leader of the Tigers until he stated his name with a gentle smile.
Rather, Mr. Prabhakaran's status stems from the loyalty of his movement and his people — a potent mix of adulation and terror — inspired by his total devotion to the cause and by his sheer ruthlessness.
"The movement as a whole can be described in two words, Velupillai Prabhakaran," said M.R. Narayan Swamy, an Indian writer whose books on Sri Lanka's war include a rare Prabhakaran biography called Inside an Elusive Mind.
"The LTTE was Prabhakaran and Prabhakaran was the LTTE. It had only one leader, only one god — that was Prabhakaran and everything that happened in the LTTE in terms of major policy decisions all had Prabhakaran's stamp."
Mr. Prabhakaran, in his long struggle, came close to realizing his dream of "Eelam," an independent homeland for the Tamil people in the northern and eastern portion of Sri Lanka (Tamils make up about 13 per cent of Sri Lanka's population). At one point, he ruled over a sort of Potemkin police state in much of that territory as the Tigers set up a parallel civil administration, police force, banks and tax collection. He came even closer to Eelam when the strength of the rebel insurgency forced the Sri Lankan government into a Norwegian-brokered peace process, beginning with a ceasefire in 2002, in which real autonomy for the Tamils was on the table. It collapsed in violence four years later.
But as a bloody endgame of sorts plays out on a tiny strip of Sri Lankan beach, it is clear that Mr. Prabhakaran's Eelam empire has slipped away: The Tigers are all but destroyed as a conventional military force and most of the people who once lived under their rule are starving in squalid refugee camps or desperately trying to get into one.
Mr. Prabhakaran lost because he did nothing to convince Sri Lankans or international brokers that he was serious about wanting peace, and because the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka elected a leader, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was not remotely interested in making peace with him in any case. Two years ago, President Rajapaksa launched an all-out military offensive against the Tigers, pumping new soldiers and new funds into armed forces demoralized by their losing battle against the insurgency.
Still, the person who may know Mr. Prabhakaran best, outside his inner circle of fighting colleagues, doubts that he will be found if soldiers overrun his last stronghold.
"The noose tightens, but I would think he has already left that little sliver of land," Anita Pratap said. Ms. Pratap, one of India's leading journalists, is the author of Island of Blood, about Sri Lanka's civil war, and the sole journalist of whom Mr. Prabhakaran made something of a regular confidante. "He is an excellent military strategist, a good chess player who anticipates his enemy's every move. I don't see him doodling his thumbs and waiting for the army to advance and capture him."
Many others, starting with the Sri Lankan military, disagree with Ms. Pratap. The army says that senior Tigers who were captured in the past few days report that Mr. Prabhakaran is hunkered down with the last rebel forces.
A Tamil journalist based in Colombo who has covered the Tigers for 20 years — and who like so many others refuses to be quoted by name talking about the rebel chief — said he doubts the vastly outnumbered rebels would still be fighting if Mr. Prabhakaran were not in the middle of them.
Mr. Narayan agreed. "I have no doubts he is there. I'm sure they'd like to take him alive, but that will depend on Prabhakaran and, if the past is any guide, he will not let them take him alive."
There was little in Mr. Prabhakaran's early life to suggest that he was headed for such ferocity. He was the youngest of four children, born Nov. 26, 1954, into a Hindu family of the low fisherman's caste in a small town in northern Sri Lanka. His father was a mid-level civil servant. He was a mediocre student, whose affectionate but stern father despaired a bit of his prospects. But he was also an avid reader, who devoured biographies, and in particular became fascinated with two Indians, Subhash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh, who were leaders in the armed struggle for independence from Britain. He embraced Mr. Bose's mantra, "I shall fight for the freedom of my land until I shed the last drop of blood."
Mr. Prabhakaran entered his teens at a time of rising Tamil nationalism, after the Sinhalese-dominated government implemented a series of measures — making Sinhala the official language; Buddhism, the religion of the Sinhalese, the national religion; demanding higher grades of Tamil students to let them into universities; and giving Sinhalese priority access to government jobs — whose brutal chauvinism the government remains unwilling to acknowledge today.
Many Tamils, especially young people, were frustrated with the lack of a radical response from their leaders, and small militant groups began to form. After joining several political youth groups, Mr. Prabhakaran founded the organization that would become the LTTE in 1972. Three years later, using a rusty, old revolver and bullets he made from matches, Mr. Prabhakaran walked up to the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiyappah, a Tamil considered complicit with the government in Colombo, and shot him as he entered a Hindu temple. Mr. Prabhakaran, as would become the Tiger signature, simply melted away in the melee. When police came to his family home days later, he was long gone, and had taken the precaution of burning any family photos in which he appeared, Mr. Swamy writes.
Mr. Prabhakaran began life on the run in earnest; he was never caught in Sri Lanka, no matter how wide a net the government cast. He was only jailed once, in one of his periods of operating from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, just a short boat trip from Sri Lanka, when a squabble with another Tiger leader led to a shootout in the street. But sympathy for the rebels in the Tamil state was strong; India would not extradite him and soon enough he slipped away from house arrest and was smuggled in a fishing boat back to Sri Lanka.
Over the following years he cemented his hold on the Tiger leadership and began to fund the organization with meticulously planned but dramatic bank robberies. Mr. Prabhakaran vetted would-be rebels for loyalty and stability, then put them through intense training in jungle camps in India and in Sri Lanka. There was gruelling physical training, military-strategy classes, target practice and lessons in the use of the heavier weapons, which the Tigers began to acquire with stolen cash and donations from sympathetic Tamils abroad. Recurring episodes of anti-Tamil violence, and a lack of intervention by a hard-line Sinhalese government, provided him with no shortage of recruits.
In the midst of this, Mr. Prabhakaran got married. His relationship with his wife, Mathivathani Erambu, began awkwardly when he had her abducted — she was among a group of students on a political hunger strike that the Tigers disrupted. She and the others were spirited off to a Tiger base, where the others quailed but she, it's said, was undaunted by the rebel chief and openly joked with him.
The Tiger movement forbade relations between cadres at the time, so Mr. Prabhakaran rewrote the rules to allow senior LTTE officers to wed. He also had to conquer her family; she is from a much higher caste. They had two sons and a daughter. Today his wife, younger son and daughter are believed to be outside Sri Lanka — variously reported to be in India, Ireland or South Africa — while his eldest son, Charles Anthony, is reported to fight alongside him.
Mr. Prabhakaran is described as a loving father, a warm host, a man with a weakness for boiled crabs and chocolate who once gave his rebels orders never to kill anyone while they were eating. But under his leadership, the Tigers had no soft side. The LTTE quickly moved from attacks on police and soldiers to bombing busloads of civilians and Buddhist places of worship.
One former LTTE fighter, who joined as an 18-year-old and rose to the rank of military trainer, remembers a fierce, if warped, sense of justice. "He grew up with the dharma thing [the Hindu idea of "a righteous duty"], you know, fair or not," said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. If Sinhalese killed Tamils, Mr. Prabhakaran would take some Sinhalese lives in response "to show that you don't do that. … Every country has a policy … to show that 'if you do that, I will do this,' so that [their enemies] understand the language."
And all tactics were fair, he told his supporters, given the "asymmetrical" nature of the conflict that pitted a small insurgency against a well-armed state force. The Tigers had a great many teenagers in their ranks, leading to criticism of "child soldiers," although Mr. Prabhakaran, who began fighting at 16, likely fails to see a problem with that. When the recruits did not come voluntarily, the LTTE began to conscript, forcing each household in the region it controlled to send a fighter. Many Tamil families supported the Tigers, but whether they did or not, they began to face regular pressure to supply funds. Families that did not supply either fighters or cash might see their children disappear in the night, their house burn, or one member return shell-shocked from brutal Tiger interrogation or "political retraining."
Mr. Prabhakaran, a few of whose cadres had been trained by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Lebanon, drew on the tactic of suicide bombing then in early use by Hezbollah, and he pioneered the use of the explosive vest. He called his bombers, those from whom he demanded thatkodai, the Black Tigers, and nearly half of them were women.
It was a young woman who carried out the mission that Mr. Swamy and many others view as Mr. Prabhakaran's great mistake: She approached Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi as he left a political rally in 1991 and offered him a flower garland, and then bent to touch his feet in apparent respect, setting off her explosive vest as she did so. She killed him, herself, and 18 others. The attack was intended to keep India — which had sent a peacekeeping force, that wound up fighting the rebels, to Sri Lanka in the late 1980s — from further meddling, but it had the effect of permanently souring Indian sympathy for the Tigers.
In 1993, Mr. Prabhakaran sent Black Tigers to kill Ranasinghe Premadasa, the Sri Lankan president with whom he had been allied against the Indian forces; he ordered the killing of the opposition leader, Gamini Dissanayake, and he was equally ruthless in hunting down Tamil politicians he considered insufficiently loyal. In 1996, several squads of intended suicide attackers blew up the Central Bank in Colombo, killing more than 100 people. He sent bombers in 1999 to kill president Chandrika Kumaratunga, with whom he had been engaged in peace negotiations, but the attempt failed, leaving her partially blind. Thirty-five others were killed in the attempt.
Why were so many willing to don the vest of the Black Tigers? And why did so many in the Tamil diaspora willingly pour money into LTTE coffers?
Mr. Prabhakaran had no real ideology. He read about Che Guevera but had little interest in socialism, even when the revolutionary ideology was sweeping rebel movements in Latin America and elsewhere in Asia. Mr. Swamy quoted him as once saying he had little interest in "isms" but for one: "I want all these caste differences to go." (Mr. Prabhakaran has been an unusual champion of gender equality, promoting women through the highest ranks of the Tigers and not differentiating between tasks given to male and female cadres.) Nor has Mr. Prabhakaran relied on charisma or great skill as an orator. Ms. Pratap said that when she first met him, her disappointment — the legendary guerrilla leader was short, a bit dumpy and looked like a middle-aged merchant — was so visible on her face that Mr. Prabhakaran laughed. But, she added this week, within moments, she knew he was extraordinary.
"There was no pretence or mendacity, hyperbole or chest-beating patriotism. … There was no spin in Prabhakaran. His sincerity was simple, direct, plain, transparent. That gave him a clarity of thinking and purpose that I knew was unusual and exceptional," she said.
"I realized during that first interview that no way this man could be bought or bullied. … Prabhakaran was too tough to be browbeaten by sticks and too detached from the trappings of power to be enticed by the usual carrots that politicians salivate over —money, position, titles, etc. … I also saw that he had the determination and the intelligence, the courage and the ruthlessness to pursue his cause."
Another Tamil Toronto resident who knew Mr. Prabhakaran well — and who also refused to be quoted by name for fear his old association would bring unwanted attention from Canadian security agencies — described his own seduction by the Tiger leader. They grew up near each other. When the man was young, Mr. Prabhakaran approached him to ask for some help for the new rebel movement.
"The first time I met him, I could see he is a different person, that was my feeling throughout," the man recalled in a recent interview. "Even when you look at him, his eyes are so powerful, you know. He can just capture you. … I'm not exaggerating. These are my feelings. From that time onward, I know he's the person who is going to lead the Tamils from the slavery, from the injustice of the Sinhala majority."
The man soon found himself working closely with the Tigers from a base in India.
And even his detractors have to acknowledge Mr. Prabhakaran's extraordinary force of will, Mr. Swamy said. "Apart from all he has done — negative or positive, depending on which side of the fence you're on — there must be something," he said. "When you ask people to die for you, there must be something in you that causes people to do it. The fact that he could sit in the jungle and set up air strips and make planes take off and bomb Colombo, that's something."
Mr. Prabhakaran always had the ability to speak powerfully to Tamil alienation; he offered angry people the promise of revenge, he tapped skillfully into their frustration and he seemed always devoted to the cause, with none of the tendency to pander that earlier leaders had, the Toronto resident said. "They feel, 'This is right — we don't mind supporting this man.' He had certain traits that made people follow him, and quite blindly at that."
And yet the most critical blindness, in the end, appears to be Mr. Prabhakaran's own. He completely failed, for example, to gauge the sea change after 9/11, when organizations using terrorist tactics lost all support. Canada listed the Tigers as a terrorist group in 2006, and barred any fundraising in Canada. By refusing to stop his attacks, Mr. Prabhakaran eroded his support in international quarters — deeply frustrating the once-sympathetic Norwegian negotiators, for example — and moderate Tamils.
"Prabhakaran didn't understand what he was in," said the one-time Tiger activist who now lives in Toronto. "The Tigers didn't understand how to build bridges."
Mr. Prabhakaran repeatedly failed to rally world opinion behind the Tamil cause; instead, he did the opposite through use of tactics such as suicide bombings and conscripting children. He lacked the political savvy of the African National Congress or the Irish Republican Army to transition to a legitimate political entity, he said.
That, he concluded, reflects several things. First, Mr. Prabhakaran's own lack of education and his distrust of better-educated people. His disdain for debate means that Mr. Prabhakaran has routinely failed to anticipate the negative results of his just-do-it approach, he said. "He is a very practical man. That is his strength … and a limitation, too."
Second, he survived as long as he has only by intense paranoia, and, for the past several decades, by isolation. He has lived for decades in a series of underground bunkers ringed by elite bodyguards drawn from his extended family, emerging only once a year to speak to the faithful on what he calls Heroes' Day.
Mr. Prabhakaran's fighters are infamous for the cyanide necklaces they wear: several crystals of poison suspended in a tiny glass vial, hung on a cord. Faced with unavoidable capture, the wearer is to bite down on the vial; cuts from the glass on the tongue and mouth will send the cyanide quickly into the bloodstream. Mr. Prabhakaran once said that he wears two capsules, just to be sure.
If it comes to that, will the Tigers outlive him?
He has groomed no successor, nor allowed anyone to rise to a position in the organization where they might earn that role, except possibly, Ms. Pratap noted, his son Charles Anthony. "But it's easy to inherit the title, but very hard to inherit the mandate," she added.
If she is wrong, and he is not now outside Sri Lanka plotting his next move but rather trapped on the beach, then the Tigers as an organization — the cult of suicide bombing, the Eelam-or-nothing ideology, the determination to militarize the Tami struggle — may die with him. But not, she noted, their cause.
"Prabhakaran did not rise from nothing. There is a historical context in which he grew and rose to what he became. If the Sri Lankan establishment settles the grievances of the Tamils in a fair and just manner, then even the diehard Tamil resistance will wither away. But if there is no genuine political settlement, then it's a matter of time when the Tamil resistance will renew."
His one-time neighbour who later became a Tiger propagandist feels much the same. "My intuition says you'll never be able to catch him and you'll never be able to kill him," he said. But if they do? "They'll never be able to eradicate this movement from the minds of the Tamils."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/
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well, if u see a Tamil tiger and a poisonous snake
which do you kill first?
Depends who poses a threat to me.
US says LTTE is the master of all terrorist groups
Pot calling kettle black.
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Originally posted by Socialist:
The tactics the employ reminds me of psychopaths and lunatics. Be very careful of this organisation. they have the potential to take over the world if they adopt the ideology of Al Qaeda.
Yes i agree that what was done to them by the sinahalese is unfair. But LTTE just is so stubborn to negotiate. The stubborn nature has propelled them to the world's best terrorist group that ever existed.
One Euro terrorism expert said that the war in Sri Lanka is not about rights and space. It is about people who want to gain control of the continent.
You have confused LTTE with Al Qaeda.
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I think LTTE kills Tamils who disagree with them to avoid resistance and traitors i believe. But still KIlling is wrong. People who initially sympathasised with them came to realise that they are not what they preach. They have become a money and power hungry organisation
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First its Al-Qaeda, Second its LTTE, whats next?
All words from the mouth of US! How can i ever trust them again?
Bush did not managed to find the weapons of destruction in Iraq. How can he explain that now? All pushed to Obama?
I think, Bush is the real terrorist!
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Originally posted by angel7030:
But Tamil tiger in the zoo very cute leh...its stripes is very beautiful.
bengal tiger you mean.
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Anybody who uses civilians as human shields to protect their selfish little asses ought to be annihilated.
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Originally posted by seyKai:
i think you got it all wrong - to wedge a war for a independent state?
If the british had not given us an independent status, we might be still fighting with them as guerillas or gorilla, but the brits are gentlemen enough to let us be what we are..and all these liberation come after WW2 when the Jap and German had made the Brit poorer and shown that the mighty Brit also cannot protect us. -
Originally posted by wonderamazement:
bengal tiger you mean.
No, Tiger Beer -
Originally posted by dotaro:
Anybody who uses civilians as human shields to protect their selfish little asses ought to be annihilated.
When the jap fought Nanjin, what you expect the Chinese do, without any weapon, they roll themselve with bomb strapped body beneath the Jap tanks and artillery vehicles, all for the love of his/her country. -
a good leader will nvr kill his ppl
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Originally posted by Aang:
a good leader will nvr kill his ppl
good leader of course dun kill his ppl lah, a good leader is only consider good if he/she knows how to make use his/her peoples to his/her advantages, just like our govt. Kill us for what?? slowly slowly squeeze and torture you better, then when you cannot tarhan, gives some goodies and then start all over again.