 "Tamil leader claims Prabhakaran still alive: A look back at LTTE leader’s reign of terror and his death in 2009")
A top Tamil leader has claimed that Velupillai Prabhakaran, chief of the outlawed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is still alive. Pazha Nedumaran, a noted Tamil nationalist leader, declared that the international (political) atmosphere and fierce opposition to Rajapaksas by the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka ‘has created the right conditions’ for Prabhakaran to emerge. Prabhakaran, one may recall, was killed in 2009 by the Sri Lankan Army. Let’s take a look at who Prabhakaran was, what we know about his death, and Nedumaran’s claims: Who was he? Sri Lanka saw a civil war fought from 1983 to 2009 over the minority Tamils’ demand for ‘Eelam’. ‘Eelam’ in Tamil denotes the homeland of the Tamil people. Tamil Eelam is a proposed independent state that many Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Born in 1954 in Jaffna, Prabhakaran was a larger-than-life character who championed the dreams of Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils.
Seldom seen in public, his word was unquestioned until his death at age 54.
He governed by fiat over a de facto state in one-third of this Indian Ocean island nation. Even many Tamils who abhorred the Tigers’ suicide bombings and assassinations embraced him as their hope for dignity and equal rights in Sri Lanka. The man known to friends as “Thamby,” or little brother in Tamil, started out with a few friends by robbing banks to fund their rebel group in the 1970s, and eventually turned it into one of the world’s most well-funded and well-armed irregular groups. The son of a government employee, Prabhakaran dropped out of school at 16 to fight for Tamil independence and has been accused of drafting thousands of child soldiers, some as young as 10, and sending hundreds of people to blow themselves up. The LTTE at its peak ruled a quarter of Sri Lanka’s land mass, maintaining a standing army, navy and even a combat air wing of small planes that carried out attacks in the capital and elsewhere during its two years aloft from 2007-2009. A stocky man who brooked no dissent from his own organization or the wider Tamil community, Prabhakaran has been accused of eliminating all of his opponents, including lieutenants. The list included nearly every moderate Tamil politician in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Jehan Perera, executive director at the National Peace Council in Colombo, in a conversation with DW called Prabhakaran an ‘aggressive and extremely ruthless’ individual. “He was a person who fought for an ideal and that ideal was a country, which Tamil could rule and he never gave up on that idea,” Perera added. “He killed anyone who stood in his way whether they were Sri Lankan leaders or leaders of Tamil parties with different views.” “He was a person who fought for an ideal and that ideal was a country, which Tamil could rule and he never gave up on that idea.” Before meeting his end near a marshy lagoon in the land he fought three decades to establish as a separate nation for Sri Lanka’s Tamils, Prabhakaran had almost single-handedly propelled one of the world’s most brutal and intractable wars. He sent thousands of foes and followers to their deaths, either by signing off on their assassinations or ordering them to blow themselves up with a bomb strapped to their chest. Prabhakaran was most often pictured in his trademark tiger stripe camouflage with men and women he had sent to their deaths on suicide missions. One notable photo showed his followers in combat boots, while he wore penny loafers. A fan of action movies, Prabhakaran initially called his group the Tamil New Tigers, which produced the acronym TNT. Although he caught the attention of authorities shortly thereafter, his notoriety grew after he killed the pro-government mayor of the northern city of Jaffna in 1975. A year later, he changed his growing insurgent group’s name to reflect his goal of creating Eelam, the Tamil word for homeland. The LTTE quickly became the most brutally efficient of several groups formed to fight against what they saw as mistreatment by successive governments, all led by the Sinhalese ethnic majority since independence from Britain in 1948. By the time Sri Lanka’s civil war got under way in 1983, the LTTE had sidelined almost all of them. Prabhkaran lifted a ban on marriage in the LTTE when he married university student Mathi Vathani in 1984. Prabhakaran’s death The campaign, led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to establish a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation, came to an end in May 2009 when Prabhakaran was killed by the Sri Lankan Army in Mullaithviu’s Vellamulivaikkal in May 2009. In the end, Prabhakaran appeared to have no time to bite the cyanide capsule he wore to take in case of capture.
Video footage showed what the military said was Prabhakaran’s corpse with the top of his head blown off.
Photographs of the familiar mustachioed face, a handkerchief covering the fatal head wound, were splashed on the front pages of Sri Lanka’s national papers. His dog tags and ID card were also put on display for the cameras. In 2009, the Sri Lankan government said that DNA tests proved Prabhakaran’s death and proclaimed victory against his Tamil Tiger rebels, crushing a 25-year rebellion that the UN estimates had cost between 80,000 to 100,000 lives. “Prabhakaran’s body was found near Nandikadal lagoon (in the No Fire Zone),” military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said at the time, as per NDTV. He further added that Prabhakaran was in uniform and his head had bullet wounds. However, many Tamils didn’t believe it. A pro-LTTE website at the time raised questions about his demise. The pro-rebel Tamilnet website at the time claimed Prabhakaran was still “alive and safe”. “I wish to inform the global Tamil community distressed witnessing the final events of the war that our beloved leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive and safe,” LTTE’s international relations head S Pathmanathan was quoted as saying by the website. However, Pathmanathan a week later told BBC that their “incomparable leader had attained martyrdom.” The LTTE leader at the time said Prabhakaran had died on 17 May but did not give details of the circumstances, it reported. Pathmanathan said the Tigers would now use “non-violent” methods to fight for the rights of Tamils. The Tamils allege that thousands were massacred during the final stages of the war, a charge the Sri Lankan Army denies. According to a UN report, at least 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed in just the final months of the civil war. India has been pressing Sri Lanka to implement the 13A which was brought in after the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement of 1987. Sinhalese, mostly Buddhist, make up nearly 75 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 22 million population, while Tamils are 15 per cent. The majority hardline Buddhist clergy has been thwarting attempts for reconciliation with the Tamil minority since 1948 when the country gained its independence from Britain. What has Nedumaran claimed? Nedumaran, Tamil president of World Tamil Federation, claimed that Prabhakaran is doing well and that he will soon “announce a plan for the liberation of the Tamil race.” Prabhakaran is all set to soon announce a plan for the dawn of the Eelam Tamils in Sri Lanka, Nedumaran claimed. He added that the announcement would end ‘planned’ suspicions spread about Prabhakaran. “I would like to reveal some truths about LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. I am happy to reveal a truth which would dispel doubts about Prabhakaran. We will like to tell all the Tamil people that LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran is healthy and fine,” Nedumaran said. He further appealed to Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Tamils living in all other parts of the world to stand together and extend him their full support. Till such time the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was powerful, they did not allow any forces inimical to India to find a toehold in the regions held by them in Sri Lanka, Nedumaran said. “LTTE has fought against that. In any situation, the LTTE never sought any help from the countries which were against India. China has set its foot in Sri Lanka and is trying to project India as Sri Lanka’s enemy,” Pazha Nedumaran noted. Nedumaran expressed concern that China has extended its dominance in the Indian Ocean also. “We request the Indian government to take steps to counter China,” he added. “In these critical times, we request unity among the Tamil Nadu government, Tamil politicians, and Tamil Eelam people to stand with Prabhakaran” Nedumaran added. When asked whether he had contacted Prabhakaran, Nedumaran said he had contact with Prabhakaran’s family members and based on theinformation he received he was “releasing this based on their approval.” Queried on how the LTTE leader who was declared dead by the Sri Lankan government managed to survive Nedumaran said, “No doubt that everyone including me want to know where he is. However he will soon come to fore and the world will know about it.”
It is important to note that this isn’t the first time Nedumaran has made such a claim.
As per The News Minute, Nedumaran in 2010 claimed the war would happen in Eelam again and that Prabhakaran would lead it. In February 2016, Nedumaran yet again claimed Prabhakaran was alive and that the Indian government never confirmed his death. Sri Lanka’s Director of Media and Army Spokesperson Brigadier Ravi Herath dismissed Nedumaran’s claim. BBC Tamil quoted Herath as saying Sri Lanka has evidence of Prabhakaran being killed in the last phase of the civil war in 2009. “We also have DNA evidence. He was killed on 18 May, 2009,” Herath said. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .