Tamil Tigers overstay Thailand
welcome By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Within the space of three weeks, Sri
Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels have earned unflattering
stripes in Thailand, a country they once roamed freely
in search of weapons for their separatist struggle.
Jut recently, the Thai navy named the Tamil
Tigers as one of possibly two militant groups they
suspected of trying to ship a cache of weapons from a
resort island in the southern Trang province.
Last Wednesday, the navy mounted a dramatic
strike - including a helicopter landing - to seize the
weapons, which included 17 AK-47 assault rifles and over
1,000 bullets. Also, two days before, three Sri Lankan
men with alleged links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE), as the rebels are formally known, appeared
in a Thai court to hear the dates being fixed for their
trial early next year.
The men - Thevarajah
Sasikaran, 29, from Vavuniya, a town that borders the
territory under LTTE control in northern Sri Lanka,
Aseervathan Sathyapavan, 34, and Gunapalan Sujith, 27,
from towns in the Jaffna Peninsula - were arrested by
the police in the southern port town of Ranong in May.
The weapons they had in their possession included 10 9mm
Glock pistols with silencers, three 11mm HK Mark 23
pistols and 45,000 rounds of ammunition.
But
what could probably most upsetting for the Tamil rebels,
who have been trying to gain international respect
during their current quest for peace with Colombo, is
the notoriety they gained during the summit of 21
Pacific Rim economies held in Bangkok in mid-October.
The LTTE was the only militant group named in a
background note issued by the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) secretariat as the type of rebel
organization that had profited from the easy
accessibility of man-portable air defense systems
(MANPADs), such as the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft
missiles.
There are systems available in the
Asia-Pacific region to purchase MANPADs from "regional
black markets or stolen military stockpiles", the
background note read. "Sri Lankan insurgents acquired
MANPADs via Cambodia."
At the end of their
two-day summit, APEC leaders, including US President
George W Bush, resolved to crack down on any terrorist
or "violent subnational groups" who sought MANPADs in
the Asia-Pacific region.
The Bangkok Declaration
called on the APEC member economies, which include
Australia, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, to
have strict domestic controls, to secure stockpiles and
to take domestic action to "regulate the production,
transfer and brokering" of MANPADs.
For the
LTTE, the combination of these three developments adds
up to an uncomfortable reality - the erosion of the
freedom they used to enjoy in Thailand to both secure
arms and use the country as a transshipment point for
weapons.
According to a South Asian diplomat,
the climate in Thailand for the Tamil rebels will become
increasingly difficult in the wake of Bangkok's
commitment to throw its weight behind the US
government's "war on terror". In fact, a mid-September
decision by the government of Thai Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra echoed that view. Thaksin announced
that he wanted to make this Southeast Asian country
"free of firearms" in five to six years' time.
It was a statement aimed at the estimated 250
gun shops that dot this country, some of whom, according
to the Thai police's crime suppression division, have
been a major supplier of weapons to militant groups
waging violent campaigns in South and Southeast Asia.
During the 1990s, the coast of southern
Thailand, including the famed tourist resort of Phuket,
was a pivotal pipeline to supply the LTTE's strongholds
in northern Sri Lanka with arms and ammunition.
Intelligence reports of that period point to four
sources from where the LTTE's chief arms procurer,
Tharmalingma Shanmugham, alias Kumaran Pathmanathan, got
weapons: Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and even Vietnam.
"Cambodia has been one source from which the
[LTTE got] SAMs," or surface-to-air missiles, said Iqbal
Athas, defense correspondent of Sri Lanka's Sunday Times
newspaper. "SAMs have been very useful to the LTTE to
curtail the air power of the Sri Lankan Air Force. They
first used it in April 1995 to down two Avro aircraft."
The LTTE is also known to have used Thailand's
Andaman coast to strengthen its capability to attack Sri
Lanka's navy. That included the training that members of
its Sea Tiger Wing allegedly received from Norwegian
ex-special forces to launch underwater demolition
strikes.
Furthermore, a ranking LTTE member,
Christy Reginald Lawrence, ran a shipyard in Phuket
where, in 2000, the Thai police stumbled upon a
half-built miniature submarine. A speedboat he owned
also had propaganda material for the Tamil rebels, along
with non-lethal material that could be put to potent
use.
Thailand's significance for the LTTE's
global arms procurement network was affirmed that year
when the London-based shipping publication Lloyd's List
said that the islands off the country's Andaman coast
were strategic to the rebels' shipping operations.
According to Lloyd's List, the Tamil rebels had
set up shop along Thailand's southern coast after they
were asked to leave a Myanmar island in 1996. "Thailand
has remained an operational base [for the LTTE] over the
years," said Athas.
The choice of southern
Thailand by the LTTE is logical, added the South Asian
diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There is
virtually a short and direct route from, say, Phuket to
the northern coasts of Sri Lanka that the Tigers
control."
But as the past three weeks show, the
Tamil rebels may no longer have as easy a run as before
as Thailand appears keen on tightening the noose around
the LTTE's gun-running operations.
The expected
trial of the three Sri Lankan men arrested for
possessing arms underscores this shift even more than
the verbal pledges made by Bangkok at the APEC summit.
This is, after all, the first case of its kind in
Thailand where three suspected Tamil rebels are being
tried for the illegal possession of weapons.
For
Sri Lankan officials following the case, this could well
expose how deep the LTTE's arms procurement and shipment
operations in Thailand go.
(Inter Press Service)
Nov 11, 2003
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