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Tamil Tiger killing jeopardizes
aid
By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO - The murder of a high ranking
Tamil Tiger political leader in eastern Sri Lanka
two days ago is likely to heighten tensions
between the rebels and government of President
Chandrika Kumaratunga. It is also feared that this
could cast a shadow over the country's
post-tsunami reconstruction efforts.
"We
fear that these killings would have a serious
impact on the humanitarian relief work undertaken
now and for the recommencement of peace talks,"
the Tigers said in a statement 24 hours after the
killings.
E Kaushalyan, political head for
the eastern Ampara and Batticaloa districts for
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - as
the Tigers are formally known - was gunned down on
Monday night on the main highway that links
Batticaloa, the rebel stronghold. He died
instantly when assassins who had followed the van
in which he was travelling opened fire at point
blank range. Former Tamil parliamentarian
Chandranehru Arianayagam and four others also died
in the attack.
The Tigers immediately
blamed a renegade group led by former Eastern
Commander Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, alias
Colonel Karuna, who defected to government-held
areas last April after a failed rebellion.
Kaushalyan had served under Karuna but opted to
side with the main leadership based in northern
Kilinochchi when Karuna announced his rebellion.
"The assailants have not been identified
as yet, but it is believed that this is the handy
work of paramilitary groups having links with the
military in view of the location and its proximity
to two military complexes," the LTTE peace
secretariat in Kilinochchi said.
The
military, however, denied any involvement in the
attack.
"Kaushalyan is not an ordinary
man, he was an emerging leader," M K Eleventhan,
member of parliament for the pro-Tiger Tamil
National Alliance told IPS.
At the time of
his death, Kaushalyan was coordinating the tsunami
relief work in areas under Tiger control in the
two districts. The Amapara and Batticaloa
districts were the two worst affected areas in the
country with more than 15,000 deaths, when killer
waves on December 26 lashed the coastlines of Sri
Lanka and a dozen other countries in the Indian
Ocean rim.
"It is like a combination of
evil forces, that at this crucial hour this has
happened," Eleventhan said.
The LTTE has
accused the government of not channeling
sufficient aid to the northeast, despite the
colossal damage caused by the tsunami. The two
parties are yet to come up with a mechanism on how
aid and reconstruction work will be carried out in
areas under the Tigers.
At least 35,000
people in Sri Lanka are known to have died in the
Indian Ocean tsunami and thousands more are
missing. The number of homeless people is put at
between 800,000 and one million.
The
government, while denying any link with the
assassins, however admitted in a statement Tuesday
that the assassins had intended to disrupt the
rapprochement taking place between the Tigers and
Colombo since the tsunami.
Peace talks
have been stalled since April 2003, but the
government and the Tigers have shown an
inclination to work together following the tsunami
- spawned by a huge undersea quake in the northern
tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island.
LTTE
chief negotiator Anton Balasingham said recently
that the Tigers were willing to put politics
behind in order to provide tsunami relief.
Koushalyan is the most senior Tamil Tiger
to be gunned down since the rebels and troops
began observing a truce that Norway brokered in
February 2002. More than 60,000 people have died
in violence in Sri Lanka since the Tigers began
their fight for a homeland for minority Tamils in
the island's north and east.
"Such
killings are the last thing we want," said Lalith
Weeratunga, secretary to Prime Minister Mahinda
Rajapakse. "Just when things were moving on the
reconstruction front, this incident has occurred
which can throw post-tsunami work out of gear if
clashes intensify."
Last week, a
consortium of donors warned that the
reconstruction effort should take note of the 25
year-old civil conflict and ceasefire. "The
allocation of resources both domestic and
international should be strictly guided by the
identified needs and local priorities, without
discrimination on the basis of political,
religious, ethnic or gender considerations," the
World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the Japan
Bank of International Development said in a joint
report titled "Sri Lanka Post-tsunami Recovery
Program, Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment".
"Reconstruction interventions should be
done in such a way that as to build confidence
between the different actors in the process,"
added the joint report. The report said that Sri
Lanka would need US$1.5 billion to recover from
the tsunami damage and identified the northeast as
the area that was damaged the most.
The
head of the Tigers' political wing, S P
Thamilselvan, however, skipped a meeting on
Tuesday with the three donors to discuss relief
programmes.
Many who have interacted with
Kaushalyan, including those in the Sri Lankan
army, admit that one of his strengths was his
endearing personality despite a military
background. "He represented a brighter future for
the LTTE and the Tamil people because he was so
eager to learn and to adapt to acceptable ways,"
said a source with a multinational agency working
in Batticaloa. "Kausalyan was a decent and
soft-spoken man who was tired of war."
Kaushalyan was also credited with holding
back extreme elements within the LTTE military
wing in the east from taking drastic action in the
face of attacks by the Karuna faction. The
possibility that his death would be avenged by an
all out attack on the renegade group is now a very
real possibility.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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