Tigers come clean on Rajiv Gandhi's
killing By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - After 20 years, the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has admitted
unequivocally that it carried out the
assassination of former Indian prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi.
"[The assassination of
Rajiv] was well-planned and done with the
concurrence of [LTTE chief Velupillai] Prabhakaran
and [intelligence chief] Pottu Amman," Kumaran
Pathmanathan, or KP as he is better known, said in
an interview with CNN-IBN/Firstpost.com.
Pathmanathan headed the LTTE's "international
secretariat" and was its chief arms procurer
before taking over the LTTE leadership in 2009.
"I want to say to the Indian people and
especially the [Rajiv]
Gandhi family. I want to
apologize for Prabhakaran's mistake," KP said.
At an election rally on May 21, 1991, at
Sriperumbudur in Indian's southern state of Tamil
Nadu, a female suicide bomber named Dhanu blew
herself up, killing Rajiv and 15 others.
While the LTTE has obliquely admitted to
the killing in the past, this is the first time it
has named Prabhakaran. The Tamil leader was killed
in Colombo's final victory over the Tamil rebels
in May 2009. Pottu Amman is also widely believed
to have been killed in the rout, though his body
was never been found.
India's relations
with the LTTE, already strained in 1987 by the
latter's rejection of an India-Sri Lanka accord
and the outbreak of hostilities between the rebels
and the Indian Peace Keeping Force, snapped after
the Rajiv assassination.
A year after the
killing, the LTTE was outlawed in India under the
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The LTTE's
vast network in Tamil Nadu was dismantled, and the
assassination contributed significantly to India's
decisive tilt in the Sri Lankan civil war towards
the Colombo government.
India held the
LTTE solely responsible for the assassination. In
a Supreme Court judgment in 1999, the judge
stated: "There is not even a speck of doubt that
the criminal conspiracy to murder Rajiv Gandhi was
hatched by at least four persons comprising
Velupillai Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman, [hit man]
Sivarasan and [LTTE women's wing chief] Akila."
Throughout the 1990s, the LTTE, which
claimed responsibility for most of its
assassinations and bombings, staunchly denied
killing the former Indian prime minister.
In 2002, in his first interaction with the
media in around 12 years, Prabhakaran when asked
about his indictment in the Rajiv assassination
case, said of the killing: "This is a tragic
incident that took place 10 years ago. We don't
want to comment further on it."
While the
LTTE supremo did not admit to any involvement, he
did not deny that he and his organization played a
part in the assassination.
In 2006, regret
was expressed by the LTTE's chief ideologue and
negotiator, Anton Balasingham. "I would say it is
a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy
which we deeply regret," he told India's NDTV news
channel. "We call upon the government of India and
people of India to be magnanimous, to put the past
behind them."
Balasingham's comment was
interpreted in the media as an acceptance of
responsibility for the assassination. It was not.
It was a cleverly worded statement aimed at wooing
back India's and providing the LTTE with
wriggle-room.
Within days of the
interview, the LTTE said it had "not taken
responsibility for the killing". Daya Master, a
spokesperson based at the LTTE's headquarters in
Kilinochchi, said that Balasingham had "only
regretted the incident".
Unlike
Balasingham's ambiguously worded statement, KP's
is a more candid confession. He has categorically
admitted to the LTTE's role in the assassination
and gone further, naming Prabhakaran and Pottu
Amman as the masterminds.
However, he has
not revealed his own role in the assassination.
Although he was not an accused in the
Rajiv assassination case and not directly linked
to the killing, KP was investigated for his larger
role in the conspiracy. He was reportedly aware of
the plot to kill the former Indian prime minister.
M R Narayan Swamy, a noted journalist and
author of several books on the LTTE, reported in
2009 that he "was one of the rare few outside the
group's intelligence set-up who knew months
earlier" of the impending assassination. In
November 1990, he had told a Sri Lankan Tamil in
Tamil Nadu that the "Indian leadership" would soon
be targeted by the LTTE.
With the LTTE now
defeated and both Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman long
gone, KP's admission of their responsibility for
Rajiv's brutal killing will not have an impact on
the organization's image or fortunes. Neither will
he need to fear Prabhakaran's wrath.
Since
his arrest in August 2009, KP has been kept in Sri
Lankan government detention. Critics accuse him of
having collaborated with the government and
betrayed Prabhakaran in the final days of the war.
He has been described as a turncoat who has
revealed to the government much information about
and access to the LTTE's overseas assets and its
activities.
He is reported to be a changed
man today. DBS Jeyaraj, a Toronto-based Sri Lankan
Tamil who has written extensively on the LTTE, has
drawn attention to KP's "remarkable
transformation" from an arms procurer who fueled
the war to a man who is working "to alleviate the
plight of the [Tamil] people to the best of his
ability".
KP has reportedly set up a
non-governmental organization, the North-East
Rehabilitation and Development Organization
(NERDO), which is working for resettlement of
displaced Tamils, reintegration of Tiger cadres
and development of the war-torn northeast.
Ironically, KP's partner in this venture is his
former enemy, the Sri Lankan government.
In an interview last year to the state-run
English weekly the Sunday Observer, Defense
Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said the government
was working with KP in a "strategic manner" to
mobilize the support of the Tamil diaspora.
KP is reported to have organized meetings
between Sri Lankan officials and former leaders of
the LTTE based overseas and got the latter to
support the government's resettlement and
reconstruction efforts in the war-ravaged Northern
and Eastern Provinces.
In his interview to
CNN-IBN/Firstpost, KP spoke the language of peace.
"The war was over more than two years ago. We've
one way, one chance. That's the peaceful way,
peaceful negotiation and continuous engagement,"
he said.
Several of KP's supporters point
out that his peace talk is the outcome of
pragmatism, a realization that the armed struggle
option for Sri Lankan Tamils does not exist any
longer.
KP had begun realizing the
futility of the LTTE's dogged pursuit of Tamil
Eelam years ago, which resulted in his
marginalization from 2002 (It was only in January
2009 - months before the LTTE's defeat - that he
was made head of its "international department"),
they point out. When he became leader of the LTTE
after Prabhakaran's death he did try to steer the
LTTE onto a democratic path.
But this
approach had not gone down well with LTTE
hardliners in the diaspora, such as Perinbanayagam
Sivaparan alias Nedivayan, who succeeded KP as
LTTE chief following his arrest in August 2009.
KP's critics dismiss him as a "puppet" of
the government. They point to his endorsement of
several government positions that are not popular
among Tamils. KP has, for instance, rejected a
United Nations panel's call for both sides in the
civil war to be investigated over possible war
crimes, an investigation that will hurt the
government more than it will the LTTE as almost
the entire top brass of the latter is dead. In his
interview to CNN-IBN/Firstpost, KP said that the
UN report "wouldn't help any reconciliation" and
that it would "disturb the reconciliation"
process.
Critics say that the Sri Lankan
government is hoping to get KP to play a larger
political role in Tamil politics in the island.
There was speculation in the Sri Lankan media last
year that the government was contemplating
"installing" KP as chief minister of the Northern
Province.
Indeed, KP's revelations over
the LTTE's role in Rajiv's assassination is either
remorse over the LTTE's violent past, or a
carefully planned maneuver in preparation for a
larger political role.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. She can
be reached at sudha98@hotmail.com
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