Velupillai Prabhakaran
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
Early life
Source: From the archives of India Today, May 23, 2009
Rise and fall of Prabhakaran
The child soldier:
Born on Nov 26, 1954 in Velvettithurai on the Jaffna peninsula, he was the youngest of four children of a government clerk. He dropped out of school and joined the cause for Tamil independence. In May 1976, he formed the LTTE.
Indian connection
India helped groom him and other Eelam groups like the EPRLF, PLOTE, ENDLF and EROS for strategic reasons right till the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord in 1987.
Signed by Rajiv Gandhi and President Jayawardene, the accord ended the civil war in Sri Lanka. The Indian Army was sent in to disarm the militant groups and supervise the setting up of an interim council where political power would be devolved to the Tamils.
The rebel leader
The accord broke down after the Tigers refused to disarm and soon the IPKFwas locked in a bitter battle with the LTTE for nearly two years. The Indian peacekeepers withdrew in 1990 after governments changed in both countries. The assassin: One year after the IPKF withdrew, Prabhakaran sent a suicide bomber to kill Rajiv Gandhi, a strategic mistake that cost him Indian sympathy. Two years later, he eliminated President Premadasa. They were the first of dozens of leaders, Tamil and Sinhalese, that Prabhakaran murdered. The LTTE soon emerged as the sole representative of militant Tamil nationalism.
The comeback kid: In a series of military campaigns, beginning with the capture of Killinochhi in 1995 and culminating with the overrunning of the military garrison at Elephant Pass in 2000, Prabhakaran inflicted multiple defeats on the Sri Lanka Army.
Eelam boss
Soon Prabhakaran controlled nearly one-third of Sri Lanka, the north and east and ran a quasi-state, collecting taxes and running an administration.At his first-ever press conference in 2002, he announced an unconditional ceasefire. But like so many other ceasefires before, it was merely a ruse for him to buy time to rearm for Eelam War IV. Middle age crisis: The biggest secret of the reclusive guerrilla was his family life, his wife and three children—two sons, Charles Anthony and Balachandran, and a daughter, Duwaraha. In his later years, he was plagued by obesity, diabetes and hypertension.
End game: A fallout with his Eastern Commander, Karuna, cost him the east. Yet, in the end, the biggest mistake for the Tigers was to abandon guerrilla warfare and fight like a regular army.
In the face of a well-trained new Sri Lankan military machine, which innovated and fought like guerrillas, the Tigers didn’t stand a chance.
The determined thrust in 2007 did not end for two years till the Tigers were cornered into a tiny sliver of land on the northern sea coast, where they had withdrawn with over two lakh civilians as human shields.
The entire LTTE leadership was wiped out and Prabhakaran’s death was one of the last in a conflict that has claimed over 70,000 lives in 25 years.
How Prabhakaran died
The last days of the militant era
Arjun Sengupta, February 16, 2023: The Indian Express
On February 13, Tamil nationalist leader P Nedumaran claimed that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Sri Lankan Tamil separatist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was still alive, and would “announce his next plan (to liberate) Tamil Eelam very soon, himself”.
The Sri Lankan army had announced Prabhakaran’s death on May 18, 2009, as the three-decade Sri Lankan civil war ended in an orgy of violence in the rebel-held territories in the north and east of the island.
The LTTE had put up a final stand in Mullaitivu, a small fishing settlement in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. The death of Prabhakaran brought the war to an end, and also effectively signalled the end of the LTTE, which had been militarily annihilated and left leaderless.
What happened in the final days of the Sri Lankan civil war, ending with Prabhakaran’s death?
The beginning of the end
In February 2002, the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE entered into a ceasefire brokered by Norway. However, by 2006, the truce was dead, with each side accusing the other of not sticking to the terms of the ceasefire.
While the LTTE carried out repeated guerilla attacks and suicide missions, the Sri Lankan army pushed deeper into the rebels’ eastern territories and then to the north.
In January 2008, the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa formally announced the annulment of the ceasefire agreement after a bus carrying government soldiers to a military hospital in Colombo was targeted in a claymore mine attack.
Over the following year, the Sri Lankan forces pushed northwards, finally capturing Kilinochchi, the de facto administrative capital of the Tigers, in January 2009. Except for limited counter-attacks in Jaffna, the LTTE was not able to mount a counter-offensive.
Prabhakaran is believed to have told his Intelligence Chief Pottu Amman at the time that “75 per cent of the LTTE’s strength had gone downstream and they would have to hold on till the international community could stop the war”, defence analyst Ashok K Mehta wrote in a 2010 paper (Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict: How Eelam War IV was Won).
Last stand at Mullaitivu
By April 2009, the Tigers were boxed into an 8-km sliver of the coast, along with some civilians, in Mullaitivu. Under international pressure, specifically from India which at the time was in the middle of a Lok Sabha election, the Sri Lankan government announced the end to the use of heavy weapons, including aircraft and aerial weapons. The area was designated as the ‘No Fire Zone’.
But this provided little relief to the LTTE. The Sri Lankan forces had blockaded the rebels from land and sea. “By May 11, the conflict zone was redesignated as the New Safety Zone (NSZ) and shrunk to 1.5 sq km with 700 Tigers and 50,000 civilians”, Mehta wrote. For the army, this was an internal hostage crisis – the Tigers were forcibly holding thousands of civilians with themselves, using them as human shields.
The LTTE was out of options. While the Sri Lankan government believed that the LTTE fighters might “resort to mass suicide”, Prabhakaran himself hoped to negotiate a ceasefire. When the government rejected offers of a negotiated truce, a daring escape plan was formulated.
According to Mehta, “The impossible escape plan had three phases: in the first phase, a group led by Prabhakaran would cross the Nanthikadal lagoon, and disperse in three groups in the east; in the second phase, a group led by B Nadesan was to negotiate a surrender for the sick and wounded; and in the third, a rearguard action was to be led by Prabhakaran’s son Charles Antony.”
However, less than 24 hours after the rebels launched their final salvo, the government forces had secured a swift and complete victory: not a single Tiger was left alive, even those waiving white flags from the beach in which they were cornered.
In the aftermath of the massacre, the Sri Lankan government came under heavy criticism for human rights abuses and for using heavy artillery in the NSZ.
The death of Prabhakaran
With the international media kept out of the conflict zone, several versions emerged of Prabhakaran’s death. The army claimed that he was killed as he tried to escape with a band of followers in an armour-plated van, with more rebel commanders accompanying them in a bus. After a two-hour exchange of fire, the Sri Lankan troops fired a rocket that hit the van, killing the rebel leader. Some versions of this story state that he was in an ambulance instead of a van.
Another version claimed that Prabhakaran was killed as he tried to break the blockade of the Lankan forces – and died fighting with his men.
One version also claimed that Prabhakaran died by suicide. Sri Lankan Tamil journalist DBS Jeyaraj wrote in 2021,
“Prabhakaran’s body was discovered before dawn on Tuesday. The bodies of six bodyguards were found nearby. All indications were that Prabhakaran had committed suicide by placing a gun inside his mouth and firing upwards.”
Yet another version claims that Prabhakaran was captured by the army and then executed, with the single bullet injury to his temple cited as evidence. The University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna (UTHR-J), a Jaffna-based human rights group wrote in a special report that “Prabhakaran was tortured probably at Division 53 HQ in the presence of a Tamil government politician and a general”, before being executed, The Indian Express reported in 2009. The Sri Lankan government denied this account.
P Nedumaran’s recent claims have renewed speculation surrounding the circumstances of Prabhakaran’s death.
The Sri Lankan forces had at the time released a picture of the dead rebel leader, and had claimed to have confirmed his identity with a DNA test.
Is he dead or alive?
Claims in 2023
February 14, 2023: The Times of India
Tamil nationalist leader Pazha Nedumaran dropped a bombshell on February 13 when he claimed that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive and will be back soon.
His claim was dismissed even by other Tamil nationalist leaders. Speaking to reporters in Thanjavur, Nedumaran declined to comment when asked about the videos showing Prabhakaran’s bullet-riddled body that were released by the Sri Lankan government on May 18, 2009. The then Mahinda Rajapaksa government had said DNA tests had confirmed the body was that of Prabhakaran. On May 24, 2009, the LTTE had also confirmed that Prabhakaran was dead.
Former Congress leader makes sensational claim, says LTTE chief Prabhakaran is alive
On the proof for his claim, Nedumaran said he was in touch with Prabhakaran’s family members. “I reveal this with their permission,” he said. When asked about Prabhakaran’s wife and daughter, he said, “All are well.”
Nedumaran, chief of the World Confederation of Tamils, said that Prabhakaran will soon announce a plan for a better life for Eelam Tamils. He also said that the LTTE chief “is doing well” and a “conducive atmosphere prevails for him to appear now”.
‘We have proof’
Sri Lanka’s defence ministry, however, dismissed Nedumaran’s claim as a “joke” and said that the LTTE chief was killed and that the DNA has proved it. “It is confirmed that he was killed on May 18, 2009. The DNA has proved it,” said Colonel Nalin Herath, a defence ministry spokesman.
The Sri Lankan government had in May 2009 claimed that they killed Prabhakaran. Days after his alleged killing, a Sri Lankan military spokesman had said that DNA tests conducted on the bodies believed to be of the rebel leader and his son, Charles Antony, have matched.
The LTTE chief’s body was reportedly found on the banks of Nanthikadal lagoon in the Mullaitivu area in the island nation. He led the fight for an independent state for the Tamil people in the north and east provinces of Sri Lanka. The LTTE was allegedly behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
The DNA factor
Close-up photographs of Prabhakaran’s face left little doubt about the identity of the slain rebel leader, but how did Sri Lanka’s defence ministry establish it through DNA fingerprinting? What tissue did they have to refer to and compare the DNA collected from the body?
There was no sample from Prabhakaran’s own body collected anytime earlier. Neither were there samples of his father or mother. The reference material could have come from the DNA samples of his son, whose body the authorities claimed to have also recovered. State-of-the-art laboratories worldwide use a technique called short tandem repeats (STR) of sequences of DNA by amplifying some regions of the DNA strand using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This is the standard test followed in cases of paternal disputes. There are 23 pairs of chromosomes in a human cell, including 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. A person inherits 50% of chromosomes from the father and the rest from the mother.
What could be clinching scientific evidence in such cases would be to compare the son’s samples with those of the mother’s too, to see if the DNA sequence matches with that of both the parents. But, in this case, samples of Prabhakaran’s wife Mathivadani were not available.
Another opportunity here is the Y chromosome amplification technique, said Lalji Singh, director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. If they are father and son, sequences in the Y chromosomal strand should match 100%, as the Y chromosome is found only in males and is inherited by a male from his father.
Experts, however, are not sure if Colombo could have done such a high-end analysis in such short a time. “They [Sri Lanka] have not explained the method they have followed. To my knowledge, there is no sophisticated lab there which can do the technique so fast,” Singh said.
More evidence
But the Lankan authorities had other evidence as well.
Prabhakaran’s body was identified by two of his former aides with the help of certain scars and birthmarks. Federal minister Vinayagamoorthi Muralidaran, alias Karuna Amman, one-time close confidant of Prabhakaran, and Daya Master, the former LTTE media spokesman who had surrendered, identified the body.
“They identified and confirmed that the body recovered was that of Prabhakaran. Certain scars and birthmarks had helped them in identification. Thus, the army was able to quash all rumours regarding Prabhakaran being alive,” the Bottomline newspaper had reported back then.
Prabhakaran was killed by commandos, who only collect the personal weapons of the slain terrorists and not their bodies as a rule. They then produce the arms before their commanding officers (COs) or brigade commanders, the newspaper said.
On the evening of May 18, a commando handed over a pistol and a hip holster to his CO. The pistol carried the inscription T.V.P 001, raising suspicion that it belonged to Prabhakaran.
T.V.P 001 means Tamil Vidudalai Puligal (Tamil Liberation Tigers) and the military intelligence confirmed that it was indeed Prabhakaran’s pistol, the newspaper said. Karuna Amman and Daya Master were then brought to the scene to identify Prabhakaran’s body.
About Prabhakaran’s family, the newspaper noted that there were rumours that his wife, younger son Balachandran and daughter Duwaraka too had been killed during the final battles.
With inputs from Times Now and PTI
