Anton Balasingham

When Anton Stanislaus Balasingham fronted as media spokesman for Tamil Tiger guerrillas in the presence of rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran at a crowded press conference in April, he was criticised by sections of the foreign media.

“This guy didn’t allow Prabhakaran to speak. He was answering all the questions. We wanted Prabhakaran’s response. Instead it was Balasingham who was answering,” a frustrated foreign correspondent said after the Sri Lankan rebel leader’s first press conference in more than seven years, held in the northern town of Kilinochichi, a Tamil Tiger stronghold.

Balasingham may have got on the wrong side of the foreign media in this particular instance. But there is no doubt that the rebel spokesman – leader of the four-member Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) delegation in the September 2002 talks -- would be a much sought after figure by a 300-strong media contingent expected to cover the negotiations.

“Anton is and has been a skillful negotiator and has Prabhakaran’s backing (in negotiating a peace deal with the government),” notes Dr Lloyd Fernando, a retired civil servant and currently chairman of the Marga Institute, a private think tank.

“I believe he has been a part of the negotiating teams since the first peace talks in 1995, knows the ground situation and this is a tremendous advantage to the Tigers,’’ he adds.

The LTTE’s main political advisor -- described at various times as the group’s theoretician and ideologue -- has come a long way since emerging as Prabhakaran’s loyal lieutenant in the early 1990s.

He is said to be so trustworthy that Prabhakaran allowed him a free hand to handle the April press conference, even though it appeared at times that Balasingham was stepping out of line and not allowing the rebel leader to directly respond to questions -- because Prabhakaran cannot speak or understand English or pretends not to know the language.

Balasingham is a former journalist who worked for a Colombo newspaper and a translator at the British High Commission in Colombo. He was a Ph D candidate in the late 1960s, writing his dissertation on the psychology of Marxism at the South Bank Polytechnic in London, when the LTTE made the transition from Marxist Leninism to Tamil nationalism.

The 63-year old British citizen had extensively written and published on the subject.

According to published reports, the tutors at the polytechnic (now known as the South Bank University) still remember him as a bright but unusual student.

Balasingham’s present wife Adele, an Australian citizen and a nurse by professional training, is a prominent member of the women’s wing of the LTTE. She is wanted in Australia on charges of violating laws that prohibit Australian citizens from participating in wars in other countries.

Adele will act as the secretary of the delegation. The other two members of the Tamil Tigers’ delegation are Visvanathan Rudrakumar, a Sri Lankan lawyer based in New York, and Jay Maheswaran, an agricultural scientist based in Australia. They would be advising Balasingham on legal and rehabilitation issues.