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TSUNAMI IMPACT: Tamil Tiger Killings Jeopardise Relief Aid

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Feb 9 2005 (IPS) - 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.

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 he was travelling in 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 Col. 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 para-military 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 Dec. 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 channelling sufficient aid to the North-east 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 Programme, 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 1.5 billion U.S. dollars to recover from the tsunami damage and identified the North-east 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 multi-national 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 very real.