Sri Lankan Tamils formally acknowledge LTTE leader Prabhakaran's death

The hall at Basel was visibly full with attendees standing shoulder-to-shoulder during speeches and formal segments. Men and women, some accompanied by children born in Western countries, placed floral wreaths and bowed before the LTTE leader’s photograph.

Amid vocal criticism from hardliners, hundreds of Sri Lankan Tamils publicly acknowledged the death of LTTE founder leader Velupillai Prabhakaran for the first time, a seismic event that is bound to cast a shadow on the global Tamil diaspora as well as Tamil politics in Sri Lanka and India.

Meeting at a hired venue at Basel in Switzerland on Saturday (August 2), the large gathering of solemn looking Tamils, most of them dressed in black as a mark of mourning, unveiled a memorial statue of Prabhakaran, who was killed by the Sri Lankan military in May 2009.

Also, on the stage along with the garlanded statue — which could later be taken to Britain — were a massive cardboard cut-out of Prabhakaran in military fatigues as well as a large framed photograph of the Tamil Tiger leader along with his wife and three children, all of whom perished in the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka.

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The pedestal below the statue read in Tamil and English: “The National Leader of Tamil Eelam, V Prabhakaran.” The day of his “martyrdom” was given as May 18, 2009. Colombo insists he was killed in a last ditch battle the next day.

Long, hard struggle

Prabhakaran’s death marked the end of a quarter-century long separatist campaign for a homeland called Tamil Eelam that left Sri Lanka fractured, killing over 100,000 people and injuring thousands. It was one of the deadliest ethnically-driven civil wars in modern times.

Although the world at large accepted Prabhakaran’s demise, tens of thousands of supporters of his Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) living around the world refused to, keeping alive a fiction that he fled Sri Lanka in the nick of time and was living incognito in the West with his wife and only daughter.

The diaspora’s fantasy received backing from a section of Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka and India who, like the pro-LTTE Tamils, could not stomach the fact that a leader who was to lead the Tamils to freedom, and who it was believed could never be vanquished, was no more.

Even as the reality sunk in over the years, with the LTTE’s decimation and the surrender of about 12,000 fighters, Tamil Tiger supporters refused to commemorate his death, clinging to the fancy that the separatist war would somehow resume. This was not to be.

False narrative

In the meantime, a section of former LTTE intelligence operatives in the West used the fiction around Prabhakaran to enrich themselves by telling unsuspecting Tamils that vast sums of money were needed for the upkeep of the leader and his family.

Also read | LTTE chief Prabhakaran and family are truly dead, declares his brother

A handful of Tamil politicians in India and Sri Lanka added to the confusion by claiming that Prabhakaran would make a re-appearance soon and that they were in telephonic touch with the family.

Two years ago, a video of a young Sri Lankan woman living abroad who masqueraded as Prabhakaran’s daughter created mass revulsion, leading to criticism from the LTTE leader’s only brother who believed that he died in 2009.

All this created tremendous churning in the pro-LTTE diaspora, forcing a vocal majority to decide that enough was enough and that the time had come to accept the bitter truth.

Social media protests

This is what led to the August 2 event in Switzerland, which was initiated by a section of former LTTE cadres residing across Europe and in Australia under the banner of the “Prabhakaran Memorial Uprising Forum”.

The decision stirred volleys of protests on the social media by those who did not want to acknowledge the death because they felt it would only boost the Sri Lankan narrative that the Tamil Eelam struggle ended in 2009.

Predictably, the organisers of the Swiss gathering were dubbed agents of the Sri Lankan and Indian intelligence. But in a clear sign of the dominant mood in the diaspora, a few thousands turned out at Basel from European countries and beyond to formally accept what all of them anyway knew in their hearts: Prabhakaran was no more.

Elaborate arrangements

The hall at Basel was visibly full with attendees standing shoulder-to-shoulder during speeches and formal segments. Men and women, some accompanied by children born in Western countries, placed floral wreaths and bowed before the LTTE leader’s photograph.

Also read | Prabhakaran’s kin to publicly commemorate his death to thwart scamsters

Two large screens and a central stage displayed LTTE banners and visuals of Prabhakaran, a school dropout who founded the Tamil Tigers in 1976 and went on to transform the once rag-tag outfit into a formidable military force that almost broke up Sri Lanka.

The LTTE’s red colour flag showing the face of a snarling tiger with its paws outstretched was symbolically unfurled. A band by young Tamils as well as volunteers dressed in Tiger uniform were in attendance.

Critics, also allied to the now crushed LTTE, attempted to mobilise a boycott but failed. A crowd did shout slogans against the event but were far outnumbered by those inside the hall, earning for the latter a certain legitimacy.

Positive shift

Many Sri Lankan Tamils, both in the island nation and in the West and not necessarily Prabhakaran fans, view the Switzerland meeting as a positive shift in diaspora politics marred in recent times by lies over Prabhakaran’s fate as well as downright cheating.

Also read | Giving no rest to Prabhakaran’s legacy

“This is bound to disrupt a long-standing monetary exploitation by certain diaspora actors who profited by perpetuating the narrative that Prabhakaran was alive and would one day return,” a Tamil who lives in London told The Federal.

He felt that the Basel forum’s public declaration would encourage truth-based accountability and potential redirection of diaspora funds to better use.

Another Tamil, also in London, was very critical. “Prabhakaran’s legacy is of a defeated warrior,” he told The Federal. “To most Tamils, this Basel drama is irrelevant. Even the attendance was thin compared to the mega gatherings at religious events. In any case, the money embezzled by the LTTE all these years is gone forever.”

Critical step

As for the thousands of former LTTE fighters living in Sri Lanka, they never believed that Prabhakaran survived the war. “The problem with some of these diaspora guys is that they live far away from reality,” said a Jaffna-based Tamil man. “None of them will return to Sri Lanka. Many are citizens of other countries. It took them 15 long years to say that Prabhakaran is dead. What a shame.”

Other Tamils insist that accepting Prabhakaran’s death is only one though critical step. Leaving aside emotion, a far more nuanced understanding of the man and his politics is necessary to realize why a struggle that raised so much hope finally ended on such a decisive and bloody note.