Mystery Behind Tamilchelvan’s Death

"Thamilchelvan was an acceptable face of the LTTE for the international community if it wanted to work towards an LTTE minus Prabhakaran and others involved in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi just as it worked for a Palestine Liberation Organisation minus Yasser Arafat. In fact, I have myself been suggesting this formula for many years in order to re-start the peace process again."

(November, 04, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Normally, whenever the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) makes an air strike on areas held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), it makes an announcement immediately after its planes safely return to base and a claim regarding the successes achieved. The LTTE then makes a counter-claim refuting the version of the SLAF.

In the case of the death of S.P.Thamilchelvan, the head of the political wing of the LTTE, supposedly in an SLAF air strike on November 2,2007, this reportedly did not happen. The SLAF initially did not come out with any statement or claim.

It was the LTTE, which made the first announcement, about six hours after the alleged air strike and then the Sri Lankan Government went to town about it. There was apparently an air strike in the Kilinochi area at 6 AM on November 2,2007, but it was not a targeted air strike directed to killing Thamilchelvan.

It did not make any sense for the SLAF to kill him. The LTTE has two wings--- a conventional warfare wing and a terrorist wing centred around the Black Tigers and the Black Sea Tigers. Karuna, the leader of the Eastern Province, who deserted Prabhakaran in 2004 and Thamilchelvan belonged to the conventional wing and not to the terrorist wing.

Thamilchelvan was an acceptable face of the LTTE for the international community if it wanted to work towards an LTTE minus Prabhakaran and others involved in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi just as it worked for a Palestine Liberation Organisation minus Yasser Arafat. In fact, I have myself been suggesting this formula for many years in order to re-start the peace process again.

Photo: Newly appointed political Wing leader P. Nadesan who was a former police constable in Sri Lankan Police with military uniform at the funeral ceremony in Kilinochchi

Since the interrnational community liked Thamilchelvan and his pleasant ways of interacting with people, many of his interlocutors were working towards making him see reason and make the LTTE break with its reputation as a terrorist organisation.

If the Sri Lankan Government also wanted to work towards this scenario, it would not have targeted him. Instead, it would have tried to spare him. One had the impression that this was its policy till now.

Sri Lankan officials, including its Defence Secretary, have claimed that they had pinpoint information about Thamilchelvan's place of residence and hence were able to target him. In fact, many knew his place of residence since he was freely receiving his foreign interlocutors there. He felt that the Sri Lankan Government would not target him since he represented the internationally-acceptable face of the LTTE and there could not be a revival of the political process without his playing a role in it.

Many well-informed persons with their ears to the ground feel there is more than meets the eye in the case relating to Thamilchelvan's death. They do not rule out the possibility that the LTTE's intelligence wing had him and his close associates killed and then put the blame on the SLAF, thereby killing two birds with one stone---it eliminated a possible rival to Prabhakaran and aggravated the anger against the Sri Lankan authorities.

According to these sources, in their anxiety to overcome the embarrassment caused by the LTTE's recent successful raid in the Anuradhapura base, the Sri Lankan authorities, instead of waiting and watching in order to analyse why the LTTE took the initiative in making the announcement, walked into the trap and claimed credit for eliminating him, thereby unwittingly providing a deniability to the LTTE's intelligence wing.

(B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )