They too need to be enlightened:

Trapped in an illusion...

By Shanika Sriyananda

V. Rudrakumaran with the most ruthless terrorist leader V. Prabhakaran in the Vanni

As a member of the LTTE with Nediyavan in Vanni in 2004

As the Deputy Speaker of TGTE in USA in 2010

V. Rudrakumaran addressing a pro-LTTE gathering in 2011

A few months after exposing the true identities of Meena Navarangi Krishnamoorthy, Arunachalam Jegatheeswaran and Dr. Parimala Nathan Sampavi, who tried to camouflage their Tiger stripes with ‘diplomatic coats’, military intelligence has unearthed the true face of the Deputy Speaker of the self-proclaimed ‘Trans-national Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE)’ – a purely pro-LTTE front formed by sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora forwards creating Tamil Eelam, a separate State in the North and the East of the country.

The TGTE ‘Constitution states’: “Whereas the TGTE has guided us towards a democratic system of government, in order to establish an independent State of Tamil Eelam based on the principles of peace, non-violence, tolerance, pluralism, transparency and accountability”.

Though it has no recognition locally or internationally, the TGTE which has wings in the USA, Canada, Norway and the UK, with the US-based lawyer Visvanathan Rudrakumaran as its chairman, had held global elections among Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora communities in May 2010 to elect members to the first Transnational Constituent Assembly of Tamil Eelam, the first step towards the formation of the TGTE.Puthirasigamani Suganya was elected Deputy Speaker of this unrecognised pro-LTTE ‘government’. The 22-year-old, who is a prominent figure in Tamil circles in Switzerland, had contested the TGTE election in May 2010 from Berne, Solothurn in Switzerland. She had obtained 1,880 votes. Very few knew that this young girl had links with the LTTE; it remained a secret until military intelligence scanned her details in the database of the LTTE about its membership and also about Tamil youth who were given a brief military training in the North.

Deeply motivated and sometimes forced to contribute towards the creation of ‘Eelam’, Suganya, who was born and bred in Switzerland and resided in Ostermundi Gen, had participated in a Heroes Day event as a dancer in 2003 during her maiden visit to the North of Sri Lanka.

The second in the family, Sugunya’s father was a cook and her mother a cleaner in Switzerland. She has relatives in Thirunelveli, Jaffna while close relatives also live in France, Zurich, Switzerland and Canada.

Consent to contribute

With no ability of speaking Tamil, Sugunya, who is fluent in Dutch, in her membership application to the LTTE’s International Co-ordination Unit, had given her consent to contribute to the LTTE’s so-called ‘freedom struggle’ during the study period and also to contribute money to the LTTE.

She wanted to serve in the medical unit of the outfit.”Our heroes sacrificed their lives on behalf of us, let us work towards their effort”, she mentioned in the form, which was submitted in August, 2003.She was among the many youth who returned to Sri Lanka in 2004 to join the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO), which was formed by the LTTE to appoint youth leaders to carry out their propaganda and fund-raising abroad.

Using the ceasefire between the then Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE, many youth who were studying and working abroad arrived in Sri Lanka in 2004 to join the LTTE to represent the outfit in their countries.

They met the Head of the LTTE’s international propaganda unit Veerakulasingham Manivannan alias Castro who formed the TYO to recruit youth between the ages of 18 and 30 years.

As a human rights activist

As the LTTE leader wanted every member of the TYO to be given weapons training, they underwent military training and were educated on how to raise funds.

After the training session, they flew back to their countries to carry out their missions. Like Meena, Dr. Sampavi and Suganya, thousands of Tamil youth who had never experienced life in the North of Sri Lanka and living abroad, are still trapped in the illusion created in their minds by LTTE leaders who tapped their unspoilt hearts to create sympathy over Tamils living in the North.

The pathetic stories and fake pictures shown to them by the LTTE about the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan military made these youth join the LTTE to “have a homeland for them”.

Sri Lanka has a proud and remarkable record in rehabilitating former LTTE terrorists. Isn’t it time to take measures to ‘rehabilitate’ youth such as Suganya who were misled by the LTTE and to give them the true picture of the peaceful Sri Lanka?

Membership forms

Can’t those who cry for human rights convince these youth to join the reconciliation process in a more productive way, to support Tamils in the North by raising funds instead of pumping more money to the remaining Tiger front organisations to destabilise the hard-earned peace?

Suganya’s hand-written membership application form was among heaps of LTTE membership forms recovered from a Tiger hideout in Vanni during the humanitarian operation in 2009.

Though the LTTE remnants try to ‘adopt’ a political approach to hide their blood-strained past, these true faces of the members of the TGTE or pro-LTTE Tamil diaspora exposes their motive to carry forward the LTTE’s terror ideologies.With the repeated exposure of the true identities of the members of the pro-LTTE diaspora, it clearly shows the TGTE’s intention to whitewash the heinous crimes committed against humanity by the LTTE.

Their hidden agenda to continue to live comfortably in foreign soils while their people went through nightmarish lives under the LTTE terrorist are also exposed.

It is time for the international community, who clamour for ‘justice’ for crimes against humanity and lobbying for human rights, stood against organisations such as the TGTE which still pose with the Tiger flag.Peace-loving Sri Lankans including Tamils who experienced the agony of the three-decades long battle against terrorism have one big question to ask from the vociferous Human Rights champions such as Amnesty International who proved their links with pro-LTTE front organisations such as the TGTE and Canadian Tamil Congress, which was proved its links to the LTTE despite their denial. "Why do they still promote shadows of LTTE terrorists harbouring separatism, while people who suffered terror at their doorsteps are trying to stand on their own feet in a united country?”