Overseas designated groups call for scrutiny:

IMHO and the LTTE connection

by Hassina LEELARATHNA in Los Angeles, California

The ceaselessly protean LTTE has appeared in numerous guises, using various names, creating and moulding the terrain to fit its agenda. TRO, White Pigeon, Illankai Thamil Sangam - are just some of its avatars. If shut down in one place, it rises up brimming with energy in another. Along with the decline and fall of the LTTE, there’s been a flurry of activity in the US Tamil diaspora with their front groups and operatives hitting on all cylinders as they hastily reinvent themselves, taking cover under a plethora of names spun from their indefatigable acronym maker USTPAC (United States Tamil Political Action Council), APSL (Americans for Peace in Sri Lanka), and PEARL (People for Equality And Relief in Lanka) to name a few.

The current momentum is being played out at several levels, by several groups. One is pushing a political agenda, as was evident in the meeting Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake had with a group of representatives from known LTTE fronts. Another is advocating a purported ‘peace and reconciliation’ plan even while another is accusing Sri Lanka of ‘genocide’ and continuing old LTTE propaganda. Undoubtedly, it’s a byzantine network of organisations, but it’s the same people, the same agenda, and all roads lead to the same Babylon: Tamil Eelam.

Comprising an army of Tamil expatriates entrenched in a sycophantic culture that follows orders obediently (most are ‘economic refugees’ trafficked by the LTTE), an ill-gotten booty estimated at nearly a billion dollars, and a well-oiled propaganda machine, this network is essentially the next frontier of the Eelam war. As terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratne warns: “Although the LTTE in Sri Lanka is dead, there will be efforts by the vast LTTE network overseas to revive violence. As long as support for LTTE persists overseas, Sri Lanka will remain under threat.”

Central to that support, is, of course, fundraising. When freezing the assets of the TRO, the LTTE’s main fundraising and money laundering department, the US Treasury noted: In the United States, TRO has raised funds on behalf of the LTTE through a network of individual representatives. According to sources within the organisation, TRO is the preferred conduit of funds from the United States to the LTTE in Sri Lanka. With the TRO banned, the mantle of ‘humanitarian’ fundraising appears to have fallen on a group that calls itself the International Medical Health Organisation (IMHO). There’s nothing ‘international’ about this all-Tamil group which has effectively supplanted the banned TRO in the US and is suddenly on the radar as the beneficiary or organiser of several fundraisers held in the name of the IDPs. On June 13, the group held a fundraiser in Bellflower in Southern California and raised $13000, purportedly to build toilets at Menik farm, a very well-known IDP shelter. Another IMHO fundraiser was held on August 22 at the Ambassador Theatre in Pasadena, CA. More are scheduled outside of California.

The monies raised from these fundraisers no doubt amount to just chump change for an organisation allied with the LTTE which raised an estimated $70 million in tsunami funds alone (and used most of it to buy weapons).

But such fundraisers are an opportunity for self-promotion, anti-Sri Lanka propaganda, and establishing credibility. Just as the 2004 tsunami provided a bonanza to the TRO to raise and launder funds for the LTTE, the IDP situation (created by the LTTE when it took thousands upon thousands hostage in the last stages of the war) is turning out to be a sturdy milking cow for IMHO and others.

With post-war dust settling, the emergence of an organisation with direct and indirect ties to a proscribed terrorist organisation demands scrutiny, not just for the potential threat to Sri Lanka but from an American perspective as well. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has it exercised the due diligence required to ensure its tax-free assets don’t fall into terrorist hands? Has it contravened US counter-terrorism laws? Has it knowingly provided material support to a terrorist outfit? Who are its players, who are its allies, where has it been and where is it headed?

The genesis of the IMHO, known as the Tamils Health Organisation (THO), is in itself an indicator of its LTTE ties. It was launched on Nov. 1, 2003 as part of the AGM of the Illankai Thamil Sangam, a virulently anti-Sri Lankan LTTE front in the USA.

Outrageous claims

Among the four founders of the THO is physician Sujanthy Rajaram who in April 2009 added her voice to that of the frenzied LTTE diaspora that was making a last-ditch effort to save the trapped terrorist leaders in the Wanni by outrageous claims that the SL military was using chemical weapons. In an article titled ‘Medical Crisis in the Wanni,’ Rajaram not only endorses the falsified chemical weapons charge (made by a pro-LTTE website called ‘War Without Witness in Sri Lanka’) she goes on to provide advice on what the Wanni victims should do to fight the effects of chemical warfare. The advice, all in English, was surely not for the benefit of the Tamil-speaking people who were at the time fleeing their homes. Strategically placed on the ‘Tamils for Obama’ site, the purpose was clearly to create the kind of atmosphere of panic and urgency that grabs the attention of the international community.

The relationship of IMHO members to the LTTE/TRO, however, goes beyond the realm of propaganda antics.

A Lancaster cardiologist whose office address and phone number have been identified as a TRO centre by the LTTE’s official organ, Tamilnet and in other documents, is also the IMHO’s California coordinator. The TRO (AKA TREO - Tamil Refugee Relief Organisation) office on Heaton Avenue in Lancaster is the medical office of Dr. S. Sunder, IMHO California coordinator. The phone number used by the TRO is still being used by Sunder for fundraising and other activities of the IMHO, which raises the question of the TRO, designated a terrorist front whose funds were frozen in Nov. 2007 by the US Treasury, continuing to raise funds under a different guise. The advertisement for the June 13 IMHO fundraiser in Bellflower, that appeared in several publications, points to such with S. Sunder’s wife, Thilaka Sunder, being shown as one of three organisers and the same TRO phone number provided as her contact number.

Another IMHO board member of interest is San Ramon, CA, resident Jegan Thambaiyah who is also a member and one-time president of a group called Tamils of Northern California (TNC), essentially another pro-Tiger group. Counting just what it has declared in its tax statements, from 1999 to 2006, the TNC’s funds to the TRO totalled about $400,000.

In addition to funding the TRO, the TNC has carried out numerous campaigns on behalf of the LTTE. It was the TNC (along with Ilankai Thamil Sangam; Tamils Of Northern California; Tamil Welfare And Human Rights Committee; Federation Of Tamil Sangams Of North America; World Tamil Coordinating Committee; Nagalingam Jeyalingam) that took the US State Dept. to court, challenging the Patriot Act for criminalising providing material support to terrorist organisations such as the LTTE.

TNC has steadily raised funds for the IMHO in the past and is continuing to do so, with copious borrowings from the LTTE propaganda machine.

It is also one of the groups that fought hysterically to get the international community to intervene in Sri Lanka to stop the war in May of this year and save the LTTE by petitioning for a “Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council on the Human Rights Situation in Sri Lanka.”

The TNC indirectly provided other assistance to the Tigers when it funded an organisation called the International Tamil Technical Professionals’ Organisation (ITTPO), the parent of VanniTech - supposedly a high-tech computer training facility - which was opened in 2003 by LTTE political leader Tamil Selvam and other Tigers in Kilinochchi. The ITTPO’s first director board included the head of the TRO’s USA office, N. A. Ranjithan, and Vimal Rajagopal, also identified by Tamilnet as a TRO operative. Ranjithan’s TRO office in Cumberland, MD, into which the TNC and other Tamil diaspora groups poured funds, was raided in 2006 by the FBI and eventually closed down as being an LTTE front in Nov. 2007 by the US Treasury. (The Tamil Foundation, another organisation headed by Ranjithan, was designated an LTTE front earlier this year and its assets too are now frozen.)

Shared links

In addition to the shared links to the LTTE with the TNC, the IMHO maintained a direct relationship with the terrorist group. It is a given that nothing could have been done in the Wanni without the approval and support of the Tiger leadership. Since its inception in 2004, the IMHO has partnered directly with the LTTE by way of a Kilinochchi-based NGO called the Centre for Health Care (CHC) which operated almost exclusively in the LTTE-held areas.

The CHC website contains photographs of a handful of token activities in the south, which, on closer review, turn out to be tsunami-related funding - a dental chair donated by the foreign NGO Direct Relief International and a mobile clinic on board the Dundee Mercy Bus funded by Australian donors.

With funding from several expatriate organisations, including IMHO-US, the CHC set up eleven health centres named ‘Thileepan Medical Centres’ in LTTE-held areas. The centres, identified by the CHC website as ‘primary care’ centres were manned by rural ‘medical practitioners,’ who provided the most rudimentary treatment. The centres were named after former LTTE political wing head Rasiah Parthiban alias Thileepan who died in 1987.

When LTTE supremo Vellupillai Prabhakaran was injured in an air attack by Sri Lankan forces on December 1, 2007, he is said to have been treated at a Thileepan Medical Centre at a hidden jungle location, an indication of the centres being used to treat not just civilians but militants as well.

At a public event held on June 3, 2004 in Pattalipuram, an area in the Trincomalee district that was then under its sway, the Tigers made it abundantly clear that it owned and controlled all the Thileepan Medical Centres, set up by the IMHO and other groups in the North/East. The event was the opening of the eleventh Thileepan Medical Centre and at hand for the ceremony were the local top militants: ‘Colonel Banu,’ ‘Military Commander’ Sornam, S. Elilan and Iyankaran, LTTE leader and deputy leader respectively of the Trincomalee district, Isaiarasan, Muttur LTTE military wing head, and Kaaronja, LTTE Trincomalee district women’s wing political head. The honour of lighting the lamp was given to the mother of a slain LTTE militant.

That strain of Eelam ‘nationalism’ is unmistakably echoed by IMHO secretary Thavam Thambipillai in a letter to the London-based Medical Institute of Tamils (MIOT): “Nation-building is obviously a daunting task and for this reason we, the expatriate Tamil medical community needs to be organised to take on a task of this magnitude.”

Even after the LTTE publicly declared the Thileepan primary care medical centres to be its property, administered by its so-called ‘Eelam Health Ministry,’ the IMHO did not withdraw its ‘nation building’ thrust. On the contrary, just two months later, in August 2004, it infused another $47,500 to build another center, this time in Iyankankulam. It also continued to provide support and aid to the other LTTE-owned primary centres by way of furnishings, motor cycles, ambulances, computers, fax machines, and even a digital camera. The IMHO claims to have gifted at least three such ambulances to the LTTE-controlled facilities. It does not require much imagination to suspect what the LTTE, engaged in deadly combat with the Sri Lankan forces, did with these vehicles!

US tax laws governing charitable organisations, (501(c)(3)s), state that in order to qualify for tax exemption, the domestic (US-based) charity must legally control and operate the foreign organisation to which it channels funds. Piecing together its own narratives, provided to donors and potential donors, there is nothing to show that the IMHO met this very basic requirement.

The CHC definitely was nothing more than a unit of the LTTE, a convenient conduit for diaspora funding. The Norwegian Tamils Health Organisation, the London-based Medical Institute of Tamils (MIOT), and the Canada-based Tamil Emergency Medical Services are among organisations that claimed to be CHC’s partners.

Along with the LTTE’s moribund fortunes, the CHC has disappeared and now the IMHO claims it is channelling aid to the IDPs through the Colombo-based Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), headed by Jeevan Thiagarajah.

Let it be noted that in Sri Lanka, Thiagarajah’s credentials for representing any humanitarian organisation have been in question after his own wife filed a case against him accusing him of abuse and ‘inhuman treatment.’ The CHA presents itself as a non-partisan umbrella organisation of NGOs with rather vague objectives such as advocating for “peace, human rights and development with specific focus on diversity, fundamental rights and freedom” and generating knowledge and sharing skills particularly in areas of information gathering, processing and dissemination.

Despite this innocuous front, the CHA has partnered with NGOs with deep ties with the LTTE, such as the Norwegian Berghof Foundation and FORUT whose heads were deported from Sri Lanka for activities that undermined Sri Lankan sovereignty. Among the events the CHA has organised with Berghof is an eyebrow-raising 16-month training course in “Defence and Security Management” in South Africa. For an organisation that promotes peace, the training is suspect enough, doubly so considering that South Africa has been a hotbed of LTTE activity which included military training camps. CHA has also been the recipient of a $1500 grant from the TNC (under the presidency of Jegan Thambiayah), which establishes that it has had ties with this LTTE front.

These questionable links notwithstanding, Thiagarajah is known to have easy and privileged access to sensitive government information and to security zones, as well as IDP camps. This puts IMHO at a great advantage because the connection to such an official at once throws sanctity on its actions and removes the baggage it carries from its established ties to the LTTE.

The IMHO’s interconnectedness to other Tamil groups by way of a common political agenda, funding, material support, and shared personnel (the same board members) is comparable to the relationship TRO(USA) and the Tamil Foundation where the flow of funds and coordinated financial activities took place.

Earlier this year, when it issued the order freezing the assets of the Tamil Foundation in Maryland, the US Treasury Department pointed out that the head of the Tamil Foundation also being the president of the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) in the United States, a designated terrorist organisation, had led to the flow of funds and coordinated financial actions. “The common leadership of the TRO and the Tamil Foundation has facilitated these activities,” the Treasury said in a statement adding that it will continue to: “...aggressively target attempts by any terrorist group to hide behind charities, front companies, or name changes to propagate terror against innocents around the world.” Both Sri Lanka and the US have a stake in scrutinising the activities of groups such as the IMHO. Let it be remembered that while the LTTE’s defeat signifies an internal military victory for Sri Lanka, the war is still being waged unabated in the overseas theatre. As noted earlier, it is a byzantine network of (to quote Guneratne again) “state-of-the-art propaganda, fundraising, procurement, a shipping infrastructure, a significant drug trade, a far-flung human smuggling empire, and offices and cells in about 60 countries.”

The challenge for Sri Lanka is to stop this behemoth from getting a foothold once again in the north and east.

Just as much as it set up an overseas network, the LTTE, now morphed into a ‘transnational,’ ‘in-exile’ operation, will have to seed itself back in Sri Lanka by recruiting front organisations, into host bodies such as the CHA.

Sri Lanka is well-versed in the devious tactics and subversive aims of foreign NGOs and needs no reminder of the dangers of allowing them free rein. Maintaining a tight leash on foreign groups without becoming insular while allowing legitimate charities to do their work unimpeded is part of the challenge of reining in the beast.

When organisations such as the IMHO come bearing gifts, Sri Lanka will do well to remember New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s response to a $10m donation to the 9/11 disaster recovery fund from Saudi Arabia in 2001.

After giving the cheque to the mayor at a memorial service at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the attack, Saudi Prince Alwaleed made a statement suggesting the United States “must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack.” Giuliani immediately responded saying the cheque would not be cashed. He said: “There is no moral equivalent for this [terrorist] act. “There is no justification for it. The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people.”

Similarly, the humanitarian aid from IMHO and such NGOs comes with a heavy price tag.

For example, in April, the TNC held a fundraiser and raised around $60,000 for the IMHO using the following propaganda:

* Over 300,000 Tamil minorities are held in detention camps fenced with barbed wires.

* Everyday people are dying of malnutrition, starvation, and disease, due to severe shortage of infant formulas, food, and lack of proper sanitation.

* Since December 2008, 100,000+ have been injured and are without adequate medical care.

Donors were urged to write to the White House and Congress to ‘prevail on the Sri Lankan government to allow international aid agencies, and international media, unfettered access to these camps,’ even though aid agencies were working in the conflict zone.

In other words, are the scraps of ‘humanitarian aid’ that NGOs such as IMHO bring worth the price in terms of the ‘moral equivalency’ they claim?