The Murder of T. Subathiran :
Sri Lanka's End GameA press statement By University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) UTHR(J)*
17June, 2003
The murder of Thambirajah Subathiran (Robert) may
signal the end of Sri Lanka's peace process, yet many
in Colombo and the wider world will not even recognize
his name. The papers would carry short notices
describing him as the deputy leader of the
Varatharajaperumal wing of the EPRLF, an insignificant
political force by conventional assessments. But the
LTTE scrutinizes its enemies very minutely, and
undoubtedly came to a very different conclusion.Subathiran was among the few remaining bold and
assertive members of the beleaguered democratic scene
in the North-East of Sri Lanka. Always under
pressure, the democratic hope, which that movement
represented, has been driven to near suffocation by
LTTE repression, compounded by Norwegian arrogance and
the myopic opportunism of the UNP. Though cruelly
deprived of the opportunity to do greater things for
his people, Subathiran's courage and his services to
the Jaffna Municipal Council as a firm and clear
democratic voice will be remembered. He advocated
constructive cooperation with the TULF dominated
Council.During his period as councillor, two mayors, Sarojini
Yogeswaran and Sivapalan, were murdered by the LTTE.
Subathiran played a key role in defying the LTTE's
threats and giving his fellow councillors the heart to
carry on. Those who knew Subathiran were deeply struck
by his large humanity and readiness to cast aside
narrow loyalties for the greater welfare of the
people. This was part of the Marxist inspiration the
group's pioneers had imbibed. Subathiran was a pillar
of strength to the last mayor, Mr. Sellan Kandaiyan,
in standing up to the LTTE's intimidation and attempts
to take over the functions of the Council. This
brought him into direct confrontation with the LTTE
and its agents, where he was firm and assured, but
always a polite voice of reason. Every society in
crisis produces individuals, who will, to the last,
stand up for truth and justice against hopeless odds.
Subathiran will surely not be the last of them in the
Tamil community.In the run-up to the recent donor meeting in Tokyo,
which the Tigers decided to boycott, LTTE attacks on
Tamil opponents reached alarming proportions. The
Tigers have targeted not only active members of
opposing groups, but also hundreds of individuals who
had left these groups long ago, had young families and
were leading civilian lives. Subathiran himself was
struggling to help the community cope as the pressure
intensified.On 12th June, two days before Subathiran was killed,
the LTTE attacked former EPRLF member Nagamuttu
Nagendran (35) in Chunnakam, Jaffna, with swords and
knives. Nagendran, a father of five, screamed, and the
assailants ran away leaving the victim with one hand
severed and the other hanging limp.On 6th June the LTTE cut with a sword and badly
injured reserve police constable Sathasivam
Sarvananda (31), a father of two, in Thimilativu,
Batticaloa.In the night of the same day, 6th June, the LTTE threw
a grenade at two former TELO members in Kallady,
Batticaloa, returning from a temple festival. One of
them, Velusamy Samuel (30) was killed with his
one-year-old daughter Naveena.The following morning (7th) Ramasamy Vijayanathan
(33), a former EPDP member who was watering plants at
a restaurant in Thirugnanasambandar Street,
Trincomalee, where he was working, was shot dead by
LTTE gun men.On 10th June, the LTTE shot dead Subramaniam (32),
father of a child, at Maharambaikulam, Vavuniya.
On 12th June, the LTTE threw a grenade into a Muslim
restaurant in Valaichenai, which was open during an
LTTE-ordered hartal injuring six persons. Haniffa (60)
and Meerasaibo were admitted to Batticaloa Hospital
with severe injuries.On 12th June, the LTTE shot and injured Sivasegaram
Vijayasegaram (Arasan), a former member of the EPRLF,
now employed as a UC driver, in Chelvanayakapuram,
Trincomalee.During this period, it fell to Subathiran to go around
the North-East and visit party offices, in which local
members lived under siege, to keep up their spirits.
At dawn, on 14th June, Subathiran was killed by sniper
fire from the direction of Vembadi Girls' School while
exercising on the flat above the EPRLF(V) office. One
bullet struck his shoulder and the other bullet had
caused internal bleeding in the chest.Shortly afterwards party members went to the school
with the Police and examined a three story building
from the upper floor of which it is possible to have a
view of the flat on the EPRLF(V) office 200 yards
away. The classrooms were locked. In one classroom,
which the watcher opened for them at their request,
they found the window netting cut to make space for
the barrel of a rifle, a table placed near the window
with the sand bag on it to keep the rifle steady, and
some biscuit packets and an empty 1.5 litre bottle of
soda. The Police have arrested the watcher. Party
members had seen Easwaran, the LTTE's area leader for
Nallur, in the Vembadi Girl's School grounds the
previous afternoon. This had been denied by a school
watcher with whom they checked immediately.EPRLF-LTTE Relations - A Tragic Story of a Struggle
Destroyed from WithinThe LTTE had been killing members for the EPRLF by
stealth and deceit from 1985, reaching epic
proportions upon the departure of the IPKF in 1990.
Those who survived were refugees in India for a time,
where in June 1990 the LTTE gunned down several of its
leaders, including the charismatic Padmanabha.Like Subathiran, many in the group were committed
democrats. Having suffered severely at the LTTE's
hands, they attempted to do political work behind the
cover provided by the Indian Army. In the fight to
prevent the LTTE from wrecking any political process
under the Indo-Lanka Accord, democratic ideals were
compromised. There was an orgy of killing and
counter-killing. Subathiran's father Thambirajah too
was arrested and killed by the LTTE during this
period.Several of the group's survivors painfully evaluated
their experience and decided to return to Sri Lanka
and do political work avoiding any operational links
to the state forces. They started publishing their
paper 'Puthiyakannottam'(New Vision). This was a
difficult period. The massive killing of Tamil
civilians by the Sri Lankan Army in 1990/91 gave the
LTTE a new legitimacy in the eyes of the world. As the
Army got bogged down, the Tamil Press in Colombo, and
even many former militants from groups decimated by
LTTE terror, and politicians like Kumar Ponnambalam
who had been very critical of the LTTE, gravitated
towards the LTTE's ultra-nationalist slogans. For many
of them, resisting the LTTE's terror appeared futile
and unrewarding.The EPRLF reestablished its Jaffna office in 1997 and
obtained 15% of the vote in the 1998 municipal
elections, a creditable performance for a party that
could not go out and canvass. The party found itself
in deep crisis in 1999 when its General Secretary
Suresh Premachandran made a deal with the LTTE and
walked out with nearly all party's money and property
held by him in trust. At this time the LTTE's terror
too became more intense. But most members of the group
stayed with Subathiran.It is misleading to judge the significance of a party
by counting votes in a skewed environment crushed by
terror. Anyone familiar with the scene knows that the
people long for a way out of the death trap set by the
LTTE, but cannot, for the fear to express it
concretely. Privately, at least, there is tremendous
appreciation of people who stand up to the terror and
give hope of an alternative. On the contrary, those
who have joined the TNA have not done so out of any
faith in the LTTE's politics, and their role is to
ensure that the Tamil people are crushed. Not
surprisingly, they were the cheerleaders of the
UNP-Norway peace process.No one with any passing knowledge of the LTTE can call
the fate to which the Norway-sponsored cease-fire MoU
subjected the non-LTTE groups, an innocent
misjudgment. It was sheer cynicism. The arms these
groups had for their protection were removed and the
LTTE was allowed into the government-controlled areas
with practically no checks. To say that the LTTE was
unarmed was convenient fiction; the public knew
otherwise. The SLMM and the UNP remained silent as
abductions and killings of persons opposed to the LTTE
accelerated. The Government even helpfully distracted
the public from the LTTE's killing of Tamil members of
the Sri Lankan Army, by surreptitiously pinning on the
victims the label 'Tamil informants'.Amidst murder and the abduction of children for use as
combatants, the Government and Norway got the rest of
the world to praise the peace process. When confronted
with violations by the LTTE, they simply said that
there was no evidence - evidence for which they never
looked. Members of non-LTTE groups who tried to draw
the attention of Norwegian or SLMM officials to their
plight, found themselves effectively rebuffed,
sometimes the annoyance of the officials reaching the
point of rudeness. To the Norwegians, those insisting
on building and preserving democratic norms were a
nuisance.Conclusion
The peace carnival is now all but over. It bought
the LTTE a nearly 18 month free run to conscript
children, draw up hit lists, spy and carry out its
fatal missions, before returning to war. For its
trouble, the Government seems to be satisfied with
post-dated cheques from donors supposedly worth four
and a half billion dollars.Peace groups in Colombo, who under prodding from their
overseas 'partners' praised appeasement of the LTTE in
the name of peace a grand idea, have had some much
belated afterthoughts about democracy and human rights
in the North-East. With active encouragement from the
LTTE, its agents and the TNA, they pushed for third
party mediation and international involvement. The
reason: neither the Tamils nor the LTTE can trust a
Sinhalese government!Now, suddenly, the LTTE does not want to talk to its
Norwegian and Japanese interlocutors who were paying
regular pilgrimages to the Vanni and begging it to go
to the Tokyo Conference. Even the bizarre sideshow of
the LTTE's well publicised binge murdering democratic
opponents, and civilians, did not appear to dampen
their enthusiasm or the strength of their entreaties.
All this pleading did not help to allay the LTTE's
fears that someone, at the Tokyo Conference, might
extract from it a pledge, even a merely formal one, to
respect democracy and human rights. Against that risk,
even the prospect of Tokyo's multi-million dollar
cheques turned sour.The signs are that the carnival is coming to a close
and the country faces, barring a miraculous reprieve,
the terrible cruelties of war. Tolerating human
rights abuses by the LTTE in various forms during the
process has not yielded any opening for the people.
It only reinforced total control for them to drag the
people again in the direction of war. The question is
whether at least at this last stage the international
community prepared to make people central to the
process? Has the Government, which created a nightmare
in the name of peace, learnt enough to deal with what
is coming without inflicting further horrors on the
Tamil people? Does the Opposition command the
statesmanship to be restrained in its quest for power,
and to guide the Government through the initial crisis
while ensuring that the ordinary Tamil citizen is
treated with fraternal concern?