FRONT PAGE | Tuesday, May 19, 2009 | Email | Print | 
A bloody era ends, Prabhakaran dead
Ravi Nessman | Colombo
Sri Lanka declared on Monday it has crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels, killing their chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and ending his three-decade quest for an independent homeland for minority Tamils.
State television broke into its regular programming to announce Prabhakaran’s death, and the Government information department sent a text message to cell phones across the country confirming he was killed along with top deputies, Soosai and Pottu Amman. The announcement sparked mass celebrations around the country, and people poured into the streets of Colombo dancing and singing. Prabhakaran’s death has been seen as crucial to bringing closure to this war-wracked Indian Ocean island nation. If he had escaped, he could have used his large international smuggling network and the support of Tamil expatriates to spark a new round of guerrilla warfare here. His death in battle could still turn him into a martyr for other Tamil separatists.
While Velupillai Prabhakaran was a hero to some, his group was branded a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union, and it was accused of waging hundreds of suicide attacks, including the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female bomber. The rebels also forcibly recruited child soldiers.
Sri Lanka’s Army chief, Lt Gen Sareth Fonseka, said on television that his troops routed the last rebels from the northern war zone on Monday morning.
“We can announce very responsibly that we have liberated the whole country from terrorism,” he told state television. Rajapaksa confirmed Prabhakaran’s death in a phone call to India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Indian Foreign Affairs spokesman Vishnu Prakash said in a statement. Senior military officials said troops closed in on Prabhakaran and his final cadre early on Monday.
He and his top deputies then drove an armor-plated van accompanied by a bus filled with rebel fighters toward approaching Sri Lankan forces, sparking a two-hour firefight, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Troops eventually fired a rocket at the van, ending the battle, they said. In addition to Prabhakaran, the attack also killed Soosai, the head of the rebels’ naval wing, and Pottu Amman, the group’s feared intelligence commander, the officials said.
One of Prabhakaran’s sons was also killed, the military said. Suren Surendiran, a spokesman for the British Tamils’ Forum, the largest organisation for expatriate Tamils in Britain, said the community was in despair.
“The people are very somber and very saddened. But we are ever determined and resilient to continue our struggle for Eelam,” he said, invoking the name of the Tamils hoped-for independent state. “We have to win the freedom and liberation of our people.” But in Colombo, which had suffered countless rebel bombings, people set off fireworks, danced and sang in the streets. “Myself and most of my friends gathered here have narrowly escaped bombs set off by the Tigers. Some of our friends were not lucky,” said Lal Hettige, 47, a businessman celebrating in Colombo’s outdoor market. “We are happy today to see the end of that ruthless terrorist organisation and its heartless leader. We can live in peace after this.”
The chubby, mustachioed Prabhakaran turned what was little more than a street gang in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most feared insurgencies. Prabhakaran demanded unwavering loyalty and gave his followers vials of cyanide to wear around their necks and bite into in case of capture. They often used suicide bombings — a tactic pioneered by groups in Lebanon years earlier but perfected by the rebels.
At the height of his power, he controlled a shadow state in northern Sri Lankan that had its own border control, police force, tax system and law school. The rebels feted foreign diplomats at one of the many guest houses they ran in their administrative capital of Kilinochchi.
He commanded a force that included an infantry, backed by artillery, a significant naval wing and a nascent air force. Prabhakaran was renowned as a master strategist, but made a series of fatal miscalculations.
The assassination of Gandhi alienated his supporters in India, his stubborn line during negotiations eventually convinced the Government it could never reach a peace deal and a Tamil boycott he enforced during the 2005 election ensured the a victory for the hard-line Rajapaksa. The Tamil Tigers were also badly weakened when one of his top commanders defected along with thousands of fighters to the Government side.
Earlier in the day, the military announced it had killed several top rebel leaders, including Prabhakaran’s son Charles Anthony, also a rebel leader. The military said special forces also found the bodies of the rebels’ political wing leader, Balasingham Nadesan, the head of the rebels’ peace secretariat, Seevaratnam Puleedevan, and one of the top military leaders, known as Ramesh. Government forces ousted the rebels from their strongholds in the north in recent months and brought the group to its knees.
Meanwhile, the chiefs of Sri Lankan armed forces, who led the successful military campaign that wiped out the entire LTTE leadership, were rewarded with rare promotions. Army chief Sarath Fonseka was promoted to the rank of General, Navy chief Wasantha Karannagoda has been made an Admiral, while Air Force chief Roshan Goonathilake is now an Air Chief Marshal. The three defence chiefs became the first Armed Forces Commanders to hold four star ranks while in active service, the military said, according to PTI.
LTTE: Chronology of events
1975: LTTE group formed, demanding separate State for minority ethnic Tamils
July 1983: Tamil Tigers ambush Army patrol in Jaffna, killing 13 soldiers
Anti-Tamil riots begin, killing 300-600 people, civil war begins
March 1990: Indian troops withdraw
May 21, 1991: India’s former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassinated
1993: A rebel suicide bomber kills Sri Lanka’s President Ranasinghe Premadasa after his Government's failed peace efforts
July 1996: Rebels overrun Army camp in northeastern town of Mullativu, killing 1,200 troops
October 1997: United States bans LTTE
January 1998: Tamil Tigers bomb Sri Lanka’s holiest Buddhist shrine, the Temple of Tooth Relic, in Kandy
July 2001: Rebels attack main air base and only international airport in Sri Lanka, destroying 13 aircraft and leaving at least 12 dead
February 2002: Sri Lankan Government signs cease-fire pact with Tamil Tigers
August 2005: Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, an ethnic Tamil who opposed separate state for the minority, is assassinated
January 16, 2008: Sri Lanka officially withdraws from cease-fire deal
January 25, 2009: Government captures rebels’ last major stronghold of Mullaittivu
-- AP
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