Govt.plays KP card

It was a double blow to the Diaspora scheming of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). First, Colombo did what was anticipated to happen anytime since the arrest of Kumaran Pathmanathan, LTTE’s chief arms procurer and the successor of Velupillai Prabhakaran. KP was brought to the scene in a calculated move to win a part of the Tamil diaspora.
KP travelled to the North and East with a delegation of diaspora representatives, his loyalists in the past, whom he invited to Sri Lanka on the request of the government.

Lavish lifestyles
The nine-member delegation is a group of KP confidantes and his relatives. After visiting the North, KP spoke to a state media journalist at a Colombo hotel. KP arrived in a white coloured car with a back-up vehicle. He spoke at length about the LTTE and alleged that some former members of the LTTE were swindling diaspora funds. LTTE financial accounts and business ventures have now been used to fund lavish lifestyles, he alleged.
Therefore, he said he decided to speak out against the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). He said the LTTE could not resurrect its military wing and wage a war of the magnitude it did. The money directed to resurrect the TGTE was in vain and will serve the cause of the Tamil people better if the funds were directed properly for resettlement and rehabilitation work in the North, he said.
He said the visit by the delegation was partly personal and that they wished to see him. They would also encourage the diaspora to take part in development in the North-East.
The journalist asked him whether he had political ambitions. Some media reports earlier speculated that he would be the chief ministerial candidate of the SLFP for the Northern Provincial Council Election.
He replied in the negative and vowed that his concern was resettlement and rehabilitation. If seeing is believing, KP is anything but a prisoner.
His security officers carry his bags. He sends them to buy him cigarettes!
The split is widening within the Tamil diaspora courtesy KP factor. Nethiyaan, the Oslo based close confidante of Tamilselvan, wanted to resurrect the LTTE’s military wing, but he lost in the power struggle to Vishvanathan Rudrakumar, a former advisor to Prabhakaran and currently the chief executive of the TGTE.
However, with KP’s latest appearance, there are reports of a split in the LTTE ranks in Malaysia, KP’s romping ground before his arrest .
Some quarters of Malaysian Tamils of Sri Lankan origin will hold a fundraising evening to help resettlement and rehabilitation in the north-east.

Rejected
Second, the US Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by a host of LTTE front organizations based in US in association with the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), a human rights organization with consultative status to the United Nations and its president Ralph Fertig, a retired administrative law judge. The court upheld the Material Support Statute, which criminalizes the material support to designated terrorist groups.
The petitioners included Nagalingam Jeyalingam, a Sri Lankan born Tamil surgeon and a member of the advisory panel of the TGTE and five diaspora organizations with links to the LTTE: Ilankai Thamil Sangam; Tamils of Northern California; Tamil Welfare and Human Rights Committee; Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America; World Tamil Coordinating Committee.

Challenging
They filed a federal law suit challenging the constitutionality of the material-support statute. Plaintiffs claimed that they wished to provide support for humanitarian and political activities of the PKK and the LTTE in the form of monetary contributions, other tangible aid, legal training, and political advocacy, but that they could not do so for fear of prosecution under material-support statute.
Activities are: (1) “training members of the LTTE to present claims for tsunami-related aid to mediators and international bodies”; (2) “offering their legal expertise in negotiating peace agreements between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government”; and(3) “engaging in political advocacy on behalf of Tamils who live in Sri Lanka.”
The US Supreme Court delivering its judgment, stated: since the LTTE was militarily destroyed, “the support the Tamil organizations and Dr. Jeyalingam sought to provide is now moot.” The material-support statute was enacted in 1994. However, the LTTE had been successful in circumventing the law in the past, though there had been several arrests and convictions handed down to LTTE operatives under the statute recently.

New face
Therefore, how the Supreme Court ruling would impact the activities of the TGTE is to be seen. The TGTE is by any definition the new face of the LTTE. However, the TGTE has so far been successful in lobbying officials in Washington, including US under Secretary of State for South Asia, Robert Blake, whom Rudrakumar met several times since the establishment of the TGTE.
Both Under-Secretary Blake and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have called on Colombo to engage with diaspora Tamils, whereas the government in Colombo alleges that remnants of the LTTE will raise funds to fight a fresh war in Sri Lanka. The government has shunned the bloc of the diehard LTTE sympathizers and apologists; instead, it is working to isolate them, by winning over sections of Tamil diaspora who are willing to work within a mandate decided by the government itself.

Who’s who of the TGTE

Vishvanathan Rudrakumar, the chief executive of the TGTE is a US based lawyer and a former advisor of the LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. Rudrakumar is the son of the former Jaffna Mayor Mac
Vishvanathan. His mother was a respected school teacher at Jaffna Hindu Ladies College, the leading girls’ school in the peninsula. She later became the Vice Principal of the school.
Rudrakumar attended Jaffna Central College and later Colombo Law College and graduated as an attorney at Law. He migrated to the United States after anti Tamil riots in July 1983. Rudrakumar joined the LTTE’s diaspora lobbying groups in the mid 90s when the LTTE approached a group of Tamil technocrats to canvas their host governments. The group included Joe Maheswaran, the former Sydney correspondent of the Sydney Broadcasting Service, Siva Pasupathy, former Sri Lankan attorney general and Rudrakumar.
Rudrakumar was appointed as Prabhakaran’s international affairs advisor and a member of the LTTE panel which drafted the Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA).
Rudrakumar was appointed as the head of the TGTE after the arrest of KP, who succeeded Prabhakaran as the leader of the LTTE.
TGTE reneges on the central pillar of the LTTE ideology, which cling to a territorial base. The TGTE concedes territory and many other attributes which were part and parcel of the LTTE’s de-facto state-”The TGTE will not have a territorial base like traditional governments. Enforcement of sovereignty by enacting laws, defense of territory and taxation like traditional governments is not applicable to the TGTE.”

Francis Anthony Boyle is a professor of international law at the University Of Illinois College Of Law. Boyle received a J.D. degree. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Harvard University. He also practiced tax and international tax with Bingham, Dana & Gould. He is a noted propagandist of the LTTE. He and Bruce Fein are alleged to have been paid by the LTTE front groups, according to diaspora LTTE sources who defected the group. He is a member of the advisory panel of the TGTE

Professor M Sornarajah is presently Professor at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore. He is also a Fellow at the CEPMLP. He is a Solicitor of the High Court of England and Wales. He studied law at the University of Ceylon, Yale Law School and the University of London. Prof. Sornarajah was formerly the Head of the Law School of the University of Tasmania, Australia. He has also been Chief Editor of the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies and was the Founding Editor of the Singapore Journal of International and Comparative Law. He is a member of the advisory panel of the TGTE

Ramasamy Palinasamy is currently, the Deputy Chief Minister of the state of Penang, Malaysia. He is also a member of the Parliament of Malaysia. He is a shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition.
Before entering politics, Ramasamy was a Professor at the University Kebangsaan Malaysia, but his employment was terminated in 2005. He later took up teaching positions in Germany and Singapore. He is a member of the advisory panel of the TGTE
A.J.C. Chandrakanthan was a pro-LTTE catholic priest in Jaffna, and campaigned against the Indian Peace Keeping Force.
He studied theology, obtained a degree and a university position in Canada with the help of Professor A. J. Wilson. He is a passionate advocate of the LTTE militancy. Prof. Michael Roberts says that “Chandrasekaran’s picture of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is a veritable paen of praise in the Kaavya tradition of the Indic world”.
Chandrakanthan has disrobed and works as a “layman” prof. He is a member of the advisory panel of TGTE and a Director of the Margosa Financial Institution. He has tried to move away from his theological training and now claims to be a”bio-ethicist”.

Nadarajah Sriskandarajah is an Associate Professor at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University of Denmark. He penned an article: Liberation struggle or terrorism? The politics of naming the LTTE.
He argued that politics of the terrorist label of the LTTE had affected its evolutionary course. The label has not necessarily impeded the growth of the LTTE’s military capability but has, by denying the LTTE’s international legitimacy, undermined the organization’s stated political project-Tamil self-determination. He is a member of the advisory panel of the TGTE.

Dr A L Vasanthakumar is a British based Tamil academic and a member of the advisory panel of TGTE.

Karen Parker is an attorney hired by the LTTE represents it in a number of court cases in the United States. She is a member of the California Bar and has a J.D from the University Of San Francisco School Of Law and a Diploma in Droit International et Droit Comapare des Droits de l’Homme (Strasbourgh, France).
She argues that the LTTE is not a terrorist group.
“I have been asked to set out my views on whether the LTTE is a “terrorist” organization. I state categorically that the LTTE is not a “terrorist” organization, but rather an armed force in a war against the government of Sri Lanka. Characterization of the LTTE as a “terrorist” organization is politically motivated having no basis in law or fact”. She is a member of the advisory panel of TGTE.

Dr. Nagalingam Jeyalingam practices otolaryngology in Newburgh, New York. Dr.
Nagalingam Jeyalingam in the petition challenging the constitutionality of the material support statue claimed that he wanted to “provide training in the presentation of claims to mediators and international bodies for tsunami-related aid, offer legal expertise in negotiating peace agreements between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, and engage in political advocacy on behalf of Tamils living in Sri Lanka.” He is a member of the advisory panel of TGTE.

Prof. Peter Schalk a leading propagandist for the LTTE and fell in love with Tamil militancy, especially suicide terrorism when he researched the ‘martyrdom’ concept of Black Tigers. Schalk holds a PhD from Lund University and is an academic of Uppsala University, Sweden.

Selva Sivarajah

Sivanendran Seevanayagam