Shifting Stance?

On November 27 each year, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), delivers a "Heroes' Day Message" to climax a week-long series of events intended to honour the Tiger cadres who have died in the course of their secessionist campaign of war and terrorism. This routine event, staged on the day following the leader's birthday, tends to be looked upon by most observers as part and parcel of the cult-perpetuating ritual on which the LTTE has always placed great emphasis. The annual message, regularly published in journals espousing Tamil nationalism, has also been occasionally scrutinised for guidelines it could provide to the thinking among the LTTE leadership.

Prabhakaran's message this year has attracted greater media attention than it usually does. Broadcast in the context of the on-going peace negotiations - a process that began in December 2001 with the suspension of the military confrontation between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE - the message was expected to contain clues on the extent to which the LTTE would deviate from its secessionist commitments in order to reach a compromise with the government. 

It derived special significance from the fact that, two days earlier, representatives of about 40 countries had met in Oslo at a forum named the 'Sri Lanka Peace Process Support Conference' to urge both the Sri Lanka government as well as the LTTE to persist with their peace efforts, and pledged assistance totaling to about US $70 million for rehabilitation and reconstruction of the war-ravaged areas in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

Despite appearances to the contrary, the 'Oslo Conference' was not a meeting convened to decide on aid commitments - such decisions seldom are extempore responses to ceremonial statements by prospective recipients of aid. Nor could it be regarded as an elaborate gesture of international support for the peace efforts, because the existence of such support was already well known. 

Considered in the context of the current global tide against terrorism, and the fact that the LTTE has remained a proscribed terrorist organisation in several participant countries, the significance of the conference lay mainly in the fact that it represented a collective effort to pressurise the LTTE to abandon not only the violence with which its campaign of secessionism has been associated, but even its seemingly intransigent secessionist stance. In addition, the conference could be perceived as being aimed at strengthening the segment of the Sri Lankan government led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe to deal with the increasingly vehement domestic opposition to its approach on negotiations with the LTTE.

The foregoing considerations are the backdrop against which Prabhakaran's recent message must be examined for any implicit or explicit novelty it might contain. The most widely publicised response to this message has been that it does reflect a significant shift from the LTTE's earlier separatist stance. Reuters, for example, reported that the "leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers made the clearest statement yet that the Tigers had given up their demand for a separate state saying he was willing to settle for regional autonomy." 

Again, Prime Minister Wickremasinghe interpreted the message as a "paradigm shift reflecting that the LTTE no longer relentlessly pursues the idea of a separate state but is content to consider substantial power-sharing within a framework of a unified Sri Lanka." Several pro-negotiation groups in Sri Lanka responded almost ecstatically to the message, seeing in it "a vitally significant breakthrough" for peace. 

The 'message' is, as usual, quite lengthy and elaborate in its scope and content. The essence of the LTTE's demand as it stands at present, however, is encapsulated in the following passage extracted from the English translation. 

Tamil homeland, Tamil nationality and Tamils' right to self-determination are the fundamentals underlying our political struggle. We have been insisting on these fundamentals from Thimpu to Thailand. Our position is that the Tamil national question should be resolved on the basis of these core principles... As a distinct people they (the Tamils) are entitled to the right to self-determination. The right to self-determination has two aspects: internal and external. The internal self-determination entitles a people to regional self-rule.

The Tamil people want to live in freedom and dignity in their own lands without the domination of external forces. They want to protect their national identity pursuing the development of their language, culture and economy. They want to live in their homeland under a system of self-rule. This is the political aspiration of our people. We are prepared to consider favourably a political framework that offers substantial regional autonomy and self-government in our homeland on the basis of the right to internal self-determination. But if our people's right to self-determination is denied and our demand for self-rule is rejected we have no alternative other than to secede and form an independent state". (emphasis added)

Is there, in fact, a tangible shift in the negotiating stance of the LTTE leadership identifiable here? In order to seek an answer to this question, it is necessary to compare the 'demand' contained in the cited extract with pronouncements made by the LTTE leadership in the past, not only on what they demand and the extent to which they might be persuaded to compromise on their demand, but also the principles on which they claim to base their demands, and what they would do if the demands are not conceded. 

The answer to the question of whether there has been any change in the principles to which the LTTE claims adherence is an emphatic 'no'. Indeed, the 'fundamentals' postulated in the present extract as providing the basis of the LTTE stance are identical to the first three 'Principles' enunciated at Thimpu seventeen years ago, and repeated thereafter on innumerable occasions almost as litany. These 'Principles', announced by the Tamil delegation at the Thimpu Talks facilitated by the Government of India are (to cite verbatim): 

1. Recognition of the Tamils of Ceylon as a nation; 
2. Recognition of the existence of an identified homeland for the Tamils in Ceylon; 
3. Recognition of the right of self-determination of the Tamil nation; and 
4. Recognition of the right of citizenship and the fundamental rights of all Tamils in Ceylon. 

Is it possible to attribute significance to the distinction that has been made between 'internal' and 'external' self-determination and what it is intended to imply? It is significant that in Prabhakaran's latest message, while the former is explained as 'regional autonomy', the latter has been left unexplained. 

Admittedly, the concept of 'external self-determination' of a national group (as the Tamils of Sri Lanka are referred to in the message) is not easy to define, specially in the context of the fact that about 50 per cent of this group live outside the 'region' for which self-rule (i.e. internal self-determination) is being demanded - unless the differentiation is intended to pertain to matters of internal government of the expected autonomous region and those of foreign relations of the country as a whole.

Whether the maintenance of such a distinction in affairs of governance would be feasible is an issue that will obviously loom large in any future negotiations. Regarding self-determination in its un-differentiated form, it is significant that many of the LTTE's earlier pronouncements contained the proviso that 

"...self-determination includes the right to determine the degree of autonomy which the Tamil nation could exercise" (which implies that it would include the right to secession). Such a qualification is not found in the present statement. [Citation from the opening statement by the spokesman for the Tamil delegation at Thimpu at the commencement of the talks in July 1985].

What stands out most prominently as a similarity between Prabkakaran's recent message and the LTTE's earlier statements of policy and intent is the conditionality attached to an abandonment of the goal of secession. In the present statement, as in almost all previous ones, one finds the daring ultimatum that, if the Tamils are denied the right to self-determination, the LTTE would secede. The related qualifications are, explicitly, that the degree of self-determination granted must satisfy the "aspirations of the Tamil people", and, implicitly, that it would be the LTTE that would decide on whether the aspirations have been satisfied.

To sum-up, the only conclusion which can be reached is that, in terms of substance, there is still no tangible change in the LTTE's stance on secessionism. This conclusion finds support from the actual record of the LTTE's performance in Sri Lanka's 'north-east' since the commencement of the peace negotiations. 

It is also vividly reinforced by Anton Balasingham's (leader of the LTTE delegation at Oslo) response to the gentle request made by Richard Armitage (delegate of the United States government) for the LTTE to formally renounce violence and terrorism. In a show of brinkmanship which only a very few leaders of terrorist organisations would dare display in the prevailing ethos, but has all along been LTTE's forte, Balasingham said (admittedly in more polite terms), 'Go, fly a kite!' 

There is, of course, a change in tone, though that too is not entirely new. For example, the 'Heroes Day Message' of 1999, as the Tamil Times (15 December 1999: 9) observed, was "peppered with vitriolic attacks against President Chandrika Kumaratunga's regime (and) reflected the extent of the Tiger leader's hatred and anger" (which found expression in an attempt on her life about three weeks later). In the following year, the crux of the message was a scathing criticism of the President's policy statement at the opening of the Parliament elected in October that year. 

The 'message' of 2001 (the Norwegians were active by this time, and the country was preparing for a parliamentary election and a possible change of regime) was mild in tone, but almost identical in substance to the present one, except for the sophistry on the subject of "self-determination". In sum, the Tigers have systematically tailored their rhetoric to the imperatives and expedients of the moment. There is little current evidence of substantive change on this count.

The author is Senior Professor, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and Senior Fellow, International Centre for Ethnic Studies.Copyright: South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, where it first appeared