Lion, Tiger and lies - SRI LANKA
Too many loose ends in Lankan army's version of Prabhakaran's death - By
Anita Pratap
Precisely because he is many things to many people, LTTE
leader V. Prabhakaran’s death has been greeted with joy by the Sinhalese, grief
by his Tamil supporters, and relief by many who hope his death will bring peace
to beleaguered Sri Lanka. But is he really dead? Speculation is rife only
because journalists are not allowed in, and independent verification is
impossible. I was sceptical of the first report, which said he was killed while
fleeing the war zone in an ambulance. No way. Prabhakaran would not do something
so idiotic. Remember, the Sri Lankan army told us that Prabhakaran and his
cadres were surrounded in a tiny patch of land, less than 1 sq.km. The area was
so small and so well surrounded that anyone coming out on a bicycle would be
spotted and stopped. So logically, what chance would an ambulance have of
sprinting past unnoticed? If he had to flee from such a tiny war zone, he would
have scurried out through an underground tunnel.
And then came the picture of Prabhakaran’s corpse. The first question: if he was
killed in an ambulance, how come his body was discovered in a lagoon? The
picture looked fake. Top of the head was blown off, but the face was clear and
the eyes wide open. Prabhakaran’s most distinguishing feature are his eyes,
which seemed artificially wide, as if someone was trying to prove it was indeed
him by grabbing attention to his eyes. It reminded me of the front-page picture
of the terrorist killed in a shootout in Ansal Plaza in New Delhi a few years
ago. I had said then that I found it hard to believe that the terrorist had died
that way with the gun in his hand. I have seen innumerable civilians, soldiers
and guerrillas lying dead in battlefields. They don’t look like this. I
instinctively felt the picture was stage-managed. Forensically, I did not see
how it was possible that a guy involved in a massive shootout could die so
perfectly posed. Subsequent investigations reinforced these doubts.
That is the same feeling I had when I saw the picture of Prabhakaran’s corpse.
Far from setting my doubts to rest, the picture convinced me that something was
fishy. The initial version was that soldiers had “shelled” the ambulance, which
caught fire and was destroyed. If you pummel an ambulance with artillery shells
or rocket propelled grenades, it will explode. So, if Prabhakaran were inside,
his body would have been blown to bits. At the very least, charred. And when his
dog tags and identity cards surfaced, the whole thing seemed even more of a
set-up. Besides, Karuna’s and Daya Master’s identification of Prabhakaran’s body
has as much credibility as a confession extracted in police custody.
I am not saying that I know for sure Prabhakaran is alive. What I am saying is
that this version of his death does not ring true.
I have said before that Prabhakaran will never be captured alive. But there is
one more thing I would add. If he knew there was no way out, he would not only
have killed himself but have made sure his body was not found. There are two
reasons for this. One, he is a keen student of military history and knows if his
body were found, it would be desecrated by the victorious Sinhalese soldiers.
All triumphant soldiers have done this through history. I can still vividly
recall the dead Afghan leader Najibullah hanging from a Kabul lamp-post,
cigarette stuffed in his nose, body bloated and beaten black and blue by the
victorious Taliban. I have seen videos of dead female LTTE soldiers being
stripped naked and paraded by gleeful Sinhalese soldiers.
Many detest him, but one must understand Prabhakaran’s psyche. He is an
extraordinarily proud man, one who believes he is fighting to restore the honour
and glory of the Tamils. There is simply no way he will allow himself to be
desecrated and bring eternal shame and dishonour to his people. So not only will
he swallow his cyanide, have his bodyguard shoot him to make his death doubly
sure, but he will ensure that his body is blasted to bits, so that no corpse
ever surfaces.
That brings me to the second reason why he would ensure his body was never found
if he had to commit suicide to evade capture. Remember, one of his favourite
heroes is Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Even today, there are people who believe
that Bose is still alive. The mystery and the mystique remain. If Prabhakaran’s
body is never found, no one can be sure whether he is really dead or alive and
the conspiracy theories will spin forever—keeping him alive in people’s
imagination. Purpose served, especially if he is dead.
I do not rule out Prabhakaran’s death. I don’t think he was killed, more likely
he took his own life. If I were to pick a day that he decided to commit suicide
with his top cadres, it would be May 16.
In my last article published a month ago in THE WEEK (Crouching Tiger, May 3) on
what I expected Prabhakaran’s next move to be, I had written, “He will be
watching the Indian elections closely to see which dispensation takes charge in
New Delhi. He will be watching to see if there is a popular upsurge of support
in Tamil Nadu for the plight of Tamils across the Palk Strait. …He will be
watching President Barack Obama who rightly analysed that conflicts stem from
our perception of the other.”
On May 13, referring to the “desperate, humanitarian crisis” in Sri Lanka, Obama
urged the Tigers to “lay down their arms” and the government to stop the
“indiscriminate shelling that has taken hundreds of innocent lives”. Tiger
spokespersons said they were willing to accede to Obama’s request, but the Sri
Lankan government refused to slacken or halt the final onslaught to wrest the
last piece of land from Prabhakaran’s grip. On May 16, the Indian election
results came out and contrary to media punditry, the Congress made a resounding
comeback. That spelt doom for Prabhakaran: his implacable foes will remain in
power for another five years. Instead of an upsurge in Tamil Nadu, staunch LTTE
supporters like Vaiko were routed. Prabhakaran has been waging this battle alone
for the last three years and he knows what it has cost him—his cadres, the
Tamils civilians and the diaspora. It has been truly horrific. Surviving another
five years of this isolation with a hostile Congress establishment at the helm
in India and an impotent international community is very hard. Getting Eelam in
the near future in such hostile international circumstances is impossible.
In the past, after he was routed, Prabhakaran started all over again from
scratch. That is why I had said I could envision him continuing the war. But
with Congress’s victory, Tamil Nadu’s political defeat and adamancy of the Sri
Lankan state to disregard even the American president, I can see why he saw the
futility of continuing his struggle, deciding then to fight unto death.
In his introduction to an absolute must-read 1964 book, The World of Yesterday
by Austrian author Stefan Zweig, Harry Zohn talks about the three times that
Zweig had to start his life all over, caught up as he was between the two world
wars. Writes Zohn: “Too exhausted to start a fourth, Zweig took his life in
Brazil soon after completing his autobiography, at a time when the prospects for
the realisation of all that he had ever striven for looked particularly bleak.”
Zweig and Prabhakaran are complete opposites. But this, I think, sums up
Prabhakaran’s mood on May 16. What lends some credence to my theory is that
several members of the Tamil diaspora said they began getting calls from their
LTTE contacts in Vanni, tearfully bidding farewell. That most of the top rung of
the LTTE’s military wing are dead, points to mass suicide.
Rumours began circulating in the blogosphere on May 16 that Prabhakaran and 300
of his top cadres had committed mass suicide and blown themselves up. In fact,
Sri Lanka’s army website posted an item at 17:51 on May 17 from the battlefront:
“Self-ignited LTTE explosions [were] heard and witnessed in close vicinity.
Likelihood of Tigers committing suicide en masse or burning of LTTE assets on
their own has not been ruled out.” Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa
announced victory and end of war. On May 17 afternoon, the LTTE, issued a
statement: “This battle has reached its bitter end. We remain with one last
choice—to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We
have decided to silence our guns.” The statement blamed the silence of the
international community, the impunity with which the Sri Lankan government
ignored urgent appeals, used words like “desperate” and “saddened”, referred to
“bitter end” twice. And added: “Against all odds, we have held back the
advancing Sinhalese forces, without help or support…. Our only regrets are for
the lives lost and that we could not hold out any longer.” It reads like a
suicide note.
For an even more absurd reason, I am inclined to believe that he could have
committed suicide on May 17. Prabhakaran was very superstitious and once
confessed to me that the number 8 is very unlucky for him—even though he is born
on November 26. So he never undertook major offensives on 8th, 17th and 26th of
a month. I reported that. And the Sri Lankan army took it easy on those days.
But Charles Anthony, his son, couldn’t care less about superstition. Many of the
operations he commanded were on 26th, precisely to surprise the army. On April
26, 2006, an LTTE suicide bomber tried in vain to assassinate Sri Lankan army
commander, Sarath Fonseka, who since then became Prabhakaran’s mortal enemy.
From this superstitious perspective, it is perhaps not a coincidence that the
likely date of Prabhakaran’s suicide is May 17. When Prabhakaran told me about
his superstition regarding numbers, I read Cheiro. According to Cheiro, people
born with the birth number 8 are destined for great successes and great
failures! If he has indeed committed suicide, this prediction certainly rings
true for him!
On May 18 at 3 a.m. Vanni time, the LTTE political chief B. Nadesan and its
peace secretariat director Puleedevan telephoned their European contacts
requesting them to ask the ICRC to evacuate about 1,000 of their wounded cadres
and LTTE’s civil officials. But a few hours later, the Sri Lankan defence
ministry claimed they had found the dead bodies of Nadesan, Puleedevan and
Anthony. The LTTE accused the Sri Lankan government of “treachery”. Their
version is that their international contacts told them that arrangements had
been made with the Sri Lankan military to discuss “an orderly end to the war”.
So as instructed, Nadesan and Puleedevan, unarmed and carrying white flags,
contacted the 58 division of the Sri Lankan troops operating nearby. But they
were shot and killed. If this is true, under international conventions, this
would be a war crime. The number of dead bodies shown on Sri Lankan websites
indicates that this war on terror ended with a bloody massacre.
Sri Lankan army released pictures of Anthony’s corpse on May 18. Up until then,
they had been releasing old pictures of a bulky Anthony in battle fatigues
looking at the camera sulkily. But now two photos were released—one in which he
is alive and the other his corpse. The strange thing is in both pictures he is
wearing the same blue shirt. The explanation then could be that he, with Nadesan
and Puleedevan, had gone dressed in civilian clothes with white flags to the 58
division. Pictures were taken, where he looks clean-shaven, relaxed and neat.
And then something went wrong and a massacre followed some time later (the dead
Anthony’s face has stubble). All Tiger fighters wear combat fatigues, so if he
was fighting, Anthony should have been wearing battle dress. But the army’s
version is that Anthony and others arrived dressed in civilian clothes on what
was a suicide mission. But then that doesn’t explain the picture of Anthony
alive.
Intriguingly, it took another whole day before the government released the
picture of Prabhakaran’s dead body. If Prabhakaran did indeed blow himself up
along with his top cadres, then there can be no body to parade. In which case,
the Sri Lankan government came up with a Prabhakaran “double”. How weird is
that? But the answer could be simple—the army was under pressure to show a dead
body as proof. No one will believe otherwise that Prabhakaran is dead. If the
Sri Lankan military has evidence that Prabhakaran did indeed blast himself, then
they can be certain he will not surface to dispute their claim. On May 20, Sri
Lanka’s defence ministry website carried a bizarre announcement: “We are not
going to comment on how he died.”
But the story gets more curious. The LTTE is silent about Anthony, but has
issued a statement that Prabhakaran is alive and safe. But few believe the LTTE,
so rumours are now rife that Prabhakaran will give a television interview to
prove he is alive. That will be a bombshell if it happens, suggesting he had
waged an elaborate war of deception, complete with his own “double”. Any move he
makes will be picked up by the Sri Lankan intelligence. But that is if he is
alive. A Sinhalese blogger said: “He is alive and well—in hell.
But all these conspiracy theories can be quelled. The international community
can force Sri Lanka to share the DNA tests done on Prabhakaran and Anthony and
verify if they match Prabhakaran’s sisters’ who live in Canada and Europe. If
they match, all speculation can be put to rest. India and the four co-chairs—the
United States, Europe, Japan and Norway—should insist on this.
courtesy: http://week.manoramaonline.com/
May 31, 2009.
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