LTTE arrests: Support or sympathy?
The investigations into the 12 persons held for alleged links to the Tamil Tigers must be completed before the end of the 28-day period of detention without trial under Sosma.
AS the second round of arrests of people suspected of having alleged links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were being made on Saturday, I was sweating it out in Banting.
A friend who was on a short break from his United Nations duties in Iraq had invited me and two of my friends – a Malaysian with an Australian PR and a Jordanian businessman – for an exotic lunch, served under a thatched roofed cabana in a toddy grove.
Among the other guests were two Sri Lankan Tamils, a doctor serving the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Iraq and a former refugee who is now a Canadian businessman in Toronto.
Naturally, the conversation revolved around the latest arrests under Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) 2012, which allows police to detain suspects for up to 28 days at a time without trial.
The arrests of the five in Selangor, Melaka and Penang came two days after the detentions of seven, including two DAP elected representatives – Seremban Jaya assemblyman P. Gunasekaran and Gadek assemblyman G. Saminathan.
Like many in the Indian community in Malaysia, the two Sri Lankan
Tamils were surprised by the alleged links to the LTTE. According to them, the Tamil Tigers are effectively defunct with the death or capture of its leaders.
Hundreds of thousands have been displaced internally in Sri Lanka while close to a million people, like these two men, have sought refuge in Canada, Australia, UK and other countries.
They said the form of the struggle also changed significantly with the crushing defeat of LTTE on May 18, 2009 but the resolve for self-determination, especially among large sections of the diaspora, remained unchanged even after a decade.
Based on press reports, the dozen Malaysians arrested are alleged to have been supporting LTTE activities in the country. We have also been told that police had been monitoring their movements since last year, after they attended LTTE events in several states.
Was it the Maaveerar Naal (Great Heroes’ Day) on Nov 27, the day on which the first Tiger cadre was said to have died in combat in 1982?
Or was it Mullivaikkal (Remembrance Day) on May 18, to mark the date on which tens of thousands were killed and widespread human rights abuses were committed in the last village where the
26-year-old war came to an end.
There is a lot of sympathy among Tamils around the world for what is also referred to as the “Mullivaikkal genocide”. The estimated number of people killed ranges between 40,000 and 100,000.
Three years after the end of the war, a leaked United Nations internal report concluded that it was the result of a grave failure of the world body, pinpointing the “sustained and institutionalised reluctance to stand for the rights of people they were mandated to assist.
According to the report, the UN team abandoned the civilian population with no protection or witnesses by withdrawing staff from the war zone in 2008.
It also noted that senior UN staff did not perceive the prevention of the killing of civilians as their responsibility and also failed to highlight that the majority of deaths were caused by shelling by the Sri Lankan armed forces.
It also implied that the senior UN officials gave the geo-strategic interests of the US and UK and the stability of the Sri Lankan government higher priority over the lives of tens of thousands of Tamils in the war zone.
In the final report released three years later in 2015, the Office of the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a special court to try war crimes committed during the Sri Lankan government’s war with Tamil Tiger rebels.
Then UN Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said only a special court with international magistrates and investigators could examine the alleged crimes committed but this was rejected by Sri Lanka which promised to set up its own inquiry.
Given this background, and the recent promotion of Lt General Shavendra Silva as commander of the Sri Lankan army despite the serious allegations of gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law against him and his troops during the war, the empathy for the plight of the Tamils is understandable.
Amid the continued disbelief expressed by leaders of the DAP and even the MIC on the reasons for the arrests of the 12, Bukit Aman’s Counter Terrorism chief Datuk Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said Malaysians should not be confused between sympathy for the plight of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka and support for the LTTE.
“I sympathise with the Tamils too but I don’t support LTTE,” he said on Sunday while disclosing that large
sums of money had been traced in the accounts of persons detained last Thursday and Saturday. He also said that police had also found flags, posters and pictures of LTTE leaders.
Earlier, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador dismissed suggestions that the arrests were part of any political agenda. He said they were not carried out arbitrarily and had nothing to do with political, racial and religious issues.
The IGP also gave his assurance that the rights of the detained would be respected and this had also been made clear to the investigating officers.
“Security matters are under the purview of the police. I guarantee we will be fair and follow the standard operating procedures,” he said.
At the very least, Malaysians hope for the investigations to be completed quickly.
We should not be made to wait for the end of the 28-day detention period under Sosma, one of the six draconian laws that Pakatan government promised to repeal or amend.