How Tamils lost a Country: The Yet Untold Story of Tamil Destitution by T. Wignesan

The Yet Untold Story of Tamil Destitution

For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

from Wildred Owen’s « Strange Meeting »

Where in the world would you have to pay nearly five pounds sterling or about forty French francs in an equatorial region for a coconut? No where else than in a land where the coco-palm sprouts even more wildly than in coconut groves or plantations.

Where in the world would you - even if you had the money which is more than unlikely in the majority of the cases - be ousted from your traditional homelands and be living in a sort of no-man’s-land, your life mortgaged by all that you possess and where a simple meal could fetch up to around seventy or eighty pounds?

Where in the world - today - would children be forced to desert their ageing parents or newly-married couples be constrained to take leave of one another, sometimes for ever and at best some long painful years hence? Where in the world would siblings go astray, their paths never to cross again?

Where in the world would children, aged from eleven to fifteen and whether boys or girls, instead of going to school be weighted down with bandoliers of ammunition, AK-47s slung over their yet-tender shoulders, make for the front line in battle array to defend their borders, where days and nights are indistinguishable from one another owing to the constant crackling of rifle-fire and the pounding of heavy weapons, where drinking water is scarce and a whole people move about in the dark by the glow of handmade oil-lamps?

Where in the world is home for a people who have never known any rest for some fourteen years now?

It is this true story that I wish to tell; it is this true experience that you can tell us, each and every one of you who have been displaced, dispossessed and damned.

I am not concerned about the political or the military situation which produced such a calamity, nor the moral, ideological, social and/or religious affiliations of those contending in this clash of ideals. All I know is that it is a fight for survival, and what I am chiefly concerned about is the infinite suffering of those individuals and families who are forced to flee their birthplace and be subject to untold abuse and despair, mainly in Europe and North America, never knowing whether they would one day regain their homeland, nor be integrated once again within the bosom of their families in a time of peace. Nor am I concerned about the colonial historical heritage which engendered and accentuated in the first place the differences between ethnies, nor do I recognise the usefulness of carping about it all at this late date.

If we have been reduced to subject status in the past, we have only ourselves to blame for it, for it was the work of some amongst us who betrayed us in crucial moments and reduced us to abjectness in the face of a minority of settlers and colonialists who set out on long, perilous voyages from European shores.

After a century of Portuguese domination, the last King of Jaffnapatham (roughly the northern Sri Lankan province), Cankili, the Second, during the relentless revolt in 1618 and 1619, was undermined in his effort to oust the invading settlers out of his country by the very Tamil nobles and their families who were fresh converts to the conquerors’ alien faith. Since then, the Tamils of Ceylon have been subject successively to the Dutch and British colonial regimes, and finally, since Independence, to the Sinhalese majority ruling at/from Colombo.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said
This is my own my native land...

are words that assume a special significance, I know, to those who have had to flee their country of origin under circumstances which left them little or no time even for farewells. One doesn’t have to be a diehard patriot, or rabid nationalist, or be a bigoted believer or supporter of the idea of purely ethnic « nation » states to appreciate or understand the plight of the exiled, the refugee, the stateless. We all know of Wilfred Owen’s fine anti-war poem: « Dulce et Decorum Est » [It is sweet and honourable (pro patria mori: to die for your country.)] before he laid down his life in the First World War just one week before the Armistice, and while taking the example of his pathetic poem as a warning, we would like to guard ourselves against such excesses of bravura in the name of a Motherland or a Fatherland. Yet from his « Anthem for Doomed Youth » a similar apt picture of « demented » hostilities may be painted of the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them for prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

Since the eruption of the July-1983 Sinhala-Tamil ethnic riots, there has been a steady stream of Tamil refugees and displaced persons making their way through the Indian sub-continent or Southeast Asian countries to other, let’s say, climes and comforts, but at a cost, that is, both in precious cash and possessions and in unspeakable human suffering and peril.


The agents or passeurs

The French word « passeur », meaning « smuggler of drugs, refugees, etc. », best denotes the often faceless and abode-less runners of humans in distress across frontiers and oceans. I prefer to call them the « blood runners » or, as the case may be, « bloody runners » for the simple reason that they traffic in humans and sometimes leave these “destitutes” in extreme danger of their lives in strange far-off places. A recent case of some young men and women who were transported in the boot of an omnibus for days without providing for ventilation and the subsequent discovery of their bodies once the frontier was crossed rests as essential proof of some of the inhuman and greedy acts committed by some of these agents. Do not get me wrong, these runners or passeurs make themselves indispensable in the circumstances in which displaced persons find themselves. They provide a service which is avidly sought after by the very people they make money on.

How else could a potential refugee in danger of losing his life leave the island of Sri Lanka? By what other means could they find themselves in a European, Australasian or North American country where more liberal laws permit the welcoming of political refugees? Of these, Australia, Germany, France, the United kingdom and Canada become the target of most of the Tamils, for the simple reason that in these places one may alight and ask for political asylum and even be granted aid while they await their fate. Not that other countries are less hospitable, just that in these countries there are already to be found the basic necessities, available in the form of rudimentary but organised Tamil communities.

Almost any Sri Lankan Tamil can name a friend or relative in these places, and this knowledge gives them the necessary courage to undertake the long hazardous journey, often lasting from months to about four years at the most, via Singapore, Malaysia, Bangkok, Moscow and the East European countries, quite often having to cross on foot some country or other with all their belongings, womenfolk and children - even babes in arms - under cover of night, in order to gain their destination which in most cases is Germany where the laws relating to political asylum until recently have been rather generous and lax.

Since the beginning of the nineties, due to the burgeoning numbers of the locally unemployed and the organised attacks from the extreme rightist and/or nationalist forces, such as the Lepenistes of France, a tightening of the frontier measures regarding asylum seekers has been introduced, and the granting of refugee papers less and less certain for most of the applicants. With the result, France, first among the « human rights » nations, has even begun the deportation of those who have failed to obtain the necessary papers - after due process of law, of course.

It is precisely in such situations where the potential refugee faced with expulsion might ordinarily despair that the runner or passeur comes in useful. He knows how - for a hefty sum, of course - to spirit away his ward to another country where the process of seeking asylum may begin all over again. Where does the destitute asylum seeker find funds for such a facility? Your guess is as good as mine. Some talk of black market work under sweat-shop conditions and for a precarious salary (with no provision for overtime) which no decent self-respecting human would accept; others talk of pinching every penny or franc in hovels without proper amenities where as much as five or six would sleep in one room of two by three metres during the day while another batch occupies the same premises during the night. Yet others talk of borrowing at random, and hawking all their possessions for paltry sums, while others of ignominious subjection to would-be lenders or so-called helpers.

The truth is, the blood runners provide an essential service and the asylum seeker cannot do without them, whether or not the former get rich on the latter’s misery. The passeur’s duty - if you can call it that - ends the moment he « delivers » or directs the asylum seeker into the terre d’asile (the country of asylum). From then on, another breed of « go-betweens » takes over.

The « petition writers »: go-betweens or defence lawyers

These may be either legally constituted professionals who exercise their metier under normally acceptable conditions, or those Tamils with a flair for such matters. The latter may or may not have had legal training in Sri Lanka, may have been lawyers or solicitors (proctors as they are known back in their homeland), or laymen with the necessary knowhow. They may be classed under the general category of « petition writers » (the unemployed or aged, clerk-y gentlemen who with their heavy old-fashioned typewriters perched on cabinet-like boxes literally clog the corridors of post offices or columned five-foot ways of restaurants or coffee shops in the cities of South and Southeast Asia.) To the illiterate of Asia, frightened by the merest official document, these petition-writers are veritable saviours, veritable buffers between heartless officialdom and the world of easily-distressed “analphabetisme”.

In a way, for the asylum seekers, these petition-writers turned « defence lawyers » are a boon: they ask less than the local lawyer and one does not need an interpreter to talk to them. Being of the same tongue and sharing a similar history, the Tamil asylum seekers gladly entrust their case to them. They know the ropes; they have been through the stages of being rejected in their initial attempts to obtain the necessary papers.

In France, it is to the Office français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides (OFPRA) which comes under the Ministry of External Affairs that the asylum seeker is obliged to present his case. If his application is rejected, he may appeal to the Commission des Recours (presided over by a Conseiller d’Etat, the high(est) administrative judge, and by two assessors: one, a member of the OFPRA’s council, and the other, a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and/or a Rapporteur who cannot partake in the decision-making of the commission) within a month of the notification, or else within four months. If the Commission des Recours confirms the decision of the OFPRA in the first place, the asylum seeker has two months in which to appeal to the highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat (the State Council). Similarly, he could also, in France, seize the ordinary courts of justice (the high courts and the courts of appeal), or even the administrative courts, to have them confer on him the quality or status of a refugee or stateless person.

From what I hear - I cannot vouch for its being true in all cases - the truth gets distorted. An asylum seeker is never advised to tell the truth as it really took place. Apparently, truth must be varnished to appear like a bigger convincing truth. Otherwise, it is said, the judges won’t take any notice of their application. Imagine a world without « lawyers ». Then you would have - if you are not the guilty party - no compunction to tell the truth to the judges. But, in this very special world we live in, if you told the truth, you are most likely to be turned down, and possibly would have to face deportation. So, your case gets worked on, the story takes proportions on paper you have difficulty recognizing as your own. You are told that this « newly concocted truth » is the truth of your life, and that from now on you have two lives, one on paper and one in your memory and bones.

For the asylum seeker, there is only one truth: his birthplace is under constant siege by mortar fire and bombs; freedom of movement is restricted; the life of his people since July-1983 is completely disrupted; one way or another, if he continues to live there where he was born, he risks his life and the lives of his dear ones for the Sri Lankan security forces personnel may just quite out of the blue enter his home and arrest, torture, rape or kill those they suspect of being Tigers or Tiger supporters! So what the hell does he care what truth is put out on paper, so long as he is able to get the cherished refugee papers?

To be fair, one has to admit that even Sinhalese civilians run the risk of being maimed or killed in a time-bomb blast set by the defending or opposing forces as far south as the haven of the capital city of Colombo, or of being mowed down by rapid fire from automatic weapons as far north as the natural port of Trincomalee. This war is not all one-sided. Civilians - Tamils, Sinhalese and Indians - who have no part in the hostilities nor any claim on the benefits one way or another, have paid with their lives, too.

Once the asylum seeker leaves his homeland, his identity changes in the hands of the « blood runners », and when he arrives in the host country of asylum, even his life as he had lived it is no more something he owns or recognises in the hands of the « petition writers ». Almost overnight the asylum seekers have lost their « souls ». They are like waifs drifting in a netherworld, in a parallel dimension, another universe where other moral principles, other « laws » apply. Nothing counts any more but the need to keep the body alive. To tell a lie about oneself becomes a necessary expedient. If false papers can get one a job, or get one into another country where they may be safe, it is instantly seized upon at any cost, even at the cost of being imprisoned.

Any job will do, so long as it brings in some money, so long as they can little by little pay up the debt of their painful journey over here, so long as they can send back some of it to those stranded back home. Engineers, technicians, economists, nurses, artists, journalists, teachers, university graduates and lecturers, civil servicemen and the like exercising responsible posts back home - are all glad for a pittance (even below the minimum wage) and for a place to put head to pillow. No work is deemed too menial for them. So they get exploited, and they are not bothered by the injustice of the situation. An energetic worker who worked so hard and finished his tasks in half the time is forced to do only half-time with half-day pay. Now, if he slows down, his employer would show him the door, and there is nothing he can do about it.

All is not misery, of course. An obverse rosy side to the picture also emerges. There are those who profit from this situation, too, those who make good quickly by honest or « nefarious » means, those who see in this business of asylum-seeking a way out of their own hapless economic condition and do well enough to « more than merely » survive over here and in other countries happy enough to receive them. Or they may be genuine refugees turned businessmen for the nonce. With their newly earned affluence, they provide essential services: Oriental-products shops, agencies, restaurants, printeries, groceries, temples, schools, performing halls, etc. Credit has to be handed out to them for their ingenuity, for their industriousness, for their entrepreneurship.

But the truth remains that the majority are defenceless, among them - barring children, of course - those without cashable skills or diplomas: young girls and women. For them, brought up in a society of less than equal status with men, they - by the same token - become the wards of their menfolk. They are not expected to work back home but in their homes, looking after the children, keeping the house, serving their husbands for whom their parents paid hefty sums and valuable property in the form of dowries.

Over here, in their asylum countries, most of them take to working as household cleaners and caring for children « chez la Madame », as the expression goes. For mothers and daughters of the Vellala caste (the highest caste among Sri Lankan Tamils, the land-owning agricultural gentry) such work is infra dig, a secret to be lived down all by themselves. Others work in factories, packaging produce, trimming and sewing in haberdasheries, framing pictures, sewing and so on and so forth.

The Tigress?

Thandikulam is a village some two hundred miles from Colombo and some fifty from the abandoned Jaffna capital. A report dated February 22, 1996 states that a Tamil mother and her young daughter who were on their way to Colombo were subject to interrogation by soldiers who manned the control checkpoint established by the Sri Lankan Army there. Perhaps they were off to rejoin relatives in Colombo; perhaps they were fleeing the precarious conditions of penury reigning in this part of the world. The mother was allowed to proceed on her journey, but the daughter was detained for further investigation. Days passed. The mother refused to leave, begging the authorities for information concerning her daughter. The soldiers said that they had not yet finished with their interrogation. Some days later, they told the pathetically distraught mother they had delivered her daughter’s body to the L.T.T.E., for they took her for a terrorist.

The symbol of the great Cola dynasty which ruled the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India before the invasion of the Muslim hordes from across the Northwest Frontier is precisely that of the tiger. Rajaraja, the Great, reigning from 985 to 1014 A.D., held sway from Tanjavur [the former capital: Kaveripumpattinam, the then universally famed entrepôt, the Kaveri Emporium of the anonymous Greek account of the first century A.D.: The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea] over Sri Lanka (up to 1070 A.D.), Southeast Asia and the Calukya kingdom to the northwest, centred at Vatapi ( at present, called Badami), which he conquered with an army numbering nine hundred thousand. Under Rajendra I (1014-1042), who ruled from Gangaikondacolapuram, the empire was consolidated, and the Tamils attained the zenith of their power in a history of civilization dating some thousands of years before the arrival of the Aryans.

Much earlier, around the second to the fifth centuries A.D., a yet unparalleled and unique form of poetry was composed by Tamil poets, a poetry which had been collected in eight anthologies (ettuttokai), and characterised by the theory and conventions of the « five landscapes » (aintinai), an age known more conveniently as the Cankam period in Tamil classical literature, a richly prolific literature dating from some centuries B.C. and continuing without break right down to our times. Purananuru, one of the eight anthologies dealing with the poetry of action, war, heroism and the praise of warring and valiant princes, has the following poem by Kavar Pentu.

cirril narrun parri ninmakan
yantula no ena vinavuti enmakan
yantu ulan ayinum ariyen orum
puli cerntu pokiya kalalai pola
inra vayiro ituve
tonruvan mato porkkalat tane
Purananuru, 86

Leaning against the pillar of my hut: « Your son,
Where is he? », you want to know. My son,
Where can he be? I have no idea.
Like a tiger setting out after having rested in its cave
This womb that begot him is his lair:
You will see him only where the battles rage.

Whether a suspected terrorist, a tiger/tigress, or just a beautiful girl who caught the fancy of soldiers in a war of attrition, who is to know? who is to judge? What does yet another life matter in a long series of horrendous deaths where guns and shells don’t distinguish the innocent from the armed rebel or defender of his country?


The Case of the « Carnaticomane » or Carnatic Music Devotee

Every morning at about nine-thirty to ten, a Tamil in her early twenties sets forth from her temporary quarters in a suburb of Paris. She will not be back before seven or eight in the evening, unless the mistress of the house in which she occupies a room requires her to baby-sit her three-year-old child. Dressed in jeans and black leather jacket and tripping daintily on her high-heeled black boots strapped halfway up her legs, her long thick flowing black hair encircling her fair-complexioned extremely good looks, she is no different from the Parisian Mademoiselle riding the metro (underground) to work.

So classic are her looks, she could pass for an Italian or a Spaniard or a Central or South-American. Widely set apart black crescent eyes under long finely over-arching eyebrows (that the Chinese would take for independence of spirit), prominent cheek-bones (again the mark of no subordinate-minded person) evenly balancing a strong and ample brow, she exudes a quiet assurance of charm, betrayed only by the diffident gleam in her steady, disarming stare. A full mouth cradled by a wilful chin, the result of some fifteen years’ vocal training, she hums to herself ragas and classical melodies as she walks up to the metro. No cinema tunes will do for her.

She has her mind set on only one career - to become as good an exponent of Carnatic music as she possibly can. Carnatic music as everybody knows developed and diverted from the traditional Indian classical music from the beginning of the sixteenth century and serves as the basis for almost all Southern Indian classical music. As the veena is the musical instrument par excellence in Southern India, she spent the better part of her life trying to master the art of plucking the six-stringed lute under the tutelage of various masters in Tamil Nadu.

She began her music lessons in Jaffna at the age of six when her parents discovered her innate talent, but it was not enough to tutor her at home where elder sisters could coach her. So she was packed off to Tamil Nadu at the age of thirteen, and, except for holidays when she rejoined her family, she has been staying out as a music student either living with an aunt or as a lodger in hostels or families. The idea of sacrifice while serving as a student in higher institutions of learning or while being apprenticed to her masters is well drummed into her. Here, in Paris, she well knows how to go without any meal all day, until she returns from « work », as she puts it.

Her work consists in giving music lessons. She traverses the length and breadth of Paris to impart music lessons at various places, but mostly at other peoples’ homes. Such is the situation, it is indeed fraught with difficulties. Danger sometimes lurks in the form of a student less interested in the music than in the teacher, herself. But nothing daunts her. As a private tutor, she knows she’s at the mercy of the student, and often finds herself deprived of the paltry sums she is able to earn just to pay for her personal expenses, such as, clothing, some food, frantic telephone calls back home, etc.

We happen to meet each other on occasions. As usual, we review the situation. Then, when we have nothing more to say, or rather, nothing useful to say to make sense of the senseless slaughter taking place back in that island, her eyes would steel themselves and a flicker of mock-seriousness traverses her gentle features, and she would say, perhaps out of playfulness: « I wish somebody would put a gun in my hands. I’ll shoot up the whole world! » Yet, for an instant, I’d believe she could.

Who can blame her for this ultimate shriek of desperation?

From time to time she would call, her voice slightly deranged, at the end of a harassing day.

« Why did I ever leave there to come here? » It’s a rhetorical question. She enervates and repeats herself. Then, she cries out: « Can’t you find me a job as a seamstress? »

Yes, she acquired some considerable skill as a seamstress as well. Her long tensile and almost knuckle-y fingers are not averse to working themselves to the bone. But, there’s nothing doing. No papers, no work! She’s still waiting for the Commission des Recours to call her for the appeal against the OFPRA’s rejection of her application for refugee status.

« I don’t mind working as a seamstress, you know. I don’t care whether it be black labour or not. » Black labour is the term for illegal work under nauseating sweat-shop conditions. There is a reason for this willingness to put herself on the block.

Given the situation back home, her parents advised her against returning to Jaffna. Today, driven away and on the run from their comfortable home in Jaffna town by the conquering Sri Lankan Army, they are in dire need of cash for food. There are ways by which - for a small fee - money given to some Tamil organization in Paris could be passed on to her parents. What she earns even if it were all sent to them could not even procure for them a few days’ provisions, for prices are soaring from day to day.

For one used to being spoilt as one of the youngest of the family, there are no alternatives, there are no ample choices. Her only aim since leaving India is to be placed/brought together with the only other member of her family outside Sri Lanka: an elder married-sister in Canada.

Her calvary began some time last year. Her parents put together some one hundred and thirty thousand rupees - a fortune over there - as the required fee for an agent-passeur to get her as close to the elder sister as possible. The « blood runner » bolted with the cash and was never seen again. So the elder sister scrapes up another six thousand Canadian dollars, the sum demanded by another agent-passeur.

Soon she finds herself in a country in the Indian sub-continent, where she’s arrested and imprisoned for being in possession of false papers. In prison, she’s defiant and refuses either to eat or drink what is proffered. After four long, excruciating days, her jailers give up, and send for the agent who was responsible in the first place for her plight. Some money passes into official hands, and she is released. Soon after, she finds herself in a German airport where she asks for asylum. The laws being such in that country, she is soon put through the initial grilling and shunted into a refugee camp to await the processing of her application.

There, the long wait in a strange place soon wears her down, wears her stoic resistance down. Her courage often failing her, she is reduced to tears but to no avail. Friends of friends get in touch with an uncle in London who then makes the journey by car to Germany. She breaks down completely at the sight of a near relative. Tears flow in abundance. She refuses to be separated from the only face she knows. The uncle has no other choice but to take charge of her. He then takes her to Paris and puts her up with friends of his. The parting between the two becomes blatantly pathetic and/or melodramatic. The girl refuses to let go of the only person she knows in Europe. At the house where she is put up, she despairs. Everybody is a stranger to her. The uncle upon returning to London (one can’t so easily traverse the channel as the French border) puts out feelers and finds a relative in Paris who is more than willing to put his niece up.

From then on begins the long hazardous legal climb to regularise her situation in France. What if the Commission des Recours turns her down? What if the Conseil d’Etat does the same? Where will she find the money for another agent-passeur? Ten thousand Canadian dollars is the price required for the trick. Where, again, would she have to go through the same rigmarole? Would all these attempts lead her closer to her elder sister in Canada? That is the question. She might call again to repeat her plea. In the meantime, her frantic voice now and then rings in my ears, a voice which otherwise has thrilled thousands with her classical Carnatic renderings.

« Why did I ever leave there to come here? »


[Paper written for a conference of French politicians and intellectuals convened in Paris in 1996 and published by the Tamil weekly: EELANADU as a supplement in May 1996 and in book by T. Wignesan. Rama and Ravana at the Altar of Hanuman: On Tamils, Tamil Literature and Tamil Culture. Chennai: Institute of Asian Studies, 2006, 486p & Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2008, 756p.]

<b>(Note: Since July 1983 when the racial riots - between the minority Tamil community and the majority Sinhalese - broke out in Sri Lanka, the exodus of refugee Tamils to India or via the sub-continent to Europe and Canada has never abated - at great cost, strife and distress to the older generation who could not accompany their loved ones. This article, submitted - at the invitation of a former advisor Pierre Lelouche to the French president - to a conference of high-level politicians and academics on refugee issues and concerns, highlights the case of the Tamil refugee. As everybody now knows, the “Tigers” (LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) who began their defence of their people’s rights in the early seventies under the leadership of Veluppillai Prabhakaran through armed conflict to achieve the secession of the Northern Province (including Jaffna) and the Eastern Province, were ousted from their strongholds, and their leaders, cadres and forces decimated a decade or so ago.
I’m NOT a “tiger”, but Tamil refugees and the LTTE representatives had always sought my assistance, and, as a Tamil, I found no reason to turn them down or withhold whatever I could do to make things easier for them.
It so happened that I received a “mandate” from their leaders in November 1987 when the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) took effective control of the northern Tamil territories - to enter into negotiations with the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi towards a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Prior to my arrival on the scene, some 17 LTTE leaders and cadres were waylaid by the IPKF while traversing the Palk Straits. Instead of releasing them to the LTTE, the IPKF turned them over to the Sinhalese, an act which antagonised the LTTE no end.
The novelist Khushwant Singh, an MP and former Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Express, introduced me to the Chief Press Officer to the Indian Prime Minister, who then put me in touch with the five members of the “Ceylon Committee” (mostly members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) who formulated policy on the Sri Lankan conflict and with each of whom I held very “fruitful” discussions.
To cut the story short, I was given assurances to the effect of granting the Northern Province of Sri Lanka to the Tamils (and hence to the LTTE) as their sovereign homeland. I was to carry the message to the LTTE representative “Baby” Subramaniam in Tamil Nadu at the Dravida Munnetra Kazagam’s offices in Chennai in the presence of LTTE sympathiser-politicians: K. Veeramani and Pazha Nedumaran. I was told to hang on for four days - the time needed to contact the Tiger Supremo Prabhakaran.
I spent about a week waiting to no avail. My two-week visa was fast running out, and I had to be back in Paris at my post. Even Veeramani was inaccessible. Before I boarded the plane in Delhi for Paris, I was given a further assurance that a “door” would be kept open with one of the Ceylon Committee (a little later ambassador in Rome) members.
In Paris, I was told that the LTTE chief had other plans, for he wanted the Eastern Province as well (with the Naval Base in Trincomalee, coveted by the Chinese for its strategic position in the Bay of Bengal). Besides, they said, they could not desert their companions fighting in the Eastern Province.
The LTTE’s final word was that they would “fight” to obtain Eelam, that is, both the Northern and the Eastern Provinces.) T. Wignesan, August 16, 2020, Paris.

The London Tamil Information Centre (TIC) has just made it possible for the United Nations to take action against British Mercenaries who were actively involved in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict to the extent of committing "crimes against humanity. » See book by Miller:
Miller's book, Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes, is available fromPluto Press. It was reviewed in the Daily Mail here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7954259/New-book-tells-story-elite-band-ex-special-forces-wreaked-havoc-world.html)</b>

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