posted August 29, 2001 11:55 PM            

Courtesy The Sunday Times 20/08/2000

The leading Swiss French language daily 'Le Courrier' in a headline story poses the question to the Swiss tax payers whether the Tamil Guerrillas are raising nearly one million Swiss Fancs (US$ 600,000) per month in Switzerland, in addition to using 'drug money' to finance its 54 offices throughout the world and to buy weapons. Further elaborating on the far-flung Tiger operation, the article says that the "Tamil Tiger octopus has long tentacles".

The article comes only a few days after several other reports appeared in the leading Swiss journals questioning inaction by the Swiss authorities against Tamil Tiger fund raising in Switzerland following a strong demarche made by the Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar to his Swiss counterpart, when the two Ministers met in Warsaw some weeks ago.

These developments take place as the Sri Lanka activist groups in Switzerland renew their own demand for the closure of Tamil Tiger offices in Switzerland and put a stop to their fund raising activities as recommended by a recent European Parliament Resolution. On 11th of August, the two Sri Lankan activist groups in Switzerland - the Committee for Peace in Sri Lanka, Geneva and the Committee for United Sri Lanka in Zurich held their anti LTTE agitation in front of the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva. This is the second time this year nearly two hundred Sri Lankans from several European countries staged a demonstration/peace vigil demanding action against Tiger fund raising in Switzerland.

This August peace vigil was organized by the Committee for Peace in Sri Lanka in Geneva with the assistance of the Committee for a United Sri Lanka in Zurich. The demonstrators from cities of Paris, Nice, Berlin, Milan, Basal, Zurich and Geneva congregated in front of the historic League of the Nation Building of the United Nations European Headquarters in Geneva.

The focus of the rally was to urge the Swiss authorities to take immediate action to stop LTTE fund raising and to close down the LTTE offices in Switzerland. In the back-drop of the damning evidence reported by the UTHR and UN Security Council action, the demonstrators also condemned the LTTE 'war crimes' of child soldiers and ethnic cleansing. The leading Geneva French daily "The Tribune de Geneve" carried a prominent report highlighting the main demand of the demonstrators where the newspaper asked the question "how can you accept the fact that people who commit terrorist acts come to your country (Switzerland)?" Quoting a spokesman for the rally, the newspaper said "the international community must act against Tamil rebels who are committing terrible atrocities in order to create an independent State in the North. According to the Tribune, the activists demanded "a multi-ethnic democracy in Sri Lanka where Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims can live in community.

The Tamil Tiger recruit children who are barely 10 years old and this is scandalous", they said. The participants told the journalists that so long as the LTTE operates offices and fund raising activities in Europe, the chances of having a peaceful solution to the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka are rather remote. Hence the focus of the rally on LTTE fund raising and the closure of offices in Europe including Switzerland, the organizers said.

In a petition addressed to the President of the Swiss Confederation and the Swiss Foreign Minister, the demonstrators ask the Swiss Government to close down the Tiger offices and money collection operation in Switzerland. The petition point out that the European Parliament had already requested EU countries to proscribe the Tiger front offices and 'free' the Tamil diaspora from the LTTE grip. While reminding that Switzerland is host to the United Nations European office, where a few months ago, the UN approved a Convention condemning the use of child soldiers as a war crime - an atrocity the Tamil Tigers are guilty of, the Tribune de Geneve newspaper also quotes the latest UTHR report denouncing the Tigers for enlisting kids between 9 and 10 years. The petition urged the Swiss authorities to ask Tamil Tigers to stop using child soldiers and to negotiate with all political parties in Sri Lanka to have a Federal State. If the LTTE is not ready to agree to these demands, the Swiss Government should close down their offices in the country, the demonstrators demanded.

Observers believe that the Tamil Tiger fund collectors may have 'over used' the goodwill of the Swiss authorities by openly advertising fund collection and using the recent LTTE military adventures to enhance fund raising. The LTTE organises open fund collection campaigns in Switzerland through advertisements in the LTTE newspapers published in Europe - the Eelamurasu and Elandadu and the Tamil Guardian in London. In fact, the recent issue of Tamil Guardian boldly claimed that the Tiger collectors have netted around SFr. 1.2 million at a fund raising event in Bern held immediately after the assault on the Elephant Pass Camp. The Swiss authorities and social workers are also concerned that the hate literature being distributed by LTTE will aggravate xenophobic tendencies in Switzerland, especially if the conflict in Sri Lanka gets prolonged without a political solution.

Another Geneva-based daily, Le Courrier raised the question as to why the Swiss authorities do not ensure that funds collected in Switzerland go only to humanitarian organization such as the ICRC. The demonstrators carried banners exhorting the Swiss tax-payers not to let their money fall into the hands of LTTE which is guilty of war crimes such as child soldiers.

The newspaper reports

Le Courrier - Geneva Front Page
Thursday 17 August 2000

Are guerrillas financed by drug money?

Colombo - The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been fighting since 1982 against the Colombo government to obtain their independence. Acts of piracy on seas, illegal immigration, traffic in arms and drug trafficking would help the political, military organization to fiance its 54 offices and units of propaganda throughout the world and would supply weapons and ammunition to a "war machine" some 17,000 men-strong. More over, the contributions, voluntary or not, from the Tamils diaspora make up a substantial part of their "war effort". For example, it is estimated that the amount of money collected monthly from the 30,000 or so Tamils in Switzerland reaches 600,000 US Dollars.

inside story In Sri Lanka the Tamil Tigers are accused of financing the guerilla with drug money. The Tamil "OCTOPUS" has long tentacles.

The liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been fighting since 1982 against the government of Colombo for their independence. They are using weapons that they are said to have bought with money obtained from acts of piracy and drug trafficking. Solomon Kane returning from Sri Lanka

Money is the sinews of war, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) know it too well. The contributions, voluntary or not, of the Tamil diaspora make up a substantial part of their "war effort". It is estimated that the amount of money collected monthly from the 25,000 to 30,000 or so Tamils in Switzerland reaches 600, 000 US Dollars.

Acts or piracy on seas, illegal immigration, traffic in arms and drug trafficking would help the political, military organization to finance its 54 offices and units of propaganda throughout the world and would supply weapons and ammunition to a "war machine" some 17, 000 men-strong.

The Underworld as an ally

One particular example of these illegal connections wars for instance a big story about drug trafficking raised in June of 1999 by a Tamil commando arrested in New Delhi after a shooting during which an accomplice was killed. His questioning led to the seizure of 14 . 5 kilos of heroin and the arrest of several drug traffickers. One thing led to another, and soon the Indian police were able to go back along the network to Ashwin Naik, one of the former drug-lord of the Bombay Mafia. He "served as an intermediary between the Pakistani cartel of the drug-lord named Ali Khan and the two LTTE members" explains Amodh Kant, the Indian police commissioner.

Following a standard plan, Ashwin Naik and his older brother "supplied the Tamils with heroin imported from Pakistan via the Indian Rajasthan."

The role played by the two Tamil commandos caught in the shooting, was to supervise the concealment of the drug into the legs of folding tables, then to organize the transit from Delhi to Madras (south of India). From there, the merchandise was carried by boat to Sri Lanka.

The retail reselling of the drug reduces the profits made by the Tigers while keeping the organization from being accused of "drug trafficking": if, in Europe, several LTTE members are behind prison bars for trafficking heroin, the seizure operated in the Tamil networks rarely reaches more than 500 grams.

Weapons from everywhere

With the profits made from selling heroin, both commandos were free to "purchase sophisticated weapons and ammunition directly either from the Indian traffickers or from their contract people in South East Asia and in the Middle-East", says the commissioner. Besides the submachine guns bought from Israeli arms dealers, the LTTE is said to have got supplies from Afghanistan (US and Soviet ground-air missiles) and in Ukraine (explosives), Cambodia and in Burma.

These weapons and the fuel go through the same roads as heroin. As for the dispatching of weapons coming from South East Asia, it is entrusted to the "Sea Tigers" as proved last May when the Burmese Navy intercepted a fast motorboat belonging to the LTTE in the Andaman Sea. The armed motorboats of the LTTE are also used to commit acts of piracy, as confirmed by Noel Choong, Director of the International Sea Bureau; last June, a ship transporting weapons intended for the Sri Lankan Army was sunk.

A fleet at disposal

Here is another one of the tricks from the Tamil Tigers: in January 1996, an attack had killed 91 people and wounded 1400 others in the centre of Colombo. The 400 kgs of explosives that were used were only a small part of the 60 tons embarked in August 1994 in the Ukrainian port of Nikolayev in the Black Sea. Destination: Bangladesh. That is at least what was indicated on the official document signed by the Minister of Defence of that country. But the document was forged, and the merchandise had been diverted to Jaffna.

The "KP Department" (for Kumaran Pathmanathan, a businessman who is wanted in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, for half a million Dollars) is in charge of the supply of Weapons for the "Tamil war machine" and is also the "nerve center" of an important sea network. A report of the London -based insurance company, Lloyd, lists 11 merchant ships belonging to some Asian front companies but in fact managed by the elusive "KP". Operating under flags of convenience and staffed with a Tamil crew, these cargo ships are carrying out their activities legally, between Asia and Europe whilst regularly transporting illegal immigrants or doing any kind of traffic on behalf of the organization, says the report.

The Tamils responding

We would have liked to get the point of view of the LTTE in respect of the facts for which they are blamed. But its international secretariat based in London, did not answer our calls. The Chairman of the Swiss Federation of Tamil Associations, Anton Ponrajah, deplores a " collection of articles without analysis" and "unfair". According to him, the people mentioned in the above stories were involved as private individual and not as members of the Tigers. The latter in fact, prohibit the use of drugs, insists Mr. Ponrajah.

A" secret base" of the LTTE

When, on 9 April of this year, police officers from the Thai Navy who were investigating on some fuel trafficking on the island of Phuket intercepted a suspicious truck, they were far from guessing that they were about to uncover one of the link of the secret network of the LTTE in the South of Thailand.

The driver was by no means involved in that fuel trafficking. But a search of his offices and those of his associates ended up in a much more interesting discovery. In the navy shipyard of Koh Si Rae, the coast guards seized a seventeen-meter-long motorboat. A short distance from it, in an adjacent corner, the marine officers discovered a pocket sided submarine under construction, of a similar type as the one used by the LTTE during some previous operations of acts of sabotage. The evidence according to which the Tamil Tigers would have set up a "secret base" in the South of Thailand goes back a long time. It is said to have been set up in 1996, the year another base was shut down in Twante, a Burmese island in the Andaman Sea, by a Burmese military junta, weary of the pressure put on by Colombo.

Thailand has become a major tourist attraction in South East Asia, and because of its open policy, is indeed the perfect place for organizations such as the LTTE. Taking advantage of the perviousness of the borders in the current conflict areas (Burma) or older ones (Cambodia), they are able to get supplied in weapons and munitions either from guerrilla movements or directly from high ranking officers of the national armed forces.

In 1994, Kumaran Path-mahathan, "KP" a businessman, had thus bribed a Cambodian General in order to obtain ground-air missiles from the army. Light weapons such as Kalachnikov, were also bought from the former Khmer Rouge. Missiles and light weapons were dispatched through the Khmer- Thai border then driven to Phuket. There, small powerboats either directly transported the weapons to Jaffna, or sailed on high seas to transfer the merchandise onto one of the cargo ships from the "KP Department."

However, the Tigers could very well be "evicted" from their Thai hideaway. In July, a Sri Lanka delegation headed by the Ministry of Defense has indeed obtained from the Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leepkai, the assurance that his country would not tolerate being used as a base by the LTTE. Meanwhile, the Thai intelligence service claimed that the Tigers had open a new base some 200 km to the North of Phuket....

Colombo increasing its pressure

For the time being, only the US and India agree with the official Sri Lankan opinion on the terrorist nature of the LTTE. But the wheel is turning... against the Tamil separatists: the European Parliament voted a resolution last May, inviting the government of the Union to " take measures in order to forbid on their territory the active organizations which continue to supply a financial help or any other terrorist actions in Sri Lanka." The recent accusations on the enrolment of child soldiers are also tarnishing the image of the Tigers.

Even outside the EU: Switzerland is not forgotten by Colombo. " Le Temps" reported last July on the request made by Sri Lanka to the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

Switzerland has already investigated on the activities of the LTTE, in particular on the financial contributions of the Tamils of Switzerland. Suspected of money extortion, the former boss of the LTTE in our country , was cleared of wrongdoing for lack of credible testimonies. He is now asking the canton of Zurich for SF 700 000 in damages. As far as the drug and human trafficking in which members of the LTTE are involved, the Federal Police indicates that no investigation is being carried out.