06 November 2007
Almost always smiling, smartly dressed and carrying a polished cane, S.P. Tamilselvan was the key contact point between Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the outside world.
Killed on Friday in a government air strike, the leader of the Tigers' political wing was the public face and mouthpiece of the LTTE who met foreign diplomats and reporters denied access to reclusive leader Velupillai Prabhakaran when they visited the de facto capital Kilinochchi.
While the government says his death shows they can strike senior rebels at will, analysts and diplomats say it will make bringing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government together even harder, further locking the country into its civil war.
In previous decades of war, Prabhakaran used English-speaking and British passport-holding negotiator Anton Balasingham for political advice. But Balasingham's influence appeared to have waned after he returned to London for medical treatment before his death last year.
Diplomats and observers could never agree whether Tamilselvan exercised significant influence over LTTE policy. But he effectively replaced Balasingham as the voice of the LTTE, and led a delegation to peace talks in Geneva last year.
Born in 1967 on the northern Jaffna peninsula in what is now a government-held enclave, he joined the fledgling movement in the 1980s before being wounded the following decade by an Indian peacekeeping force that ended up fighting both sides.
ONCE A COMMANDER
Once a military commander, he joined the political wing – although he still occasionally appeared in public in the LTTE trademark tiger-striped camouflage carrying a sidearm.
Visitors would be shown into a glass-fronted peace secretariat office before his Landcruiser with blacked out windows screeched into the compound and he stepped out accompanied by bodyguards with radios and assault rifles.
Both before and after a 2002 ceasefire collapsed into open warfare last year, he would express the commitment of the LTTE to peace. But he was unwavering in his demands for a separate ethnic Tamil homeland.
He clearly understood some English but preferred to use his veteran official translator George, a former postmaster, whose flowery translations drove some correspondents to despair.
"If the military decides to thrust a war on the people by escalating military violence ... and thereby create a situation whereby we cannot just be onlookers that may be a very decisive moment where we have to make decisions to make sure the people are safeguarded," he told Reuters in 2006 as violence flared.
He would reply to questions with an unnerving smile and would shift uncomfortably when asked about thorny topics such as human rights abuses, child soldier abductions or ambushes on troops that seemed designed to restart the war.
"We have need of such tactics," he said regarding child soldier recruitment. "But in the case of (a) 16-year-old child who was pulled out and shot dead by the military, can we go and say to the child's brother ... you cannot resort to violence because you are below the age of 18."
We need your support
Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.
Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view
We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.
For more ways to donate visit https://donate.tamilguardian.com.
