Our acquaintance with LTTE’s Charles

by R Jayadevan

(January, 08, London, Sri Lanka Guardian)When I was scanning through the neruppu.com website, I noticed a familiar face of a person I had met previously. The neruppu.com gave detail account of this man’s involvement in various violent activities of the LTTE. My colleague A K Vivekananthan and I were officially taken into captivity by the LTTE on 8 January 2005 after few days of hold-ups in reception centres of the LTTE in Kilinochchi. On the 8th we were driven to an unknown place in Puthukudiyiruupu in an unnumbered and tinted glassed eight seater Toyota vehicle. When we reached the detention place in the interior of Puthukudiyiuppu, we were told that we are subject to investigations and will be held for seven days.A LTTE intelligence official interviewed us and recorded my comments for over one hour. We were highly distressed and were thinking that we have come to face the ultimate fate of death and went to sleep around 9.00pm. We were woken up by another intelligence officer of the LTTE and I was asked many questions about my involvement in the Tamil Community Housing Association (TCHA) in London. Questions asked confirmed that the official had direct input of information about my engagement as Executive Director of TCHA.

The questions were very worrying and threatening. Next day in the afternoon, another official of Pottu’s intelligence group introducing himself as Kannan visited us and engaged in interactive discussion. Having seen the picture now of Shanmuganathan Ravishankar alias Charles in the neruppu.com, we were able to establish it is the very same Kannan whom we met had died in the military operation few days ago. He visited us couple of times successively and engaged in friendly discussions.Kannan is a very soft spoken person and had the patience and acumen to engage in talk and he soon understood that some mischief makers were behind our incarceration.

He asked us to write a detail statement to the LTTE leader Pirabakaran about our activities in London. We were reluctant to do this initially, but he patiently explained the reasons and said the audio recording of my statement will take long time to be produced in a printed form.We both wrote a detailed letter running into 28 pages that night. There was no electricity and we wrote the statement under a Kerosine lit lantern. Following morning Kannan visited us and went through the letter and said he cannot understand why LTTE’s Castro is holding us in captivity. During conversation, he expressed some displeasure about Castro.Kannan came back again next day and asked couple of more questions about some of the matters raised in the letter. He also brought a hand written letter faxed from London by Murugesu Sivarajah who was the former Chairman of Eelapatheeswarar Aalayam in London. Sivarajah had drafted some twenty eight frivolous charges against me. Kannan did not go through all the charges and said he could see a hate campaign being carried out against me. However, he asked me some questions about my engagement with Anton Balasingam.Following this meeting, Kannan came to see us with Sivapalan Sritharan on two subsequent evenings. Sritharan was introduced as Sri. Sivapalan Sritharan too was killed with Kannan in the army operation. Sri asked further questions from us. His questions were centred on my conflict with Anton Balasingam. We engaged in some arguments. When Vivekananthan realised that argument is heading acrimonious, he winked at me not to engage in any arguments. During the conversation Sri said we are lucky to be held in Pudukudiyiruppu detention centre.

They could have held us in a worm and mosquito infested detention place where we could have had sleepless nights and scraped mosquito’s in large numbers from our body with our hands. Sri went on to say Anton Balasingam is a trusted man of Pirabakaran and that we all must respect him irrespective of any misgivings. He said though there are misgivings about Anton Balasingam, he is an important person to be respected because he is trusted and valued by the leader. Sri went on to praise Tamil Nadu MDMK leader Vaiko and said he is another trusted leader who had never disclosed any details about the LTTE, even when he was held in prison in India under Indian Anti-Terrorism law TADA.After brief hostile engagement with Sri, we became friendly. Sri spent the second visit discussing various common things and I still remember him saying ‘I will not forget my hilarious discussions with you in my life’.

Both Kannan and Sri said they will do everything to get our early release and our letter will be submitted to Pirabakaran with their comments. We had one more meeting with Kannan and during our conversation it was clear LTTE’s international head Veerakathy Manivannan alias Castro was fully against our release. We found Kannan was upset about our prolonged captivity. He told us, ‘if anything serious happens, I will have to reconsider my position with the movement’. We saw sincere feelings in Kannan. Kannan also said that they have asked Murugesu Sivarajah to come to Vanni to explain his allegations in the faxed letter. But he had refused to come. He said LTTE is not happy with him and that he will be answerable one day. He also said LTTE operative T Manmatharajah who associated with me in the Tamil school activities had come with bundle of papers to incriminate me that I am anti-LTTE. Having seen the documents brought from London, they were not satisfied that he was giving sufficient reasons to investigate us. Kannan told us that T Manmatharajah was given a stern warning that LTTE will take action if he behaves like this in the future.Kannan also told us that they wanted to investigate LTTE’s London Head A C Shanthan as there were serious allegations of financial malpractices by him. When he visited Vanni with Anton Balasingam, he was secretly taken away (without the knowledge of Anton Balasingam) for investigations.

They were compelled to release him after two hours following Anton Balasingam’s intervention. We did not see Kannan for some time. On the day I was released following British government pressure on the LTTE, Kannan came to see me and had a two hour meeting. I found him very upset that I was held for such a long time. He was critical about Castro. He pleaded with me not to go against the cause. He asked me to help the LTTE in London, as its leadership under Shanthan is not satisfactory. Kannan could have been a persuasive factor for us not going against the LTTE. But it is not this one man. It is the whole body politics and conduct of the LTTE which put an end to supporting it. We have high regard for Kannan and we will not forget our engagement with both him and Sri. Both are loyal servants of the LTTE but we could see humanness in their dealings. They are people with whom you can engage and their loss is serious loss for the LTTE and loss of human faces in the LTTE machinery. This write up coincide with the third anniversary of the first day of our captivity by the LTTE.