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Struggle is not over, say Tamil Tiger remnants
Sydney Morning Herald - June 18, 2009
Barney Henderson, Mumbai – The Tamil Tigers say they have regrouped and are forming a new "government" to continue the fight for a homeland in Sri Lanka.
In a recorded statement released on Tuesday, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, one of the few leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who is still alive – but whose whereabouts is unknown – said he was forming a provisional, "transnational" government.
"The struggle of people of Tamil Eelam has reached a new state. It is time now for us to move forward with our political vision towards our freedom," he said.
Pathmanathan said a legal advisor, Rudrakumaran Vishwanathan, who was based overseas, would head a committee to decide a course of action that would be "within democratic principles".
There was no mention of continuing the guerilla war in which the Tigers deployed suicide bombers in the capital, Colombo.
The Tamil Tigers are also suspected of assassinating India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
The announcement was made nearly a month after the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed by government forces and his rebels routed as a fighting force, bringing the island's 26-year civil war to an end.
An estimated 250,000 Tamil refugees are still crammed into internment camps in the north.
Three Australians remain detained in these camps; a man, 62, and two women, 26 and 29. The Sri Lankan Government says the Australians must be screened to see if they are members of the Tamil Tigers.
The Australian high commission in Colombo has sent a team of officials to the north to inspect the camps.
The Tamil Tiger leadership's statement said the priorities of the new "government" were to "halt the ongoing genocide of Tamils on the island" and "bring to justice those who have committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity".
The Government has denied all such atrocities.
Mr Pathmanathan said the establishment of a government was necessary to advance the "struggle" of the Tamil people and that the Tigers have now laid down their arms.
While the new leadership will have no base, the Tamil Tigers have had spokesmen living overseas for years. Other leaders may have fled overseas in the final months of the war.
TamilNet – a website used as a mouthpiece for the Tamil Tigers – said in an editorial that the Tamil government would be "democratic and inclusive". It said: "A government in exile functions outside of its territory with an aim of taking control of that territory."
Pathmanathan has been chief fund-raiser and arms procurer for the Tamil Tigers and is being sought by Interpol.
It is assumed that he would take the role of de facto leader of the provisional government. (Telegraph, London; Agence France Presse)
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