Asia Times: East Timor an object lesson for Tigers


	April 18, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

East Timor an object lesson for Tigers
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - Sri Lankan Tamils have every reason to feel envious of the East Timorese: While the Timorese will be savoring the end of their journey to independence on May 20, the Tamils are still many miles away from such a historic juncture.

Both communities began their struggle for independence at about the same time, in the 1970s - the Tamils agitating for separation from the Sri Lankan government and the East Timorese pursuing the same cause from Indonesia.

More than 60,000 have died during Sri Lanka's two-decade-old ethnic conflict, which has pitted government forces against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Tamil Tigers have been fighting to establish the state of Eelam in Sri Lanka's northern and eastern provinces, home to a large Tamil population in the majority Sinhalese country.

In East Timor, more than 200,000 people are believed to have died during the 24-year separatist struggle by the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) against the Indonesian armed forces. Jakarta annexed East Timor in 1976, shortly after the Portuguese left their colony after 450 years.

Recent events provide some clues to why the Tamils will not have it easy in pushing their cause into high gear, a fact that has little to do with Colombo, the traditional nemesis of the Tamils, and more to do with the international community and the international media.

Sunday's historic elections in East Timor provide one indicator. In the run-up to this vote, the third landmark poll under three years, foreign correspondents were unanimous in who the media darling was among the two presidential candidates - Xanana Gusmao, the former commander of the Fretilin rebels. His charisma and his legendary status as a guerrilla fighter were two factors in his favor.

Likewise, Gusmao was candid and engaging, confessing to the press that he was a reluctant candidate, preferring instead to step aside from politics and spend his time gardening and pursuing photography and poetry. Few, including those in the media, doubted his assurances, upon his freedom after six years in an Indonesian prison in September 1999, that he was committed toward peace and upholding human rights.

By the late '90s, as the former strongman Suharto teetered from power and formerly friendly governments began to distance themselves from Jakarta, many viewed East Timor as the underdog and one of the last legacies of his three-decade, iron-fisted rule.

By contrast, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil Tigers, has not been so fortunate, a fact that has become amply clear after Prabhakaran's news conference on April 10, his first in 12 years. And if Sri Lankan Tamils were hoping that this media event - including an image makeover as the Tiger leader traded his customary military fatigues and Browning pistol for a gray safari suit - would help their cause, they have been sorely disappointed.

The dispatches filed by the foreign correspondents who attended the news conference in the Tiger-held territory of northern Sri Lanka painted a picture of a rebel leader who was uncomfortable, paranoid and unprepared, a far cry from the descriptions of Gusmao as charismatic and charming.

While some were suspicious of Prabhakaran's motives, others trashed him. A British journalist wrote about the extraordinary security measures the Tigers put on the media, which were so strict that they compelled one correspondent to ask, "How can you expect us to take you seriously when you give every impression of a military dictator surrounded by goons?"

Indian journalists were as severe. "If it was the intention of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to boost the image of its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, by presenting him to the world media, the all-around verdict is that the strategy failed," wrote Nirupama Subramanian of the Indian newspaper The Hindu.

There is another realm that should be disheartening to the Sri Lankan Tamils: the international community, where Prabhakaran and the Tamil Tigers are, likewise, woefully short of sympathy for their cause. This is unlike Gusmao and the East Timorese during their separatist struggle, although in the 1980s Timorese resistance leaders such as Jose Ramos Horta felt that too many governments were keen on keeping good ties with Suharto, and thus cared little about the plight of the tiny territory.

Prabharakan's press conference, in fact, provoked harsh condemnation of the Tigers and its leaders from leading political figures in India, where the LTTE is banned as a terrorist organization. Other governments, such as the United States', issued a cautious statement, welcoming Prabhakaran's commitment toward peace talks with Colombo. The Tigers are also banned in the United States as a terrorist organization and so too in Britain, Canada and Australia.

On the other hand, Gusmao and the East Timorese had chalked up significant successes internationally by the mid-1990s. In 1996, Ramos Horta, who had lived in exile for almost 25 years, was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Bishop Carlos Belo, leader of East Timor's majority Catholic population. At the time, the Nobel committee stated that the peace prize should strengthen the independence struggle of the people of East Timor, "a small but oppressed people".

Changing perceptions of him and the Tigers will not be easy for Prabhakaran, given his brutal record in leading the Tamil Tigers in their separatist struggle. The Indians, for instance, will not let him forget his alleged role in the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Equally indelible is the perception of him as "a fiendish monster - a cross between [Cambodia's] Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden", as one British journalist described Prabhakaran. Another British journalist, Catherine Philip of The Times, described the Tiger leader as "the only man to rank with Osama bin Laden as the most elusive and deadly terrorist".

Moreover, since the acts of terror in the United States on September 11, Prabhakaran's reputation for using suicide bombers has gained more notoriety. Reports in the international media have frequent reminders that the Tamil Tigers invented this form of violence and have sent more than 200 young boys and girls to their deaths in this way.

So while one rebel, Gusmao, has secured sufficient international goodwill and sympathy, the other rebel, Prabhakaran, has been reduced in many circles to a pariah.

On May 20, when East Timorese will finally taste their long-desired independence, Sri Lankan Tamils may want to ask: Is Prabhakaran an asset or liability to the Tamil cause?

(Inter Press Service)