<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>May 19, 2009
OBITUARY
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Shy boy who became rebel leader and ruthless dictator
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At the height of his power, Prabhakaran (left) ruled as a virtual dictator over a shadow state of hundreds of thousands of people across northern Sri Lanka that had its own flag, police force and court system. -- PHOTO: YAGAA-YUGANESAN.BLOGSPOT.COM
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->COLOMBO: To his followers, Velupillai Prabhakaran was the steadfast heart of the battle to establish a breakaway state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority. To his many detractors, he was an egomaniacal and brutal ruler of a suicide cult who repeatedly sabotaged peace deals in his pursuit of power.
But few would dispute that the 54-year-old transformed a small band of poorly armed rebels into one of the world's most sophisticated and ruthless insurgencies, before a string of miscalculations led his Tamil Tigers to total defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan military.
The youngest of four children, Prabhakaran was born in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula in 1954.
As a child, he was shy, quiet and unassuming, says Indian journalist M. R. Narayan Swamy, who wrote a biography of the rebel leader. But he admired Indian freedom fighters against British rule, and events in Sri Lanka, where Tamils felt they were being marginalised by the dominant Sinhalese, led him to take up arms, Swamy said.
'Once he quit his home in the early 1970s there was nothing to stop him.'
In 1975, he shot dead the mayor of Jaffna, Mr Alfred Duraiappah, marking his first political assassination.
'I wanted to achieve something through action rather than waste time in idle fancies,' Prabhakaran was cited as saying in Swamy's biography. A year later, he formed the Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The group's first landmine attack on the army in July 1983 killed 13 soldiers. And over more than a quarter century of civil war, it perfected the art of suicide bombings, assassinated top politicians including former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and fought the Sri Lankan government to a near-standstill.
At the height of his power, the portly rebel leader ruled as a virtual dictator over a shadow state of hundreds of thousands of people across a swathe of northern Sri Lanka that had its own flag, police force and court system.
His guerilla force boasted heavy artillery, a rudimentary air wing that once bombed Colombo's international airport and a squad of suicide attackers. It also had a navy, consisting of small attack craft, explosives-laden suicide boats and huge smuggling ships.
The rebels reportedly earned up to US$300 million (S$450 million) a year from arms and drug smuggling, fake charities and donations from Tamil expatriates.
But Prabhakaran was also a shadowy figure who rarely appeared in public, preferring to communicate in a sort of state of the nation radio address he delivered every November.
Tamil Tiger troops, some of them forcibly recruited as children, saw Prabhakaran as their unquestioned leader.
He ordered them to abstain from sex, cut personal ties and carry vials of cyanide on necklaces so they could kill themselves upon capture.
'He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul,' said Swamy.
Prabhakaran orchestrated surprise attacks on Sri Lankan bases and retaliated against government offensives with devastating counterattacks.
But the group's penchant for suicide attacks led the United States, European Union and India to outlaw it as a terror organisation. The Tigers were the first to use female suicide bombers and develop explosive belts and vests, the US Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism said in 2006.
They also assassinated several Sri Lankan politicians, including former president Ranasinghe Premadasa.
Though Prabhakaran was sometimes hailed as a master strategist, he also made a series of misjudgments over the years that led to his downfall.
'Unceasing allegiance to the cause of carving out a Tamil state and unforgiving ruthlessness can be called the two main traits of Prabhakaran,' Swamy said. 'These traits are Prabhakaran's and the LTTE's biggest strengths and also its biggest weakness.'
Prabhakaran alienated his strongest allies in India by sending a female suicide bomber to kill Mr Gandhi in 1991, apparent retaliation for an Indian peacekeeping mission that turned sour.
During negotiations following a 2002 ceasefire, he also rejected a deal that would have given the rebels broad autonomy over the north and east, according to a diplomat with knowledge of the offer. It was widely seen as the best deal he could ever get, but Prabhakaran said he could not accept anything less than a separate Tamil state, dubbed Eelam.
Then in 2005, he called a Tamil boycott of the 2005 presidential election, which helped propel the hardline Mahinda Rajapakse to victory.
After new peace talks failed, the rebels cut off the water supply to more than 60,000 people in eastern Sri Lanka, provoking an unrelenting government offensive.
His absolute approach, which eventually led to his death and the destruction of his organisation, can perhaps be summed up in a statement he made to Indian journalist Anita Pratap in 1990.
'Thousands of my boys have laid down their lives for Eelam. Their death cannot be in vain.' ASSOCIATED PRESS, BLOOMBERG
Me leh? *hee*hee*
OBITUARY
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Shy boy who became rebel leader and ruthless dictator
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
At the height of his power, Prabhakaran (left) ruled as a virtual dictator over a shadow state of hundreds of thousands of people across northern Sri Lanka that had its own flag, police force and court system. -- PHOTO: YAGAA-YUGANESAN.BLOGSPOT.COM
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->COLOMBO: To his followers, Velupillai Prabhakaran was the steadfast heart of the battle to establish a breakaway state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority. To his many detractors, he was an egomaniacal and brutal ruler of a suicide cult who repeatedly sabotaged peace deals in his pursuit of power.
But few would dispute that the 54-year-old transformed a small band of poorly armed rebels into one of the world's most sophisticated and ruthless insurgencies, before a string of miscalculations led his Tamil Tigers to total defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan military.
The youngest of four children, Prabhakaran was born in Sri Lanka's northern Jaffna peninsula in 1954.
As a child, he was shy, quiet and unassuming, says Indian journalist M. R. Narayan Swamy, who wrote a biography of the rebel leader. But he admired Indian freedom fighters against British rule, and events in Sri Lanka, where Tamils felt they were being marginalised by the dominant Sinhalese, led him to take up arms, Swamy said.
'Once he quit his home in the early 1970s there was nothing to stop him.'
In 1975, he shot dead the mayor of Jaffna, Mr Alfred Duraiappah, marking his first political assassination.
'I wanted to achieve something through action rather than waste time in idle fancies,' Prabhakaran was cited as saying in Swamy's biography. A year later, he formed the Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The group's first landmine attack on the army in July 1983 killed 13 soldiers. And over more than a quarter century of civil war, it perfected the art of suicide bombings, assassinated top politicians including former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and fought the Sri Lankan government to a near-standstill.
At the height of his power, the portly rebel leader ruled as a virtual dictator over a shadow state of hundreds of thousands of people across a swathe of northern Sri Lanka that had its own flag, police force and court system.
His guerilla force boasted heavy artillery, a rudimentary air wing that once bombed Colombo's international airport and a squad of suicide attackers. It also had a navy, consisting of small attack craft, explosives-laden suicide boats and huge smuggling ships.
The rebels reportedly earned up to US$300 million (S$450 million) a year from arms and drug smuggling, fake charities and donations from Tamil expatriates.
But Prabhakaran was also a shadowy figure who rarely appeared in public, preferring to communicate in a sort of state of the nation radio address he delivered every November.
Tamil Tiger troops, some of them forcibly recruited as children, saw Prabhakaran as their unquestioned leader.
He ordered them to abstain from sex, cut personal ties and carry vials of cyanide on necklaces so they could kill themselves upon capture.
'He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul,' said Swamy.
Prabhakaran orchestrated surprise attacks on Sri Lankan bases and retaliated against government offensives with devastating counterattacks.
But the group's penchant for suicide attacks led the United States, European Union and India to outlaw it as a terror organisation. The Tigers were the first to use female suicide bombers and develop explosive belts and vests, the US Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism said in 2006.
They also assassinated several Sri Lankan politicians, including former president Ranasinghe Premadasa.
Though Prabhakaran was sometimes hailed as a master strategist, he also made a series of misjudgments over the years that led to his downfall.
'Unceasing allegiance to the cause of carving out a Tamil state and unforgiving ruthlessness can be called the two main traits of Prabhakaran,' Swamy said. 'These traits are Prabhakaran's and the LTTE's biggest strengths and also its biggest weakness.'
Prabhakaran alienated his strongest allies in India by sending a female suicide bomber to kill Mr Gandhi in 1991, apparent retaliation for an Indian peacekeeping mission that turned sour.
During negotiations following a 2002 ceasefire, he also rejected a deal that would have given the rebels broad autonomy over the north and east, according to a diplomat with knowledge of the offer. It was widely seen as the best deal he could ever get, but Prabhakaran said he could not accept anything less than a separate Tamil state, dubbed Eelam.
Then in 2005, he called a Tamil boycott of the 2005 presidential election, which helped propel the hardline Mahinda Rajapakse to victory.
After new peace talks failed, the rebels cut off the water supply to more than 60,000 people in eastern Sri Lanka, provoking an unrelenting government offensive.
His absolute approach, which eventually led to his death and the destruction of his organisation, can perhaps be summed up in a statement he made to Indian journalist Anita Pratap in 1990.
'Thousands of my boys have laid down their lives for Eelam. Their death cannot be in vain.' ASSOCIATED PRESS, BLOOMBERG
Me leh? *hee*hee*
