Tiger parents found in camp

The parents of Vellupilai Prabhakaran, the slain leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels who led a quarter-century armed struggle for a separate state in Sri Lanka maybe heading for Canada to join their daughter.Canadian website Vancouverite.com reported that the elderly couple was found “living incognito” in a military camp for displaced people in the island state. The military camps hold up to 300,000 people displaced in the civil strife.

Quoting the Sri Lankan Government, it said “Prabhakaran’s father Veraswami Thiruwengadam Velupillai and mother Velupillai Parvathi Pillai have been identified by military authorities while living inside one of the welfare villages in Vavuniya.”

They escaped in the final stages of war and were living incognito inside the camp, but the Sri Lankan intelligence identified them, the report said.

The two were living in Tiruchi in India when Prabhakaran engaged the Indian Peace-Keeping Force in a bitter battle between October 1987 and March 1990.

Others who were living with Prabhakaran, including Prabhakaran’s wife Mathivathani, his son Charles Anthony and daughter Dwaraka, were killed the report claimed. 

The Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam chief has a sister living in Toronto and the displaced parents may be eligible to be sponsored to come to Canada.

But it is not known if Canada will be willing to accept them considering they lived behind the LTTE lines since 2003 and were looked after by their son, who was wanted for the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and former Sri Lankan President R Premadasa.

The Tamil Tigers has been banned as a terrorist outfit in over 30 countries, including Canada.

The Sri Lankan government officially declared the LTTE defeated after army troops killed Prabhakaran on May 18, ending the 26-year insurgency

Sri Lanka army commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka says intelligence authorities have seized the satellite phone used by Prabhakaran and calls made by him will provide information about the terror chief’s contacts in Canada, U.S., U.K. and Germany identify LTTE agents living there, the Asian Tribune said.

The LTTE has a strong base in Canada and has received millions of dollars from Canada’s Tamil diaspora, intelligence reports said.

“Canada’s Tamil community has been among the LTTE’s largest sources of funds, having contributed up to $10 (million) to $12-million annually in past years,” according to an intelligence assessment released to the National Post under the Access to Information Act.

“The LTTE through its many front organizations in other countries, including Canada, has conducted extensive fundraising and other activities to support its efforts in Sri Lanka,” the report adds.

Fundraisers were “often coercive,” it said, naming the Toronto-based World Tamil Movement as the rebels’ leading front in Canada.

Police searched the World Tamil Movement offices in Ontario and Quebec in 2006. Last year, the government banned the group under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Federal lawyers are now in court trying to seize its properties and bank accounts. The organization has denied any wrongdoing.

After the fighting between the Tamil Tigers ended in May, tens of thousands of Canadian Tamils took to the streets in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa in a bid to get the Canadian government to intervene on humanitarian grounds in the decades-long civil war on the island state off India between Tamil and Sinhalese populations.