Security for other TULF leaders has been strengthened. Reports say elite commandos have been assigned to protect MP and TULF Secretary General R Sampanthan. A week earlier, the police announced that Vigneswary, 25, from the eastern coastal town of Trincomalee and other Black Tiger suicide cadre had entered the capital seeking high-profile targets.
Colombo newspaper Sunday Times columnist Iqbal Athas says that Mr Tiruchelvam’s security was discussed at four high-level conferences only a week earlier and the Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DII) and the Army’s Directorate of Military Intelligence had warned that he would be targeted.
Mr Tiruchelvam served as an international observer in many countries, including South Africa, Pakistan, Chile and Nigeria. In Colombo, he presided over the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), an institute promoting ethnic reconciliation and conflict resolution. He was a consultant in an evaluation of the constitution for Kazakhstan in September 1991 and took part in a review of the constitution-making process in Ethiopia in November the same year. He was elected chairman of the London-based human rights agency Minority Rights Group (MRG) in 1999.
There has been widespread condemnation for the killing of Mr Tiruchelvam. US President Bill Clinton, expressed shock at the death and added that a powerful voice for reconciliation in Sri Lanka had been silenced. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson were among many other prominent leaders who expressed shock and outrage.
US-based Human Rights Watch condemned the assassination as a deplorable violation of humanitarian law. A spokesperson for the agency said that ‘Neelan was a life-long campaigner for human rights and a tireless advocate for a peaceful resolution to the bloody conflict’. A public statement by Sri Lankan and other academics around the world denounced ‘with utmost vehemence and moral repugnance, this killing of an unarmed, non-violent civilian scholar and politician allegedly by the organisation which was also responsible for the murder of Rajiv Gandhi’.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) remain silent on the death of Neelan. They have emerged as the chief suspects. The Tigers are also the prime suspects in the murders of other TULF leaders, including Appapillai Amirthalingam and Vetrivelu Yogeswaran in 1989 and more recently Jaffna Mayors Sarojini Yogeswaran and Pon Sivapalan.
In a July statement, Amnesty International said that the Tigers recently stepped-up their intimidation of MPs and public officials. The killing of Neelan appears to be a warning that involvement in politics by moderate Tamil leaders will not be tolerated by the LTTE who have declared themselves ‘the sole representatives’ of the Tamil-speaking people of Sri Lanka.
The LTTE regards Tamils cooperating with the Sri Lankan governments as traitors to the Tamil cause. Neelan’s involvement in the drafting of the government’s devolution proposals and his participation in the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Reform (PSC) had left him a marked man. The Tigers have rejected the peace package describing it as ‘a mask to conceal government’s military intentions’.
Tamil human rights activists say the assassination has undone years of painstaking work in the international campaign for Tamil rights. Others lobbying to remove the ban on the LTTE in India and the US believe that they now face an impossible task. The Sri Lankan government on the other hand, has cited the killing of Neelan in its campaign to ban the LTTE in other countries and block Tiger fund-raising.
Neelan believed that constitutional reform was essential to address the causes of conflict and minority grievances. As a constitutional lawyer, his advice was sought by institutions and governments. In 1978, he was involved in the efforts of the Ceylon Workers Congress which led to the introduction of provisions in the Constitution which guaranteed, for the first time, fundamental rights for stateless Hill Country Tamils.
In June, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunge announced that the new constitution incorporating government devolution proposals would be tabled in Parliament. Observers say that this announcement may have triggered the attack on Neelan in July.
Neelan himself spoke of the fundamental and irreconcilable ideological differences between those engaged in armed confrontation and a political party committed to non-violence. He stressed the need to create political conditions which restore respect for the sanctity of human life. He pointed out that in other contexts such conditions have been created when para-military organisations re-enter the political mainstream in the wake of a political solution.