http://transcurrents.com/tc/2010/06/_is_there_a_move_to_make_venez.html:

“Does the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) and the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) represent the Tamil Diaspora and the entire Tamil community?

No, they don’t!

The GTF and the TGTE claim that they represent the ‘Tamil Diaspora,’ which is then rehashed by individuals like Ron Ridenour, to justify claims of genocide and hence the need for a separate State.

Both organisations were formed by international leaders of the earlier LTTE and are composed of LTTE front organisations and their supporters in various Western countries. What they have in common is their LTTE origins and the demand for a separate State. Having lost territory and control over the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, claims of genocide has become a facile argument to justify foreign intervention to help create a separate State.

The TGTE is a re-branded manifestation of the LTTE overseas structure. Its co-architects are Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, former international legal advisor of the LTTE and New York based Lawyer, and Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP, previously International Chief in charge of international LTTE branch administration, global fund raising and arms acquisition. The TGTE is unambiguously clear about its ultimate goal being creation of a separate State. At its inaugural Congress in Philadelphia, the LTTE flag was openly flaunted alongside the US flag, despite it being a banned terrorist organization, and Rudrakumaran was elected as Interim Chief Executive of TGTE. As I mentioned earlier, the GTF too is an entity formed by bringing together several LTTE front organisations in the West.

These organisations are unrepresentative, but project themselves as the ‘sole representatives of the Tamil people.’ Their leaders belong to a financially powerful and influential class of educated professionals and businesspeople residing in the West and benefiting from external political and financial backing.

Let us recall the brutal war the LTTE waged against other groups issuing from the Tamil community, assassinating intellectuals, politicians and activists to establish itself as the ‘sole representative.’ At the same time, its representatives moved into gain a stranglehold over the Tamil community in the west – including through intimidation, assault, and threats to families in Sri Lanka. Paris and Toronto were prime examples of the phenomenon, where unquestioning compliance was demanded and wrought.

The TGTE too has made clear that it will not take into account decisions of the so-called “Tamil leadership” inside Sri Lanka unless they accept its separatist agenda.

No, the Tamil community is not a homogenous group!

Our perceptions of who we are and the choices we make depend essentially on our historical origins, our economic and social status, geographic location, and cultural background. For instance, the demand of almost 1 million workers belonging to the Tamil community brought as indentured labour by the British from India was to obtain Sri Lankan nationality. The LTTE showed no concern whatsoever for the fate of this working class.

Within Sri Lanka, even in regions such as the East and the northern Jaffna peninsula, which separatists claim as their territory, there is no popular support for the separatist cause.

As for INGOs and their backers and individuals who tow the LTTE/TGTE line, genocide is only a pretext for achieving a hidden agenda. Perhaps we are seeing a new model for external intervention in the making, creation of a dangerous precedent. First, encourage groups without territory or control over the population to establish ‘Transnational Governments.’ Then, facilitate a campaign of defamation to justify intervention by a nebulous ‘international community’ to exercise the so-called ‘Responsibility to Protect’.’ Of course, all this has nothing to do with the principles of the UN Charter or human rights!

My question to you is, would you like to see this happening in Latin America where regional integration, the dream of Bolivar, is on the agenda?

6. In Latin America we have little information about Sri Lanka. Was there a popular insurrection in your country?

Insurrection implies an organised rebellion aimed at overthrowing the Government in place. The goal of the LTTE was not to overthrow the Government but to establish a separate State of Tamil Eelam under its totalitarian control. That is why they projected the Sinhalese people as the enemy.

The LTTE was NOT a liberation movement. It never had an economic or social programme nor did it concern itself with development of the areas it controlled or in improving the well-being of the Tamil community. The only institutions they set up were institutions of coercion – police stations, tribunals, prisons. They had airplanes, a fleet of tankers, and even submarines.

It was a terror organisation terrorising even members of the community they claimed to represent. Theirs was an anti-civilian approach! Child soldiers were forcibly recruited for their notorious baby-brigades and forewarned that their families would be wiped out if they surrender. They invented the suicide belt and pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks. Their soldiers wore cyanide vials for consumption upon capture.They practiced extortion. They were known within the Tamil community as the “Eelam Enterprise” for their involvement in human, arms and drug trafficking and sea piracy.

Tens of thousands of civilians from the community who did not subscribe to their separatist goal were physically eliminated, including leaders of progressive political groups and their cadres, politicians and intellectuals. In one day alone, they killed 175 leaders of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation. Then they machine-gunned the entire Central Committee of the left-wing EPRLF – the Eelam Peoples´ Revolutionary Liberation Front.

It shocks me to hear comparisons being made between the LTTE and genuine liberation movements in Latin America and the Middle East.

Is it ethical to brand an entire community – the Sinhalese in this case – as enemy? Is it moral to target innocent civilians and workers in pubic places, transit hubs, buses, trains, marketplaces, temples, banks, office buildings, etc.

Ron Ridenour’s presentation of Rudrakumaran, top LTTE and TGTE leader and associate of the mafiosi KP, as a moral reference is an insult to the intelligence of people, particularly of the Tamil community itself!”