IMPACT OF THE 2004 TSUNAMI ON TAMIL-TIGER-CONTROLLED AREAS
Many of the victims of the December 2004 Tsunami, which killed 35,000 people and left 900,000 homeless in Sri Lanka, were Tamils. Mullaitvu, one of the most devastated towns, was in Tamil Tigers controlled territory. It had served as a naval base for the naval force known as the Sea Tigers. Because many Tamil areas were in war zones the people were used to hardship, making do with few resources and rebuilding. Because they suffered from high arts of poverty many aid and relief agencies were here even before the tsunami struck.
The area around Kalmunai, on the east coast of Sri Lanka about 50 kilometers south of Batticaloa, was the worst hit areas in Sri Lanka. Around 10,000 people were killed along a single 6.4 kilometer section of beach, with entire villages disappearing with hardly a trace left behind. One local official interviewed by the New York Times said he lost 27 relatives, counted 374 dead around his home, and oversaw the burial of 2,250 people. Most of the victims were Tamils and Muslims crushed and washed away by a huge wave that sounded like a bomb exploding when it struck.
There were reports that the Tigers were recruiting children orphaned by the tsunami disaster. There was a rumor that the Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran had been killed by the tsunami because it was said he lived in Mullaitivu, a town devastated by the tsunami. To show he was still alive he appeared leading on a meeting on disaster relief on the website TamilNet.
2004 Tsunami Deaths Particularly High in Tamil-Tiger-Controlled Areas
From Tamil-Tiger-controlled Mullaittivu, on the north-eastern coast of Sri Lanka, Reuters reported: Hemmed in by a landmined border, feared Tamil Tiger rebels appealed for help as they dug mass graves to clear thousands of reeking corpses strewn by a deadly tsunami. Cut off from the rest of Sri Lanka by a no-man’s land, a legacy of their bloody two-decade civil war for autonomy, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s northern and eastern coastal strongholds were ravaged by giant waves. [Source: Khaleej Times, Reuters, December 29, 2004]
The Tigers said nearly 10,000 people had perished in areas they control, while almost as many again were missing. The dead represent nearly half of Sri Lanka’s overall death toll. The Tigers’ main naval base at Mullaittivu was devastated, as was part of its fleet. Bodies littered the ground like an upturned graveyard and the overpowering stench of death wafted over the area.
Children accounted for the bulk of victims in nearby fishing villages. All 135 children at an orphanage run by female Tigers were swept away to their deaths. “We have only found bodies so far,” said Col. Soosai, head of the Tigers’ navy arm, the Sea Tigers. “We have not received any aid from the government yet.” “If the government warned us early when the quake struck, the devastation could have been partially avoided,” he said angrily.
See Separate Article: PLACES AND GROUPS IN SRI LANKA HARD HIT BY THE 2004 TSUNAMI factsanddetails.com
Tamil Tigers and the December 2004 Tsunami
Several thousand Tamils died in territory controlled by the Tamil Tigers on the east coast of Sri Lanka. Around 3,000 people were killed around Mullaittavu in northeast Sri Lanka and the fishing villages around it. Entire extended families were wiped out. People were pushed hundreds of meters inland and then pulled out to sea. The beach road and many of the houses that were on it vanished.
According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, both the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Tamil Tigers suffered extensive damage to their infrastructure. The publication cited numerous deaths among Tiger forces as well as “extensive damage at Chailai, the main base of its naval arm, together with smaller Tiger units along the northeast coast. This includes a number of boats sunk.”
After the disaster Prabhakaran expressed sympathy for Muslims and Sinhalese. “My condolence...go out to our Muslim and [Sinhalese] brethren in the southern coastal areas, who have lost their kith and kin.” Another Tiger leader said that the group would accept from the Sri Lankan government.
In June 2005, the GSL and LTTE reached an agreement to share $3 billion in international tsunami aid. However, the agreement was challenged in court and was never implemented.
Tamil Tigers and the 2004 Tsunami Relief Effort
The Tamil Tigers were effective in providing relief in many areas in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Hours after the tsunami struck they launched search and rescue missions to find survivors, set up road blocks to control panic and prevented looting. Next they collected corpses and burned them and disinfected areas where they were found. Pictures of the dead were taken with digital cameras and the data was downloaded on laptop computers to aid in identifying the dead. Many fighters donated blood. After that they began rebuilding destroyed buildings, repairing roads and fixing downed power lines. They also ran refugee camps and coordinated relief efforts with aid agencies,
The Tamil Tigers received some international supplies through its own aid group, the Tamil Relief Organization. A week or so after the disaster a convoy of United Nations trucks loaded with 100 metric tons of sugar, lentils and rice arrived at the Tamil Tigers headquarters in Kilinochchi for redistribution to relief camps. The camps in the Tamil controlled areas seemed well run. They had adequate medical supplies and had an efficient system to cook up lentils and potatoes for camp residents.
In some places the Tamil Tigers competed with the government and volunteers with a Marxist political party to see who could the best job repairing roads, provide food and water and performing other relief efforts. Their efforts seemed motivated less by a desire to help out and more by a chance to win votes and gain political leverage and as chance to recruit members,
Tsunami Relief Cooperation Between the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan Government?
The government and the Tiger agreed to work together but never really figuring out a way to cooperate. There were examples of government soldiers and Tamil Tiger fighter working together to build roads and sitting down around the same desk discussing the best way to distribute aid. At the same time suspicion and distrust remained, The government accused the Tigers of stealing aid. The Tigers accused the government of blocking aid to Tiger-controlled areas. There were also reports of Sinhalese mobs blocking relief truck from going to Tamil areas and diverting the supplies to Sinhalese areas.
The government controlled the flow of aid money and supplies to Tiger-controlled areas. The Tigers accused the government of obstructing the flow of relief supplies to rebel-controlled areas. The government denied these allegations. The Norwegian government stepped in the behalf of Tamils to make sure they got their fair share of the aid,
Tamil Tigers After the December 2004 Tsunami
As of January 2005, weeks after the tsunami, peace talks had not been resumed. Representatives of the Tamil Tigers said the government had spoiled a chance for peace after the tsunami by diverting most of the aid money to Sinhalese-dominated areas rather than Tamil-dominated areas even though many of worst hit areas were in Tamil regions.
A controversy erupted over a visit by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who visited only Sinhalese-controlled area not Tamil-controlled areas in the north and east. The government said he didn’t visit those areas because the government could not guarantee his safety. The Tamil Tigers said it was further example of discrimination against the Tamils.
Before the tsunami there had been increasing signs of cooperation. The government allowed the movement of goods in and out of Tamil Tiger controlled areas. Schoolteachers in Tiger-controlled areas were paid by the government. But at the same time Prabhakaran was expressing impatience and threatening to resume the war. The government still controlled access to the Tiger-controlled areas.
In June 2005, the Sri Lankan government signed a controversial tsunami aid sharing deal with Tamil Tiger rebels despite opposition from the island's main Marxist party. AFP reported: Details of the proposed Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS) were unveiled in Parliament today for the first time after months of secret talks with the help of peace broker Norway. It will have an international lender as the custodian of foreign aid. [Source: AFP, June 24 2005]
The Marxist JVP, or People's Liberation Front, disrupted parliamentary debate on the controversial issue when the document was released ahead of debate in the Assembly, and the sitting ended in chaos when JVP MPs prevented ministers from speaking on the deal. The JVP quit the ruling coalition last week protesting the deal to handle tsunami aid and vowed to launch nationwide protests from Friday. The deal is seen as a prelude to saving Sri Lanka's Norwegian-led peace bid.
Suffering and Violence for Tamils in Tsunami-Hit Areas
In 2004-2005, a suspected Tiger assassin killed the Sri Lankan government foreign minister and anti-Tiger hard-liner Mahinda Rajapaksa became president.
Reporting from Jaffna, Somini Sengupta and Seth Mydans wrote in the New York Times: “Charity came pouring in from far and wide for this island nation devastated by the tsunami. But on its fragile northern peninsula, Udayarani Sebastian Pillai today lives on the cliff edge of uncertainty. The government has barred her from rebuilding on the seafront where she had lived, and there is no promise of a permanent home. Home is a transit camp sandwiched between army and rebel lines. From beyond the camp comes news of a possible renewal of civil war. Her mind remains ravaged by the destruction of a year ago: The tsunami killed three of her seven children. [Source: Somini Sengupta and Seth Mydans, New York Times, December 25, 2005]
“A year ago, the tsunami dangled the hope of reconciliation here. It struck lands held by the government and those held by Tamil rebels. It even brought the two sides together to heal and divide up aid. Today, squabbles over aid combined with the legacy of recrimination between government and rebels have so exacerbated the conflict that Sri Lanka seems closer to war than ever since the peace process began nearly four years ago. Clashes between government troops and suspected Tamil separatist rebels have become routine. Cars are set alight in protest on the streets of Jaffna Peninsula. Soldiers are everywhere, with their heavy guns and wary eyes.
“This was not what most people here had anticipated a year ago. But it is only one of a wide range of contrasting and often paradoxical effects now being felt a full year after the tsunami ate coastlines of a dozen countries and killed 181,000 people. The looming threat of war in Pillai's country, in fact, stands in stark contrast to the extraordinary shift some 1,500 kilometers across the Indian Ocean, nearly 1,000 miles, in the Indonesian province of Aceh. There...separatist guerrillas are turning in their weapons and seeking to forge a political party. In Aceh, the tsunami and aid have greatly helped quiet a 30-year-old civil war.”
Violence After the December 2004 Tsunami
In February 2005, five Tamil Tigers were killed in an ambush near Batticaloa. Among the dead was the Tiger’s eastern political head, E, Kousalyan, the most senior rebel leader killed since the February 2002 cease fire. Each body had been hit by more than two dozen bullets fired at point blank range. The Tigers blamed Sri Lankan military intelligence for aiding paramilitaries that carried out the attack. A few weeks later two more Tamils were killed. According to TamilNet, the Tiger’s web site, the victims were “paramilitary cadres.”
In August 2006, fifteen local aid staff working on tsunami reconstruction on Sri Lanka's north-eastern coast were executed after six days of heavy fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels. The Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies said that a relief team had discovered the corpses in an aid agency office in Muttur, on the edge of rebel territory. "They were lying face down - executed," said CHA chief, Jeevan Thiagarajah. It was not clear who had killed them. [Source: Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, August 7, 2008]
Randeep Ramesh of The Guardian wrote: “Muttur, across a bay from the deep water port of Trincomalee, has been shattered by the fighting with homes reduced to rubble. The government claims 11,000 people had fled the town over the past few days. The military said that it had lost 17 personnel, while the Tigers put their figure at 32. More than 30 civilians have been reported killed. Some had been sheltering in schools. "We are searching for 100 missing civilians which eyewitnesses say were taken by the Tigers as they left the town," a Sri Lankan army spokesman told the Guardian. There was no word from the Tigers on the dead aid workers last night.
“The past week has seen some of the heaviest fighting since the two sides signed a Norwegian-brokered truce in 2002. The clashes were triggered by the closure of a sluice gate in a nearby reservoir that sits in rebel-held territory. This cut off water supplies to 15,000 families, most of whom are of the Sinhalese majority. Rebels say it is a protest by ethnic Tamil civilians angry that promised water tanks never arrived. Last week Sri Lankan military air strikes and ground assaults plunged the island back into conflict. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam took up weapons more than two decades ago, claiming ethnic discrimination by the Sinhalese against Sri Lanka's 3.2m minority Tamils.
Tamilnet, a website which reports extensively on the Tigers, said that the offer by rebels early yesterday to lift the sluice gates was met by a barrage of Sri Lankan artillery fire. Reuters reported that the head of the unarmed Nordic-staffed ceasefire monitoring mission, retired Swedish Major General Ulf Henricsson, was caught up in the gunfire as he headed towards the sluice, south of Trincomalee. "(The government) have the information that the LTTE has made this offer," said Tommy Lekenmyr, chief of staff for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM). "It is quite obvious they are not interested in water. They are interested in something else. We will blame this on the government."
Fifteen Tsunami Aid Workers Executed in Sri Lanka
In August 2006, renewed fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers severely affected the country's northeast, including areas still recovering from the 2004 tsunami. During the clashes around the town of Muttur, fifteen local aid workers involved in tsunami reconstruction were found executed inside an aid agency office after six days of heavy fighting. The victims were discovered lying face down, and responsibility for the killings remained unclear. [Source: Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, August 7, 2006]
The fighting devastated Muttur, forcing an estimated 11,000 residents to flee and causing extensive destruction to homes and infrastructure. More than 30 civilians were reported killed, while both government forces and the Tamil Tigers suffered military casualties. Reports also emerged of missing civilians allegedly taken away as rebel forces withdrew from the town.
The violence marked one of the most serious breakdowns of the 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire. The immediate trigger was a dispute over the closure of sluice gates in a reservoir located in rebel-held territory, which cut water supplies to approximately 15,000 mainly Sinhalese families. The government viewed the action as a rebel provocation, while the Tigers claimed it was a protest over unmet promises to provide water tanks to local Tamil communities.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Sri Lanka Tourism (srilanka.travel), Government of Sri Lanka (www.gov.lk), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022