Tamil Tigers leader to give annual speech

Tamil Tigers and bereaved families lit lamps and garlanded portraits of fallen fighters in rebel-held parts of Sri Lanka to mark the end of Hero’s Week, as the rebels’ reclusive leader prepared to make his annual policy speech today.

Velupillai Prabhakaran’s speech comes amid an undeclared civil war that has virtually destroyed a 2002 cease-fire with the government, leaving more than 3,200 people dead this year alone.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – which says it is fighting to create a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s 3.2 million ethnic minority Tamils - commemorates its fallen fighters and marks the birthday of its top leader every year on November 27.

Prabhakaran’s speech is watched by Sri Lankan and international observers to try to determine the rebels’ next move.

The speech comes after a year of bloody fighting, prompting speculation that Prabkaharan could declare an official end to the Norway brokered cease-fire on the tropical island of 19 million people.

Such a pessimistic outlook comes just a year after Prabhakaran offered a glimmer of hope to supporters of the peace process.

Just days after the election of hard-line President Mahinda Rajapakse, the Tamil Tiger leader used his 2005 annual speech to praise the president as a “realist, committed to pragmatic politics”.

He also promised to delay an “intensified struggle for self determination” despite complaining that the peace process had yielded little for Tamils.

He gave a deadline that ends today to see how Rajapakse addressed the Tamil’s demand for self rule.

However, any hopes that peace would return to Sri Lanka soon ended with a series of mysterious abductions, assassinations and bomb blasts.

The rebels accused the government of launching a proxy war against them by supporting a breakaway faction of rebels. Bombs targeting military vehicles killed dozens of soldiers and sailors. The government blamed the rebels.

Tamil Tigers denied responsibility and claimed that Tamil civilians, distraught over their hardships had started attacking government forces, intifada style.

April’s attempted assassination of Sri Lanka’s army commander Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka by a Tiger suicide bomber in the heart of the capital, Colombo, and subsequent government aerial bombing on rebel positions in the east marked the beginning of large-scale confrontation.

A year after Prabhakaran signalled that peace could be achieved, more than 3,200 fighters and civilians have died in aerial bombings, assassinations, bomb attacks and daily skirmishes. Government troops have also captured some territory held by the rebels.

The fighting has created some 200,000 refugees.

Heavy clashes are reported daily but both the sides say they have not withdrawn from the 2002 ceasefire meant to halt a civil war that had killed 65,000 people since 1983.

Growing international pressure has forced the government and rebels to remain nominally committed to the cease-fire, despite ongoing fighting which can only be described as a full-scale war.

A clause in the truce that requires the government or rebels to notify the other party 14 days before their withdrawal is the only thing keeping the agreement valid, at least on paper.