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He died as violently as he lived

by our Defence Correspondent
N. Manikkadasan lived a life of violence, and died a violent death.

One of the last survivors among the pioneers of the Tamil secessionist war, Manikkadasan’s life spanned nearly two decades of fighting, killing, prison time, jail breaks, links with shadowy Middle Eastern terrorist groups, mainstream politics, and finally, a predictable end, at the young age of forty.

Manikkadasan, the military wing leader and Vice President of the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam, was killed by a bomb planted in the ceiling of his own office in Vavuniya on Thursday.

Killed with him was his longtime deputy and close confidante, K. Thevarajah, and a senior cadre of PLOTE, L. Vino.

Manikkadasan was in his office at 10:15 that morning, meeting with 11 members of PLOTE, to discuss routine activities of the group, the former terrorists turned political party. The meeting was at his office on the upstairs of the two-stories PLOTE building, in what is known as "Lucky Camp."

At 12:30 the meeting ended, and most of the group left the room, and went out of the building. Manikkadasan, Thevarajah, Vino, and Manikkadasan’s bodyguard S. Thavam, stayed to discuss some other matters.

At 12:55, the four of them prepared to go for lunch, and stepped towards the door of the office. Only Thavam was armed at the time, with a pistol in his pocket.

As they were about to walk out of the office, the bomb went off, killing the three instantly. Thavam dropped to the ground, bleeding badly, his gun falling to the floor.

The bomb had apparently been set off by remote control from outside, by someone who was obviously watching the scene through a window. The attacker got away.

The assassination was almost identical to the killing of Jaffna Mayor Sarojini Yogeswaran more than a year ago, in Jaffna.

Police investigating the blast are trying to trace the workmen and contractors who had last done renovations to the building, believing that an LTTE infiltrator among them may have planted the bomb in the ceiling.

Manikkadasan was a colourful character. Who had made his name as a survivor over the years, escaping death many a time at the hands of the security forces, rampaging mobs, and the LTTE. But fate finally caught up with him.

He joined the rebel struggle in the late seventies, when he was only a teenager, and was a contemporary of the famed leader Uma Maheswaran.

Manikkadasan was involved in many attacks against the security forces, and was taken into custody several times. The most famous was in 1983, when he was being kept in the Welikada Prison in Colombo, when the Black July riots took place. Although a rampaging Sinhalese mob butchered 57 Tamil prisoners, Manikkadasan somehow managed to survive the attack.

Only two months later, in September, Manikkadasan was a key figure in the spectacular Batticaloa jailbreak, and travelled to Lebanon, where PLOTE cadres were being trained by a Middle Eastern terrorist group. He then went back to fighting against the army.

When the PLOTE entered mainstream politics in 1987, Manikkadasan took his place as a key leader, and was later put in charge of the Vavuniya area. Often a savage and barbaric leader, he is widely known to have meted out cruel punishments to those who disagreed with his policies, including civilians, and some of his own cadres.

When elections were held in Jaffna in February of 1998, Manikkadasan was a candidate for the Jaffna Municipal Council and was elected a member. But with the LTTE hellbent on assassinating all other politicians in the Jaffna Peninsula, Manikkadasan never took office.

Few who knew Manikkadasan are shedding any tears for him. He lived by the sword and died by the sword.

However, the latest incident brings home the fact that there are many people like him, who have no proper role to play in a peacetime Sri Lanka, and will be literally like fish out of the water the day the war ends, having grown up with violence, and lived a life of terror. They would constantly live in fear and hatred, not knowing who would try to kill them and when.

Included among them would be many cadres of the Tamil parties, such as the TELO, PLOTE, EPDP, etc.

Even more significantly, most of those who are members of the LTTE, would have no place in peacetime.

For example, LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran must surely have decided a long time ago that his life wouldn’t be worth a button the day the war ends and he loses his power. There will simply be too many people who would want to kill him, and take the opportunity. These would include other Tamil groups, government hit squads, and members of the armed forces, not to mention the millions of people who have been directly affected by the war, losing loved ones to violence.

Although no-one is shedding tears for Manikkadasan, it is a dangerous situation for the government to allow bombings and killings to continue in this fashion. Violence begets violence, and when the perpetrators get away unscathed, the security of society suffers most.

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