The Crossing

By Rajendra Abhyankar

It is 1983 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and a changing political situation is heightening differences between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Hari is a twenty-three-year-old Tamil working as a sales agent when he meets Tiziana, an Italian dancer who regularly visits Sri Lanka. As the two become acquainted, quickly fall in love, and learn about each others cultures, tensions continue to escalate in Sri Lanka. As Hari reluctantly parts with Tizianawhom he calls Zinaat the airport a few days later, neither could have ever predicted what would happen next.

After Tamil militants kill soldiers of the Sri Lanka army, riots ensue in Colombo, shattering the serenity of the beautiful island. Angry mobs wreak havoc and destruction throughout Sri Lanka, and the Tamils themselves become targets. Forced to flee his home and confront racism for the first time, Hari can only helplessly watch as his world collapses and brings him face-to-face with the deep-rooted divisions of his society. As he unwittingly becomes entangled in the Tamil struggle, Hari finds work with the UN Refugee Agency and manages to reconnect with Zinaunaware that his choices will eventually lead him down a tragic path.

The Crossing is the fascinating portrait of one mans painful journey from a peaceful existence into the dark recesses of terrorism during four decades of a militant struggle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Dec 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781482814712

Rajendra Abhyankar

Rajendra Abhyankar is a former Indian diplomat who earned a master’s degree in economics from Delhi University, Delhi. In his long career, he has been ambassador in Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. He served as the editor for West Asia and the Region: Defining India’s Role. Rajendra and his wife, Paulomi, live in Mumbai, India. Rajendra Abhyankar currently teaches at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington.

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The

Crossing

Rajendra Abhyankar

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Copyright © 2013 by Rajendra Abhyankar.

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Contents

Hari

The Palk Straits

Milan

Colombo, 1983

Kandy

Trincomalee

Somewhere on the Indian Ocean

Colombo

The Exodus

Jaffna

Colombo

Selvi

Hari

Madras

Geneva, 1984

Colombo

Geneva

Adithan

Milan

Selvi

Geneva, 1985

The First Steps

The Agreement

Geneva

The Crossing

The Die Is Cast

The Skies Darken

Limmasol

Prague

Colombo

The Assassination

The Plot Thickens

Madras

Flight

Finis

Epilogue

It is 1983 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and a changing political situation is heightening differences between the Sinhala and Tamil communities. Hari is a twenty-three-year-old Tamil working as a sales agent when he meets Tiziana, an Italian dancer who regularly visits Sri Lanka. As the two become acquainted, quickly fall in love, and learn about each other’s cultures, tensions continue to escalate in Sri Lanka. As Hari reluctantly parts with Tiziana—whom he calls Zina—at the airport a few days later, neither could have ever predicted what would happen next. After Tamil militants kill soldiers in the Sri Lanka army, riots ensue in Colombo, shattering the serenity of the beautiful island. Angry mobs wreak havoc and destruction throughout Sri Lanka, and the Tamils themselves become targets. Forced to flee his home and confront racism for the first time, Hari can only helplessly watch as his world collapses and brings him face-to-face with the deep-rooted divisions of his society. As he unwittingly becomes entangled in the Tamil struggle, Hari finds work with the UN Refugee Agency and manages to reconnect with Zina—unaware that his choices will eventually lead him down a tragic path. This story tries to capture the predicament of youth around the world who find themselves in the throes of a situation of discrimination, dispossession, and deprivation in which they see no alternative but to opt for a violent path to achieve their yearning for a voice in their country. More often than not, they have failed, but that has not—and will not—deter the world’s youth from taking matters into their own hands when faced with such a choice.

To

Adriano Amar, Eva Tara & Zoe Uma,

in the hope they will have easier decisions

Hari

Hari was not among those who were killed on May 21, 1991, when the suicide bomber got her target. They found only his camera and surmised that he too had died in the blast that killed the former prime minister and all those thronging around him. Since that fateful day, it was the sixth time that he was making the narrow crossing across the Palk Straits, which separates the Indian mainland from Sri Lanka. Each time it had felt like the last.

His mission was to frustrate the voyage of the ship MV Akbar, which was carrying the first load of Tamil refugees back to Sri Lanka. He had considered two options. The softer one was to create dissension among the refugees to force the captain to abort the voyage. The harder one was to detonate an on-board explosion, which would force the same result. He had been told repeatedly that the mission was crucial to restore the prestige of the Tamil Tigers, to embarrass the governments of Sri Lanka and India, and to convince the international community that conditions in northeast Sri Lanka did not warrant the return of the Tamil refugees.

The mission was even more important to Hari personally. His standing in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, the richest and most ruthless of international terrorist groups had suffered after his perceived failure in the assassination attempt; the loss of his camera had left valuable clues for the perpetrators of that terrible act. Hari’s field name of Kandeepan, given when he joined the LTTE, signified that he was endowed with the aura of Gandiva—the mythological unbreakable bow of Arjuna, the hero of the renowned Hindu text, the Mahabharata. There was a feeling in the organisation that he had gone soft with the creature comforts of the European bases, such as Geneva and Nicosia, that he had operated out of. In every sense, this was his last throw of the dice, for all he had come to believe in—even for his life.

In the organisation, the failure of a mission cost an operative his or her life; indeed, even success could mean the same, should it become necessary to bite the cyanide capsule all field operatives carried round their necks to leave no possibility of capture.

The Palk Straits

After a number of false starts, the meeting between the Indian prime minister and the Sri Lanka president took place in Colombo on December 21, 1991 at the Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. It was the first meeting between the two leaders after a period of bitterness and acrimony following the virtually forced withdrawal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force from Sri Lanka in March 1990. It had followed the assassination on May 31, 1991, of Rajiv Gandhi, who was on the cusp of winning the general elections that would have made him prime minister of India once again. The assassin was allegedly part of the dreaded Sri Lanka terrorist organisation LTTE, which was fighting a war with the Sri Lanka government to create a separate state of Tamil Eelam, carved out from north and east Sri Lanka and parts of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Both leaders were keen to rekindle the traditional warmth and friendship between the two peoples that had been lost after the disastrous withdrawal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force from the island. The decision to start the return of the Sri Lanka Tamil refugees from India was the most significant result of their encounter. This was the first time in the nearly ten years, since the anti-Tamil ethnic riots of July 1983, that the two governments had decided to reverse the steady stream of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, despite the continuing insecurity for the Tamil population in north and east Sri Lanka. While the Indian government wanted to reduce political pressure on Tamil Nadu, the Sri Lanka government wanted to project a veneer of normalcy to the international community. Both governments aimed to reinforce their relationship and isolate the LTTE. Neither minimised the difficulties of logistics and maritime security in moving a large number of refugees at night on a slow-moving ship crossing the treacherous waters of the Palk Straits. They were acutely aware that a failure would rebound politically and lose them prestige internationally. The plan had to succeed.

The Palk Straits, which separated the two countries, consisted of no more than thirty kilometers of shoal-ridden shallow passage across the sea and had become the safety valve for a beleaguered community in the north of the island to move to Tamil Nadu each time the people felt unsafe at home. A pogrom in July 1983 against the minority Tamil community by the majority Sinhala community had unleashed a civil war on that beautiful island. The refugee inflow had then reached a crescendo after increasing military hostility between the LTTE and the Sri Lanka government. Expectedly, once the decision became public, there was an outcry, in part orchestrated by the LTTE, and in part due to the genuine misgivings of some relief and humanitarian organisations that feared that the refugees were being sent back against their will only to further a political imperative for both governments.

The first voyage of the MV Akbar was fixed for January 13, 1992. It was scheduled to leave Madras harbor at six in the morning and reach Trincomalee by seven that evening.

A letter from his parents had conveyed to Hari rumors among the Sri Lanka Tamil community of the Indian government’s likely decision to send the refugees back. He could not believe his eyes. He wondered what had provoked such a cruel decision. He could not imagine his Tamil compatriots who had fled to India leaving all their worldly possessions behind not feeling extreme agony in having to return to a country still in the throes of ethnic tension and insecurity.

Hari was aghast when he learned that the decision was to be made at a summit meeting in Colombo between the Indian prime minister and the Sri Lanka president. The political decision would suit not only both the governments, but also the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. For the Sri Lanka government, the return of the refugees was expected to strengthen the government’s claim to Western donors as a sign of the return to normalcy. It also hoped that the return of the Tamil refugees would provide the bonus of lessening Indian interest in Sri Lanka’s internal situation. For the Indian government, the return of the Sri Lanka refugees would reduce the LTTE’s unbridled political and economic access in Tamil Nadu that had resulted from the presence of the large number of refugees. The UNHCR issued a statement expressing the hope that the proposed movement would be voluntary and conveying its readiness to help. It hoped that this positive attitude would remove the Indian government’s resistance to allowing the organisation any foothold on the Indian side of the Sri Lanka refugee story.

Hari wondered what would happen to the nearly two hundred thousand refugees, some of whom had been in India since July 1983, spread out over Tamil Nadu and its neighboring states and having made their homes in little villages and in refugee camps. It seemed inhuman, especially since the security situation in northeast Sri Lanka was bad and individual safety could not be assured. The majority of refugees were from the Jaffna and Mannar districts, both declared no-go areas by the Sri Lanka army. The only prospect for the refugees now was to go to refugee camps on the other side. The ones on the Sri Lanka side were far more makeshift, as they had been set up in a hurry to prepare for the arrival of these refugees. The Indian government had even provided materials and funds to help the operation. The construction of housing tenements of tarpaulin and plywood, the food distribution system in the camps, and the provision of health care services all had yet to be used. Hari felt that it was a most unsatisfactory situation in which to throw the refugees.

Meanwhile, the LTTE and others had already started a campaign against the proposed return of the refugees. They saw it as a political and military defeat, as they believed no refugees should return to Sri Lanka, which was still far from normal. Militarily, the reverse flow would also demonstrate the Sri Lanka government’s confidence in taking on the LTTE cadres operating in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The two governments appeared to be acting in unison against the LTTE. Hari wondered whether the LTTE had thought of this particular consequence of their assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

The letter from his parents, who were among the refugees, also informed him that the state authorities had come around to check their willingness to return—a preliminary procedure to avoid the odium of having forced the refugees out. They had been told that it would be better for them to go. There could be many difficulties in their day-to-day lives if they continued to stay, particularly the withdrawal of special facilities for securing cooking gas, free food rations, and medicine. It appeared to Hari that even the Tamil Nadu government had decided to reduce the burden the large numbers of Tamil refugees had become over the years.

His father wrote, Frankly, we never wanted to leave Jaffna in the first place. But at that time there seemed to be no other choice. We went away then in the hope that all this would end soon. It is now going to be almost ten years that we have been here. Another uprooting will really kill us. Besides, what are we going back to? We had hoped for the same understanding from the Indian authorities that we have had all this time. Once again, we have become pawns in the political game of the two countries. We really feel drained of all emotion and feeling. I suppose we will have to fall in line. The Indian government had decided to start with sea shuttles between Madras and Trincomalee.

It was incredibly sad for Hari to read these words. And to think that now even he was a contributor in their misfortune—he’d realised that even in the LTTE’s stance, the political aspect, not the humanitarian one, was dominant. He was sure that there were a number of others who shared the same feeling of despondency and frustration. A sense of inevitability came through in his father’s words, yet he offered no criticism of the LTTE.

Hari had no idea how to react to this new development. He felt frustrated and powerless. There was very little he could do for his parents. He could of course go to Madras and join them in their return journey, or alternately go to Jaffna and be there when they arrived. He realised neither was possible. He was now at the mercy and command of the LTTE, having pledged his troth to the organisation. And his parents were only two of many who would doubtlessly be affected. There was no reason for the organisation to do anything special for him or his parents.

The message from Geneva had asked him to go to London as soon as possible. He went directly from Heathrow Airport to the offices of the Sunbird Shipping Company, the front for the LTTE’s operation in London. He found Shan and Pottu Amman there. They were waiting for him.

We have an assignment for you in India, said Shan.

When he heard this, Hari knew that the leader’s promise was being redeemed. He was being brought out of seven months of forced inaction and given a reprieve for his perceived failure during the assassination. Hari was overjoyed. It meant that his incarceration and isolation were over. He was now expected to deliver. This was the chance he had been waiting for. Finally, the team player would come centre stage. He waited to hear about his assignment.

As you know, the Indian government has decided to send the refugees back. It serves both governments to enact this charade at the expense of our community. We cannot let this happen. We have to stop it. We have a plan, and you have been selected by the leader to execute it, said Pottu Amman.

I am ready, replied Hari. There was nothing else to say.

Fine. We are going to spend the next two days going over the plan. You are to leave on the Air India flight to Bombay the day after. You should inform the office in Limassol that you will not be back for some time. Tell the same to anyone else who needs to know—but not too many details, said Pottu Amman, letting him know that they knew he would want to tell Zina. Until then, Hari hadn’t been sure if they knew of his relationship with Titziana, whom he had first met in Colombo well before the beautiful island had been devastated by the humanitarian tragedy they were living through.

All three were virtually incommunicado for the next two days, going over the details of the plan.

Pottu Amman explained that throughout the second half of 1991, the two governments were in touch to work out the details. They anticipated that the Sri Lanka government would expect the LTTE to disrupt the arrangements. An increase in LTTE attacks on security forces to provoke retaliatory attacks on Tamil villages could increase the risk to the refugees, cause heightened insecurity, build international pressure against their return from India, and set back the Sri Lanka government’s claim of control.

On the Indian side there was an equal imperative to see that the plan would not be frustrated by the LTTE and its sympathisers in India and abroad.

The decision to repatriate the refugees had seen an increase of rhetoric from detractors of the idea in both countries and among the nongovernmental organisations in the West, including Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists. Yet the officials responsible for working out the logistic details of the movement on both sides continued their work. The arrangements had to be such that once begun, the movement would be uninterrupted and uninterruptible. There were an estimated two hundred thousand refugees, most in seven camps scattered throughout Tamil Nadu and the neighboring states of Karnataka and Orissa. Of these, the most problematic refugees were those in urban centres, because they could easily move out of the camps, and those suspected to be militants, who were lodged in special camps.

Even under normal circumstances, the movement of such a large number of people across the sea would pose an enormous logistical challenge. In the present case, it was compounded by factors no one could control, such as maritime conditions, the effectiveness of naval escort, and the likelihood of an attack by the LTTE’s naval wing, the Sea Tigers.

There were high political stakes in the operation for all sides. Pottu Amman told Hari that the LTTE was determined to spare no effort to see that the movement did not start.

The target date for starting the repatriation operation was January 1, 1992; by then, all the arrangements had to be in place. It had been agreed that a UNHCR representative would be allowed to visit intended returnees in the transit camps set up in Madras. Hari would need to find out who the officials were. He would need to lobby with them and insist on verifying that all were returning of their own free will. He would have to persuade them, both as the UNHCR insider that he used to be, and as a Sri Lanka Tamil who was close to the refugees. Reports would also be inspired by LTTE sympathisers in the Indian Tamil press and in the camps suggesting that official action was high-handed and that no choice was being given to the refugees.

For the government, the problem of tracing and registering those in the cities and not the refugee camps was more difficult. They included both the more prosperous refugees and the family members of LTTE leadership and cadres—like Hari’s parents and brother. Even LTTE supremo Prabhakaran’s father resided in Madras, all the while receiving the protection of the same state authorities that were offering base facilities to the Indian army. The local authorities were cajoled and persuaded by the LTTE to turn a blind eye to such LTTE faithfuls.

They estimated that there were nearly three thousand trained militants belonging to the other Tamil groups among the refugees. Many militants who had not been able to disappear in the cities had been rounded up by the Indian government and kept in two special, heavily armed camps: one for the LTTE cadres, and one for the other Tamil groups. The Sri Lanka authorities did not want either of them back. They were all militarily trained, and moving them under escort was not going to be easy. The Indian government had accepted that only the LTTE cadres’ return was to be facilitated and that the others would be prevented from returning.

MV Akbar, a vessel with a capacity of 3,500 that was normally used for ferrying Indian Muslim pilgrims from Bombay to Jeddah, was requisitioned. It was an old warhorse and was up for scrapping when she earned a reprieve by the latest demand for her services.

The most vexing difficulty for the two governments was coordinating their naval surveillance. Since the withdrawal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force, sensitivities on the Sri Lanka side were high regarding Indian naval ships crossing the maritime boundary. It was more than likely that the vessel would remain unescorted during some part of its voyage. A kamikaze-type operation by the Sea Tigers with a speedboat loaded with explosives was considered feasible.

On the Sri Lanka side, the problems were equally daunting. From the time of the arrival of the returnees, the government was working to ensure that they would be moved quickly into camps, pending their dispersal and rehabilitation in provinces and villages of their choice. A good deal of preparation had gone into the plan to reduce the time the returnees would stay in transit camps.

The authorities on both sides saw a nightmare scenario the political imperatives were too high to abort the idea.

Pottu Amman concluded his briefing by saying, The LTTE needs one—only one—successful strike of whatever magnitude, and we will have won. The domestic and international odium that the two governments would face is guaranteed to damage the prestige of their leaders and call into question the authority of their governments.

Hari had been given the different elements of the situation and told to fine-tune a plan that would meet their objectives. Speed was essential. He was to contact the LTTE’s remaining contacts once he reached Madras.

Don’t worry, Hari assured them. I am looking forward to the challenge.

Hari got a chance to call Zina to tell her that he was on the move again and that he hoped to be back soon. There was not much more he could say. Nor could he give her any idea about when he would see her again. He certainly could not tell her that this time he could well end up biting the capsule.

Hari reached Bombay very early in the morning two days after they had finalised the plan in London. It was November, and the weather was fine, with very low humidity. Hari was excited that he was now going to be in charge of an important operation, both for his organisation and even more for himself. At the same, he was acutely aware of the innocent lives that would again be lost due to their actions. He had still not been able to resolve in his mind the essential conflict between commitment to a cause regardless of the consequences and his innate abhorrence of killing innocent people. He had come to accept that if you became an active participant, it meant your life as well. Yet he had not been able to reconcile that the same should apply to innocent lives. It seemed to him that the present operation could mean the crossing of this final frontier.

He went to the Taj Mahal Hotel on the Gateway of India, following the injunction that in a deluxe hotel, scrutiny was negligible. He would cool off there for a few days and then travel to Madras. This time he would stay with his parents. They had already been informed that their son would be joining them and that they were to declare him as a passenger on the first voyage of the MV Akbar to Trincomalee. This was the first phase of their plan. It had been conveyed to Hari’s parents by the local LTTE contact just before Hari left London.

The plan was for Hari to travel as a refugee himself in response to the state government’s directives. The various elements of the plan had already been worked out in Jaffna before their meeting in London. Once Hari was on board with it, they had put it in operation. Hari could not help feeling that now even his parents had become unknowing tools of the organisation’s goals. Hari was sure that his parents must have been thrilled when they got news of his arrival, not realising the sinister purpose behind the reunion.

Hari was in the exquisite Sea Lounge of the old wing of the hotel going over his plan. He thought of the long, tortuous, and heart-breaking journey that had brought him from that fateful day in July 1983 to now. He wondered whether his life would have been better had he just stayed on with the travel agency in Colombo. Would he then have been able to have an enduring relationship with Zina? During the last ten years his life had presented him with many choices. It seemed to him that each time he had followed his heart and his emotions. When he had crossed over from a normal life to one with the organisation, he had thought that he would keep his family out of it. He now knew how difficult that was. Everyone and everything close to him was subordinate to and available for the organisation’s needs. It was not only his body and soul that they commanded.

The next phase of his plan was to get himself on the passenger list for the first voyage and see that his parents were not. Since they were a family group, this was going to be difficult. Once again he found that Murugan, their local contact in Madras, had done his homework well. He had got the entire family listed as volunteers for the first voyage of the MV Akbar to ensure that they got passage on the first voyage. It would be relatively easy to transfer his parents to the second later, since the numbers for the first voyage were being kept below the capacity of the vessel. Murugan was an LTTE operative from the intelligence wing and had been positioned in Madras long before the team sent for the assassination. He worked in the shadows, kept tabs on the members of the team giving them advice and leads, and relayed instructions to the leader of the team. None of the others had met him. This was Hari’s first meeting with him. Hari was struck at the intensity of the young man who was about his age. Of moderate build, Murugan wore his hair very short. He never seemed to smile. Hari realised that Murugan would be with him all the way.

Through him Hari met the official in the Rehabilitation Department of the Tamil Nadu government and successfully persuaded him to move his parents to the second voyage. He was able to explain to him that it would be better for him to go first and set up the house in Jaffna for his parents. The official agreed readily.

Of course, sir, the official said. We know your work at the Geneva organisation for our community. Don’t worry. I will take care of it.

"Here is something I got for you