Sri Lanka shows rebel chief's 'body', declares victory

19 May 2009, 9:11 pm   -   Source: AFP
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Sri Lankan state television broadcast images Tuesday of what it said was the body of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, as the island's president proclaimed victory over the rebels.

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Sri Lankan state television broadcast images Tuesday of what it said was the body of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, as the island's president proclaimed victory over the rebels.

The images were shown after the Tigers claimed the guerrilla leader was still alive and well, and said they would continue fighting for a separate Tamil homeland despite President Mahinda Rajapakse's call to unite the nation.

The video showed the upper section of a corpse which was dressed in camouflage fatigues.

The back of the head, which was resting on a bloodstained newspaper, appeared to be missing.

The face was intact, with the eyes wide open, and bore a clear resemblance to the stocky, moustachioed rebel leader. Also shown was a dog tag with the marking '0:01' and a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) identity card.

"We are a government that defeated terrorism at a time when others told us that it was not possible," Rajapakse said in a nationally televised address to parliament.

"The writ of the state now runs across every inch of our territory."

Under international pressure to reach out to the Tamil minority, Rajapakse also vowed that a political solution to the island's deep rooted ethnic divisions would be found. "All should live with equal rights.

They should live without any fear or doubt," he said. "Let us all be united." His speech had been shadowed by a Tiger statement insisting that Prabhakaran was not dead and that his fight -- which he began in 1972 -- would go on.

"Our beloved leader is alive and safe. He will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people," the rebels' international relations chief Selvarasa Pathmanathan said on the pro-rebel Tamilnet website.

Pathmanathan went on to accuse the government and military of "crimes against humanity," saying senior LTTE leaders had been shot dead after being invited to negotiate a surrender.

But the army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, stated categorically that Prabhakaran's body had been identified -- a day after defence officials reported he was gunned down trying to flee government troops.

"Reports from the battlefield confirmed this morning that they have identified the body of Prabhakaran, this ruthless terrorist leader," Fonseka said.

"The fighting was yesterday (Monday). He was killed yesterday, and the body was identified today," the government's defence spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella, told reporters.

"We will give it (the body) to an undertaker. We can't just throw the body in the jungle. We are a civilised country."

The conflicting accounts of the Tiger leader's fate came after a dramatic day that effectively ended one of Asia's oldest and most brutal ethnic conflicts.

The army said its commandos overran the last sliver of Tiger-held territory, killing their remaining 300 fighters and decimating the rebel leadership.

More than 70,000 people have died in the long-running conflict, in everything from pitched battles to suicide attacks, bombings and assassinations. But the Sri Lankan government's moment of triumph came at the cost of thousands of innocent lives, according to the United Nations.

The UN and human rights groups have partly blamed indiscriminate shelling by the military for causing heavy civilian casualties, while accusing the rebels of using tens of thousands of people as a "human shield".

The European Union on Monday called for an independent enquiry into alleged human rights violations, while the Red Cross complained it was unable to reach the wounded in the northeastern conflict zone even after victory was declared.

UN relief agencies also said that access to some government-run camps housing tens of thousands of displaced civilians had been restricted in recent days and demanded that the camps be "demilitarised."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was expected to visit Sri Lanka later in the week.

Sri Lankan authorities have repeatedly bridled at what they see as outside interference in their internal affairs, and Rajapakse made it clear Tuesday where he felt foreign efforts should be focused.

"What we need from the international community is not advice, but material help to carry out our reconstruction effort," he said. "We have demonstrated that we can solve our problems and we will come up with a homegrown political solution."

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