ADELE BALASINGHAM DENIES SHE IS TO BECOME THE PUBLIC FACE OF THE SRI LANKAN TERRORIST GROUP

By Walter Jayawardhana

ADELE Balasingham, the Australian widow of a senior leader of the Tamil Tigers terrorist group, has announced that she will not replace her husband within the organisation, reported the Telegraph of Australia reproducing the item from Australian.

"There's absolutely no truth in the story that I am to assume my husband's role in the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers)," she said in an email to The Australian, which was her first comment on persistent reports that she was to be the new international "voice" of the Tigers, the news item said..

The diplomatic pressure by the Sri Lankan government to arrest her if she starts to play the role of her dead husband in the now banned LTTE organization in Britain is beleived to have led to her refusal, diplomatic sources say.

Sri Lankan diplomats have urged Britain to arrest the London-based former Victorian country nurse if she does replace husband Anton as the Tigers' chief negotiator and spokesman, following his death from cancer in December, the newspaper said..

The newspaper further said, “Close observers of the Tigers and their three-decade fight for an autonomous Tamil state in northeast Sri Lanka say Ms Balasingham, 57, is still likely to have a significant role as one of the few Tiger activists with long international experience and the confidence of the group's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

“The Tigers run a de facto government in northern Sri Lanka but been losing momentum in recent years, with little sign of military or diplomatic progress. “Ms Balasingham lives in a large double-storey home in a quiet street in New Malden, a middle-class residential suburb in southwest London.

“The home is believed to be paid for by Tiger supporters but has none of the security one might expect for leaders of a group that has been banned as a terrorist outfit by the US, Britain, India and the European Union because of its role in a civil war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives.
“Friends say Ms Balasingham is still distraught over the loss of her husband, a charismatic ideologue. Her mother, Betty Wilby, a former shop assistant from Warragul, in Gippsland, has been staying with her since his death.

“Ms Balasingham, who left Australia as a 21-year-old nurse in 1971 to work in London and travel around Europe with two girlfriends, is now the centre of diplomatic speculation from Sri Lanka to Norway because she is seen as a potentially crucial link between the jungle fighters and the international community.

“One British diplomat said: "It is crucial that somebody replace Anton Balasingham. Whether it will be her, we don't know, but there are very few suitable candidates. Without him, both sides are going to find it harder to get any sort of progress going. There is a next generation of intellectuals and people familiar with foreign politics but they are not close to the military leaders or ready to take on his mantle at defining strategy."

“Priyath Liyanage, the editor of the BBC's Sinhalese service, said Ms Balasingham "could be a good go-between with the West but notthe leader of negotiating delegations".

"Her big asset is that she is trusted by Prabhakaran, who makes all the big decisions and trusts very few people to represent him abroad," he said.

"Her weakness is that she's not a Tamil and her spoken Tamil is not good enough for serious political discussions.

"She's actually a more fiery character than Anton and could be more aggressive - she's less diplomatic than him by nature."

“In her 2003 autobiography, Will to Freedom, she recounts that after a couple of years of backpacking and nursing she became a community health worker in London, then at 27 signed up for a social sciences degree at a left-leaning London university faculty.

“That was where she fell in love with her husband, a left-wing activist who was tutoring and studying for a doctorate.

“Twelve years her senior, the former journalist and translator at the British high commission in Colombo had come to London with his first wife to seek medical treatment for the kidney disease that eventually killed her.

“The widower and the young Australian married in 1978. He developed some early Marxist-influenced theories on the Tamil fight for independence and the couple were invited to India in 1979 to meet Prabhakaran.

“The guerilla leader came to rely on Anton Balasingham as his main ideologue, negotiator and spokesman.

“Ms Balasingham, dubbed "Auntie" by Prabhakaran, was also called "the White Tamil" by her Tiger colleagues.

“The couple was not active in Tiger military affairs but Ms Balasingham recounted in her book that in 1981 Prabhakaran personally taught her how to use a revolver and an automatic rifle.
"I viewed weapons as a necessity for self-defence and an instrument for liberation," she wrote. "Ultimately, years later, carrying an automatic rifle and sleeping with one in my room became the norm."

“She became an official member of Tiger delegations to peace talks and the most prominent woman in the organisation.

“In 2001, the British Government outlawed the Tigers and shut down their international secretariat in London but the Balasinghams continued to operate from there despite “British laws making it illegal to be a member of the Tigers or to "provide or show support" for them.

“Sri Lankan diplomats say they often complained to the Government that police and prosecutors were turning a blind eye to their activities.

“Gareth Price, an analyst at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said Britain "seemed to allow Anton Balasingham to keep operating for expediency reasons - if he wasn't here, nobody else would have been negotiating."