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The Hague, Netherlands

The Hague, Netherlands

Tamil Tigers’ Dutch day of judgement

Published on : 20 October 2011 – 12:20pm | By Richard Walker (Photo: ANP)

More about:

• indoctrination

• LTTE

• Sri Lanka

• Tamil Tigers

The trial of five Dutch-Sri Lankan Tamils, accused of raising funds for the separatist group LTTE (Tamil Tigers), is expected to end in The Hague on 21 October. If the men are found guilty as charged of overseeing an international criminal and terrorist organisation involved in arson, bombings and murder, they will face up to 20 years in prison.

The prosecution claims the men were responsible for a climate of fear and brainwashing, coercing young Tamils into supporting a murderous regime in Sri Lanka. The defence says they were nothing short of freedom fighters; heroes working in the cause of an oppressed minority struggling under a brutal and genocidal government.

Fear

The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora (9000-13,000 people) is awaiting tomorrow’s decision with bated breath. How many of them were coerced into donating 2000 euros per year to the LTTE, as the prosecution maintains happened to each family, is difficult to know – few were willing to give testimony. Unsurprisingly, equally few were prepared to talk to the media – those who have spoken claim to fear the Dutch police, who earlier this year sent letters to all Tamils living in the Netherlands informing them of their investigation, and warning they were under scrutiny. ‘Many of us felt intimidated, so most people don’t really dare to show up here together in public,’ one Tamil supporter told RNW outside the court.

Live coverage of trial

Follow proceedings as they unfold and have your say on RNW’s International Justice live chat at RNW’s International Justice website

Sri Lankan army

Also watching keenly for tomorrow’s verdict are sectors of the ruling Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka. Most eagerly anticipate a conviction and with it an inference that the Tamil Tigers are the sole criminal party in the country’s bloody conflict, not the state military. The Sri Lankan government has come under intense international pressure this year to fully investigate allegations of genocide and war crimes committed by its army in the closing months of the conflict in 2009. It welcomes any foreign judgement of its arch foe the LTTE, instead of itself.

The Netherlands has used its laws of universal jurisdiction to prosecute the case. This happens only once or twice a year in the country’s specialist war crimes court, as such The ‘Tamil 5′ represent a rare case of an international prosecution in The Hague taking place in a Dutch court.

Macro vs micro

Some voices in the international legal community have expressed distaste for the case being taken up at Dutch national level in the first place. The Paleis van Justitie (Palace of Justice) is a Dutch criminal court, which according to the defence team from the Böhler Advocates group, was ill-equipped to understand the complexities of a 30-year civil war waged 8000 km away. The case should be decided on a question of definition, they argued: If one sees the Tamil Tigers as a liberation movement then raising funds for it or being a member of it cannot be criminal.

Prosecutors have taken a more honed perspective, focussing on the documents and testimony relating to the individual behaviour of the men on trial. They maintain, for example, that there are or have been, 20 classrooms across the Netherlands educating Tamil children. There is nothing unusual in that for a strong expat community, but these, according to the prosecution, were used to “brainwash (children) with the violent ideology of the LTTE,” by teaching them to “make pictures of bombs and grenades,” said Prosecutor Ward Ferdinandusse.

The men ran organisations like the Tamil Youth Organisation and the Dutch Tamil Arts and Culture Organisation, which seek municipal subsidies. This is money that, according to the prosecutors, has been used to lubricate the war machine.

Judgement

The final hearing is scheduled for 13:00 CET Friday, if found guilty sentencing will follow immediately for the five

.