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 tomorrow. 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 sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
The prosecution maintains the men organised a climate of fear, brainwashing and 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 the shackles of a brutal and genocidal government.
The 6 week case has sparked minimal interest in the Netherlands, which has used its laws of universal jurisdiction to prosecute international crimes. This happens only once or twice a year in the country’s specialist war crimes chamber. The ‘Tamil 5’ represents a rare case of an international prosecution in The Hague taking place in a Dutch court.
All eyes on this
By contrast, awaiting tomorrow’s decision with bated breath will be the Netherlands’ Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora (9000-13,000 people). How many of them were coerced into donating 2000euros 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.
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 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.
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 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 8000km 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 ex-pat community, but these, say the prosecution, were used to “brainwash (children) with the violent ideology of the LTTE,” where they “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, during which a guilty verdict would be followed immediately by sentencing, Radio Netherlands reports.
