Berlin was the preferred destination of 'Jaffna Tamils' during the years when the LTTE was on the rampage and V Prabhakaran led a brutal campaign, testing the loyalty of his cadre by asking them to turn into human bombs. Once they landed in Berlin, or West Berlin in the pre-reunification days, they claimed "terrible persecution" at home and insisted they would be tortured and killed if forcibly repatriated. Liberal Berlin not only gave them shelter but turned a blind eye to their activities to raise funds for the LTTE, Mid Day.com, an Indian tabloid reported.

The immigrant 'Tigers' indulged in ruthless extortion, forcing indigent fellow Tamils to part with their meagre earnings; ran a flourishing trade in human trafficking, extracting a hefty fee from those whom they helped enter Germany illegally; and, were involved in a variety of crimes ranging from peddling drugs to pimping for minor Tamil girls forced into prostitution. An apocryphal tale is still told of Berlin's 'Tigers' gifting a made-to-order Mercedes car to a certain mayor of the city.

It's only after May 2006, when the European Union declared the LTTE a terrorist organization, that measures were adopted by German authorities to restrict the activities of the organization’s fund-raisers. Those measures could not have been strictly implemented or else the Tamil Coordination Committee, a LTTE front organization, would not have succeeded in 'collecting' a whopping 3 million euros between July 2007 and April 2009. The TCC men are now being prosecuted. But that's too little, too late.

It's been two years since the Sri Lankan Army smashed the LTTE. Prabhakaran is dead, so are his lieutenants. But in Germany the LTTE lives, its slain leader lionised as 'National Hero' by Tamils who "thirst for a Tamil homeland". I picked up the accompanying poster from a Tamil-owned grocery store in the heart of Berlin. The poster bears testimony to Sri Lanka's separatist war still raging in distant Europe. Such are the wages of misplaced liberalism.

Read the full article at:
http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/oct/291011-In-distant-Germany-LTTE-lives.htm?