VIDEO ALERT: Death of Tamil Tigers’ leader not a guarantee for peace, says Dr Pradeep Taneja.

The armed struggle of Tamil Tigers for an ethnic homeland in Sri Lanka is reported to have ended after 26 years, yet Dr Pradeep Taneja from the University of Melbourne’s School of Social and Political Sciences said peace will be short-lived if the Sri Lankan Government does not “reach out to the Tamil people and appeal to their grievances”.

Professor Taneja said the death this week of Tamil Tigers leader Velupillai Prabhakaran will also affect relations between the Tamil people and the Indian government.

“In July 1987 the Congress Party in India signed an accord with the Sri Lankan Government which led to Indian peace-keeping forces going into Sri Lanka, but attempts at peace ended following the assassination of India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Tamil Tiger.  Since then this relationship has not been good,” he said.

“Before the assassination of the Prime Minister there was a great deal of sympathy for the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka, but a lot of that evaporated after the assassination in 1991, so now we will have to see what happens because this week both the Congress party were re-elected and in Sri Lanka the Tamil separatist war has come to an end.”

“From the Indian Government’s point of view, they now have to put more pressure on the Sri Lankan government to deal with the grievances of the Tamil people because this is a cause that goes back to the 1950s, and the death of the Tamil Tigers’ leader doesn’t mean there will automatically be peace in Sri Lanka.”