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Expert comment on Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tiger “threat”
ASIO’s assessment of four Tamil asylum-seekers rescued by the Oceanic Viking
as threats to national security has raised questions about the risk posed by those
with Tamil Tiger links, and their impact on stability in Sri Lanka and Australia.
RMIT University academic Dr Martin Mulligan says the Australian and Sri Lankan
governments must be generous in their treatment of people with connections to the
Tamil Tigers to avoid creating the conditions for a re-emergence of the insurgency.
“The Tamil Tigers as an organisation has been destroyed, for the foreseeable
future,” Dr Mulligan said.
“People who lived in that part of Sri Lanka almost inevitably had something to do
with the Tamil Tigers.
“We now have a vital, historic opportunity to move beyond treating everybody as a
suspected Tamil Tiger.
“There is a danger of creating the conditions for breeding a new Tamil Tiger-like
organisation if we are not generous, now that the war has come to an end.
“While the main responsibility lies with the Sri Lankan government, Australia is
complicit in this.
“If we start to categorise people as terrorist threats, if we lack generosity in our
treatment of Tamils, we run the risk of destabilising the fragile peace in that region
and breeding a new generation of armed rebels.”
Dr Mulligan is a Senior Research Fellow and the Director of RMIT’s Globalism
Research Centre.
He has long-term research interests in Sri Lanka and has regularly visited areas
that were affected by the war.
Dr Mulligan is available for interview.
For interviews: RMIT University’s Dr Martin Mulligan, (03) 9380 1257 or 0411
426 045.
For general media enquiries: RMIT University Communications, Gosia
Kaszubska, (03) 9925 3176 or 0417 510 735.
13 January, 2010
NEWS 
