Sri Lankan group claims LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s daughter Duwaraka is alive
A video of a woman claiming to be Duwaraka, daughter of slain LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, has triggered a debate among the Tamil community as well as foreign security agencies. In the video, which was live streamed on Monday, November 27, by the Tamils coordinating committee in the United Kingdom, the woman claiming to be Duwaraka said that she is stepping into the Tamil Eelam struggle in Sri Lanka.
The speech was delivered by a woman who identified herself as Duwaraka, and was to commemorate Maaveerar Day (Great Heroes Day), which is celebrated on November 27 every year by the LTTE.
In the video, which was streamed on tamiloli.net and their Youtube channel, the woman spoke for around 10 minutes. However, the authenticity of the video is yet to be established. It is believed that Duwaraka was killed during the last phase of the civil war in the island nation. Sri Lankan newspaper Daily Mirror meanwhile said that AI generated videos of a woman have been made by LTTE supporters. The Mirror, on November 18, claimed that Sri Lanka was alerted by foreign intelligence agencies that a video clip made using artificial intelligence would be shared across the globe on November 27, to portray that Duwaraka was still alive.
TNM spoke to a person who used to work closely with the LTTE. He said that the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora did not believe that Duwaraka had survived the war and they were not taking the event seriously. The announcement that Duwaraka was alive was made by Tamil movie director Va Gowthaman at a press meet in Chennai on November 26.
The woman in the video said that Sinhalese Government in Sri Lanka, during the last phase of the conflict, managed to defeat the LTTE, only because it had the support of other countries. “The government did not have the guts to face us on the battlefield so it joined hands with powerful nations. Whenever it was on the brink of losing the war, it begged for support from other countries,” she said.
The woman clad in a saree also said that the LTTE’s “battle for liberation” was fought with the support of the people and was cunningly defeated by the Sri Lankan government. “But our battle for political freedom has not ended,” she adds.
She also went on to claim that the United Nations and the international community, which had admitted that the Sri Lankan government was guilty of committing war crimes, failed to ensure justice for the Eelam Tamils.
“Even though our armed rebellion ended, the people who reside in the country, the Tamil diaspora in foreign countries, political leaders, and the former Tamil Tigers are the ones who keep the political fight alive,” said the woman.
Who is Duwaraka?
Born in Jaffna in 1986, Duwaraka was Prabhakaran’s second child. Although raised in Denmark by her maternal family, Duwaraka returned to Jaffna with her mother after the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) left Sri Lanka.
While the civil war was raging in the island nation, Duwaraka was reported to have been with her family in the conflict zone and died during the last few days of the war.