Sri Lanka/USA: Intelsat Halts “Unauthorized” Tamil Tiger Satellite Broadcasts

Intelsat, the world’s biggest provider of fixed satellite services, has shut down a transponder relaying broadcasts by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lankan separatist group designated as a terrorist organization by the USA, the EU, Canada and India.

Washington-based Intelsat switched off the clandestine transmissions of National Television of Tamil Eelam on the weekend of 21-22 April.

The issue emerged in early March when Tamil Tiger websites announced that the LTTE radio Voice of the Tigers had launched broadcasts to South Asia from rebel-held territory in the North and East of Sri Lanka.

“Signal piracy”

On 10 April, Intelsat officials met the Sri Lankan envoy to the USA Bernard Goonetileke in Washington and the company later issued a statement. Phillip Spector, vice-president and general counsel for Intelsat said: “Intelsat does not tolerate terrorists or others operating illegally on its satellites. Since we first learned of LTTE’s signal piracy we have been actively pursuing a number of technical alternatives to halt the transmissions. We are clear in our resolve to end this terrorist organization’s unauthorized use of our satellite”.

But an LTTE spokesman, speaking from Sri Lanka’s north to wire services in Colombo, denied the group had been using the satellite services illegally. “We are accessing it legally and there is no signal piracy,” the spokesman said.

The Sri Lanka embassy in Washington had informed the US State Department and the Department of Justice that “a terrorist group designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization,” was using a satellite owned by a US-based satellite company to transmit their TV and radio programmes.

Sri Lankan embassy statement

The embassy in a statement gave a history of the LTTE-Intelsat connection.

It said: “Since March 2005, the LTTE had been transmitting TV and radio programs through Europe Star 1 satellite owned by French satellite provider Alcatel. PanAmSat, a satellite operator headquartered in Wilton, Connecticut in the US, acquired Europe Star 1 satellite in July 2005. In July 2006, Intelsat Ltd acquired PanAmSat, following which, Europe Star 1 satellite was renamed Intelsat 12. The programmes that the LTTE had been transmitting through Europe Star 1 thus continued uninterrupted even after Intelsat Ltd acquired the satellite”.

But Ambassador Goonetileke said that he was still not sure that the LTTE was not continuing with its broadcasts. It was possible that a European satellite company had been engaged to carry on the work, he said.

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