Anton Balasingham
Anton Balasingham is the political advisor of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE organization and also had been its theoretician and chief negotiator in the stalled peace talks with the government of Sri Lanka over the autonomy of nearly 3 million Tamils living in Sri Lanka.
Based in London, he also plays a major role in LTTE's political base. He suffers from diabetes, Motor Neurone Disease (a degenerative disease of the nervous system), and possibly medicine-induced Parkinson's disease.
Balasingham is a former journalist, who worked for a Colombo newspaper and as a translator at the British High Commission in Colombo. Balasingham’s present wife, Adele, an Australian citizen and a nurse by professional training, is a prominent member of the women’s wing of the LTTE. She is wanted in Australia on charges of violating laws that prohibit Australian citizens from participating in wars in other countries. In the past, Adele herself has involved in the peace talks, as the secretary of the LTTE delegation.
Two other members of the Tamil Tigers’ delegation advise Balasingham on legal and rehabilitation issues: Visvanathan Rudrakumar, a Sri Lankan lawyer based in New York, and Jay Maheswaran, an agricultural scientist based in Australia.
In April 2002, Anton Balasingaham appeared alongside LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in a rare press conference in the LTTE held town of Kilinochchi in Sri Lanka.