Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

By Romario.V. 1

INTRODUCTION

Nationalism may be defined as the belief that a particular culture or ethnic group constitutes
a distinct people deserving of political self-determination as opposed to a state which is a
territory considered as an organized political community less than one government. This is
exactly what the Tamilian’s in LTTE (The Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam) believe.
Tamilian’s or simply Tamil’s, are a Dravidian ethnic group who speak Tamil as their mother
tongue. Tamil people exhibit a variety of phenotypes depending on nativity and cultural
formations. Tamil people with a population of about 77 million living around the world are one
of the largest and oldest of the existing ethno-linguistic cultural groups of people in the modern
world to exist without a state of their own. Tamils comprise 15.36% of the population in Sri
Lanka, 5.91% in India, 5.83% in Mauritius, 5% of the population in Singapore and 5.7% of the
population in Malaysia.2

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam commonly known as the LTTE or the Tamil Tigers) is a

now defunct organization that was based in northern Sri Lanka. Founded in May 1976
by Velupillai Prabhakaran, it waged a secessionist nationalist campaign to create an
independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka for Tamil people.3  This campaign evolved
into the Sri Lankan Civil War, which ran from 1983 until 2009, when the LTTE was decisively
defeated by the Sri Lankan Military under the leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.4
Historical inter-ethnic imbalances between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil populations
created the background for the origin of the LTTE. Post independent Sri Lankan governments
attempted to rectify the disproportionate favoring and empowerment of Tamil minority by the

1
BA LLB.
2
Minahan, James (2002). Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: S-Z. pp. 1835–1850
3
"Sri Lanka – Living With Terror". Frontline (PBS). May 2002. Retrieved 9 February2009.
4
"SCENARIOS-The end of Sri Lanka's quarter-century war". Reuters. 16 May 2009.
colonial rulers led to exclusivist ethnic policies including the ″Sinhala only act″ and gave rise to
separatist ideologies among many Tamil leaders.

TAMILS IN SRI LANKA

There are two groups of Tamils in Sri Lanka: the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Indian Tamils. The
Sri Lankan Tamils (or Ceylon Tamils) are descendants of the Tamils of the old Jaffna
Kingdom and east coast chieftaincies called Vannimais. The Indian Tamils (or Hill Country
Tamils) are descendants of bonded labourers sent from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka in the 19th
century to work on tea plantations.[84] Furthermore, there is a significant Tamil-speaking Muslim
population in Sri Lanka; however, unlike Tamil Muslims from India, they are not ethnic Tamils
and are therefore listed as a separate ethnic group in official statistics.

Most Sri Lankan Tamils live in the Northern and Eastern provinces and in the capital Colombo,
whereas most Indian Tamils live in the central highlands. Historically both groups have seen
themselves as separate communities, although there is a greater sense of unity since the 1980s.5

British colonists consolidated the Tamil territory in southern India into the Madras Presidency,
which was integrated into British India. Similarly, the Tamil speaking parts of Sri Lanka joined
with the other regions of the island in 1802 to form the Ceylon colony. In Sri Lanka the unitary
arrangement led to legislative discrimination of Tamils by the Sinhalese majority. This resulted
in a demand for federalism, which in the early 1970s grew into a movement for an autonomous
Tamil country.6 By the mid-1970s, initial nonviolent political struggle for an independent mono
ethnic Tamil state, gave away to a violent secessionist campaign led by the LTTE.

5
Department of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka,Population by Ethnicity according to District (PDF),
statistics.gov.lk, retrieved 3 May 2007
6
"Population of Sri Lanka – Srilanka People". Tourism-srilanka.com. Retrieved 18 July 2010.
HISTORY OF LTTE
The LTTE was founded on 5 May 1976 as the successor to the Tamil New Tigers. Uma
Maheswaran became its leader, and Prabhakaran, its military commander. A 5-member
committee was also appointed. Prabhakaran sought to "refashion the old TNT/new LTTE into an
elite, ruthlessly efficient, and highly professional fighting force", notes the terrorism
expert Rohan Gunaratna. Prabhakaran kept the numbers of the group small, and maintained a
high standard of training. The LTTE carried out low-key attacks against various government
targets, including policemen and local politicians. The ideology of the Tamil Tigers emerged
from Marxist–Leninist though its leadership is considered atheist.

The Tamil United Liberation Front leader, Appapillai Amirthalingam, who was in 1977 elected
as the Opposition leader of Sri Lanka Parliament clandestinely supported the LTTE.
Amirthalingam believed that if he could exercise control over the Tamil insurgent groups, it
would enhance his political position and pressurize government to agree to his demand, which
was to grant political autonomy to Tamils. Thus, he even provided letters of reference to the
LTTE and to other Tamil insurgent groups to raise funds.7

The LTTE carried out its first major attack on 23 July 1983, when they ambushed Sri Lanka
Army patrol Four Four Bravo at Thirunelveli, Jaffna. Thirteen Sri Lankan servicemen were
killed in the attack, leading to the Black July. Black July was a planned rampage against the
Tamil community of Sri Lanka, in which the JVP movement and sections of government were
implicated. Many outraged Tamil youths joining Tamil militant groups to fight the Sri Lankan
government, in what is considered as the start of the insurgency in Sri Lanka.8

By 1985 the group was in control of Jaffna and most of the Jaffna Peninsula in northern Sri
Lanka. Under Prabhakaran’s orders, the LTTE had eliminated most of its rival Tamil groups by
1987. To fund its operations, the group engaged in illegal activities (including bank robberies
and drug smuggling) and the extortion of Tamils in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, but it also received
considerable voluntary financial support from Tamils living abroad.

The LTTE lost control of Jaffna in October 1987 to an Indian peacekeeping force (IPKF) that
had been sent to Sri Lanka to assist in the implementation of a complete cease-fire. However,
7
Rohan Gunaratna (December 1998). "International and Regional Implications of the Sri Lankan Tamil
Insurgency". Retrieved 27 July 2011.
8
Sri Lankan families count cost of war BBC News – 23 July 2008
following the withdrawal of the IPKF in March 1990, the Tigers grew in strength and conducted
several successful guerrilla operations and terrorist attacks. On May 21, 1991, a suicide
bomber killed former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi while he was campaigning in the
Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Other attacks included an August 1992 land-mine explosion in
Jaffna, which killed 10 senior military commanders; the May 1993 assassination of Sri Lankan
President Ranasinghe Premadasa; a January 1996 suicide bomb attack on the central bank
of Colombo that killed 100 people; and a July 2001 attack on Colombo’s international airport
that destroyed half of the country’s commercial airliners. An elite unit of the LTTE, the “Black
Tigers,” was responsible for carrying out suicide attacks. If faced with unavoidable capture by
Sri Lankan authorities, those operatives and others purportedly committed suicide by swallowing
cyanide capsules that they wore around their necks.

Negotiations between the LTTE and the government broke down in the mid-1990s. In December
2000 the LTTE declared a unilateral cease-fire, which lasted only until April. Thereafter, fighting
between the guerrillas and the government again intensified until February 2002, when the
government and the LTTE signed a permanent cease-fire agreement.9

Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected as the president of Sri Lanka in 2005. After a brief period of
negotiations, LTTE pulled out of peace talks indefinitely. Sporadic violence had continued and
on 25 April 2006, LTTE tried to assassinate Sri Lankan Army Commander Lieutenant
General Sarath Fonseka. Following the attack, the European Union decided to proscribe the
LTTE as a terrorist organisation. A new crisis leading to the first large-scale fighting since
signing of the ceasefire occurred when the LTTE closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Oya (Mavil
Aru) reservoir on 21 July 2006, and cut the water supply to 15,000 villages in government
controlled areas. This dispute was developed into a full-scale war by August 2006.10

At the start of the final round of peace talks in 2002, the Tamil Tigers, with control of
15,000 km2 area, ran a virtual mini-state. After the breakdown of the peace process in 2006, the
Sri Lankan military launched a major offensive against the Tigers, defeating the LTTE militarily
and bringing the entire country under its control. Victory over the Tigers was declared by Sri

9
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/581988/Tamil-Tigers
10
"Sri Lanka forces attack reservoir". BBC News. 6 August 2006. Retrieved 4 January 2010
Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 16 May 2009, and the LTTE admitted defeat on 17
May 2009.11

CONCLUSION

Look at any nationalist movement the ends never seem to justify the means. Look at Zionism
they cleaned the now Israel of all Palestinians, or Hitler who caused the holocaust they all
justified their acts by talking about self-determination. The funny thing is that if you manage to
establish your state then people forget the methods used to establish it like in South Sudan but
fail in your endeavor and they call you a terrorist organization. The LTTE was a nationalist
group that wanted a separate state for the Tamils of the world especially those in Sri-Lanka.
Their aim was to bring about a sort of equality in the political system, where the majority
Sinhalese was properly represented. They radicalized the political system by asking for a federal
system so that they could govern themselves and later asked for an autonomous country. Their
intentions though being pure the method they went about doing it was not so humane. To reach
their objective they assassinated, had suicide bombings, used child soldiers, smuggled arms and
people, extorted money, forged passports, defrauded credit cards and indulged even in
cybercrimes. This led them to being termed a terrorist state.

From correspondents in Colombo (17 May 2009)."Tamil Tigers admit defeat in civil war after 37-year battle".
11

News.com.au. Retrieved 17 May 2009.

Books Referred

1. Athena. S. Leoussi and Steven Grosby, Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism, Edinburgh

University Press, 2005.
2. Andrew Vincent, Nationalism and Particularity, Cambridge University Publication, 2002.
3. 2 Athena S. Leoussi and Steven Grosby, Nationality and Nationalism, I.B. Tauris Co.
Ltd, 2004 (London, NewYork).
4. Robert Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews, Jewish Publication
Society, 2010.