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Sri Lanka Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) emerged in 1972
when Tamil youth espousing an independent Tamil state established
a group called the Tamil New Tigers. At that time, the idea of
secession was still considered radical by most Tamil leaders,
though the TULF embraced it four years later. An incident of
apparently unprovoked police brutality in 1974 started the LTTE
on its career of insurgency. In January of that year, the World
Tamil Research Conference, bringing delegates from many different
countries, was held in Jaffna. Police seeing large crowds milling
around the meeting hall attacked them ferociously. Nine persons
were killed and many more injured. The incident was viewed by
youthful militants not only as a provocative act of violence but
as a deliberate insult to Tamil culture. It was, according to one
Tamil spokesman, "a direct challenge to their manhood." The
Tigers' first act as an insurgent movement was to assassinate the
progovernment mayor of Jaffna in 1975. Subsequently they went
underground. As extremist movements in other countries have done,
the LTTE apparently established contacts with similar groups,
such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
trained with Palestinians in Libya and Lebanon, and ran its own
secret training camps in India's Tamil Nadu State. In 1988
Velupillai Prabhakaran, its undisputed military and political
leader, and A.S. Balasingham, its ideological spokesman, were the
LTTE's most important figures.
The Tamil militants' choice of the tiger as their symbol
reflected not only the ferocity of that animal but a deliberate
contrast with the lion (singha), which traditionally has
been a symbol of the Sinhalese people and is depicted in the Sri
Lankan flag.
Ideologically, LTTE theoreticians at times resorted to
Marxist rhetoric to characterize their struggle. Overall, the
creation of an independent Tamil state, irrespective of ideology,
remained the movement's only goal. In pursuit of this objective,
the LTTE seemed more wedded to direct and violent action than
formulation of principles on which the independent state would
operate.
LTTE leader Prabhakaran maintained friendly, though watchful,
relations with the chief minister of India's Tamil Nadu State,
M.G. Ramachandran, until the latter's death in 1987. Until
India's intervention in 1987, he could count upon at least the
moral support of Ramachandran's political party, the All-India
Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Some of the LTTE's
militant rivals maintained ties with the Tamil Nadu opposition
party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which was headed by
Ramachandran's bitter rival, M. Karunaidhi.
Data as of October 1988
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