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Concept
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Summary
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි; also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization that was based in northeastern Sri Lanka.
The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the northeast of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Government.
Its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran cited violent incidents of the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom during his childhood that led him to militancy. In 1975, he assassinated the Mayor of Jaffna Alfred Duraiappah in revenge for the 1974 Tamil conference incident. The LTTE was subsequently founded in 1976 as a reaction to the Sri Lankan Constitution of 1972 which prescribed Buddhism as the primary religion of the country, and Sinhala language its national language. The LTTE was involved in attacks on government targets, policemen and local politicians and moved on to armed clashes against the armed forces.
Oppression against Sri Lankan Tamils continued by Sinhalese mobs, notably during the 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom and the 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library. Following the week-long July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom carried out by Sinhalese mobs that came to be known as Black July, the LTTE's escalation of intermittent conflict into a full-scale nationalist insurgency began, which started the Sri Lankan Civil War. By this time, the LTTE was widely regarded as the most dominant Tamil militant group in Sri Lanka and among the most feared guerrilla forces in the world.
Initially starting out as a guerrilla force, the LTTE increasingly came to resemble that of a conventional fighting force with a well-developed military wing that included a navy, an airborne unit, an intelligence wing, and a specialised suicide attack unit. The LTTE popularised and perfected the use of a suicide vest as a weapon, a tactic now used by many current militant organisations.
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