Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

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.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (21)

Terrorism

Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants (mostly civilians and neutral military personnel). The terms "terrorist" and "terrorism" originated during the French Revolution of the late 18th century but became widely used internationally and gained worldwide attention in the 1970s during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Basque conflict, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Tamils

The Tamil people, also known as Tamilar (Tamiḻar, t̪amiɻaɾ in the singular or Tamiḻarkaḷ, t̪amiɻaɾɡaɭ in the plural), Tamilians, or simply Tamils (ˈtɑːmɪls), are a Dravidian ethno-linguistic group who natively speak Tamil and trace their ancestry mainly to India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, the union territory of Puducherry, and to Sri Lanka. People who speak Tamil and are born in are considered Tamils. Tamils constitute 5.