Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization

The Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) is an Eelam Tamil organisation which campaigned for the establishment of an independent Tamil Eelam in the northeast of Sri Lanka during 1972-1987 which later accepted the December 19th proposals. The TELO was originally created as a militant group, and functioned as such until 1986, when most of its membership was killed in a conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Its surviving members reorganised themselves as a political party, and it continues to function as such today. The TELO currently has two Members of Parliament. It is part of the Tamil National Alliance, a coalition of Tamil parties which won 2.9% of the popular vote and 14 out of 225 seats at the 2010 parliamentary election in Sri Lanka. The TELO evolved out of the group of Tamil student radicals formed by Nadarajah Thangathurai and Selvarajah Yogachandran (better known by his nom de guerre Kuttimani) in the late 1960s. The group formally constituted itself into an organisation in 1979, inspired in part by the LTTE and the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS). Soon, it had become the most effective of the Tamil militant groups. Both Thangathurai and Kuttimani were captured by the Sri Lankan Army in 1981 while they were in the process of escaping to India. For a while after their arrest, the TELO was led by Sri Sabaratnam as the de facto leader. The TELO was thereafter relatively dormant until 1983. On 25 July 1983, both Thangathurai and Kuttimani were brutally tortured and killed in a prison riot by Sinhalese prisoners. Sri Sabaratnam then became its head. The trained cadre would be supplied with weaponry, and sent to Sri Lanka to wage a guerrilla war against the army. In February 1984, the TELO together with the EROS and the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) set up a common militant front for the Eelam struggle, which was called the Eelam National Liberation Front, or ENLF. The LTTE joined the ENLF in April that year.