HOMELAND SECURITY

Homeland Security

Homeland Security

Overview

The name Tamil Tigers is used by over twenty-five different Tamil guerrilla organizations fighting the Sinhalese-dominated government of Sri Lanka. The Tigers use terrorism to push for the creation of an independent Tamil state.

The best-known and most influential of these terrorist groups is the Liberation Tigers of Tiger Eelam (LTTE). An outgrowth of the Tamil United Liberation Front and originally known as the Tamil New Tigers, LTTE formed on May 5, 1976. By April 1989, the LTTE and the remnants of three other Tiger organizations had formed an umbrella group, the Eelam National Liberation Front.

History

The Tamil Tigers are the product of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, the country known as Ceylon under British rule. The Sinhalese were the first Indians to arrive in Sri Lanka, landing in the sixth century. The Tamils seized power on the tropical island when they arrived from southern India in the early sixteenth century. The Portuguese then subdued the Tamils before losing control of Sri Lanka to the Dutch. The British held the territory from 1802-1948.

When Sri Lanka gained independence on February 4, 1948, the majority (74% in 2002) Sinhalese and the minority (18% in 2002) Tamils began to drift apart. The Sinhalese were Buddhist while the Tamils were Hindu. The rift started initially because of economic competition. The break increased because of the rise of Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism, in which the Sinhalese argued that the future of Sri Lanka depended on the unity of the government with Buddhism and the Sinhala language. They saw the Tamils as only invaders from South India. Successive Sri Lankan governments gave in to the sentiments of the nationalists and approved legislation that the Tamils viewed as discriminatory. In 1956, Sri Lanka passed legislation to disenfranchise the Tamils of Indian origin and to make Sinhala the sole official language. As a result, the Tamils were excluded from receiving the best education and denied the opportunity to hold government jobs.

By the mid 1970s, the Tamils began to push for a separate state in the areas of Sri Lanka in which they are a majority. When the Sri Lankan government standardized education, thereby making Sinhala compulsory in all schools, the demand to separate became stronger. In 1972, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) was begun as an advocacy group for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. A group of young, radical TULF members under the leadership of Velluppilai Prabhakaran created the Tamil New Tigers (TNT) in the belief that only armed struggle could free the Tamils from oppressive Sinhalese rule. In 1975, Prabhakaran committed the group's first act of violence by killing the mayor of Jaffna. Prabhakaran turned TNT into LTTE in 1976.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is a Marxist Tamil separatist group that has been fighting the government of Sri Lanka since 1978.

Sri Lanka is an island nation located off the southeast coast of India. Sinhalese Buddhists comprise about 75 percent of the island's population, while Hindu Tamils, concentrated in the north and east of the country, ...