Who is tamil eelam

About 20 divisions function at each district level through committees, structured on a functional and departmental basis. Some of the LTTE civil administration includes departments of economic affairs, finance, foreign affairs, labour and recruitment, planning and development, traffic, criminal complaints, judiciary, education, health, banking and communications.

It has investments in stocks and money markets, real estate, restaurants and a large number of Asian grocery stores throughout the world. Its shipping operations carry legitimate goods and also engage in the smuggling of drugs, arms, gold, and has also been indicted for human trafficking to UK and parts of Europe.

The bulk of LTTE funds are known to come from illegal means such as robbery, extortion, forgery, international arms sales and siphoning of monies from donations provided by non-governmental organisations NGOs , aid organisations and other benevolent entities.

Although not widely known, the LTTE has close links with many armed groups around the world. In one of its documents released as far back as November , it declared its resolve to work in solidarity with the various national liberation movements, socialist states, and international working class parties.

The LTTE is known to have worked with Palestinian factions in the Middle East from whom they received advanced military training from to , the Maoist Naxalite movement in India and the Khalistan movement which was agitating for a separate Sikh state in northwest India.

Sources that keep a watch of terrorist activities and organisations claim that the LTTE maintains branches in 54 countries. Published On 28 Apr Here we answer questions about the Tamil rebels, their composition and their stated goals. When was the LTTE formed? Focus: Sri Lanka. Being a member of the LTTE assured them their own safety from sexual violence inside the organisation. Being a combatant and training under the LTTE, secured them with additional military skills that allowed them to defend themselves outside the organisation.

Both of these formed important reasons for women to join the militant organisation. Even those who were less ideologically engaged felt safer after having received training in arms than they did as unarmed civilians ibid. Furthermore, The LTTE had also introduced anti-dowry legislations, banned alcohol and prostitution and meted out strict punishments for domestic violence in the areas under their control Parashar , Gowrinathan Parashar notes that travelling to LTTE controlled areas was like travelling to a different state in Sri Lanka under a different rule of law Parashar These areas followed a different administrative, legal and justice systems and allowed its women a much greater degree of freedom from patriarchal control, harassment and everyday criminality ibid.

In LTTE controlled areas, civilian and combatant women saw a glimpse of an Eelam which would assure them and their future generations freedom and security. It led women to believe that their feminist and nationalist aspirations were linked, and could only be actualised through a separate Eelam.

As observed earlier, displacement also led to the breakdown of family structures. An increase in incidents of domestic abuse among Tamil families was also observed. As a result, women were faced with an acute feeling of homelessness. Several women joined the LTTE because they had no home or the home they had was no longer a safe space with abusive family members, regular home checks by army officers and lack of resources Parashar , In the face of increased poverty and violence being directed at women, joining the LTTE served two purposes: first, the feeling of a home created within the LTTE as a product of shared experiences, aspirations, and solidarity among its members; and second, the realisation of an ideal homeland i.

There was a large consensus of having been treated well in the LTTE among women cadres ibid. Women who had been survivors of sexual violence, and social ostracisation as a result of it, also found comfort and solidarity in their interactions with other women members of the organisation. It also moved away from the dominant discourse of victim blaming by directing the blame towards the armed forces ibid. Women felt they could talk about their experiences and trauma without being ostracised and marginalised for it.

The LTTE had instituted a system of forced conscription in the regions under its control — this mandated at least one young member from each family to join the LTTE Parashar It is observed that a majority of early recruits joined voluntarily, but as the war escalated and the LTTE counter-militarised, some of the later recruits were coerced or forced in nature Gowrinathan These counter-institutional networks primarily operated through familial and community networks ibid.

This added another layer of exposure and vulnerability, as civilian girls and women were not able to identify LTTE informants. While some girls were forcibly recruited either by being abducted by the LTTE or volunteered by their own family members, once they joined the organisation, they displayed higher levels of commitment than their male counterparts irrespective of their recruitment process Parashar It was also observed that parents who tried to get their children back home found it more difficult to do so in case of girls than boys ibid.

In addition, the perceived number of forced recruitment of girls and women seems exaggerated. Herath states that all female combatants in her study joined the organisation voluntarily Herath It has also been widely noted that a large number of girls joined the LTTE without parental consent, or in the face of strong parental resistance Herath , Parashar , Once recruited, most women found security, solidarity and a sense of purpose within the organisation and hence, chose to stay in it despite having the option to leave a few times in their journeys.

Hence, we observed that women joined the LTTE to seek basic necessities; safety and security; home and family; and solidarity and acceptance; but above all they joined the LTTE and stayed in it to actualise their dreams of an Eelam — a homeland where their nationalist and feminist aspirations would be realised.

Agency exercised by Tamil women in deciding to join the LTTE in varying capacities, albeit restricted, was radical and marked a departure from their traditional roles. In the Tamil culture women are viewed as docile and peace-loving by nature. The LTTE enjoyed strong support from conservative Tamils, and projected itself as a revivalist organisation. Hence, the LTTE needed to culturally legitimise its recruitment of women combatants to perpetrate violence on their behalf, especially as suicide bombers.

I argue that the LTTE manipulated the narratives of rape, which depoliticised the women, to culturally legitimise violence perpetrated by their women cadres. Unlike most cases in which the LTTE maintained complete silence about their affiliation to suicide bombers, they have actively claimed for female suicide bombers to be victims of rape by the IPKF or the Sinhalese Army Herath It has narrativised the use of rape by the State to claim that all women combatants had been raped and that is what served as their primary motivation to join the organisation ibid.

In Tamil culture, self immolation by fire agnipravesam is an ancient purification ritual ibid. As it adheres to the cultural beliefs and practices of the Tamils, such a narrative culturally and socially legitimises, and even pedestalizes, acts of violence being committed by women. It is important to note that this entire legitimising narrative is based on the assumption that all women combatants of the LTTE were victims of rape — this is categorically untrue.

It is incorrect to assume that all women combatants, or even all women suicide bombers, are rape survivors Herath , Murray The fact that on one hand, the LTTE maintains complete silence around the private lives of its members, and on the other shares only their assumed experience of rape is very telling. It aims to rationalise the act by portraying it as being a product of shame and trauma being faced by women. It is in sharp contrast to how the LTTE women viewed the act of suicide bombing.

Through this paper, I have attempted to move away from the dominant discourse around women in militant organisations as being situated in the extremes of the falsely constructed binary of victimhood and agency, and towards analysing their participation through the lens of state repression.

First, it helps us analyse the gendered impacts of displacement and militarisation, and the new fears it produced among women. That being said, this paper also suffers from certain limitations. First, due to its scope, it does not analyse the post-conflict situation of women in North and East Sri Lanka.

These regions continued to be repressed by the State for nearly a decade after the war was officially called off, and the twin working of militarisation and displacement continued to create gendered insecurities among women. However, without the presence of the LTTE, these insecurities manifested themselves in a significantly different manner post-conflict.

Attempts were made to push women back to their traditional roles by the State, society and even international organisations through their selective DDR [1] programmes.

Alison, Miranda. Cogs in the Wheel? Women in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil … www. JSTOR , www. Accessed 26 Nov. Davenport, Christian. Dearing, Matthew P. Gowrinathan , Nimmi.

Gowrinathan, Nimmi. Herath, Tamara. Hoole, Rajan. Jordan, Kim and Denov, Myriam Birds of Freedom? Macrae, Callum. History Honors Program. Murray, Athena Renee. Schalk, Peter. Wall , Kim, and Mansi Choksi. Many of these children were abducted from refugee camps and orphanages in Tamil-controlled areas. Accessed 22 Jult By , the LTTE was the dominant group. By April , the LTTE had essentially subdued the breakaway faction; however, Colonel Karuna escaped with a small group of supporters and regrouped in Colombo.

The LTTE has developed relationships with various Islamist groups because of its criminal activities in the informal arms market, rather than any form of ideological affinity. By the s, the LTTE had developed a close relationship with the Kurdish Support Group in France and had modeled their diaspora funding efforts after the Kurdish example.

The LTTE also established a presence in Eritrea, which is known to be a major shipment point in the informal arms market. Overseas funding is mainly provided by the large Sri Lankan diaspora, which has continued to grow since Sri Lanka's independence.

Thailand also served as an important source of manpower, as well as a strategic base for arms procurement. Skip to: Skip to content Skip to navigation. Brief Summary of the Organization's History. How does a group organize? Who leads it? How does it finance operations? How does a group fight? What are its aims and ideologies? What are some of its major attacks?

Major Attacks. What is the group's relationship with other militants over time? Key Statistics First Recorded Activity. Contact mappingmilitants [at] lists [dot] stanford [dot] edu.

How to Cite: Mapping Militant Organizations. Last modified June Overview Brief History. Overview Narrative. During the s, the LTTE defeated a number of different Tamil militant groups, emerging as the dominant group by the end of the decade.

The LTTE successfully carried out a number of high-profile attacks, including the assassination of two heads of state. The LTTE were also notorious for their use of suicide terrorism, perpetrated by their elite suicide bombing unit known as the Black Tigers. Starting in , the LTTE began negotiations with the Sri Lankan government; however, multiple rounds of negotiations failed and were interrupted by bouts of violence and clashes between both sides.

In , after another failed round of negotiations, the Sri Lankan government declared all-out war on the LTTE and the group was militarily defeated in May Leadership Velupillai Prabhakaran to Shanmugalingam Sivashankar, commonly known as Pottu Amman to Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan, commonly known as Soosai to Balasingham Nadesan to Leadership This section describes various leaders, their deputies, and other important officials in the militant organization.

Prabhakaran was killed on May 19, in an ambush by Sri Lankan forces as he was trying to flee the area in northern Karayamullavaikkal. He was also killed in the May 19, ambush along with Prabhakaran.

He was killed alongside Prabhakaran on May 19, He was formerly head of the LTTE police force in , and then named chief of the political wing in Nadesan was killed in the army ambush on May 19, along with Prabhakran.