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Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam
The Birth of the Tiger Movement
From "Liberation Tigers and the Tamil Eelam
Freedom Struggle" by the Political Committee of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam, 1983
Anton S. Balasingham
The revolutionary ardour of the Tamil youth, which
manifested in the form of indiscriminate outbursts of
political violence in the early seventies, sought concrete
political expression in an organisational structure built on
a revolutionary political theory and practice. Neither the
Tamil United Front nor the Left movement offered any
concrete political venue to the revolutionary potential of
the rebellious youth.
The political structure of the
Tamil United Front. founded on a conservative
bourgeois ideology could not provide the basis for the
articulation of revolutionary politics. It became very clear
to the Tamil masses and particularly to the revolutionary
youth that the Tamil nationalist leaders, though they
fiercely championed the cause of the Tamils, have failed to
formulate any concrete practical programme of political
action to liberate the oppressed Tamil nation. Having
exhausted all forms of popular struggle for the last three
decades, having been alienated from the power structure of
the Sinhala State, the Tamil politicians still clung onto
Parliament to air their disgruntlement which went unheard,
unheeded like vain cries in the wilderness.
The strategy of the traditional Left
parties was to collaborate with the Sinhala capitalist class
and therefore their theoretical perspective was subsumed by
the hegemonic ideology of that dominant class; which was
none other than chauvinism. This suicidal class
collaboration made the Left leaders to turn a blind eye to
the stark realities of national oppression; it made them to
ignore the revolutionary conditions generated by the Tamil
national struggle; it made them incapable of mobilising the
revolutionary aspirations of the Tamil militants.
Confronted with this political vacuum and caught up in a
revolutionary situation created by the concrete conditions
of intolerable national oppression the Tamil revolutionary
youth sought desperately to create a revolutionary political
organisation to advance the task of national liberation. It
was in this specific political conjuncture the Tiger
Movement took its historical birth in 1972.
The movement was formed by its present
leader and military commander Velupillai Pirabaharan. At the
time of its inauguration the movement called itself The
Tamil New Tigers and later on 5th May 1976 the
organisation renamed .itself as the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam. From its iinception the Tiger movement took
into its ranks the most resolute, the most dedicated most
zealous young Revolutionaries.
Structured as an urban guerilla force,
discipilined with an iron will to fight for the cause of
national freedom, the Tigers emerged as the armed resistance
movement of the oppressed Tamil masses. As a revolutionary
liberation movement it provided a concrete organisational
base to the insurrectionary spirit of the rebellious youth
and soon established itself as the armed vanguard of the
national struggle. The Tiger's commitment to armed struggle
as the form of popular mass struggle was undertaken after a
careful and cautious, appraisal of the objective conditions
of the national struggle, with the fullest comprehension of
the concrete situation in which the masses of people were
presented with no other alternative other than to resort to
revolutionary resistance to advance their national cause.
Prabakaran, the leader of the Tiger Movement, is an ardent
young revolutionary, born on the 26th November 1951, in the
coastal town of Valvettiturai, a place famous for its
militancy against Sinhala State repression. Ho was drawn
into revolutionary politics when he was sixteen, and earned
the name 'Thamby' amongst the co-revolutionaries as he was
very young. Pirabaharan represented the aspirations of the
rebellious Tamil youth who, having become disenchanted with
the failures of non-violent political campaigns, resolved to
fight back the barbarous form of state violence perpetrated
on their people. Pirabaharan soon organised a
politico-military structure which found an organisational
expression to the revolutionary ardour of these militant
youth. Showing an extra-ordinary talent in planning military
strategy and tactics and executing them to the amazement of
the enemy. Pirabaharan soon became a symbol of Tamil
resistance and the Tiger Movement he founded became the
revolutionary movement to spearhead the Tamil national
liberation struggle.
Ideologically bound to the revolutionary theory and
practice of Marxism and Leninism, our movement firmly
believes that its commitment to armed struggle is not an
alternative to mass movement. The revolutionary armed
resistance must be sustained and supported by the mobilised
masses. The invincible power of the organised masses, we
believe, must be activated as the force of popular
resistance. Adopting Lenin's teaching that armed struggle
'must he ennobled by the enlightening and organising
influence of socialism', our movement has chartered its
political programme integrating the national struggle with
class struggle defining our ultimate objective as national
liberation and socialist revolution. With the conviction
that armed struggle is the highest expression of political
practice and must be channeled into a process of socialist
revolution, the Tiger movement, from its earliest stages,
engaged in developing and building political and military
bases among the popular masses.
A Mandate for Secession
The emergence of the Tiger Movement
marked a new historical epoch in the nature and structure of
the Tamil national struggle extending the dimension of
the agitation to popular armed resistance. While our
Movement was engaged in organising and developing its
politico-military structure, great events of extra-ordinary
political significance began to unfold in the Tamill
political domain. It was the time when national oppression
assumed such severity and harshness that made joint
existence between the two nations intolerable and
impossible.
It was at the peak of this national
oppression, when secession became the inevitable political
destiny of the Tamil nation, the Tamil United Front called
for a national convention in May 1976 at Vaddukoddai where a
historical resolution was unanimously adopted calling
for complete political independence of the Tamil nation. It
was at this conference that Tamil United Front changed it
name to Tamil United Liberation Front. The convention
outrightly condemned the
Republican Constitution of 1972, which "has made the
Tamils a slave nation ruled by the new colonial masters the
Sinhalese who are using the power they usurped to deprive
the Tamil nation of its territory, language citizenship,
economic life, opportunities of employment and education
thereby destroying all the attributes of nationhood of the
Tamil people". The convention resolved that "restoration and
reconstitution of the tree, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist
State of Tamil Eelam based on the
right to self determination inherent o every nation has
become inevitable in order to safeguard the very existence
of the Tamil nation in this country".
The General
Elections of July 1977 became a crucial testing ground for
the secessionist cause of the Tamil United Liberation Front.
The T.IJ.L.F. asked for a clear mandate from the people to
wage a national struggle for secession and accordingly the
Front explicitly stated in the
Manifesto:
.Hence the Tamil United Liberation Front seeks in
the general election the mandate of the Tamil Nation to
establish an independent sovereign' secular, socialist state
of Tamil Eelam that includes all the geographically
contiguous areas that have been the traditional homelands of
the Tamil speaking people in this country".
The Manifesto further stated:
"The Tamil Nation must take the decision
to establish its sovereignty in its homeland art the
basis of its right to self -determination. The only way
to announce this decision to the Sinhalese Government
and to the world is to vote for the Tamil United
Liberation Front".
The Manifesto finally pledged
"The Tamil speaking representatives who
get elected through these votes, while being members of
the National State Assembly of Ceylon, will also form
themselves into the 'NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF TAMIL EELAM
which will draft a constitution for the State of Tamil
Eelam and to establish the independence of Tamil
Eelam by bringing that constitution into operation
either by peaceful means or by direct action or
struggle".
In reference to the Tamil question the
verdict at the elections was very crucial. It was fought
precisely on a decision to secede. In a political sense, it
assumed the character of a plebiscite, a public expression
of a nation's will. The Tamil speaking people voted
overwhelmingly in favour of secession, or rather, the people
of Tamil Eelam exercised through a democratic political
practice, their right to self -determination, their right to
secede and form an independent State of their own. Thus, the
Tamil question assumed a new dimension. Its no longer a
question to be resolved by District Councils or by Federal
system, nor by negotiations and pacts. It is no longer a
question to bargain for concessions. It has become a
question of national self-determination, a question of an
inalienable right of a nation of people to decide their own
political destiny. The Tamil nation did proclaim its
determination to he an independent sovereign State, and this
national will was articulated through a popular democratic
practice. This was the specific mandate given to the
T.U.L.F. leadership, an authentic irreversible mandate
stamped with the popular will, a mandate to establish an
independent sovereign socialist State of Tamil Eeelam.
The Repression and Resistance
The General Elections of 1977 resulted in a
massive victory for the extreme right-wing United National
Party (U.N.P,) with nearly 85 of the seats in Parliament.
The traditional Left Parties were completely wiped out
without a single seat, and the Tamil United Liberation
Front, for the first time in Ceylon's political history,
became the leading opposition Party in Parliament. The stage
was set for a confrontation; the Tamils demanding secession
and separate existence as a sovereign State and the Sinhala
racist ruling Party seeking absolute State power to dominate
arid subjugate the will of the Tamil nation to live free.
The intensity of this contradiction took its manifest form
soon after the elections into a
racial holocaust unprecedented in its violence towards
the Tamils.
In this island wide racial conflagration hundreds of
Tamils were mercilessly massacred and millions worth of
Tamil property was destroyed and thousands of them made
refugees. The State police and the armed forces openIy
colluded with the hooligans in their gruesome acts of arson,
looting, rape and mass murder. Instead of containing the
racist violence that was ravaging the whole island, the
Government leaders made inflammatory statements with racist
connotations that added fuel to the fire. It was the Tamil
plantation workers who bore the brunt of this racial
onslaught. 17,000 of them became refugees and sought asylum
in the Tamil areas of the North and Fast.
The racial horror had a profound impact on Tamil
political thinking. While it hardened the militancy of the
revolutionary youth, it exposed the political impotency of
the Tamil bourgeois leadership, who, having failed to
fulfill its pledges to the people. sought a collaborationist
strategy to placate the Sinhala leaders. Jayawardane in his
Machiavellian shrewdness soon realised that T.U.L.F. leaders
were not serious in their secessionist demand but sought
alternative to deceive the Tamil masses.
The real threat of secession, the Government
thought, arose from the militant Tamil youths who are
unappeasable, irreconcilable and committed to the core to
the goal of an independent socialist Tamil Eelam. The new
regime, therefore, utilised all means to crush the
revolutionary youth, the very ground from where the cry for
political freedom emanated. The Government thus embarked on
a ruthless policy of repression, delegating extra-powers to
the police and military to clamp down on the Tamil youth.
Caught up in a revolutionary situation and constantly
victimised by the Police the young Tamil revolutionaries
were forced to resist the State repression. The dialectic of
repression and resistance began to unfold into a deadly
national struggle ushering the armed people's war that
opened a new dimension in the freedom movement of the Eelam
Tamils.
Tiger Movement comes to limelight
On the 7th April 1978, a police raiding
party headed by the notorious torturer Inspector
Bastiampillai suddenly surrounded a Tiger training camp deep
into the northern jungle and held the guerrillas at gun
point. One of our commando leaders. Lieutenant Chelvanayagam
(alias Aman) tactfully swooped on a police officer, snatched
his 5MG and gunned down the police party. Inspector
Bastiampillai (do), Sub-Inspector Perambalam, Police
Constable Balasingham and Police driver Siriwardana were all
killed. Our geurrilla Unit sustained no casualities. The
incidents alarmed the Government but created euphoria among
the Tamils since it signified the first major incident of
armed resistance against the repressive state apparatus.
On the 25th April 1978, the Tiger movement for the first
time officially claimed responisibitity for the annihilation
of the raiding party and the earlier killings of Police
officers and Tamil traitors. Thus, the Tiger Movement came
to limelight announcing itself to the world as the
revolutionary resistant movement of the Tamils committed to
the goal of national liberation of Tamil Eelam through armed
struggle. The Sinhala Government reacted swiftly by enacting
a law proscribing the Tiger movement. The Government also
poured into Tamil areas large contingents of armed units for
the 'Tiger hunt' and brought the Tamil nation under total
military occupation.
Having intensified the military repression in Tamil
Eelam, Jayawardane introduced a
new constitution on the 7th September 1978, which
bestowed upon him absolute dictatorial executive powers and
gave Sinhala language and Buddhist religion extra-ordinary
status, and relegated a second-class status to the Tamil
language. While the Tamil Parliamentary Party failed in its
duty to register any mass protest, the Tiger movement
brought the matter to the attention of the
international community by blowing up an AVRO aircraft, the
only passenger plane owned by the national airline (Air
Ceylon). The incident was a humiliation to the Government
but boosted the moral of the Tamil freedom movement.
The Tigers stepped up the campaign by
raiding a Government bank (Tinnevely People's Bank) on the
5th December 1978 appropriating 1.68 million rupees of state
money. In this daring daylight raid two police officers were
shot dead and another seriously wounded Our guerrilla
fighters escaped without any casualty, taking away the
weapons from the enemy.
To stamp out the growing
armed resistance the Government took draconian measures. On
the 20th July 1979 Jayawardane's racist regime enacted the
Prevention of Terrorism Act, which contained the most
infamous provisions that contravened the very principles of
the Rule of Law and violated the norms of human justice.
This notorious law denied trial by jury, enabled the
detention of people for a period of eighteen months and
allowed confessions extracted under torture as admissable in
evidence.
Having enacted the law the Government
declared a State of Emergency in Jaffna the northern Tamil
capital and dispatched more military units to Tamil areas
under the command of Brigadier Weeratunga with special
instructions to wipe out 'terrorism' within six months.
Empowered by law and encouraged by the State, the
fascist Brigadier unleashed military terror unprecedented in
its violence. Hundreds of innocent youths were arrested arid
subjected to barbarous torture and several of them were shot
dead and their dead bodies were dumped on the road side.
Their oppressive measures caused massive outcry all over the
world and the Terrorism Act brought universal condemnation
by the world human rights movements particularly by the
International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty
International.
Tigers step up guerrilla campaign
The political events that unfolded since
1981 involved massive genocidal onslaughts on the life and
property of the Tamil community and increased guerrilla
campaigns of our liberation movement.
On the midnight of 31st May 198!, the
Sinhala police went on a wild rampage burning down the
city of Jaffna This state terrorism exploded into a mad
frenzy of arson. looting and murder. Hundreds of shops were
burnt to ashes, the Jaffna market square was set on flames.
A Tamil newspaper office and Jaffna M.P.'s house were
gutted. The most abominable act of cultural genocide was the
burning down of the famous Jaffna public library destroying
more than 90,000 volumes of invaluable literary and
historical works an act that outraged the conscience of the
world Tamils. The whole episode was master minded by two
Cabinet Ministers (Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake) of
Jayawardane's regime who were in Jaffna during the riots and
were supervising the orgy of police violence.
An
island wide
racial conflagration flared up again just three months
after the burning of Jaffna, a racial onslaught on the
Tamils organised by leading members of the Government,
assisted by the armed forces, and executed by gangs of
Sinhala thugs and hooligans. And again our people became the
cruel victims of Sinhala racist barbarity; victims of insane
sadistic orgy, victims of arson, looting, rape and murder.
Hundreds of our people, including women and children were
slaughtered, thousands of them made homeless and millions
worth of Tamil property destroyed.
The repetitive pattern of this organised
violence that brought colossal damage in terms of life and
property to our people signified the genocidal intent
underlying this horrid phenomenon. The objective of the
chauvinistic ruling class is nothing other than to inflict
maximum injury to the Tamils to terrorise, subjugate and
destroy the aspirations of our people for political
independence. Yet more and more the oppression intensified
the determination of our people became more and more
hardened with an iron will to resist the forces of
repression. As the consequence of heightened repression the
resistance of the freedom fighters increased with such a
vehemence that it caused the destabilisation of the Sinhala
state and disrupted the civil administrative system in Tamil
Eelam.
On the 2nd July 1982 the Tiger guerrillas launched a
lightening attack on a police patrolling party at Nelliady,
Jaffna, killing four police officers on the spot. Three
police personnel were seriously injured.
Another major incident of guerrilla attack
that shook the Sinhaha police system was the successful raid
on the well-guarded Chavakachcheri Police station. On the
early morning of 27th October 1982 a Tiger guerrilla unit
commanded by Lieutenant Lucas Charles Antony (alias Aseer)
launched a well planned sudden attack on the Police station,
killing three police officers and injuring several others.
The rest of the police personnel fled in terror. From the
Police armoury we raided thirty-three pieces of weaponary -
nineteen repeater guns, nine 303 rifles, two sub-machine
guns, two shot guns and one revolver. Two of our guerrilla
members sustained minor injuries. This successful guerrilla
raid forced the Government to close down almost all the
Police stations in the North and the Police administrative
system became paralysed.
On the 18th February 1983
our freedom fighters shot and killed Police Inspector
Wijewardane and his jeep driver Rajapaksa of Point Pedro
Police station. Inspector Wijewardane is notorious for
Police repression in that area.
On the 4th March 1983
at Umaiyalpuram, Paranthan, our guerrilla fighters ambushed
an army convoy and in the gun battle that ensued several
army personnel were seriously injured and the rest fled in
fear. In that ambush two armoured cars were damaged.
On the 2nd April 1983 the Tigers blasted the Jaffna
Secretariat building by bombs. Just a few hours before a
Government organised 'security conference' to discuss ways
and means to crush the Tiger movement. The blast caused
extensive damage to the building and destroyed all State
documents. Several Government jeeps were set on fire.
On the 29th April 1983, the Liberation Tigers
assassinated three prominent supporters of the ruling United
National Party on the same day, as a warning to all Tamil
traitors who supported the racist Government. Two of them
were U.N.P. candidates for the local elections (F. V.
Ratnasingham of Point Pedro and S. S. Muthiah of
Chavakachcheri) and the other, S. S. Rajaratnam, a long time
U.N.P. supporter, and the body-guard of lJ.N.P's Jafina
organiser K. Ganeshalingam As a direct consequence of this
action all the Tamil U.N.P. candidates withdrew from the
elections and several Tamils resigned from the ruling party.
Tiger's Political Campaign Succeeds
Responding to a mass campaign launched by
our movement the majority of the Tamil people hymn
predominately in the northern province staged a mass boycott
of local elections on the 18th May 1983.
Such a mass boycott of elections, unprecedented in the
political history of the Tamils, constitutes a great
political and propaganda victory for the Tiger Movement. The
T.U.L.F. which defied the Tiger appeal, suffered an
insulting humiliation and irreparably damaged its political
image, when 90% of the voters in the North rejected the
Party's appeal to vote. The boycott was called by the
Tigers, who, for the first time, launched an effective
popular campaign appealing to the people to shun the local
government elections as a mark of disapproval and rejection
of the racist State system that has imposed a reign of
terror and repression against the Tamils.
V. Pirabaharan chairman and the military
commander of the Tiger Movement in a statement widely
circulated among the people called upon the Tamils to
'reject the civil administrative machinery of the Sri Lankan
state terrorists and join the popular armed struggle
directed towards national emancipation'. He also accused the
reactionary bourgeois political Party, the Tamils United
Liberation Front. as functioning as agents of the Sinhala
racist regime and utilise the slogan of 'freedom' to win the
elections.
On the day of elections (18th May '83)
just before the voting started, time bombs planted by our
movement exploded at five polling booths in the Tamil city
of Jaffna causing panic and havoc among the armed forces. On
the same day, an hour before the polling ended Liberation
Tiger guerrillas opened fire with machine guns on the army
arid police units guarding a polling booth at NaIlur,
Jaffna, killing an army corporal and seriously wounding a
soldier and two policemen. As a consequence of
guerrilla attacks, the Government imposed a state of
national emergency.
Reasons for the Recent Holocaust
The causality that underlies the
recent holocaust is manifold. It is absurd to assume
that our guerrilla ambush on the midnight of 23rd July 1983
that killed fourteen Sinhala soldiers and seriously wounded
several others precipitated the calamity. Riots had already
exploded at Trincomalee weeks before the guerrilla ambush.
Aided by the military, masses of Sinhala hooligans went on a
wild rampage at Trincomalee massacring innocent Tamil people
and burning down their houses. Under the cover of Emergency
and Curfew the military openly colluded with the Sinhala
vandals in an orgy of arson, looting and murders.
An all out genocidal assault on the Tamils
living in Colombo has been pro-planned by Sinhala fascist
groups led by leading members of the ruling party. The
recent outburst, unprecedented in its destructive horror, is
therefore certainly an open manifestation of a genocidal
programme hatched by the fascist leadership as the Hitlerian
'final solution' to the Tamil national question.
There are two basic reasons for the ruling Sinhala
bourgeoisie to let loose a genocidal repression on Tamils.
Firstly, to divert the mass attention from a deepening
economic crisis brought about by a dependent neo-colonial
economy which has reduced the Sri Lankan Government as a
perpetual beggar to western imperialist aid-giving agencies.
The popular resentment that has been accumulating from
massive inflation and mass unemployment as a consequence of
a disastrous economic policy has been constantly diverted
and channelled as anti-Tamil hysteria. Secondly, the
massacre of Tamils on a genocidal scale the Sinhala fascist
ruling class always conceived as the only solution to the
national question. Mass killings and massive destruction of
property, these fascists wrongly assumed, may humble the
Tamils and wipe out the Tamil national freedom struggle.
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