Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

aka World Tamil Association

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

[Page 216]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, make up roughly 15 percent. In the early 1970s, the Sri Lankan government began to place special emphasis on Sinhalese unity and cultural cohesion following a Marxist-led student rebellion; for instance, the 1972 constitution named Sinhala and Buddhism as the official language and religion of Sri Lanka, respectively. The government's efforts at overcoming divisions within the Sinhalese community only exacerbated existing ethnic tensions between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The resurgence of Sinhalese chauvinism sparked a comparable rise in Tamil separatism, ...