These Tigers are far from extinct

PETALING JAYA: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers, was a militant organisation that tried to create an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka.

The organisation, claiming that Sri Lankan Tamils were victims of discrimination under the majority Buddhist Sinhalese government, was founded by Velupillai Prabhakaran, also known as Col Prabha, in 1976.

Its armed struggle reportedly saw over a million people being displaced and tens of thousands of people being killed from suicide bombings and other types of attacks.

It also carried out assassinations, including those of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 and former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

The LTTE may have started out as a guerrilla force that infamously included women and child soldiers, but it increasingly became a military force in its own right, with a navy, airborne unit and intelligence wing.

It was designated a terrorist organisation by 32 countries, including the European Union, the United States, India and Malaysia.

In May 2009, Prabhakaran and other LTTE leaders were said to have been in a small convoy when it was attacked by government troops.

After the attack, the Sri Lankan defence ministry announced that the rebels’ leadership had been destroyed, marking the end of the decades-old insurrection.

However, in May 2018, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena claimed that the LTTE was regrouping abroad.

“We have defeated the terrorism of the LTTE, but we have not been able to defeat their ideology,” he was quoted as saying by international wire agency AFP.