Word: ltte
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...more than 800,000 members of the Tamil diaspora spread out from Toronto to Sydney, the news was met with mixed reactions. Some are fervent supporters of the LTTE and others downright oppose the separatist movement, but are reluctant to publicly criticize the Tigers out of fear of a network globally regarded as terrorists. What more Tamils living abroad can agree on is better rights for the minority still in the country. Many Tamils, who are primarily Hindu, have long claimed job discrimination and unequal political power in a nation and government dominated by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese Buddhist majority...
...doctor in Australia who also visited Sri Lanka during the cease-fire to volunteer at orphanages and hospitals, regularly meets with fellow activists to plan events and rallies. After seeing what she describes as the "discrimination and racism of the government" firsthand, Pari says she understands why the LTTE resorted to arms throughout the conflict. "The diaspora is very concerned that the one body that protected the Tamils against oppression by the Sri Lankan government is now very much weakened." (Watch a video about civilians displaced...
...many members of the first generation of Tamils who fled the country when the war began are relieved by the Tigers' seeming end, and wish that the global Tamil youth were more critical of the LTTE. Nirmala Rajasingam, a first-generation activist with the U.K.-based Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, says the Tigers were "packaged as martyrs and freedom fighters" to the Tamil people, and that the diaspora's "unquestionable support and loyalty made the LTTE more unaccountable for its military power." Rajasingam, who has spent much of her life in exile having once been involved with the guerrilla group...
Prabhakaran, 54, was born to a middle-class family on the Jaffna Peninsula. Incensed by discrimination against Tamils and radicalized by a militant grade-school teacher, Prabhakaran founded the LTTE in 1976, a year after a group he headed claimed responsibility for killing Jaffna's mayor. By 1983 the guerrilla movement--which pioneered suicide bombings and the recruitment of child soldiers--escalated the fighting into a civil...
...power earlier this decade, Prabhakaran led a de facto government that controlled vast swaths of territory and boasted its own systems of taxes, roads and courts. As the army closed in, he allegedly used thousands of Tamil civilians as human shields. By the final days, just 250 LTTE members remained. They died too, along with the dream of eelam...