The Tamil people’s cry for dignity, equality, and justice is as genuine and urgent as ever. But that noble cause cannot stand tall on a foundation built with blood, silenced truths, and a legacy of internal brutality. It must reckon with a painful truth: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), while hailed by many as freedom fighters, were also responsible for some of the most harrowing violence committed against their own community.
Across the Tamil diaspora especially in Western countries the LTTE are often remembered through the lens of resistance: brave fighters who stood against a powerful Sinhala-dominated state and a military apparatus responsible for horrific war crimes. But there is another story one buried in fear, spoken in hushed tones, and often excluded from the diaspora’s collective memory. It is the story of how the LTTE, in the name of liberation, also crushed the very people they claimed to protect.
Rather than merely confronting state oppression, the LTTE also launched a calculated, ruthless campaign to silence dissent within Tamil society itself. Moderate politicians were assassinated. Dissenters were labeled traitors. Child conscription became systematic. And civil society Tamil civil society was throttled into silence.
Take the assassination of A. Amirthalingam in 1989, one of Tamil nationalism’s most respected democratic leaders. As the head of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), he championed peaceful, parliamentary resistance. For that, the LTTE murdered him in cold blood. His death sent a chilling message to the Tamil community: democracy was no longer part of the struggle. The same fate awaited Neelan Tiruchelvam, a visionary constitutional scholar and architect of a peaceful federal solution. Gunned down in 1999, his only crime was believing in coexistence. “Violence will never deliver justice to our people,” Neelan had warned. The LTTE ensured it was the last warning he ever gave.
But the Tigers didn’t stop at eliminating leaders. In 1986, they turned on the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), one of the LTTE’s main rivals. Within weeks, more than 400 TELO members were massacred. Other groups like EPRLF and PLOTE met similar fates. By the end of the 1980s, Tamil resistance had been reduced to a single, brutal voice: the LTTE. It wasn’t unity it was conquest through internal carnage.
The victims of the LTTE’s authoritarianism weren’t just political or militant figures. Ordinary Tamils civilians faced horrifying oppression. In LTTE-controlled regions, families lived in fear of the midnight knock. Children, sometimes as young as 12, were taken from their homes, given minimal training, and sent to die on the frontlines. Resistance from families meant retribution. A mother from Kilinochchi remembered how her teenage son was taken in 2006 for refusing to fight. “They never brought back his body,” she said. The LTTE called these boys Maaveerar Great Heroes. But what sort of heroism begins with abduction?
Rajani Thiranagama dared to speak the truth. A brilliant academic from the University of Jaffna, she co-authored The Broken Palmyra, a rare book that exposed violence from both the Sri Lankan state and the Tigers. For her honesty, she was assassinated in 1989. Her words “You cannot remain neutral when people are crushed between two armed forces” ring tragically true even today. Her death wasn’t an anomaly; it was a message. Speak up, and you die.
Other human rights defenders and community voices were also silenced. Catholic priest Father Karunaratnam, known for documenting civilian suffering, was killed in a suspected LTTE-planted landmine in 2008. His “crime” was truth-telling. “When you silence justice, you dig your own grave,” he once said. In retrospect, it reads like a warning the Tigers ignored until it was too late.
Beyond the headlines, thousands of nameless civilians were summarily executed accused of being informants, or simply punished for disobedience. The final phase of the war was especially nightmarish. As the Sri Lankan army encircled LTTE territory, the Tigers herded tens of thousands of Tamil civilians into so-called “No Fire Zones.” Escape was forbidden. Those who tried to flee were shot by their own. These zones became both shields and killing fields. A 2011 UN report noted the LTTE was directly responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilian deaths not from crossfire, but from cold-blooded murder and forced entrapment.
None of this excuses the Sri Lankan state’s appalling conduct. The military has committed grave atrocities, some rising to the level of war crimes. But exposing state crimes cannot mean ignoring or whitewashing the LTTE’s mirror-image violence. The Tamil people suffered not just at the hands of the state, but under the heel of their own so-called liberators.
This moral complexity remains deeply uncomfortable for many in the diaspora. From Toronto to London, Tiger flags still wave at rallies. Martyrs are glorified. But missing from the chants are the names of those the Tigers silenced—democrats, mothers, journalists, priests, and children. Missing, too, is the courage to face the full truth.
Solidarity that ignores truth is not justice it is denial. And denial has a cost. It alienates victims. It stunts progress. It disrespects memory. True justice requires reckoning not just with what was done to us, but with what was done in our name.
The Tamil quest for justice is righteous. The dream of self-determination, equality, and dignity is sacred. But it must be built on truth. Not selective truth. Not romanticised rebellion. The full truth.
Because if we want the world to hear our cry for justice, we must first prove we’re brave enough to face our own reflection. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.
