Ananthan recently penned this fascinating post 
on the Tamil Tigers’ cemeteries (see photos):
The LTTE is a secular organization but up until the early 90s it seems that dead cadres… were all cremated according to Hindu practice. In the early 90s this was changed to burial…… the use of these graveyards, similar in style to those used by militaries in the west, helps to confer legitimacy to the LTTE. The Tigers are often dismissed or denounced as unthinking, purposeless terrorists; established memorials help to combat that view… Cremation doesn’t leave any tangible, visible evidence of those who have passed, burial does…
The Maaveerar are celebrated on November 27th, officially remembered as the day in which the first Tiger died… in Sri Lanka the ceremonies take place in the Tuillum Illam. [LTTE Leader] Prabhakaran’s yearly speech is delivered and broadcast through loudspeakers in all Tuillum Illam.
… the practice of burial is rationalized with the opposing beliefs of Hinduism…
Can you work an M.I.A link into this Manish?
Bet you’d love that.
death cult
got around to flipping through all the pics…With violence and death glorified to this degree, how again will the LTTE head a peaceful democratic society?
Millions are starving and missing limbs due to landmines, and somehow there’s so much cash, a little tombstone is not enough for each fallen tiger. Nope, the martyres (wonder if the conscripted 10 yr olds get the same treatment at death?) are entombed in what looks like marble sarcophagi. nice.
Content aside, your photo skills are impressive Ananthan.
Thanks Cicatrix, i’m actually a pretty terrible photographer but that site lent itself to good pictures.
As for the death cult thing, the black tigers might qualify, but the LTTE as a whole? Not any more than every other military force.
The spot where [Rajiv] Gandhi was assassinated… at night it casts a halo of light that can be seen for quite some distance. When the lights go on at the LTTE cemeteries, they cut through the dark in such a way that you can’t ignore them. I don’t know of any other memorials, cemeteries, etc. where such things occur and I mention these things because they came about at roughly the same time.
In addition to the reasons you cited, I understand the cemeteries were established because regular headstone-burials were easily uprooted and destroyed by the SL army during offensives, sweeps, etc.. The Dravidian-reasoning makes sense, the orchestrated sensibility of creating a cemetery just to gain legitimacy also makes sense but can’t supersede the fact that the LTTE also gains strength from having sacred ground above which one can say, “these are my people who died for my land” (which is, coincidentally, what the SL army targeted cemeteries to be destroyed).
It just occurs to me that I’ve seen quite a few Tamil burial sites from both the Sangam and Chola periods. Funny, however, because despite what one might see as a reason to have respect for cemeteries, I’ve seen people taking shits in them also…
Anyhow, interesting post.
cicatrix, how about you comment on the pathetic and deplorable treatment the Government of Sri Lanka provides the families of their soldiers?
Maaveerar Naal (Great Heroes Day) was especially significant in Canada last November, when it was remembered at all the major universities in Ontario (Canada’s biggest province), with the Tiger and Canada flags raising. Along with, 9 or 10 halls across Toronto to acocomodate the amount of people attending to pay respects. God Bless Canada!
anyhow, while doing a search about a story i read back in january about how a former Sri Lankan soldier POW, after the tsunami, came back to Tiger territory with a couple trucks worth of supplies to give to either the ppl or Tigers, in thanks for his treatment when he was a POW for 3 years, i came across an interesting article by TIME magazine about the Tigers and Thamileelam.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/srilanka/story.html
Since you asked so nicely…I don’t know details about how the GoSL treats its soldiers but I’m pretty sure you’re right. Which entirely underscores my long held contention that the GoSL has long treated many people like shit, not just the Tamils, so this depiction of Tamil oppression is a bit overwrought.
From the Time Asia article:
So unbelievably sad. How else can she, or anyone there, make sense of this madness and violence.
Is it just me, or does this writer sound like he’s drunk the kool-aid? This is “Tigerland” – a orwellian vision come to life.
WTF?! r u trying to deny Tamil oppresion!?!
that is by far the most ludicrous of all your comments?!
really now. making Singhala the official and only language, quoatas on Tamils entering university, state-sponsored colonization with Singhala settlers, anti-Tamil riots, burning of the respected Jaffna Library, lynching of participants in the World Tamil Research Conference, Denial of Gov’t Jobs for Tamils.
okay cicatrix, the Tamils really were on the same level as everyone else. cough cough. you really stooped to a new low. its a farce what has become of the journalist profession.
Whoa, ok. sorry. I reread my last post and ‘overwrought’ was not the word to use…Rescinding, apologizing, apologizing..
However, I do think that with 20+ years of this conflict, the original causes have taken overtones of legend and lore..the injustices seem to have a mythic ring when LTTE advocates yell that the LTTE are the only saviors etcetc..
Sinhala Only was passed and then rescinded. Tamil was the second official language since I was a kid. Quotas on Tamils entering university was placed soon after independance when Tamils, numbering 20% of the population had almost 60% of the civil service jobs, university postiions, medical school students, etc.
I’m not saying it was right. I’m jsut saying that it was the birthing pains of a new country trying ot establish itself, and many other forms of protest are preferable to armed ‘revolution’ that randomly kills civilians.
The riots of ’83 were a terrible, horrifying disgrace..but those were Sinhala thugs. I’ve heard rumors that local level Sinhala politicians encouraged it. And the goverment is completely at fault for being lackadaisical about intervening.
What is this about colonization and lynching of conference participants? Can you provide links?
> However, I do think that with 20+ years of this conflict, the original causes have taken overtones of legend and lore..the injustices seem to have a mythic ring when LTTE advocates yell that the LTTE are the only saviors etcetc..
Isn’t this a disingenuous way to address the issue? You have already clothed the grievances in a context that makes light of them without addressing their legitimacy…
> I’m not saying it was right. I’m jsut saying that it was the birthing pains of a new country trying ot establish itself, and many other forms of protest are preferable to armed ‘revolution’ that randomly kills civilians.
Could you explain what you mean by this? Are you saying that protests have always been bloody? That is simply not true. Nobody had heard of LTTE until the late 70s (though a small number of Tamil youth did participate in violenc e.g., the assasination of a Tamil mayor who was sympathetic to the party in power in the mid 70s and the lore is that they were the precursors of LTTE). The protests to ‘ethnicist’ measures before the 70s have been non-violent and there are non-violent protests even now.
> Tamil was the second official language since I was a kid. Quotas on Tamils entering university was placed soon after independance when Tamils, numbering 20% of the population had almost 60% of the civil service jobs, university postiions, medical school students, etc.
Do you have any links for this? My understanding is, the quotas were instigated in the early 70s (almost a generation after the colonial rule). Also, in S.J. Tambiah’s book “Sri Lanka: Ethnic fratricide…”, he provides statistics that show Tamils occupied just above 25% of the highly sought after occupations at that time…
> The riots of ’83 were a terrible, horrifying disgrace
Unfortunately, this was not the only ethnic riots in Sri Lanka since independence.
(I am not the original poster so I am not sure what s/he is talking about.) Civilians who were gathered to participate in an event that was part of an international conference of Tamil scholars were indiscriminately sprayed by bullets which resulted in some deaths. (This was in the mid 70s before the rise of LTTE, btw.) As usual with the case with such killings of civilians by the armed forces in SL since then, not a single person was prosecuted.
The policies of the Sri Lankan state aren’t simply oppressive, but are specifically designed to numerically reduce and economically, politically, and culturally break the Sri Lankan Tamil populace’s ability to resist aka Ethinic Cleansing & Genocide. 10% of the Sri Lankan Tamil populace has been killed by conflict (a conservative number with certain 3rd party groups estimating the death toll from secondary factors such as starvation and illness much higher) and many more have fled the country outright. The demographics shift in the Eastern province is a clear indication of this. This can’t be solely attributed to the Tamil Tigers as these policies have existed long before their arrival (the disenfranchisement of a million Tea Plantation Tamils, multiple pogroms leading up to 1983, and illegal Sinhalese settlements set up by the Sri Lankan state in Tamil areas). This policy is now reaching a climax with the creation of ‘refugee’ camps run by that most humane of organizations the Sri Lankan Army; which in reality are internment camps, and all probability will become, if not already, concentration camps. All funded by the international community, bravo!
Top officials in the Sri Lankan defence department have been quoted as saying (translated): Drain the ocean and the fish will die – in reference to the Tamil people being the support and backbone of the Tamil Tigers respectively.