--- title: The Tamil Tigers' martyr cult, and the state's 'humanitarian operation' url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/ description: the LTTE built a calendar, a landscape and a broadcast system around its dead, so that loyalty to the fallen and loyalty to the movement became one… section: Case studies --- ![Illustration: a split dossier collage contrasting a 1950s intelligence briefing room with an analog newsroom monitoring wall.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-then-and-now.jpg) [Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/) # The Tamil Tigers' martyr cult, and the state's 'humanitarian operation' At a glance The LTTE built a calendar, a landscape and a broadcast system around its dead, so that loyalty to the fallen and loyalty to the movement became one thing… - **When:** 1976 - **Actor:** Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam… - **Target:** Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka, including children and families… - **Source:** Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure - **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures - **Techniques:** [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) Full details - **Actor:** Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its media units (Voice of Tigers, NTT, Nitharsanam) and diaspora fronts; Government of Sri Lanka and its Ministry of Defence as the opposing messenger - **Target:** Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka, including children and families; the Tamil diaspora in Canada, the UK and Europe; international opinion On this page - [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#what-happened) - [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#how-it-works) - [How it was countered](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#how-it-was-countered) - [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#then-and-now) - [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#positions-on-the-record) - [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#same-method-test) - [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#how-to-spot-it) - [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#images) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda/#sources) On this page > **Content note.** This case describes suicide attacks, the recruitment of children, extortion, and mass civilian deaths in the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war. Movement and government terms such as "great heroes" and "zero civilian casualties" are quoted as evidence of method, not as this archive's description of anyone. **In one line:** the LTTE built a calendar, a landscape and a broadcast system around its dead, so that loyalty to the fallen and loyalty to the movement became one thing; in the war's final phase the Sri Lankan state answered with a "humanitarian operation" that it said followed a policy of "zero civilian casualties", while it kept journalists out of the war zone. ![Diagram: the LTTE's dead become great heroes; cemeteries, a national day and broadcasts turn them into a claim on the living; diaspora and children are drawn in; the state bans, bombs the radio, and names its offensive humanitarian; the UN panel finds credible allegations against both](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/ltte-tamil-tigers-propaganda-diagram.svg) ## What happened - **1976 onward.** The LTTE forms under Velupillai Prabhakaran. Its fighters carry a cyanide capsule (the *kuppi*), worn on a necklace and given after training, to bite if capture is imminent. Michael Roberts describes the capsule as part of a wider ethic of "gift of self" or sacrificial devotion. - **1986-1990.** The movement builds its own media. A television and newspaper unit, *Nitharsanam*, opens in Jaffna in 1986. A newspaper called *Voice of Tigers* launches in 1988 and becomes a radio station in November 1990. The Jaffna Monitor describes the station as the movement's chronicle of the war, with a built-in bias toward the LTTE. - **27 November 1989.** The first *Maaveerar Naal* ("Great Heroes Day"). D.B.S. Jeyaraj and others report that about 600 cadres met in the Mullaitivu jungle to honour some 1,300 fallen comrades. From then on the day closed with Prabhakaran's annual speech, which journalists and governments read as the movement's statement of policy. - **Early 1990s onward.** The dead are buried, not cremated, in *thuyilum illam* ("sleeping houses"), with memorial stones. Cristiana Natali (2008) and Roberts (2005) describe how the LTTE called the bodies "seeds" sown in the soil of the homeland. - **Black Tigers.** The suicide unit is honoured on its own day each July as well as on Heroes' Day. Its members' memorial stones sit in the same cemeteries. - **Children.** Human Rights Watch's *Living in Fear* (November 2004) reports that the LTTE kept recruiting children during the 2002 ceasefire, often by force, and threatened families who resisted. As of 31 October 2004 UNICEF had documented 3,516 new cases of underage recruitment since the ceasefire. - **26 March 2005.** National Television of Tamil Eelam (NTT) begins satellite broadcasts, carrying the movement's message to the diaspora as well as the Vanni. - **March 2006.** HRW's *Funding the Final War* documents intimidation and extortion of Tamils in Canada and the UK by LTTE-linked fundraisers, and pressure on diaspora visitors to the north. - **2006-2009.** Fighting resumes. The Ministry of Defence names its campaign a "humanitarian operation" and the government states a policy of "zero civilian casualties". Journalists and rights monitors are barred from the Vanni. - **May 2009.** The LTTE is defeated and Prabhakaran is killed. Its radio and television go silent. ![LTTE-run district court, Kilinochchi, 2005](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/kilinochchi-ltte-court-2005.jpg) *A district court of the LTTE's de facto administration in Kilinochchi, 2005, signposted as a court of Tamil Eelam: state-like institutions were part of the movement's claim to be a government. Photo by Wikimedia user Mugilan, CC BY 3.0.* ![Diaspora demonstrators with LTTE flags, April 2009](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/tamil-diaspora-demonstration-2009.jpg) *Demonstrators carrying the LTTE's tiger flag, April 2009, during the diaspora protests of the war's final months. Photo by Iouri Goussev, CC BY-SA 2.0; the file record does not give the city.* ## How it works - [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): the LTTE borrowed the prestige of older Tamil forms and pasted it onto its own dead. Roberts argues the cult drew on the *nadukal* (hero stone) tradition and on ideas of divine potency, so a cadre's grave carried a sacred weight the movement's political argument could not supply by itself. Burial in rows, lamps, and a day of mourning gave a guerrilla army the look of a nation honouring its war dead. - [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/): once the fallen are the nation's "great heroes", doubting the movement reads as dishonouring the dead and the people together. Jeyaraj notes that *Maaveerar Naal* was a partisan event "of, for and by the LTTE": it honoured the movement's own fighters, not Tamils killed by the LTTE or by rival Tamil groups. In the diaspora, HRW and the International Crisis Group describe the same fusion enforced by pressure. Refusal to give money was met with threats, and Crisis Group (2010) says moderate voices only began to speak "in the absence of LTTE coercion". - [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/), LTTE side: "great hero" for any dead cadre, including children HRW says were recruited by force; "seeds" for bodies; a "gift of self" for a suicide attack. The words turn a death into a donation. The act they name is not hidden, but its cost is recast as a gain. - [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/), state side: an offensive that the UN panel says included shelling of no-fire zones and hospitals was called a "humanitarian operation" and, in 2009, a "humanitarian rescue operation". The operative act, artillery and air strikes on areas crowded with civilians, is missing from the name. - [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/), both sides: *Voice of Tigers* and NTT reported the war through the movement's losses and victories only. The government's "zero civilian casualties" line, its 2011 *Humanitarian Operation: Factual Analysis*, and its film *Lies Agreed Upon* answered war-crimes allegations while the war zone itself had been closed to independent reporting. - **Audience and spread.** Inside the north and east the channels were the radio, NTT, school and village events, posters of the dead, and the cemeteries themselves. For the diaspora, satellite television, community organisations such as the World Tamil Movement in Canada, and November Heroes' Day gatherings in Toronto, London and elsewhere carried the message and the fundraising appeal together. International opinion was addressed through the annual speech and diaspora lobbying. ## How it was countered - **Bans and designations.** India banned the LTTE in 1992 after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and has renewed the ban every five years since. The US listed it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on 8 October 1997, the UK proscribed it on 29 March 2001, Canada listed it in April 2006, and the EU listed it on 29 May 2006. Days after Canada's listing, police raided World Tamil Movement offices in Toronto; Canada listed the WTM itself on 13 June 2008, stating that it was the LTTE's leading front and that refusals to donate often led to threats. - **Criticism of the bans.** The EU listing came during a Norwegian-brokered peace process, and the LTTE had warned it might leave the truce if listed. The LTTE then demanded that monitors from EU states leave the truce monitoring mission. - **Military action against the media.** On 27 November 2007, Heroes' Day, the Sri Lankan Air Force bombed the *Voice of Tigers* station in Kilinochchi shortly before Prabhakaran's speech was due. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports three media workers killed. - **State counter-messaging.** From 2006 to 2009 the Ministry of Defence was the main source of war news. HRW reports that both the government and the LTTE kept the press out of the combat area. Civilians who left the war zone were held in camps without media access. - **The UN panel.** The Secretary-General's Panel of Experts (Marzuki Darusman, Yasmin Sooka, Steven Ratner) reported on 31 March 2011. It found credible allegations against both parties. For the LTTE: using civilians as a human buffer, killing civilians who tried to flee, and forced recruitment, including of children. For the government: shelling of no-fire zones, hospitals and aid points, and denial of humanitarian aid. It said a number of credible sources estimated up to 40,000 civilian deaths, while stating there was no authoritative figure. - **Channel 4 and the reply.** *Sri Lanka's Killing Fields* premiered at the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011. The government published a formal rebuttal and the Ministry of Defence released *Lies Agreed Upon* in August 2011. A 2011 Defence Ministry seminar on the war was described by HRW as an attempt to whitewash war crimes. - **After 2009.** Courts in the north and east, at police request, have banned *Maaveerar Naal* events. The US State Department reports that in 2020 the bans cited COVID-19 rules and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, that at least 23 people were arrested for sharing content glorifying the LTTE on social media, and that a Jaffna priest was arrested on 27 November. Families say the bans also stop them mourning relatives; the government says the events glorify a banned group. - **Did it work?** The movement's domestic media ended with its military defeat, not with a counter-narrative. Crisis Group found in 2010 that most of the diaspora still backed a separate state, now through open political bodies rather than LTTE fronts, and that younger Tamils had been radicalised by the civilian deaths of 2009. The state's "zero casualties" line did not survive the UN panel's findings outside Sri Lanka. ![Civilians displaced in the Vanni, January 2009](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/vanni-displacement-jan-2009.jpg) *Civilians on the move in the Vanni, January 2009. Posted by the Flickr account trokilinochchi, whose original caption attributes the displacement to the army's offensive; CC BY 2.0.* ## Then and now ![Address announcing a 'special military operation'](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/special-military-operation-address-2022.jpg) *[Address announcing a 'special military operation'](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/special-military-operation-address-2022/), Government of the Russian Federation, 2022. CC BY 4.0 (kremlin.ru).* Russia's 2022 "special military operation" and Sri Lanka's 2006-2009 "humanitarian operation" use the same device. The word "operation" replaces "war", and a qualifier ("special", "humanitarian") tells the audience how to feel before any facts arrive. The differences are large. Russia's address launched an invasion of another state; Sri Lanka's campaign was against an armed group inside its own territory that the US, UK, EU, India and Canada list as terrorist; the UN panel found credible allegations that the LTTE used civilians as a buffer and that government forces shelled no-fire zones and hospitals. Russia made "discrediting" the army a crime; Sri Lanka kept journalists out of the zone. The LTTE's own "great heroes" language is the same device pointed the other way: it inflates a death where the state's term shrinks one. ## Positions on the record - **The LTTE's position:** its fighters were *maaveerar*, great heroes who gave their lives for Tamil Eelam, and the cyanide capsule and Black Tiger attacks were acts of self-sacrifice for the nation. - **The government's position:** the 2006-2009 campaign was a humanitarian operation to free civilians held by a terrorist group, conducted with a policy of zero civilian casualties; *Lies Agreed Upon* and the 2011 *Factual Analysis* state its case. - **What is documented:** child and forced recruitment by the LTTE (HRW, UNICEF, UN panel); coercive diaspora fundraising (HRW, Government of Canada); LTTE use of civilians as a buffer and shooting of those who fled, and government shelling of no-fire zones and hospitals (reported by HRW; found credible by the UN panel); the exclusion of journalists; the 2007 air strike on the radio station; post-war commemoration bans. - **What is contested or not shown:** the total civilian death toll (the panel gives no authoritative figure); how far diaspora giving was voluntary rather than coerced, which varied by person and place; and whether Heroes' Day in its post-2009 form is mourning, political commemoration, or support for a banned group. This page makes no finding on the case for or against a Tamil state. ## Same-method test Martyr commemoration works the same way whatever the cause. [Walls, prisons and airwaves: republican and loyalist paramilitary propaganda in Northern Ireland](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/northern-ireland-paramilitary-murals/) shows republican murals of hunger strikers and loyalist murals of dead volunteers, on opposite sides of one conflict, using the same device: the dead are painted into the street so that the living owe them loyalty. Sri Lanka's government holds its own annual commemoration of soldiers it calls *ranaviru* (war heroes), which this page does not assess. The scoring here would be the same for any of them: honouring the dead is not a technique; turning them into a claim that silences questions about the movement, or the army, is. ## How to spot it - Ask who is left off the memorial. A day that names only one side's dead is a message as well as a mourning. - When a death is called a gift, a seed or a sacrifice, restate it in plain words (who died, how old, who sent them) and see whether the claim still stands. - Treat "operation" names and casualty claims issued while reporters are barred as unverified until independent access exists. - Separate a community's grief from the organisation that runs the ceremony. The same candle can mean both. ## Images | Image | Source | Licence | | --- | --- | --- | | Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the sources below (`make_diagrams_extremist.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME | | LTTE-run court, Kilinochchi (2005) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kilinochchi_court_of_de-facto_State_Tamil_Eelam.jpg) | CC BY 3.0, Mugilan | | Diaspora demonstration with LTTE flags (Apr 2009) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tamil_Tigers_Demonstration,_Flags_(3457772864).jpg) | CC BY-SA 2.0, Iouri Goussev | | Displacement in the Vanni (Jan 2009) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_2009_displacement_in_the_Vanni.jpg) | CC BY 2.0, trokilinochchi | | Address announcing a "special military operation" (2022) | FRAME gallery, from kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 4.0 | ### Image gaps - **A *thuyilum illam* cemetery or Heroes' Day gathering.** The LTTE's own photographs and footage are copyrighted and are movement media, so they are cited, not hosted. Many wartime cemeteries were destroyed after 2009, but photographs of post-war gatherings or sites taken by Wikimedia contributors may exist under open licences. **This gap can be filled.** - ***Voice of Tigers* and NTT broadcasts.** Movement media; not hosted. - **The UN Panel of Experts report cover.** UN documents are not automatically public domain; the report is linked below instead. **This gap can be filled** if a copy with a clear open licence is found. - ***Sri Lanka's Killing Fields* and *Lies Agreed Upon*.** Both are copyrighted and the former contains graphic footage of killings; not hosted. ## Sources - [Human Rights Watch, November 2004: Living in Fear: Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka](https://www.hrw.org/report/2004/11/10/living-fear/child-soldiers-and-tamil-tigers-sri-lanka) - [Human Rights Watch, March 2006: Funding the "Final War": LTTE Intimidation and Extortion in the Tamil Diaspora](https://www.hrw.org/report/2006/03/15/funding-final-war/ltte-intimidation-and-extortion-tamil-diaspora) - [Human Rights Watch, February 2009: War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni](https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/02/19/war-displaced/sri-lankan-army-and-ltte-abuses-against-civilians-vanni) - [ReliefWeb, 31 March 2011: Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka](https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/report-secretary-generals-panel-experts-accountability-sri-lanka) - [International Crisis Group, February 2010: The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora after the LTTE (Asia Report 186)](https://www.crisisgroup.org/rpt/asia-pacific/sri-lanka/186-sri-lankan-tamil-diaspora-after-ltte) - [Michael Roberts, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2005: Tamil Tiger "Martyrs": Regenerating Divine Potency?](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10576100590950129) - [Cristiana Natali, Contemporary South Asia, 2008: Building cemeteries, constructing identities: funerary practices and nationalist discourse among the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09584930802271323) - [D.B.S. Jeyaraj: Great Heroes Day (Maaveerar Naal) was a partisan event of, for and by the LTTE](https://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/?p=75214) - [Jaffna Monitor: Voice of Tigers: the rebel radio that echoed through Sri Lanka's war](https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/voice-of-tigers-the-rebel-radio-that-echoed-through-sri-lankas-war/) - [Committee to Protect Journalists, 2008: Attacks on the Press in 2007, Sri Lanka](https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/cpj/2008/en/56559) - [Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence via ReliefWeb, 2011: Humanitarian Operation Factual Analysis, July 2006 to May 2009](https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/humanitarian-operation-factual-analysis-july-2006-%E2%80%93-may-2009) - [Human Rights Watch, May 2011: Sri Lanka: Military Conference to Whitewash War Crimes](https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/05/23/sri-lanka-military-conference-whitewash-war-crimes) - [Worldwatch Institute, 2006: The European Union lists Sri Lanka's LTTE as a banned terrorist organization](http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4373) - [Government of Canada, June 2008: Government of Canada lists World Tamil Movement as a terrorist organization](https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2008/06/government-canada-lists-world-tamil-movement-terrorist-organization.html) - [US Department of State, 2021: 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Sri Lanka](https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/sri-lanka)