Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front

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ஈழமக்கள் புரட்சிகர விடுதலை முன்னணி
ඊලාම් ජනතා විප්ලවවාදී විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ
Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front Revolutionary liberation front of
the people of Eelam
Suresh Premachandran (2013)
Secretary General Suresh Premachandran (since 1999)
founding October 1981
Place of foundation Kumbakonam , Tamil Nadu , IndiaIndiaIndia 
Alignment Tamil nationalism, Marxism
Parliament seats
1/225

The Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front ( EPRLF , Tamil ஈழமக்கள் புரட்சிகர விடுதலை முன்னணி , Sinhala ඊලාම් ජනතා විප්ලවවාදී විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ , "Revolutionary Liberation Front of the People of Eelam ") is a small political party of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka .

history

The EPRLF was founded in October 1981 in Kumbakonam , Tamil Nadu , India by Kandasamy Pathmanabha, Douglas Devananda, Varatharaja Perumal, and Suresh Premachandran after they split off from the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS). The declared aim of the new group was to create a mass base and to prepare the population for the revolutionary struggle for Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. The EPRLF used a pronounced Marxist vocabulary and class-struggle rhetoric. At a first congress from October 4 to 10, 1981, she proclaimed the “complete liberation of Eelam” from the “neo-fascist state of Sri Lanka”, the establishment of a socialist society, the “fight against imperialism, Zionism and racism” as her goal “Fight for Eelam cannot be decoupled from other international progressive struggles”, and historical and dialectical materialism as its philosophy and guideline. Under Devananda's leadership, the EPRLF also established a military wing, the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The PLA received a large part of its military training in secret training camps in India by instructors of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) from George Habasch .

The EPRLF initially worked with the Tamil Tigers ( LTTE ) and in April 1985 an alliance of all major Tamil militant groups, the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF), consisting of TELO , EROS , EPRLF and LTTE, was formed. However, a rift erupted in the following years, and when the EPRLF publicly accused the LTTE in November 1986 of being responsible for the disappearance of Tamil student Vijithiran, open confrontation broke out. In a large-scale “cleanup” from December 1986 and in the following months, the LTTE murdered a large part of the EPRLF cadre and took over the EPRLF's arsenal.

After the loss of its military wing and after the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement of 1987, the EPRLF transformed from a terrorist organization into a political party. In the elections to the Provincial Council of the Northeast Province , held under the supervision of the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) stationed there , she won 41 of the 71 seats and EPRLF leader Varatharaja Perumal became President of the Provincial Council. After the withdrawal of the Indian peacekeeping force in 1990, the Provincial Council declared itself in a resolution on the "Government of the Free and Democratic Republic of Eelam", after which it was promptly dissolved by the Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa .

In the parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka in 1989 the EPRLF ran under the symbols of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and in the parliamentary election in 1994 as a single party. In 1999 the EPRLF split into a wing under Secretary General Suresh Premachandran and a wing under Varatharajah Perumal. Although the latter gathered the majority of party members behind it, the former succeeded in gaining recognition by the electoral commission as the legitimate successor to the old party with all its possessions. The wing under Varatharajah Perumal then dissolved a little later. The Suresh Premachandran Wing of the EPRLF joined forces with other Tamil parties ( TELO , ITAK and TULF) to form an electoral alliance, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). The TNA exists in this composition to this day (as of 2020). In the 2015 general election , the EPRLF won one of the 16 TNA seats in Sri Lanka's 225 MPs.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Mapping Sri Lanka's Political Parties: Actors and Evolutions, Chapter 2.1. Political Parties Formally Constituted Along Ethnic Lines. (pdf) Verite Research / Westminster Foundation for Democracy, pp. 26–27 , accessed on March 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b K T Rajasingham: SRI LANKA: THE UNTOLD STORY, Chapter 30: Whirlpool of violence. Archived from the original on December 3, 2002 ; accessed on March 26, 2020 (English).
  3. ↑ EPRLF. (pdf) padippakam.com, January 1984, accessed on March 2, 2020 (English, EPRLF program publication).
  4. ^ Rajan Hoole: Indo-Lanka Accord, Crisis For The LTTE - The High Cost Of Politics Through Rhetoric. Colombo Telegraph, December 7, 2013, accessed March 26, 2020 .
  5. ↑ APPENDIX I: The Snares of Violence. University Teachers for Human Rights, accessed March 26, 2020 .