“He’ll kill your men, and then you”
Black tigress fought in the jungle and exploded in the crowd. And now I’m sitting in the kitchen.
Upstairs
Women’s participation in wars, as a rule, celebrated in the stories of valiant nurses, the bullets make the wounded from the battlefield, or on the faithful wives waiting for soldiers at home. However, there are examples of women killing enemies no less cruel and fought as fiercely as men. One of them is the army, “liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” or rather, its women’s battalions. Some of the most formidable women in the history of warfare — in the material “Tape.ru”.
In January 2010, the authoritative newspaper the New York Times published an article “13 of the best tourist places in Sri Lanka”. This hypocritical statement of the publication, which a few months before this was published horrific footage of war crimes the Sri Lankan government against its own population, angered many.
Especially notable was a British singer, known under the stage name M. I. A., whose father was one of the founders of the separatist movement the Tamil Tigers. In his Twitter she wrote: “Here they are, inviting coastline, which writes the NYT”, accompanied by the entry photograph of the corpse of the peaceful resident and hanged two Tamil children.
The girl was the only public figure trying to draw attention to what was happening in Sri Lanka. There for over 30 years, the government tried to exterminate an ethnic minority Tamils. Those in the answer have organized one of the most violent resistance movements. Especially in the ranks of distinguished women.
The girls went to the front voluntarily. They lived in the jungle, not produced from hand machines and dealt harshly with enemies.
After the British in 1948 left the island, legitimate Sri Lankan government declared Buddhism the main religion of the country, and the state became the language of the ethnic majority Sinhalese. It’s not like the Tamils professing Hinduism. They announced their intention to secede from the state and set up their own North of the island — the Tamil Eelam.
Buddhist government, such a prospect is not satisfied and long-standing ethno-religious tensions escalated into a civil war formed in 1976, the rebel movement “liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” which lasted almost 30 years and accompanied by destruction of the Tamil population.
Subsequent decades, separatists in 32 countries (including the United States and the European Union) considered a terrorist group, launched attacks on government agencies, airports, hotels. They tried to kill politicians attacked even the President of Sri Lanka and the Indian Prime Minister.
Their trademark explosions of suicide bombers. The financial support of the Tamils from other countries, they were the only terrorist organization in the world with its own fleet and aircraft.
Hostilities officially ended in 2009, Buddhist, however, the government is still repression, not only against the remaining island of the Tamils, but also against Muslims. During the war, were killed, according to various estimates, from 40 to 70 thousand people and more than 800 thousand have fled their homes.
It would seem that what distinguishes tamilo-Sinhala war from other ethnic conflicts around the world? And in Rwanda, and in Bosnia and in Cambodia, the population brutally and massively cleaned out “wrong” from the point of view of the authorities, of ethnic groups. However, only in Sri Lanka, one of the main driving forces of the resistance were women. Groups of tamilok in the ranks of the “liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” went into battle on equal terms with men, becoming the most ferocious army of women, known to the world.
Since the mid-1980s, the “Tigers” began to actively recruit women. Then they were mainly engaged in propaganda, worked in military hospitals, collected information about the enemy in the fields, the funds for military spending and recruiting new fighters. Soon, however, they had to become soldiers.
In 1983, created a special women’s corps in the army of the Tamil “Tigers liberation front”. First fight for them took place three years later. A year later, the leader of the “Tigers” founded the first military training camp for women, and by the early 1990s, the “Tigress” has turned into an independent organization.
By the time their number in Tamil army began to increase sharply. By one estimate, it accounted for 15-20 percent of all soldiers others reached fifty. Mostly women served in commando squads of “Black tigers”, so as to recognize the suicide bombers was much more difficult.
“Tigers of liberation” demanded that each Tamil family was sent to the membership one person, but mainly to the movement they joined voluntarily. According to some researchers, initially women groups were recruited not for ideological reasons about equality and feminism, but because of the banal lack of fighters. At the same time, according to the polls, “Tigress”, many of them cut her hair and changed Sari for camouflage pants because they longed for the change of the status of women in Tamil society and wanted a different future for themselves and their daughters in Tamil Ilam.
When Velu was seven years old, jeep Lankan government army brought to the village where her family lived, the mountain of corpses of its neighbors. She was hiding in the coop, and when the car passed her, she had narrow eyes.
Two years later, began large-scale massacres of Tamil villages, their inhabitants were destroyed, and Tamils in response massacred Sinhalese and Muslim population of Sri Lanka. When the authorities again reached the village Velu, her family fled to India. However, several years later, the girl returned home, but not because there it was safe. She returned to fight for the independence of his people.
In the women’s army camp for Breakfast was rice with curry, the girls learned to pass the obstacle, crawl in the mud, walking a tightrope, collect and clean the machine. According to the memoirs of Velu, the leaders of the “Tigers” took care of the girls, giving them sanitary pads and special bras without fasteners, to the soldiers it was convenient to throw over the shoulder weapon.
In traditional Tamil society from the girls demanded obedience, but on the battlefield they set their own rules. They were respected men, considered them as equals. “In Tamil Ilam nobody will suffer and starve. Women are equal to men,” — that Velu saw the future, for which we fought.