TIGERS officially announces restructure process

“The Executive Committee of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, wishes to officially let our beloved Tamil people and the international community know that Mr Selvarasa Pathmanathan, who had been appointed as Head of International Relations by our National Leader, will lead us into the next steps of our freedom struggle according to the vision of our esteemed leader”, said LTTE’s Executive Committee in a press statement released today.

Full text of the statement by the Executive Committee of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is as follows:

“The Eelam Tamil people are in the midst of a critical and sorrowful period in the history of the struggle for reedom of our Nation, Tamil Eelam. No one can deny the fact that we have experienced massive and irreplaceable losses, losses we would not accept even in our worst dreams.

Against the backdrop of Sri Lanka’s boastful propaganda that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been annihilated and destroyed, it is our historic duty to rise up and fight for our legitimate rights – a duty that has been left in our hands by our peerless leader and those martyred heroes and civilians who have given their lives in defending our soil.

At this historic juncture, cognizant of the new circumstances, we have set out to take our freedom struggle along new pathways.

Accordingly, we humbly announce to our beloved Tamil people that we have reformulated the administrative structures of our liberation movement.

Like all liberation struggles, we will modify the form and strategies of our struggle according to times and demands. Yet, our ultimate goal of a free Tamil Eelam does not ever change. In view of this, we, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, wish to join hands with our people in order to take forward our freedom struggle to its next phase. Hon Mr Veluppillai Pirabakaran was then, now, and shall remain forever, the leader of Tamil Nationhood.

We are determined to overcome all the hurdles ahead of us in order to strengthen our actions towards our liberation. We have undertaken a long, elaborate and deep process of consultation among our members, including our cadres who bravely fought their way out of the battlefield and our representatives abroad and in the Diaspora, in order to make some firm decisions.

According to this collective decision, we, the Executive Committee of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, wish to officially let our beloved Tamil people and the international community know that Mr Selvarasa Pathmanathan, who had been appointed as Head of International Relations by our National Leader, will lead us into the next steps of our freedom struggle according to the vision of our esteemed leader.

We have set up a head office for our liberation movement, and formulated various sector-based working groups and an executive committee, in order to take our struggle vigorously forward. We shall share the details of these in due course. We look forward to the support and wise counsel of the Tamil people in realising our future plans.

If the Sinhala nation and those countries that support it consider that the Tamil people's freedom struggle has been defeated through the capture of historical homeland areas of the Tamil people and the massacre of thousands of Tamil civilians, we shall shatter that illusion.

Let us demonstrate to the world through our actions that the fire of freedom awakened by our great leader V.Pirabakaran continues to burn in the hearts of all Tamils, and that only a free Tamil Nation has the power to extinguish it.”