GO TIGERS! - PART 1

Tamil Girls Are the Toughest Girls in the World

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY THOMAS HAUGERSVEEN, ASSISTED BY HENRIK PRYSER LIBELL

Two years ago, Norwegian photographer Thomas Haugersveen went to Sri Lanka to cover the civil war that’s been ravaging the country for the past 20 years. After making initial diplomatic contacts in Norway he managed to enter the area known as Tamil Eelam. It’s a guerrilla-controlled state-within-a-state, not officially recognized by the government. Just hours after Thomas wrapped up his time there and headed for home, the village he’d been staying in was attacked. Since then the fighting has intensified rapidly. Rumor has it that all the borders have now been closed. Aid workers are talking about how this could be the final leg of the war.

A Tamil Tiger.

The Tamil Tigers (aka Liberation of the Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE for short) is a military separatist group that is currently fighting a civil war against the state of Sri Lanka. Their main goal is an independent state, far removed from the oppressive powers of the Sinhalese government. They are incredibly serious. All Tamil soldiers carry a poison ampoule around their necks—they don’t believe in being taken prisoner. They single-handedly beat the Indian army in the 80s, and they’re sometimes credited for having “invented” modern-day suicide bombing (it is believed that they’ve carried out more suicide attacks than any other group in the world, including the killing of two heads of state). They’re not a huge army (unofficial numbers vary between 8,000 and 20,000 people, but we’d put it at 15,000) but they’ve made considerable progress, and they now control the northern parts of Sri Lanka—the area known as Tamil Eelam. So far the conflict has claimed 65,000 lives and spawned 1 million fugitives. (And yeah, yeah, yeah, MIA’s dad is famously affiliated with the movement.) But the Tamil Tigers are still not terribly well known in the West, and even lesser known are their female fighters—of which there are a hell of a lot, and of whom we are particularly enamored.



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