Women Fighters of the LTTE

It is variously estimated that between 20-35 percent of the LTTE's fighters are women.

While the Indian army still does not deploy women in combat, the LTTE started deploying women in combat in 1986.

This is what Adele Balasingham says about these women in her book "Women Fighters of the Liberation Tigers", first published in 1993.

"Young women too experienced the horror of the racial riots. They themselves were victims of the riots. The forces of social constraint which had obstructed their deeper participation earlier, had left them exposed and defenceless in the face of violent racist hatered and state terror. Deepening genocidal oppression now propelled them out of their established social life into a new revolutionary world. Young women broke the shackles of social constraints, they ripped open the straight jacket of conservative images of women. The military partiotism of Tamil women finally blossomed as they entered into a new life of revolutionary armed struggle."
Adele Balasingham is the wife of LTTE's theoretician Anton S Balasingham.